Africa has the potential to leapfrog with the fourth industrial revolution using technology if only it could get its policies right and open up to allow free trade in the continent.

That was the submission of the Chairman of MTN Nigeria, Mr Ernest Ndukwe, who spoke on Wednesday at the ongoing Nigerian Economic Summit (NES31).
He said that, having missed out on the first three revolutions, the future of Africa is in creating digital natives.

“We have a very great opportunity to leapfrog with the fourth industrial revolution and that is by removing the barriers to entry,” he said, adding that there was so much emphasis on sovereignty.

“Many countries close their doors. We just need to open up our doors. We put obstacles along the way, preventing each other from trading with ourselves.

“We need to open up our space, people should be able to move from one African country to another and be able to do their businesses, knowing that when you can sell a business at a pan-African level, you will be able to compete in the world,” he said. Using the MTN example, Ndukwe said any company that wishes to succeed must get its strategy right.

“One thing that makes a business succeed is how the business is structured, the kind of board members you have, the kind of visionaries you have and your recruitment processes. You can’t get something out of nothing. If you look at the MTN story in Nigeria, one of its strongest success stories is the fact that it is the most stable mobile operating company in Nigeria; it did not have board squabbles, it has a very strong board and recruitment of staff is done based purely on merit,” he said.

On the need to build human capital, the former Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said Africa must continue to build a very strong manpower pool.

“India supplies manpower to nearly all countries in the world because of the kind of system they built in the country that enabled people to be trained to the highest level possible, especially in modern technologies,” he said.

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave, Olugbenga Agboola, said the African or Nigerian story is that of resilience supported by the telecom revolution in Nigeria. He said that for any company to survive on the continent, it must be ready to build resilience.

The panelists all agreed that there was a need to build an ecosystem and leverage the strength of each other. According to them, no business exists in isolation.