To illustrate the technological transformation that the African continent is undergoing, CNN's African Voices has highlighted 10 leading tech voices from different African countries. While the article put a much needed emphasis on the innovation trend originating from the African continent and their achievements, many tech experts felt that the feature did not represent the whole scope of tech innovation and entrepreneurship that is brewing in all the regions of the continent. It left out most of the non-English speaking regions and outreach actions that took place in the most isolated areas from a technological standpoint. Business canvas presentation in Addis Ababa by BillZimmerman on Flickr (CC license BY) Innovation from Necessity Bright B Simmons, the Accra-based founder of mPedigree Network explains “What Africa's Entrepreneurs Can Teach the World”: It's becoming ever clearer that entrepreneurship is the answer to the vexing economic questions facing Africa today (..) But how has it actually evolved in Africa? Are there peculiar features of African entrepreneurship we may consider relevant to big global debates on development and sustainability? [..] the overall difference in the structure of typical African economies, compared to the West, makes a big difference. The fewer resources available to regulatory and tax authorities and the smaller sizes of businesses jointly mean that when businesses make complex arrangements to rationalize their tax expenditures, their costs go up rather than down. Also, a shallower financial system makes the notion of a corporate treasury function similar to what is common in the West nearly redundant in the African setting.[..] In a sense, African entrepreneurs run profit ecosystems rather than business units. These ecosystems interact with other ecosystems in a culturally elaborate manner that can produce extreme robustness, resilience, and flexibility. In Senegal, entrepreneurs have clearly identified the need for better networking between actors in the field of agriculture ( and other industries). A Start Up conference is set up on March 30 in Dakar to discuss opportunities in collaboration between tech experts and entrepreneurs [fr] : Le constat est simple : trop peu de liens sont encore tissés entre les TIC et les secteurs dans lesquelles elles pourraient avoir des retombées sociales et économiques considérables. Les jeunes développeurs ne savent généralement pas comment utiliser leur talent au profit de ces industries et de l’autre côté, les professionnels des secteurs concernés ne sont pas en contact avec le monde des TIC et du fait peinent à exprimer leur problématiques en termes techniques. In the CNN African Voices feature, Ory Okolloh emphasizes why technology is important but that other critical areas need to evolve as well for the effort to persevere: In order for this growth to be sustainable and to create more revenue generating opportunities, we need other forms of infrastructure such as electricity to catch up and we need more governments to embrace the idea of open access policies An indication of the current innovation trends that are bubbling on the continent is the multiplication of technology hubs across the continent (via Crowdmap): African tech Hubs via Hubs in Africa A recent example of collaborative tech initiative through the aforementioned hubs is the Apps4Africa event on Climate Change that i-Hub tech community in Madagascar is organizing on March 16. The Language Divide Okolloh noticed along with other tech African experts that other regions were missing from the coverage. Jean Patrick Ehouman explains both his satisfaction with seeing African tech being in the news and his disappointment with the lack of coverage of the francophone tech world [fr] : Il y a 21 pays en Afrique (environ 350 millions de personnes) dont la langue officielle est le Français. En plus de ces 21 pays, il y a 5 autres dont le Français est aussi une langue officielle (la deuxième). Il s’agit de l’Algérie, le Maroc, la Mauritanie et la Tunisie qui sont des pays dont la première langue officielle est l’Arabe. Dans tous ces pays, il y existes des passionnés et des leaders de technologies qui publient régulièrement sur Twitter. Ces personnes passent beaucoup de temps à créer ou a mobiliser les différents acteurs de cette industrie pour en tirer le meilleur. [..] @Fasokan n’a jamais réussi à lever des centaines de millions de dollar pour ces projets, mais il a beaucoup de mérite quand on sait que grâce à lui les villageois des zones reculées du Mali arrivent à se faire connaitre du monde en tenant un blog. Et il publie tant en Bambara (Langue africaine parlée au Sénégal, en Mauritanie, au Mali, au Burkina Faso, en Côte d’Ivoire, en Guinée, …) qu’en français.