9- May-2024- Building a Connected Africa: The Path to a Single Digital Market and a Prosperous Future
Organizations working on digital data on the African continent are looking for a single market where data can cross their borders, which can greatly contribute to the challenges facing the continent’s business.
Digital technology experts on Tuesday called on African countries to make and implement appropriate laws that protect people’s and business data, which will lead to changes across the continent.
A single digital market across Africa will lower barriers to trade and communication, It will make the internet faster and more accessible.
Content and services, hosted on local data centers, will be cheaper to download because they won’t go through expensive international connections.
And better access to online communication, banking, or health care can make continent-wide connections with family and friends, businesses and lenders, doctors and patients easier.
Connections to neighboring countries, to regions, and to the entire continent are key to sparking economic growth, creating jobs, and moving Africa into the digital age.
Long term, the goals are ambitious: to create a single and secure digital market across Africa alongside free trade areas on the ground.
To build regional links that eliminate roaming charges. To improve cross-border trade across the continent by creating the largest free-trade area in the world.
This kind of connectivity, both digital and at national borders, was one of the major themes at the 2023 Dakar Financing Summit held in February given that an objective of the African Union is to build a secured single digital market in Africa by 2030, an effort supported by the World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A) initiative.
These goals require large investments in broadband connectivity, secure data infrastructure, and the governmental and legal reforms that can spark competition.
Building digital and physical connections by eliminating barriers like broadband coverage gaps, digital illiteracy, and even red tape and paperwork at ports and land borders will allow people and businesses across Africa to reach bigger markets, build businesses, and create jobs.
For example, Diaobé, Senegal, is a rural market town in the southern part of the country near Guinea. Every week businesspeople and entrepreneurs meet to trade dried fish, palm oil, honey and more. Improving connectivity in Diaobé would be a real-world example of how to boost trade in the region.
Since Diaobé is a regional economic hub, strong connectivity would promote economic growth.
Digital payments for buying and selling, ordering goods online, locating merchandise using GPS—all of these digital tools would make it faster and easier for people to work and that, in turn, would attract still more businesses and customers to Diaobé.
Of course, more people and more money coming to town would mean additional business for many other businesses – cafes, hotels, street vendors – creating a positive spillover effect.
