Africa in a shifting world order — can digital technology achieve what aid never could?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Anne Jones** (0:07)
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**Natasha Mitchell** (0:38)
Media coverage of the African continent in Australia is so minimal and often one-dimensional and we're really missing out on so much going on. There are so many big and small stories to be told about Africa right now, stories that are no longer being written by colonial powers. African nations are not waiting to be invited to the geopolitical table. They are building their own. So let's head to Harvard's prestigious Kennedy School of Government today to meet a power panel of African leaders really repositioning Africa on the world stage. Hello, welcome to Big Ideas. I'm Natasha Mitchell.
As the United States upends its international relationships, China expands its global footprint and Europe is distracted by the war on Ukraine. A generation of African leaders, thinkers, entrepreneurs, is now asking what does this moment make possible for Africa?
Dr. Jendayi Frazer served as US. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the George W. Bush administration. Her Excellency Ameenah Gurib Fakeem is a biodiversity scientist and former president of Mauritius, one of only a handful of women to have led an African nation. His Excellency Mark-Alexandre Doumba is Gabon's Minister of Digital Economy and Innovation. And the host is Mayowa Kyoro, a partner at McKinsey. So let's head to Harvard.

**Mayowa Kyoro** (2:20)
I'll address my first question to you, Madam President. What does political maturity look like in the current African context?

**Ameenah Gurib Fakeem** (2:30)
When you talk about political maturity, I will not use the current context. I'll just look at political maturity.
When we look at political maturity for Africa, we have to go back before the Berlin Conference.
And before that, we saw that many regions, because there was not the borders which had been imposed post-Berlin, we saw that these regions were managed by kings, by queens, and we saw the approach which was very environment-focused, which was not very extractive, and people were living in harmony with environment. The concept of being outside of the environment is not asked, because in Africa, in that governance system, we feel that humans are very much part of that ecosystem. Then we've had Berlin.
And Berlin saw, of course, the splitting of Africa into now 54 countries. And I think there's quite a few more in gestation. We have to be careful about that. And what do we see is that a system of governance has now been imposed in Africa.
And many regions, they still cannot grapple with what they've had as chiefs before. And now the Western democratic system, which has now been imposed, and many regions are still trying to grapple of how to cope with that system of governance. Countries like mine that didn't have an established kind of population before, we managed to actually work through this diversity of people and we managed to get it right because we are still a very young population in Mauritius, but those countries that had established governance structures with kings, with queens and chiefs, I mean, some of them, they're still trying to cope with the model. Now, is that model, which is still very extractive, still the future for Africa, that remains to be seen? Because increasingly, governments are now reacting to the fact that Africa sits on 30% of the world minerals. For example, that's one item. Whether Africa should go down the model of just being an exporter of raw material, or whether Africa must start transforming this raw material to create opportunities. Because we mustn't forget that the African continent is the continent of the future. By 2100, one in two working-age adults will be African. So let us start number-sinking. One in two by 2100, about 75 years from now. So these are questions that we have to see whether the democratic, the model, the governance model that we have inherited, how best to make it work with the culture, with the tradition, with the heritage, which is an advantage for the African continent.

**Mayowa Kyoro** (5:08)
When you said you were going to go back in history, I didn't realize you were going to go back, back, back.

**Ameenah Gurib Fakeem** (5:13)
Well, I'll be a professor so context matters.

**Mayowa Kyoro** (5:17)
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm actually going to come to you, your excellency Mark-Alexandre, because Madame President talked about Africa being a net exporter of raw materials. And we're now in an age where parts, if you look at what we export and import, we're a net importer of IP.