It is high time that African innovators are supported and that their stories are recorded and amplified, says founder of Disrupting Africa, researcher Nnamdi Oranye.
In a world where Western countries
have often sourced and repackaged concepts from Africa as their own, Oranye
says now is the time for Africa to write its own story. “All you have to do is
Google an African innovator and almost nothing pops up,” says a frustrated
Oranye about inventive local entrepreneurs.
“The inverse of this is Silicon
Valley, Europe and even China. Go on Amazon or Google and enter ‘Steve Jobs’ as
a search. The plethora of books that just pop out on this one individual is
astounding. Now do the same for the locals you know – Africa’s equivalent of
Steve Jobs. Nothing pops up.”
Africa
needs a narrative ecosystem
In a virtual interview with Inc.Africa,
Oranye, the founder of Disrupting Africa and
the author of Disrupting Africa: The
Rise and Rise of African Innovation, points to the disparity in
the number of books written about Jobs and Mohammed ‘Mo’ Ibrahim.
“For those who don't know, Ibrahim is
considered the father of telecommunications in Africa. He was the founder of
Celtel, which was bought out by Airtel. You can imagine that for most African
innovators with mobile technology, the innovation wouldn't exist without
Ibrahim.”
A practical exercise of searching for
books on Jobs and Ibrahim on Amazon reveals the stark disparity – Apple’s
inventor has thousands of written tomes. Ibrahim is lauded for "transforming
a continent" but has zero books written about him.
Oranye concedes that Silicon Valley
has existed for close to a century, while mobile innovation in Africa has only
been around for the past 15 years. “You could say that Africa hasn’t matured enough
to have its own innovation stories written about it, but this argument falls
aside if one understands the correlation between storytelling and innovation,”
says the researcher.
“We
have a strong role to play to make sure we tell the stories of innovators
accurately. If we fail to do this, the generations behind us will have no
anchor or reference points, and Africa will be back to square one.”
“If you think about it objectively,
it's hard for you to want to work with, invest in or partner with an innovator
if you don’t know them. You just don't know about them, right?”
Disrupting Africa research reveals
that some 30-million innovators in Africa could disrupt the continent but holds
that these stories aren’t getting the attention they deserve. “Our argument is
that storytelling in the African innovation context is a critical element to
success in moving Africa forward,” he says.
“If you use a very loose approach to
innovation – think of ways of farming that have existed for centuries in
Africa, or plant-based drugs that you can either find in the Kalahari, or in
Nigeria – these innovations are often exported and then repackaged and sold
back to us,” he says.
Build
Enduring African Companies
With his partner, Ryan Peter, Oranye
finds, documents and researches enduring African companies. The methodology –
what makes for an ‘enduring’ business–— is premised on Jim Collin’s piece on The Secret Of Enduring
Greatness.
One of the most influential
management consultants and business authors of our times, Collins was a
Stanford Business School professor who wrote up his research in accessible
books called Built to Last and Good to Great. The
books made Collins a publishing sensation and established him as a management
guru.
On the subject of appropriating ideas,
Oranye tells how Logan Green, one of the
founders of Lyft, travelled to Zimbabwe in 2005, when that
country was in the grip of a catastrophic economic recession. “Anyone around in
Zimbabwe will know that if you use the public transport system, the vehicles
don’t leave until they are full,” he says.
The
genesis of Lyft was in Zimbabwe
“Green was impressed with what he saw,
went back home to the US and imported the concept of ride-sharing to the US,”
Oranye explains. Green joined forces with John Zimmerman and founded Zimride late
in 2006. Ubercab, which became Uber, was created in 2009. Zimride evolved into
Lyft in 2012.
“We have a strong role to play to make
sure we tell the stories of innovators accurately. If we fail to do this, the
generations behind us will have no anchor or reference points, and Africa will
be back to square one.
“Silicon Valley is brilliant in
telling its own stories. The plethora of books and articles written about US
innovators is just incredible. And it includes those who fail, right? It's just
incredible.”
Write
our own stories
Oranye urges inventive startups and
founders to write their origin stories and history. “As an entrepreneur, you
have all these reference points. By recording these, others can read about and
learn from them.”
In knitting the fabric of this
continental story together, innovators, entrepreneurs and their supporters can
help create a grand narrative ecosystem that supports everyone, Oranye says.
Nnamdi Oranye offers three lessons for inventors and entrepreneurs:
Fact trumps
fiction. Use research and
data points to tell real, factual stories that others can learn from.
Roll out the red
carpet for African innovators. Not
everyone can become an innovator, but innovators and entrepreneurs need support
services like accounting, legal services and marketing. African entrepreneurs
need all the support they can get. Help them, and you’ll be helping to shift
the continent’s narrative.
Become more
future-focused. Most local
inventors lean into needs-based innovation. Research shows that most African
innovators solve basic human, societal and economic problems. While important,
Africa must also flex its future-fit muscles and open space for inventions in
artificial intelligence and space exploration.
Source:Inc.com