EMERGING Valley 2021

As Africa and Europe race to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063, taking much needed steps to regain the progress that has been lost due to the COVID-19, the shortage of healthcare workers, vaccine inequity, along with unprecedented strain on health systems has triggered an accelerated opportunity for digital healthcare solutions to bridge the gap between healthcare and those it serves.

Europe’s telehealth market, is estimated to grow four-fold, and in Africa – by 2030 the health market is estimated to be at 259 billion USD; the second largest global market after the US. Digital health has been a critical tool for most patients, health service providers, and professionals to connect and navigate social distance as the “new normal”. Digital solutions will accelerate the adoption of an outpatient setting, they will enhance a customer centric approach, and will stimulate a greater interest from citizens to be more and more in touch of overseeing their healthcare.

However, most digital health startups do not survive long, mostly losing steam before realizing adequate profits. Despite having sufficient users, investor funding, and buzz across their products, these startups go out of business quite swiftly.

Questions will include:

• What are some common problems digital health start-ups face across both continents?
• How can digital-health solutions be deployed and scaled up for use?
• What are the opportunities for collaboration and joint ventures between start-up e-health ecosystems between Africa and Europe?

The Covid-19 pandemic has had surprising outcomes, one of them being the adoption of digital technologies across the globe. Although African citizens still suffer from inequalities in accessing the internet or smartphones, growth has been real. And yet, this acceleration does not necessarily come easy, nor free. We have seen in previous years how Facebook, Google or Elon Musk have come to Africa to conquer the last digital frontier. “Free Basics”, “Loon”, or “Starlink” are all projects that intend to connect the continent with itself and with the world, with a value proposition either downgraded, or unfitted to local needs. Rarely these strategic tools are African owned.

With such powerful international actors, Africa runs the risk of ceding access to a significant control of its countries’ digital economy. Africa might indeed appear as the last bastion to conquer for web giants, since a vast majority of the world’s unconnected population resides on the continent. This presents a golden opportunity for companies whose economic model is highly dependent on the sale of their user data, it also poses a new threat to African digital sovereignty. These questions are not Africa specific, Europe shares much of the same pressure in its relationship with tech giants. Faced with similar challenges Europe and Africa appear as natural partners that could join forces and balance the power of US and Asian giants.

Sharing best practices, cocreating new models and working together are a step in the right direction for both continents’ digital sovereignty. African and European tech ecosystems must leverage these interlinked interests to develop their economies, their competencies, and their positioning on the world digital stage. Strategies are left to be to be identified and alliances to be reinvented in order to ensure the resilience of societies in a post-Covid world and a shared digital fate, oriented towards the common good. Those solutions might require a Europe-Africa approach.

Questions include:

• How do both continents position themselves in front of firms that at times hold more sway and power than countries themselves?
• What strategies should governments adopt to face this pressure? How can the protection of personal data be guaranteed when Africa is still the continent with the smallest number of data centres?
• How can African stakeholders carve out a harmonized framework that would take into account public and private standards? Could governments in both Europe and Africa leverage tax policy as a way to loosen up GAFAM’s grip on their digital economy?