Two Volumes. One Continent.
Unlimited Potential.
Emerging Technologies for Development in Africa
Opportunities, Risks and Pathways for Transformation
The first comprehensive, evidence-based analysis of how emerging technologies — from
artificial intelligence and blockchain to genomics, renewable energy systems, and 3D printing —
are being adopted, adapted, and innovated throughout Africa. Moving beyond hype, this
volume explores what ten frontier technology domains mean in practice for a continent
facing climate change, inequality, rapid urbanization, and a youth employment crisis.
Written for policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and development practitioners,
this book is both a reference and a call to action — an argument that Africa's
technological future must be shaped deliberately, inclusively, and on the continent's
own terms.
About This Book
Africa is at a pivotal crossroads. By 2050, the population will reach 2.5 billion, with 60% under age 25 — the youngest and fastest-growing group. This demographic reality, combined with urgent needs in climate adaptation, economic transformation, and expanded social services, makes technology adoption not merely a goal but a necessity.
The book examines ten emerging technologies — artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, renewable energy systems, drone technologies, 3D printing, robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, and genomics — assessing each against Africa's specific constraints and opportunities. Africa is not a passive receiver of technologies created elsewhere but an active innovator: M-Pesa's mobile money ecosystem handles over $1 trillion in cumulative transactions; Zipline's drone network has completed more than 500,000 medical deliveries across six countries; pay-as-you-go solar systems serve over 30 million households.
Across five parts, the book situates Africa within global technology transitions, classifies ten priority technologies and aligns them with Agenda 2063, examines sector applications in health, education, agriculture, manufacturing and trade, addresses foundational challenges in infrastructure and human capital, and outlines strategic paths at continental, regional and national levels. Throughout, African ethics and values — Ubuntu, justice, sovereignty, and intergenerational responsibility — guide the governance analysis.
The central argument: Africa's technological future will be shaped not by which technologies are adopted but by the strength of the foundations on which they are built and the quality of the governance that guides them. Infrastructure, energy, human capital, and institutions account for more variation in technology adoption outcomes than the technologies themselves.
Digital Transformation of the Health Sector in Africa
A Framework for Inclusive, Scalable and Sustainable Health Systems Digitalization
Africa stands at an inflection point that may not recur. A convergence of factors — mobile
connectivity, digitally fluent health workers, post-pandemic institutional confidence, and
growing political recognition that external dependence is a vulnerability — makes this the
defining moment for digital health transformation.
This eighteen-chapter, evidence-based guide introduces the Digital Health Technology Stack:
five foundation layers — infrastructure, identity, interoperability, data, and applications —
supported by six cross-cutting enablers that determine whether those foundations ever become
functional health systems. The book fills the gap between granular case studies and sweeping
frameworks, providing policymakers, practitioners, and researchers a practical architecture
for digital health in African contexts.
About This Book
The Digital Transformation of the Health Sector in Africa is organised around the Digital Health Technology Stack — the most coherent and practical organizing model for African digital health published to date. Its five foundation layers (infrastructure, identity, interoperability, data, and applications) are inseparable from seven cross-cutting enablers (workforce, research, ecosystem, strategy, governance, regional cooperation, and financing) that determine whether those foundations ever become functional health systems.
The book covers the full arc: from Africa's health landscape and COVID-19's accelerating effect, through each layer of the technology stack in depth, to workforce development, research, ecosystem building, national strategy, governance, regional cooperation, financing, and a phased implementation roadmap. Case studies from Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria are set alongside global models from India, Estonia, Brazil, Australia, and the EU.
The most politically important argument runs through every chapter: digital health, without deliberate and structural commitment to equity, will not reduce Africa's health disparities — it will reorganize them. A health information system that systematically undercounts the rural poor produces bad data. Bad data produces bad decisions. Bad decisions produce bad outcomes. Equity is not a value added to the technical agenda; it is a precondition for the technical agenda to mean anything at all.
Written with urgency, this book provides the shared language that policymakers, technologists, clinicians, and financiers need to act together — and the framework that will remain useful long after specific statistics have been superseded.