Ethiopia’s Tech & Innovation Revolution
By Halie Schuster
The modern world is heavily tied with technology. In fact, it is hard to even imagine a world independent of technological outputs like cell phones, the internet, computers and other hardware and software technologies. Ethiopia too is taking advantage of these new technologies and is well on its to becoming one of the major tech hubs on the African continent. While the country’s agriculture and manufacturing sectors have previously driven the progressive transformation of Ethiopia’s economy, present Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has his sights set on improving technology in the country.
Tech-led growth is an exciting prospect for Ethiopia. And Ethiopia has a substantial advantage in regard to its growing technology sector – a large number of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educated graduates are beginning to enter the job market following the Ethiopian’s government investments in higher education (Collins, 2019). In fact, over the past two decades, the Ethiopian government has made the development of information and communication technology (ICT) one of its top strategic priorities. In a recent article for the African Educational Research Journal, academic Birhanu Moges Alemu reports that “the penetration of current ICT trends in education is very important and a priority for educational development and sustainability,” and that “the main stakeholders of the global tertiary education industry are staff and students” (Alemu, 2016). In part of the country’s ICT development, the country has implemented a 70:30 higher education policy where 70 percent of students are trained in technology and science and only 30 percent are trained in social science and humanities. And in 2017, a report from the World Bank even found that overall higher education enrollment had multiplied fivefold since 2005, with the number of public institutions increasing from eight to thirty-six in that same period (Collins, 2019). As Getahun Mekuria, Ethiopia’s minister of innovation and technology, explains, “our labor market is now changing; we have a surplus of graduates in the areas of technology, engineering and sciences” (Collins, 2019).
While this is certainly promising, there is still a limited demand for these skilled graduates in the Ethiopian market. Therefore, the government is trying to find new and innovative ways to ensure that they can contribute to the economy. The African Business Magazine reports that, in response to this market gap, Mekuria and his ministry have created government-sponsored incubators that would cater to and nurture Ethiopian business startups. The magazine also reports that “Mekuria has held talks with the Industrial Park Development Cooperation of Ethiopia to create a huge incubation center, which would help merge tech into the Ethiopian development model” (Nairametrics, 2019). Notably, the business community of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa is excited about this new era of private-sector-led growth promised by Mekuria and the prime minister.
The overall objective of Mekuria’s plan is to create 20,000 new tech jobs and 2,000 SMEs within the next several years which will sustain a $2 billion growth in Ethiopia’s technology sector as a whole. In doing so, his plan would raise the Ethiopian tech sector to 2 percent of the country’s total GDP which is a step towards competing with the global GDP standard where approximately 65 percent of global GDP is made up from innovation and technology services. Mekuria concludes that “the best way to really create wealth in the world is through technology-based and knowledge-based industries” (Collins, 2019). Although Ethiopia is not quite there yet, under the guidance of Mekuria the country is well on its way to a technological revolution.
References
Alemu, Birhanu Moges (2016, October 17). Transforming Education Practices of Ethiopia into
Development and the Knowledge Society Through Information and Communication. African Educational Research Journal: Vol 5 (1). Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1216159.pdf
Collins, Tom (2019, April 2). The Dawn of Ethiopian Tech. The African Business Journal.
Retrieved from https://africanbusinessmagazine.com/company-profile/the-dawn-of-ethiopian-tech/
Nairametrics (2019, December 20). A Tech Revolution in Ethiopia. Nairametrics. Retrieved
from https://nairametrics.com/2019/12/20/a-tech-revolution-in-ethiopia/
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