Some of Africa’s market frictions cannot be fixed by software alone: we need hardware startups. Yes, you may have the best software skills, but to help certain sectors, you would need to have a physical device.
In the oil industry, software can help you in the reconciliation process, but before that can be done, you need sensors to collect the data. The same applies in agriculture and healthcare sectors where before the data can be processed and analysed, sensors must first collect them from the soil, land or humans.
Largely, the deal is this: without hardware, the impact of software will remain limited in Africa in helping communities and firms. Sure, software will eat the world, but hardware must first cook the world for it.
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In this piece, I explain how hardware can become a moat, in Africa, at a certain level, to protect entities from the competitive voltages of the global ICT utilities which continue to take territories using the power of the positive continuum of network efforts and size. We need hardware startups in Africa!
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