Fred Swaniker speaks at The Business of Fashion Presents VOICES, in November 2024, in Chipping Norton, England.
Fred Swaniker, CEO of Sand Technologies, a tech and AI solutions company headquartered in New York, recruits a third of his company’s engineers from African leadership and tech education institutions that he helped set up
In 2004, Swaniker founded the African Leadership Academy to develop the most outstanding young African talent for university, followed by African Leadership Universities, which opened to students in 2015
In 2017, aware of the boom of the tech sector on the continent and potential for remote work, Swaniker founded African Leadership Xcelerator (ALX) with short virtual courses for skills like software engineering and data analytics, and is now expanding to tech skills in film, music, gaming and animation
CNN’s Nick Watt spoke with Swaniker about how access and education in technology empowers the rise of African’s young tech talent
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length
CNN: You must have a certain amount of leakage in terms of your talent in Africa moving to the US or the UK to try and earn more money for themselves — how do you deal with that?
Fred Swaniker: I encourage it. Let me tell you why. Brain drain is only a problem when you’re training talent at low scale … we’re doing this at scale. In 2024, we trained 700,000 people. Our goal is to train 3 to 5 million people in the next decade. So, the continent should train 100 million people
What Africa has that no one else has is young people, right? The average age in Africa is 19. We’re going to be 40% of the world’s population by the end of the century, 60% of the world’s youth
Africa is the last remaining store of what has always been the driver of human progress: human capacity and talent
Africa’s tech talent revolution: How it’s reshaping sectors globally
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CNN
Africa’s tech talent revolution: How it’s reshaping sectors globally
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What the world needs to realize is that Africa is thet of the world and we are doing that right now with Sand (Technologies) in terms of the innovations that we’re bringing to different parts of the world. The same thing can happen in the creative industry. The next wave of culture and entertainment, it’s going to come from young people in Africa
CNN:Given where the world is with technology, young skilled workers will find a marketplace. They are connected
Swaniker: So, if you’re in Liberia, you’re no longer isolated and you can compete with somebody from Los Angeles. A huge fraction of the graduates that we train in Africa … they sit in Africa and work remotely. They’re sitting in Addis Ababa, Lagos, Nairobi, and they’re working in London or New York or Chicago because they have the skills. It has expanded the realm of possibility. You can be a trader and create content and build movies. You can use AI to do all these things
It’s a level(er). It’s a great equalizer in society. It allows people to have skills that they couldn’t have before, to access work opportunities that were before limited by borders
CNN: When we are talking about Africa with this new re for the benefit of the continent and the world, right?
Swaniker: Yes … when someone is educated and they’re able to work globally, even if they’re working in Africa remotely, they’re earning a lot more money. That money that they’re earning can be spent in the local grocery shops, in the barber shops, in the beauty salons. They’re creating lots of other opportunities for other people, right? So, one person who is educated, that can work remotely, for example, can support five to 10 other people
CNN: Where are we with accessing global markets? Is that realistic for a lot of people in Africa right now, that they can reach these global markets digitally?
Swaniker: If you look at what the Nigerians have done with music. Ten-15 years ago Nigerian musicians were earning $10,000 for a performance, because they were trying to sell locally. But when they went global, you know, you see Burna Boy and Wizkid selling out the 02 Arena (in London) or Madison Square Garden (in New York)
What we’ve seen in music, you can do the same thing with film, with gaming, with animation, with design, with fashion. You know, young people set the cultural zeitgeist for the world. And where’s theexports is in the creative industry
One of the things that I’m excited about that we’re doing with ALX is we’ve launched a new initiative amongst all the digital skills that we’re developing, creative AI which is teaching young people in Africa to create film, music, gaming, animation —leveraging AI to leapfrog and do this faster and cheaper and to be able to access global markets
Burna Boy performs at the Coachella Festival on April 21, 2023, in Indio, California.
CNN: Is the attitude of the rest of the world toward Africa being changed by access to all these African art forms, but also African innovation?
Swaniker: In certain ways, yes, but I think the rest of the world still doesn’t understand Africa’s potential … One thing I’m excited about the work that (ALX) is doing to unleash Africa’s creative talent is that we’ll be able to tell our own story
Swaniker at the Mauritius African Leadership University, in 2016.
CNN: Is tech inherently inclusive?
Swaniker: I wouldn’t say it’s inherently inclusive because many people who design technology solutions are not necessarily designing with inclusion in mind. That being said, when leveraged properly, it can be massively inclusive
It’s like any tool. You can use a knife to prepare a great meal or slice bread, to do many good things, but it can also be a dangerous tool. It can be used to kill someone. It all depends on the intention behind it. So, technology is a tool and the values that underlie that tool will determine whether it’s inclusive or exclusive
CNN: That’s my concern … tech can widen the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, or it can create a level playing field
Swaniker: Absolutely, it can create (a level playing field). Today, a child in rural Africa can have access to more information on their mobile phone than someone who was doing a PhD at Oxford 30 years ago
Information is ubiquitous. That allows you as a young person in Africa to educate yourself without teachers. You can do peer-to-peer learning and teach each other. You can really access the world’s best knowledge from the top universities in the world, the best libraries. You can be an autodidact (self-educated) when you couldn’t before. AI can give you a personalized tutor. There’s so many things that technology has enabled to unleash human potential
It has reduced the cost of development and, like I said, even Nigerian musicians, they couldn’t access global markets before because it was expensive to film a video and now with an iPhone, you can create a music video, put it on YouTube, you have a free distribution channel and all these things that have enabled people to get access to markets. So, access to markets, access to education, access to health(care), all these things can be enabled by technology. And it can allow you to leapfrog and catch up and develop faster. But it needs to be guided by the right vision, the right values.
