Digital Skills Provide a Development Path for Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is urbanizing with massive rural-urban migration. But unlike the urbanization of the Western world, Sub-Saharan Africa is missing a critical component: industrialized urban cities. Because of this, these urban areas have become overcrowded with substandard housing and severely inadequate infrastructure to cope with unplanned population growth.

Fortunately, a new development playbook to solve this problem is already evolving, and it is anchored on the young people equipped with advanced digital skills in Sub-Saharan Africa. These young workers are digitally savvy, creative, and can lead a massive transformation — if they’re equipped and supported to unlock their potential. They can export digital skills to Western Europe, United States, and Asia through the unbounded and unconstrained opportunities the internet has provided through “digital jobs” from music to software development to prompt engineering. But to scale this and make it a success, changes must be taken into consideration at both the policy level and in implementation in the areas of quality digital education, tax treaties and harmonization, and outsourcing-focused startups.