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The Future of business. Future of business, future of business.

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It's more global and more decentralised, making sure that enterprises that are a lot more responsible.

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Smart cities. More collaboration. Consumer driven productivity.

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Environmental and social responsibility. Global human centred.

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Purposeful individualised. Automation. Big Data.

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Climate Change. Space Exploration. Renewable Energy.

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Information security. Exciting and digital. Hello and welcome to the Future of Business Podcast.

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I'm your host, Alyssa McArthur. Today we're pleased to bring you the first in a two part series on the challenges and opportunities facing Africa.

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As governments across the continent consider a landmark free trade agreement that combined their economies closer together.

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Some see the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement as an opportunity to spur growth and innovation,

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as well as critical investments in energy and infrastructure.

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But critics worry the deal could hold some countries back as it lifts others up.

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And Nigeria's government has so far refused to back the deal,

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which President Muhammadu Buhari says could make his country a dumping ground for finished goods.

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Recently, experts from across Africa came together at Oxford, Said Business School, to discuss the agreement and the future of Africa there.

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We caught up with Dr. Vera Sunway, the Executive Secretary for the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the principal architect of the agreement.

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Dr. Some way. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

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I think we could just maybe start with like a broad question. What is your vision for Africa?

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A vision for Africa is a simple one, is that we need to create a prosperous Africa and Africa where women are empowered.

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In Africa, where there are no gender gaps. In Africa, where kids go to school, in Africa that is prosperous, in Africa,

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that this stands on equal footing with the rest of its peers and all the continents.

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And in Africa that becomes productive and continues to be innovative and vibrant and was

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the key ways in which the CAFTA could benefit Africa at a continental level and globally.

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First of all, it would create jobs. And I think that this is we need 60 million jobs a year on the continent.

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And the CAFTA will clearly create more jobs.

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It will begin to create regional value chains. We see the numbers it can add to Africa's GDP, almost 55 billion.

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It could add to Africa's exports of almost 60 billion.

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So clearly, not only is it going to create jobs, it's going to create a platform for innovation.

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It's going to create. I think the issue is when we talk about the continent, the innovative potential is so huge.

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We just need to sort of allow for that platform that would unleash it.

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And we believe that the CAFTA is that platform that will give us, you know,

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the full potential of what the African youth, the African market, the African private sector can deliver.

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And what do you think the role is of private corporations in driving forward this economic development in Africa?

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Listen, the CAFTA is all about the private sector. It's all about saying, you know, how can you create jobs?

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We know that the public sector does not create jobs.

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And even if it did, it will not create nearly enough jobs to be able to absorb what we have today.

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And so the private sector is the one that tells us where the markets are.

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The private sector is the one that tells us what to regulate.

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The private sector essentially is the sort of discover they're the ones who identify new market sectors.

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They're the ones who can bring, you know, the global goods into the continent.

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They're the ones who manufacture it. But they really are the fountain of innovation.

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And they are today. When you look at the sort of research and development across the world, a lot of it is happening in the private sector.

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So essentially, as we look at sort of what is the Africa of the future, we cannot define it.

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We don't know what it is,

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but we know that we cannot define it without having the private sector leading it and the public sector allowing for the regulation,

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allowing for the institutions that can harmonise and ensure that there is equity as you go forward.

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So do you think this it's essential to build public private partnerships in driving this change?

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Public private partnerships are an important part, particularly when we talk about infrastructure today, including in the West.

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A lot of the big infrastructure is still built with in public private partnerships because we have one to ensure and that is part

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of the conversation that we're having today is we want to ensure that we leave no one behind if you only do the private sector,

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justifiably so. They have to look at the bottom line and profit.

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If you bring in the private, the public sector, then we start looking at inclusive,

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sustainable growth and development or most of the big infrastructure.

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Most of this of last mile health, most of the last mile education will still be built by the public sector.

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But we know that there are models that can ensure that when you have what the public we just talked about energy,

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you have both the public and the private sector. You can ensure that women in the rural areas do not continue to cook with,

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you know, combustible fossil fuels, but can get access to renewable cooking.

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Because the tariffs and the prices that you have at the urban areas with the private sector is something that then you can redistribute.

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So obviously for the CAFTA to work, there has to be collaboration between all of the different countries.

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How do you overcome the differences at national level to enable different countries to work together again?

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CAFTA is something is you know, we are towards the maybe the middle of the road or the beginning of a new journey with the 50 year.

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But this started 20 years ago. And in the last 20 years a lot has happened with the regional economic communities in West Africa.

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A was in Southern Africa, SADC in East Africa.

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These are community which is now together with SADC, created the COMESA.

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A lot of work has already been happening and I think the CFT is really building on that.

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But the advantage then is that we already have regional blocs, so we are not essentially trying to harmonise, you know, over 50 countries.

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We are trying to now harmonise five or six regional blocs into one continental area.

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So there has been a lot of work that has allowed for the CAFTA to be possible today with the speed at which it is going.

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And I think that's and so finally, what we're going to try to do is work directly with the regional economic communities,

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again, to ensure that the implementation of the CAFTA comes to be because they are the ones who have been over the last,

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you know, two decades, making sure that we build slowly, you know, the rules of origins,

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the dispute settlement systems, the trading systems in the Southern Africa region, for example.

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They have really built, you know, financial systems that can speak to each other.

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There is interpretability, there are common clearinghouses. And so we will learn from those as we build the broader system.

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So there are a few nations like Nigeria who have yet to ratify the agreement.

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What do you think of their reluctance? I think it's two things.

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When you're doing a huge and transformational changes like the CAFTA, and we expect it to be transformational for the continent.

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You need consultation. And Nigeria, of course, being one of the larger manufacturing services powerhouses on the continent,

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you know, has a constituency, I think, that needs to be consulted, needs to, you know, provide its views.

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And I think one of the reasons why Nigeria didn't sign has not yet ratified the process is because they wanted to do this consultations.

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We are confident that Nigeria will finally do. We just think South Africa initially said we need to think about it.

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They have finally ratified the same thing with Egypt that just ratified two or three days ago.

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So the bigger countries said we need to go back and consult with our private sector.

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We believe now post the political cycle in Nigeria that we will come back to the discussions and hopefully between now and July,

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something Nigeria will be part of the community of nations that signed for CAFTA.

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That was Dr. Vera, some way with her take on the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement.

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So how is the private sector reacting to the prospect of this new Pan-African trade area?

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Kola Adesina is group managing director of the Sahara Group,

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an international energy and infrastructure conglomerate with operations across Africa and beyond.

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We recently asked him about his vision for Africa. The Africa of our dream is for us to be able to create, you know, employment for our people,

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get Africa working in a manner that would be beneficial to the last mile of Africa.

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Africa is deficient in infrastructure. Africa is deficient in power.

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Africa is deficient in policies and priorities that can bring about the change we desire to see.

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We believe we, as Sahara will be able to play a catalytic role in making Africa truly industrial base for the world.

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We don't just want to see the Africa that will be set in natural resources to the world,

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but Africa will be converted natural resources to finished products and consuming those

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finished products using international best practices and knowledge based economy.

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And how does Sahara plan to do that? By ensuring that we be we are involved in electricity supply as we speak today,

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which is one of the critical components of the success factors needed to make Africa great.

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We currently generate about 2000 megawatts of electricity in Nigeria, and we are expanding our foray into other parts of Africa,

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Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda and the rest of that.

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So we we plan to use electricity as a vehicle to creating greatness for Africa.

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That's the first thing we need to do. The second thing is to be able to create the educational background required for that to happen,

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because building infrastructure is not the and the whole.

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I've been. It's just a beginning.

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The derivative of that is primarily for us to be able to have people with the right skill sets and competencies to manage Africa.

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Using business principles, the resources must be applied in the right places, in the right manner, for the right purpose for Africa.

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And so do you think the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement has the ability to help solve this infrastructure problem and in doing so,

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help solve the energy crisis? Most certainly because if you have a shared mission and a shared value system, he helps the system to grow.

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My view of Africa is a system. That if we see Africa as a system,

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then it makes life easier for everybody and all the participants to contribute their quota to making the system function optimally.

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The subsystem of Africa represents the different states, the state actors and the different nationalities within Africa.

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The agenda must be the agenda of ensuring that.

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All of us have the same vision, the same mindset behind that vision, and creating an implementation framework that makes the vision realisable.

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If I see myself as a Nigerian first before.

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An African. It would be difficult for me to cross that barrier quickly.

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But if I see myself as an African and then a Nigerian, then I think I am likely to help the African dream and the African vision to become realisable.

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And do do you think the people at the moment, do they see themselves as African or do they see themselves as belonging to their particular nation?

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Do you think that mindset is changing over time? That mindset is changing, but then it requires still so much of action on behalf of the leaders.

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And the precedents, particularly the political leadership of Africa, needs to start to see Africa as one.

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It is the selfish agenda and desire for rulership.

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Please underline that it's not leadership that as blinded most political leaders in seeing the big picture of Africa fusing together,

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building a common market, a big market, 1.4 billion people, that's an enormous market for the world.

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And shedding the toga of fear, of selfishness and the more peak concept that drives the current policies of Africa.

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I think it's something that the political leadership needs to do.

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Nelson Mandela played a critical role in leading Pan-Africanism quite significantly

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because he suffered eventually became the president of South Africa.

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And I know that a lot of Africans lined up behind him and saw him as a unifying force.

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If we can recreate the Nelson Mandela factor in Africa,

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where all of us can see ourselves as one with one agenda, it will help us a great deal to make Africa great.

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That was Kola Adesina of Sahara Group. Next, we'll hear from serial entrepreneur Erik Hersman.

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He started an innovation centre for the tech community in Kenya called Ihub.

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He's also the founder and CEO of Brick, a Start-Up, that manufactures rugged Wi-Fi devices for the emerging markets.

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We also asked Eric about the role that government can play inspiring innovation and whether

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he thinks a free trade agreement will facilitate collaboration across national boundaries.

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I certainly hope so. Yeah, I certainly hope so. The the idea of, you know, the fact that we have such a border problem,

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like friction for businesses is so high where I can't even hire from certain other countries because

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I would take some crazy amount to get them into the country and a work permit on top of that.

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And they're coming from, you know, Zambia to Kenya. It doesn't make any sense to me.

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So, you know, I think that plus the movement of goods and services is going to make a huge dent in the friction problem of doing business in Africa.

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So and, you know, the more the technology we have today already allows us to have the collaboration digitally.

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But there's something about being face to face and there's something about being able to trade goods,

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services and have and move people that will really grease the wheels on a much

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more rapid advancement in business and in my world of tech across Africa.

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What do you think the role of government should be in facilitating innovation, and has it been happening so far?

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So if you look across the continent, there's different countries that are trying to do different things to,

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I guess, catalyse some innovation in in a different sector.

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They're not generally doing enough. And, you know,

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I think there are some really good models that you find in different countries

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around the world that could be applied in different African countries as well.

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That would either subsidise the cost of the initial Start-Up, you know, giving some tax breaks across a certain amount of time, you know,

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giving some low cost debt so that people can can move faster without having to take on some, you know, premium costs on their equity.

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You know, those are the kinds of things that I think the government can do.

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But beyond that, I tend to be open to the and to the the camp of, you know, get out of the way more.

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More than than most. I think that doesn't take into account when you're talking about government services, of course.

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Right. Which ends up being a large part of the I.T. capital available in a country.

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So there's actually a really I think it was a few years ago in Kenya, where over 50% of the IT spend in the country was government contracts.

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Okay. There's some really amazing things that can be done there.

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But I tend to I tend to stay towards the private sector and saying government for the most part, reduce the friction in the system.

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I mean, it if they if they want to get catalytic, you know,

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get get behind infrastructure issues so they can subsidise some of the cost on it or they can, you know, you know,

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make it more accessible for for peering of services, different, you know,

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different kind of big hairy problems that the big companies are dealing with, as well as little companies.

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The government come in there, you know, create a flat a more flat playing field for everybody to.

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John. That's an interesting place for them to play as well.

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And I guess, you know, the free trade agreement, it will hopefully help in terms of different governments cooperating with each other,

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because I think at the moment is quite you know, it's very different countries and they do things differently.

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So, yeah, I mean, the value the value of bureaucracy is that it doesn't, you know, once it's set,

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the the changing of the guard across multiple countries or even just in a single country shouldn't have as massive of an impact on it anymore.

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That was entrepreneur Erik Hersman.

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Thank you for joining us this week on the Future of Business podcast for part one of our two part series on the Future of Africa.

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In our next episode, you'll hear more from our three distinguished guests on what they see as the key challenges and opportunities facing Africa.

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If you have any thoughts on this episode, what we've done so far, please send us an email at SBS podcast at SBS Dorks dot AC dot UK.