Shaping Africa’s digital destiny with Ambassador Philip Thigo

In this episode of Voices of Africa, we speak to Ambassador Philip Thigo about Africa’s pivotal role in the global digital revolution. Amb. Thigo underlines how critical it is for African nations to ‘reimagine sovereignty’ when it comes to Africa’s digital future, moving  beyond national silos towards continental collaboration in AI and data governance. His vision? Strong pan-African collaboration and real-world AI solutions that tangibly improve lives across the continent.

With the notion of interdependence, we need to redefine, reimagine what sovereignty is in the era of emerging technologies. African sovereignty must involve shared resources like compute, talent, and data within a continental framework, rather than purely national silos.

  • In this episode

    00:00 Welcome to Voices of Africa

    01:39 The journey to technology diplomacy

    09:44 The need for an African playbook

    14:04 Reimagining sovereignty in technology

    18:04 Investing in infrastructure and talent

    23:19 Governance in the era of emerging technologies

    25:25 Integrating lifelong learning in education

    32:46 The financing challenge

    35:27 The cost of democracy in innovation

    37:41 Reimagining investment opportunities

    39:10 Vision for the future

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