Africa has become one of the world’s most dynamic laboratories for deep tech, resilience, and leapfrog-style innovation, this DLD26 expert panel makes clear – and it’s one that other parts of the world can learn a lot from.
Moderated by Sinksar von Quillfeldt-Ghebremedhin (Netlight), the session brings together Caitlin Burton, CEO of Zipline Africa; Karim Beguir, co-founder of InstaDeep; and Oluwajoba Oloba, Co-Founder of The Nest Innovation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria.
A recurring theme of the conversation is that scarcity breeds creativity that leads to innovation. Africa’s logistics gap motivated Zipline to start drone delivery of blood to hospitals. “We have flown 120 million autonomous miles with zero safety incidents and made about two million deliveries now”, Burton says, adding that “Africa is the world leader in developing and adopting scaled autonomous logistics.”
Beguir recalls founding InstaDeep in Tunisia with two laptops, $2,000 and a vision to prove that Africa could do deep-tech innovation “at the same level as the best in the world.” The company published “more than 120 research papers last year, six nature journals papers”, he says. “That’s a record for an AI startup from Africa by far.”
Oluwajoba Oloba reminds the audience that Africa consists of 54 distinct markets and highlights the agility of the continent’s young talent pool, as well as its low bureaucratic barriers, which allow founders to build at incredible speeds.
Watch the video to explore this session in detail.
