With nearly 200 million people between the ages of 15 and 24, Africa has the youngest population in the world. This figure is set to double by 2025, ushering in a new generation with the potential to understand and solve pressing social and economic challenges by harnessing the power of digital innovation.

At the same time, entrepreneurship is forging its own identity across the region – where an exciting new generation of African start-ups are developing solutions and services for African problems. Across each sector, start-ups are unearthing new ways to do business. From finance and energy through to agriculture and healthcare, entrepreneurs are developing solutions, services and platforms that are helping to refine the supply chain and drive efficiencies.

In the process, they are creating a better flow of information across the entire region, which is empowering businesses and consumers to make more informed and accurate decisions. It is starting to shape the way people interact in the region’s rapidly growing urban areas, while bringing untold benefits to underserved rural communities.

They face many challenges. But for African start-ups every challenge is also an opportunity – insufficient power supplies? Hello solar energy. No access to formal financial services? Welcome mobile money. Limited access to mobile broadband? Enter SMS-based solutions. Yet the tech ecosystem remains at an early stage of development.

In many markets, the start-up scene is little over five years old, and requires careful nurturing over the coming years. Funding and access to other critical resources is required to support start-ups who have little to no previous experience in the market. While governments and academic institutions will also have a valuable role to play, particularly in attempts to engage with those living under the poverty line.

High-speed, reliable connectivity underpins innovation, and the rollout of new networks is an important enabler for start-ups and the advancement of digital services. It is why through this report, Liquid Telecom is showcasing the region’s latest innovation and talent, which it supports through Africa’s largest independent fibre network.

The world is still waiting with anticipation to see the emergence of Africa’s first “unicorns” (start-up companies valued at over $1 billion). It is a story that is capturing the imagination of the business community at large, as these start-ups are poised to bring serious disruption to the market, while potentially changing consumer behaviour forever.

Going for the first Indigenous Africa Unicorn

Continent continues to innovate while waiting for the first US$1bn company. Africa is still waiting to meet its first ‘unicorn’ (start-up company valued at over US$1 billion), according to a recent report by Liquid Telecom. The ephemeral one achieved by Jumia does not count because Jumia is not an African company.

The Africa innovation report highlights how five countries known as the ‘Africa Kings,’ namely; Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, have been leading the way in digital innovation. and will produce the continent’s first unicorns.

This will be as a result of increasing innovation and a growing African population of about 200 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24, expected to double by 2025

“At the same time, entrepreneurship is forging its own identity across the region – where an exciting new generation of African start-ups are developing solutions and services for African problems” the report states.

According to the report, the Africa Kings have well-developed telecoms markets and all are connected to multiple submarine cables and enjoy satellite connectivity. They have multiple telecoms operators competing to offer innovative new products to consumers, with a strong demand from consumers for new digital services.

Together these five countries share an estimated 324.4 million mobile subscribers and 177.7 million internet subscribers. Kenya has a strong reputation in leading tech start-ups, earning the title of Africa’s “Silicon Savannah” over the past 10 years, triggered by its mobile money network called M-Pesa, in 2007.

Ivory Coast, said to be the least advanced of the group, has developed several innovative strides to improve – despite socio-political unrest.

Nigeria’s population of over 182 million provides many opportunities for development and the West African country is seen to be increasingly digitally-equipped, in tech skills and access to the internet.

Ghana has shown a high economic growth, coupled with a developing tech start-up scene attributed mainly to the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology which launched in 2008.

South Africa, said to have the oldest tech start-up ecosystem in Africa, has a start-up scene that can be traced back to 1994, according to Ian Merrington, CEO of the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi).

SA tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Mark Shuttleworth founded digital certificate and internet securitycompany Thawte when he was 22, selling it in 1999 to Verisign for US$575 million in an all-stock deal.

His proceeds saw the birth of HBD Capital (now Knife Capital), a Cape Town-based investment fund. In 2001, he founded Ubuntu Linux maker Canonical, his example is the closest to a venture reaching unicorn status.

Over the years, the continent has earned the mobile first tag line. Other initiatives include Kenya’s mobile money revolution, the subsea cable boom and recently, a visit from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who met with local entrepreneurs and developers in Lagos and Nairobi.

With an estimated 65% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s labour force coming from the agriculture sector, more innovative opportunities have been realised to support smaller farmers including the use of data and drones for irrigation.

According to Dobek Pater, MD at Africa Analysis, the number of global start-ups that grow into US$1 billion companies is very small, “I don’t think we are likely to see a lot of companies out of Africa turning into unicorns over the next decade, although we may perhaps see one or two. The last one I am aware of was Mark Shuttleworth’s company and that was some 15 years ago.”

Pater believes start-ups in Africa are facing challenges in receiving proper funding, government support and a relocation of entrepreneurs

“There is a small possibility of any startups in the mould of American style unicorns shortly in Africa,” says Strategy Worx CEO, Steven Ambrose. “There is not the same level of digital maturity in Africa as compared to other developed nations where the internet and technology is far more integrated into the mainstream of society than in Africa.”

He adds that SA, even as “Africa’s most developed country” has low digital maturity, only limited to a certain portion of the population and concentrated in a few urban areas. “This potential size of the market just does not support the growth of start-ups on the same scale.”

Ambrose also mentions that brilliant and innovative ideas have come out of Africa, “M-Pesa is one such, but scale will always be a challenge.”

 The Emergent Unicorn

By 2050, it’s expected that the world’s population will reach 9.2 billion people, 34 percent higher than today. Much of this growth will happen in developing countries like Brazil, which has the largest area in the world with arable land for agriculture. To keep up with rising populations and income growth, global food production must increase by 70 percent in order to be able to feed the world.

For IBM researcher and Distinguished Engineer Ulisses Mello and a team of scientists from IBM Research – Brazil, the answer to that daunting challenge lies in real time data gathering and analysis. They are researching how “precision agriculture” techniques and technologies can maximize food production, minimize environmental impact and reduce cost.

“We have the opportunity to make a difference using science and technological innovation to address critical issues that will have profound effect on the lives of billions of people,” said Ulisses.

What is precision agriculture?

Traditionally agriculture is practiced by performing a particular task, such as planting or harvesting, against a predetermined schedule. But by collecting real-time data on weather, soil and air quality, crop maturity and even equipment and labor costs and availability, predictive analytics can be used to make smarter decisions. This is known as precision agriculture.

With precision agriculture, control centers collect and process data in real time to help farmers make the best decisions with regard to planting, fertilizing and harvesting crops. Sensors placed throughout the fields are used to measure temperature and humidity of the soil and surrounding air. In addition, pictures of fields are taken using satellite imagery and robotic drones. The images over time show crop maturity and when coupled with predictive weather modeling showing pinpoint conditions 48 hours in advance, AI is able to build models and simulations that can predict future conditions and help farmers make proactive decisions.

Optimizing planting, harvesting and distribution

In order to grow crops optimally farmers need to understand how to cultivate those crops in a particular area, taking into account a seed’s resistance to weather and local diseases, and considering the environmental impact of planting that seed. For example, when planting in a field near a river, it’s best to use a seed that requires less fertilizer to help reduce pollution.

Once the seeds have been planted, the decisions made around fertilizing and maintaining the crops are time-sensitive and heavily influenced by the weather. If farmers know they’ll have heavy rain the next day, they may decide not to put down fertilizer since it would get washed away. Knowing whether it’s going to rain or not can also influence when to irrigate fields. With 70 percent of fresh water worldwide used for agriculture, being able to better manage how it’s used will have a huge impact on the world’s fresh water supply.

Weather not only affects how crops grow, but also logistics around harvesting and transportation. When harvesting sugar cane, for example, the soil needs to be dry enough to support the weight of the harvesting equipment. If it’s humid and the soil is wet, the equipment can destroy the crop. By understanding what the weather will be over several days and what fields will be affected, better decisions can be made in advance about which fields workers should be deployed to.

Once the food has been harvested the logistics of harvesting and transporting food to the distribution centers is crucial. A lot of food waste happens during distribution, so it’s important to transport the food at the right temperature and not hold it for longer than needed. Even the weather can affect this; in Africa, many of the roads are dirt, and heavy rain can cause trucks to get stuck in mud. By knowing where it will rain and which routes may be affected, companies can make better decisions on which routes will be the fastest to transport their food.

The future of precision agriculture

Currently, precision agriculture technologies are used by larger companies as it requires a robust IT infrastructure and resources to do the monitoring. However, Ulisses envisions a day when smaller farms and co-ops could use mobile devices and crowd sourcing to optimize their own agriculture. A good startup working in Africa is Zenvus.

“A farmer could take a picture of a crop with his phone and upload it to a database where an expert could assess the maturity of the crop based on its coloring and other properties. People could provide their own reading on temperature and humidity and be a substitute for sensor data if none is available,” he said.

With growing demands on the world’s food supply chain, it’s crucial to maximize agriculture resources in a sustainable manner. With expertise in high performance supercomputing, computational sciences, and analytics and optimization, agtech  is uniquely able to understand the complexities of agriculture and develop the right weather forecasts, models and simulations that enable farmers and companies to make the right decisions.

Africa has got Zenvus and the firm is ready to serve farmers around the continent.