On the first leg of Theresa May’s trade mission to Africa this week we were in a room of about 150 senior executives and politicians from South Africa. The mood was appropriately pragmatic and there was certainly a sense in the air of two nations that both have their own challenges but also of two nations that have a history of not accepting the status quo.
The Prime Minister spoke about the impact the UK has had in Africa through its long-standing aid programme and said she would be no different.
Her point was this. The world has, and is, changing at lightning speed. Technology, geopolitical shifts and most of all trillions of gigabytes of new data and sharing of information has changed things. More than half the world’s population now has access to the worldwide web. There are six billion active SIM cards on the planet.
M-Pesa, a mobile phone money- transfer platform, initially a UK- generated piece of intellectual property, has transformed a shadow economy of cash in Kenya into a digital economy for tens of millions of Kenyans who can now send money, buy products, even get a loan through the click of a button. In India, Prime Minister Modi has rolled out digital identities to hundreds of millions of citizens to enable them to benefit from the global internet shopping mall.
Aspiring entrepreneurs around the world can access billions of potential customers rather than just those in their local village. New medical technology is making medicines, vaccinations and simple testing for disease more widely available than was comprehensible 30 years ago.
This creates hope and levels the playing field. It brings light to the world and reduces the inherent vulnerability of isolated people in poverty-stricken environments.
Incumbent industries are using technology to create an abundance of new opportunities and solutions to some serious world challenges. The United Nations has agreed 17 sustainable development goals that could drastically reduce poverty and inequality.
So were Mrs May’s predecessors wrong to provide aid to parts of the world less fortunate than our own? No. It was the tool they had available to them and the right thing to do.
Is evolving that strategy to embrace technology that can move the dial for emerging markets and provide people with capital but also the self-esteem and the tools to educate themselves and their families for a brighter future the right thing to do? You’d better believe it is.
Let’s recognise how lucky we are to be able to support citizens all over the world, not just on our doorstep.
- Alastair Lukies CBE is the UK’s business ambassador for fintech and a Founding Partner at Motive Partners
