A brighter future for the people of Africa: MIT Africa Innovate Conference pushes new plans for uplifting the African continent
MIT Sloan celebrated its 15th annual Africa Innovate Conference in February, drawing in students and professionals from across the African diaspora to discuss how they can help their home continent
On Feb. 27 and 28, professionals from across the African diaspora gathered in MIT’s Sloan School for the 15th annual Africa Innovate Conference. Attendees were greeted with vibrant displays of African-owned enterprises, a spread of flavorful African cuisine, and crowds of people determined to better the African continent.
The Africa Innovate Conference is an event hosted by the student-led Africa Business Club (ABC), which dedicates itself to giving African students and allies “the necessary exposure, resources, and support to drive change on the continent,” according to its website. ABC initiated the conference as a way for students and industry leaders to commit to driving Africa’s technological progress, matching business proposals with investment opportunities and holding evocative discussions about the African diaspora supporting continental Africans. This year’s conference featured the theme of “building systems for shared prosperity.”
Hundreds of participants assembled for two days of creative ideation and entrepreneurial action at the conference, eager to share how their ideas and prospective business ventures would lead to a brighter future for the people of Africa.
Hackathon participants chart paths for improving life in Africa
The main event of the conference was its hackathon, in which participants were given two days to fully plan a technology-based system that would serve people in African countries. At the end of the two days, teams met in a Sloan lecture hall to present their business proposals — projects ranging from agricultural and educational assistance to legal tools and fraud claim protection — in front of a panel of judges.
The Tech interviewed one of the teams, comprised of Ajibola Ajani ’29, Ericsson Ansah-Antwi ’29, and Xerco Tchouankeu ’29, shortly after they finished their presentation.
The first-year undergraduates developed an agricultural logistics app called AgriMarket, which was designed to streamline the purchase and sale of crops between African farmers, contractors, and customers. The app would also use artificial intelligence to optimize farming schedules.
Ajani enjoyed the experience of programming and refining the app, even though the hackathon was on a tight 24-hour timeframe that conflicted with classes. “It was definitely a new opportunity, trying to figure out how to actually get the app to be functional [and] to fix the inevitable problems that came up during development,” he said.
Preparing the app was only part of the job: the team also had to navigate creating their pitch and implementation plan for the judges within those 24 hours. “The hackathon helped [me] get a better perspective on time management and preparing for business pitches,” Ajani added.
Tchouankeu discussed the learning curve involved with competing in the hackathon. The computer science classes that he and his teammates had taken during their first year at MIT did not necessarily prepare them for presenting their app and explaining its nuances in a real-world context to judges, which they described as the hardest part of the competition.
“I think our idea was good, [but] we weren’t ready for the way they wanted us to present,” Tchouankeu explained. “The focus was more on the business side, like marketing, and we thought it was a hackathon in a technical aspect.”
In the end, the AgriMarket team appreciated the experience of competing in the hackathon, sharing that they gained valuable skills they would not have learned from their standard classes. “It’s good to have these kinds of alternative hackathons,” Ansah-Antwi said. “It’s very important to [be able to] express the things you’re building.”
A look at AfriLex, the winners of the hackathon
The Tech also interviewed the winning team, composed of Harvard Law School student Tupalishe Mulwafu, Wacuka Ngata ’27, and Saron Yohannes ’29. The team developed AfriLex, a system designed to help legal firms and courts more efficiently navigate African nations’ often disorganized legal infrastructure. The proposal won the team $5,000 for their cause.
Mulwafu, a practicing lawyer in Malawi, explained that the motivation for AfriLex was personal for her. “[In Africa], cases are not uploaded consistently, [and] we don’t have any AI tools to help you filter through the cases to get what you want,” she said. “So it’s something that has always been at the back of my mind; I wish we had a more efficient system.”
When Malwafu later took a Sloan course at MIT, she gained the inspiration to turn her frustrations into action. As the hackathon approached, she partnered with current Institute undergraduates Ngata and Yohannes to refine the idea into AfriLex.
To improve African countries’ legal systems, the team’s plan started with the high courts, where clerks would upload their cases into a database for a learning model to analyze. The model would use the outcomes of those cases to keep track of overturned laws and other nuances, which are often overlooked in African countries’ current legal practices.
“We also want an online website for lawyers to be able to do their research with that updated information instead of having to contact people for updated regulations,” Yohannes explained.
Ngata further explained how the AfriLex team plans to use the prize money they received for their winning proposal. “We are going to proceed with a pilot in Malawi,” she said. “We’ve already targeted which higher court we want to go with, and now we’re just going to try and get in contact with two clerks to see how it goes.”
The three women looked back fondly on the process of developing and unveiling AfriLex. Ngata particularly appreciated their team dynamic. “We jibed really well, and we just did what we were passionate about, had fun with it, and, before we knew it, we all realized we were pretty serious about it,” she recalled.
For Yohannes, winning the competition gave her the confidence to take the project further. “The judges’ faith in the idea [was] very uplifting,” she commented. “So after ending the competition, we were like, ‘We want to do this; we want to make it real.’”
Improving African infrastructure amidst political instability
While teams were presenting their hackathon ideas, attendees were able to watch and engage in a series of panel discussions a few floors below. One of them, “Futuristic Urban Infrastructure & Policymaking,” explored how Africa’s current technological structure can be expanded and improved. Various industry experts, as diverse in profession as they were in African backgrounds, gave their insight into the shortcomings of Africa’s current technological infrastructure and the systemic ways those issues can be addressed.
Idah Z. Pswarayi-Riddihough, the former Global Director for Digital Solutions in the Digital Vice Presidency at the World Bank, discussed the fundamental challenges Africa faces when it comes to technological progress. Namely, she pointed to African governments’ inability to responsibly handle infrastructure. Unclear directives surrounding who is responsible for building infrastructure, as well as excessive red tape surrounding infrastructure development, leads to a destructive lack of holistic planning.
“So you will have a road that goes north to south,” she offered as an example. “But beyond that, nobody can tell you when it’s going to be built [or] what’s going to be built.”
The confusion around infrastructure projects like those has ripple effects, Pswarayi-Riddihough explained. If, for instance, a government sought to boost economic development in part by helping farmers increase their yield, the initiative would be futile without roads for farmers to travel on.
Pswarayi-Riddihough also touched on the role of corruption in hindering African countries’ technological progress. As she described, the mechanisms through which corrupt leaders maintain power consequently disempower the general population and prevent meaningful progress. For example, many African governments have shown resistance toward digitalization and artificial intelligence because of the transparency such developments would bring; they disregard the possibility that those advancements may make progress much more efficient in their countries.
Entrepreneur and investor Bunmi Adekore offered a strategy to navigate achieving progress with African politics. He broke down the delicate balance involved with infrastructure projects with African governments, explaining the infeasibility of pushing change through the government overnight and the complications around having an infrastructure project drag on through different administrations with varying agendas. The best approach, in his opinion, was focusing on shorter-term products instead of complex, years-long projects. This way, African countries would experience incremental progress without being hindered by political graft.
“Let’s know who we are, let’s know what our societies are, and let’s not be handicapped by that,” Adekore stated. “Let’s rise in spite of those, and let’s figure those as parameters in equations that we can solve.”
Pan-Africanism and the need to give back
In one of the last talks of the conference, African Olympiad Academy Co-Founder Gaidi Faraj discussed the leadership role of the African diaspora in an increasingly globalized world.
Faraj recounted how his time working in Tanzania transformed the way he viewed many of African countries’ shortcomings. “There’s not a malaria problem, there’s not a healthcare problem, there’s not a housing problem,” he explained, “there’s just engineering problems. There seem to be a ton of engineering problems with engineering solutions across Africa.” With this insight, he helped found the African Olympiad Academy to foster problem-solving and engineering skills in the continent’s youth.
Students in Africa often lack the resources to fix the continent’s problems on their own, Faraj noted; instead, with many of African heritage fortunate enough to benefit from established institutions abroad, they should consider their responsibility of giving back to their home countries. This concept is one of the cornerstones of Pan-Africanism, the idea that the African diaspora should be united in promoting the success of all Africans.
“What kind of lines are you willing to draw for yourself?” Faraj prompted the audience. “Where do you say, ‘Yes, I’m willing to work ... for someone else, create more wealth for them, [and] strengthen their institutions?’ [Where do you] say, ‘I’m willing to walk away, to go back and build institutions that lead to shared prosperity for the African continent?’”
Faraj argued that facilitating a network within the diaspora is fundamental for changing the way people view Africa as a whole. By maintaining the continuous flow of sustainable solutions for the continent, the African diaspora has the ability to bring prosperity that truly changes lives for continental Africans.
“It comes from you all,” Faraj told the audience, “who are very highly respected because you’ve been successful in the diaspora, going back and being advocates and ambassadors for change on the continent.”
Faraj’s talk was representative of the broader theme surrounding this year’s Africa Innovate Conference. From students’ elaborate business proposals to experts’ discussions of implementing real-world solutions, the event demonstrated the potential people have to induce real change for the African continent, creating the infrastructure for Africans all over the world to prosper together. It offered hope that, with a concerted effort, the African diaspora can truly succeed in “building systems for shared prosperity.”