Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet
Google’s Africa Cloud and cattle grazing routes.
By Chido Nwangwu
On Wednesday October 5, 2022, Google announced it will launch a cloud service specifically for the African continent and the infrastructure will be hosted in South Africa.
The project, a part of their “Cloud region” plan will benefit individual and corporate users, developers and educational institutions across the African continent.
According to Niral Patel, director of Google Cloud Africa, “Along with the cloud region, we are expanding our network through the Equiano subsea cable and building dedicated cloud sites in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi. In doing so, we are building full-scale cloud capability for Africa.” .
Google has indicated that Africa’s digital economy has the potential to grow to $180 billion by 2025. Its Olauda Equiano transcontinental cable connects Africa with Western Europe. I commend Google’s massive, catalytic investments in this area. Also, I commend Main One, and others.
Simply, Google and the other techno-superpowers saw the future a long time ago while Nigerians are killed, daily and currently, over who will control cattle grazing routes! Who did this to us?
Still on the issue of the digital future, our future: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” I like those timeless, wise words from Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1861 until his assassination on April 15, 1865.
Consequently, those who fail to create their future will be subjected to a new form of colonization, techno-subjugation!
Inevitably, the two were bound to clash. The have. They did. They still do. One digital; the other analog. Of course, digital won!
It’s this choice between relatively centralized, quasi-Democratic republics restrained by anti- human rights and anti- entrepreneurship codes versus the highways to the open society.
Although, there are critical and valid issues privacy and hyper-monopolization of information exchanges.
In an open society, there is no hiding place for dictators and corrupt gangsters. It’s a race against time. But the time and today’s world are digital. They belong to Apple . Google. Microsoft. Alibaba. Huawei. Facebook. AT&T. Amazon. Netflix. Bollywood. Nollywood. Uber. Burna boy. Afrobeats. Davido. Flavor. Nollytoons. Zoom…..
Those companies and superstars are predicting the future by creating it today.
Micro chip, the size of one third of a penny, has the power of 100 desktop computers!
Today, the world is driven by knowledge-based economies; it is the competition of ideas. With crude oil’s continuing decline and the exponential rise in the strategic position of micro-chips, algorithms and wireless solutions, Nigeria and other African countries should run away from old paradigms and outdated approaches. With an iPhone or android, you are a photographer, reporter, a mini satellite station, broadcaster and documentarian.
It truncated the corrupt import and export licensing issuing agencies.
Why? It’s the new age of e-commerce.
There is a new motto: Digitize or die!
The analog world and digital world are, diametrically, opposed to each other, in form, substance and outcome.
Since the gaining of political independence in the 1960s to date, the ancient captains of the analog world in Nigeria and most of the African countries continue to suffer under the crushing weight of their record of serial sectarianism, punitive incompetence and nepotism.
They have left what I’ll characterize as mal-governance scars in the collective psyche of the people! They come not only with their iron fists but a philosophy and absurdist preference for command and control. Unfortunately for these tireless tyrants and counterfeiting democrats, no one can intimidate and suppress the free will and talents of a conscientized populace.
I am a frontline voice for the building of freedom republics, truly democratic based societies driven by the ethos of open, interactive and free markets for productive governance.
I am an advocate for the digitally empowered citizenry where there are millions of multi-nodal wi-fi xG free access! This will give the abundantly creative youth of Nigeria and the rest of Africa instant e-commerce access to a multitude of markets, across the world. Those digital infrastructure will expedite and optimize the building of a modern industrial state with the government responsible for the creation of the enabling environment for businesses and talents to flourish.
The previous and current leaders of Nigeria offer(ed) very
minimal support in terms of government backed initiatives and incentives for our young people to compete in this global arena.
•Dr. Chido Nwangwu, author of the forthcoming 2023 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity., is Founder of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He has appeared as an analyst on CNN, ALJazeera, SKYnews, and served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. Follow him on Twitter @Chido247
#USAfrica: Why #Twitter chose Ghana over Nigeria. By Chido Nwangwu
