AUTHOR: Olajide Felix

It Begins With a Screen, But It Doesn’t End There

Somewhere in Lagos, a 17-year-old scrolls through TikTok on her Android phone, switching between trending challenges and comedy skits. At the same time, in Nairobi, a boda-boda rider checks his WhatsApp for customer orders. From Johannesburg to Accra, millions of Africans tap, swipe, and click their way through the digital world—sharing memes, sending voice notes, searching for answers.

If you only look at the numbers, it seems we’ve arrived. Africa is online. Over 500 million internet users, smartphone penetration on the rise, and more digital platforms popping up by the month. But beneath all the progress, a quieter question lingers:

Who’s building the future we’re logging into?

Because the real digital divide isn’t just about who has access. It’s about who creates, who controls, and ultimately—who programs the tools that will shape how we live, work, and speak.

From Access to Ownership

For decades, development goals in Africa have rightly focused on digital access—bringing broadband to rural areas, distributing low-cost smartphones, making internet data cheaper. These are good steps. But what happens when we get online and discover that none of the platforms were built with us in mind?

Most of the apps we use—from social media to translation tools—were designed in Silicon Valleyor Shenzhen. The keyboards don’t recognize our names. The voice assistants don’t understand our accents. And our languages? Often left behind entirely.

It’s not just inconvenient. It’s disempowering. Because in a world increasingly run by code, not knowing how to write the code—or influence the code—is another kind of exclusion.

The Quiet Grip of Digital Colonialism

This isn’t just a problem of cultural fit. It’s a matter of economic structure. Take a look at Africa’s tech landscape: most of the dominant players in search, communication, payments, and cloud computing are foreign-owned. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Huawei—they set the rules, run the platforms, and collect the data.

Their tools work. They’re fast. They’re shiny. But they often come with silent trade-offs. Algorithms that don’t reflect African realities. Policies written far from local context. Data that flows outward, enriching others.

This is digital colonialism—not with flags and force, but with platforms and patents. We’re not being overtaken. We’re being absorbed—into ecosystems we didn’t build, and whose future we don’t control.

Follow the Money, Find the Power

At the heart of it all lies a simple but powerful truth: he who funds the code, frames the outcome.

Africa’s startup ecosystem is growing, but its lifeblood— venture capital —comes mostly from abroad. American and European investors back most of the continent’s biggest tech companies. That money builds apps, trains AI, and scales products, but it also shapes priorities.

A healthtech app funded by a Silicon Valley investor may not see the value in integrating local dialects or offline functionality. A fintech company with foreign backers might prioritize dollar-denominated services over village savings groups. These decisions aren’t malicious. But they reflect whose problems are being solved—and whose voices are heard.

Will Africa Be Programmed, or Program Itself?

So we return to the question: in this digital world, will Africa merely participate, or will it shape?

To program is not just to write software. It is to encode vision, to define what matters, to make rules that others follow. And while there are promising signs, Nigerian AI teams training models in Yoruba, Ghanaian engineers building fintech apps from scratch, the balance still leans heavily toward consumption over creation.

We are online, but we are not yet in charge.

Yet history shows us: this is not permanent. In the same way African nations once wrestled control over their political destinies, they can now rise to claim digital ones. But it requires deliberate effort.

Build the Builders

The first step is education. And not just digital literacy, but digital authorship.

Coding must become as common as English in our classrooms. AI research must be championed not only in universities but in village hubs. Governments must recognize that funding local engineers and tech teachers is not a side hustle, it’s nation-building.

To build the future, we need builders. Not just to use tools, but to question them. To reimagine them. To remake them in our image.

Fund Our Own Code

Second, we must own the capital.

Local venture funds. Diaspora-backed seed programs. Public innovation banks. These aren’t luxuries; they’re lifelines. If we don’t fund our digital future, someone else will and with that money comes control.

And when African creators are funded by African institutions, they answer to African needs. They can build slowly, ethically, and locally—without needing to twist themselves into the shapes foreign markets demand.

Make Room for Local Languages, Local Logics

A truly African digital ecosystem cannot exist without African languages. Without Yoruba interfaces, Hausa voice commands, Tiv subtitles, Igbo keyboards.

Our languages are not backward—they are codebases waiting to be written.

The work of groups like EqualyzAI— who are building tools that speak to Africans in African tongues is a powerful start. But they need more than applause. They need scale, infrastructure, and platforms that allow them to compete globally while staying rooted locally.

The Future Won’t Wait

The next decade will be defined by AI, quantum computing, blockchain, and digital identities. The stakes are enormous. And if Africa isn’t in the room when those technologies are being built, then it will once again be forced to adapt to a world it didn’t help shape.

But here’s the hope: we don’t need to catch up. We just need to start where we are, and start boldly.

With every local language keyboard, with every AI model trained on African voices, with every startup funded by a local grant, we take back a little more of our future.

A Future Written in Our Own Code

The digital divide is real, but not just in bandwidth or base stations. It lives in who gets to decide what a tool does. Who it works for. Who it listens to.

We’ve long been users. Now, we must be creators.

Not just because it’s fair. But because it’s necessary, because the question isn’t whether Africa will use the future.

It’s whether Africa will write it.

And the time to start writing... is now.