Despite everything, despite refugees, famines, wars, corruption, Africa runs, and runs fast and this can be seen above all in the growth of mobile telephony, start-ups, the development of solar energy and the thousands of small stories of villages and communities seeking redemption and above all education. While in Europe the interest in that part of Africa which is growing from every point of view is ever stronger, in Italy the image presented by the mass media of this continent so close is almost exclusively linked to the landings of refugees. By this year, for example, the total number of smartphones will exceed 350 million devices which is already equivalent to 0,6 of the continent's GDP. The Internet is widespread everywhere even if it is still spreading like wildfire and often at high costs which, thanks to the Chinese and foreign investors, are slowly decreasing.
But the biggest obstacle to the growth of the continent - in addition to rampant corruption - is the lack of electricity and African start-ups, which attracted more than 2015 million dollars in 186, are focused, in addition to digital, on finance and agriculture, on alternative energies with a marked propensity to invent super-efficient solar systems. In Côte d'Ivoire for example, where only 30% of the country is served by electricity, the use of the solar backpack is spreading and in the dark nights of many villages or on rainy days, it provides light to many children and teenagers who they have to do their homework for the next day.
It happened that in Koroukro, the Solar Pak company donated 300 prototypes of this backpack to the model students, equipped with a solar cell that charges while being carried on the back by the student (the African sun is very strong) and which will provide hours and hours of light from a small lamp connected to a USB. So it happens to see three or four guys sitting outside the house at a table doing their homework, studying and questioning themselves illuminated by a single solar backpack. The teachers and professors declared that the students had immediately shown a better performance than those of the previous year when they had very little time available to study before sunset and total darkness.
Now, many families are moving to Koroukro both because there is school - education is the first dream of African families especially French-speaking ones - and because the news of the availability of these backpacks that give light is spreading. And the government, thanks to funding from the World Bank and Unicef, has decided to complete the electricity grid by bringing electricity to the district of Koroukro within two years. In the meantime, a young inventor from Togo has created a very simple but effective wireless connection that connects schools to the Internet, bypassing the expensive services of the TLC multinationals. Thus Africa proceeds in small and large steps towards the technologies that will be able to spread education and culture.
