Covid-19可能是非洲创新的跳板

[内罗毕]COVID-19科学家说，大流行可能是伪装非洲未来增长的祝福，因为解决它的创新思想可以为未来的基于技术的经济体绘制一条途径。

The technologies that have been developed in response to COVID-19 in Africa include WhatsApp Chatbots in South Africa, self-diagnostic tools in Angola, contact tracing apps in Ghana and mobile health information tools in Nigeria.

“Africa’s future is dependent ontechnology和innovation, which are crucial for addressing the challenges of low structural transformation and inclusive development on the continent,” says Moredreck Chibi, WHO Africa regional advisor for innovation, in an interview withSciDev.Net这个月。

“There is a need for investing in innovation as an absolute and fundamental shift in the continent’s traditional business model.”

“There is a need for investing in innovation as an absolute and fundamental shift in the continent’s traditional business model.”

Moredreck Chibi, WHO Regional Office for Africa

Chibi解释说，在COVID-19大流行期间，一些迅速发展的健康技术包括在肯尼亚，南非和乌干达等国家对地区健康信息系统的重新配置，以提供加速案例检测，情况报告，积极的监测和共同响应等关键功能-19。

在一个recentanalysis非洲非洲地区办事处由非洲地区办事处进行，占全球部署的1,000个新技术或改良技术中的120个，以应对COVID-19，包括监视，治疗，预防和控制。

According to the analysis, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa were the leading innovators — accounting for 37 per cent of the continent’s share — mainly due to existing innovation frameworks in those countries.

The WHO Africa analysis conducted between July and September 2020 examined 1,000 COVID-19 technologicalinnovationselectronically from scientific databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus using a custom web-mining instruction to search the web for text, image, audio, or videos of the innovations.

研究人员还研究了所有与COVID-19相关的技术，该技术发表在不同的组织网站，Twitter等社交媒体渠道以及几个本地和国际媒体渠道上。

Moses Makayoto, the immediate former deputy director at the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute and an award-winning Kenyan research scientist and innovator, says the number of new tech innovations coming out of some African countries is not surprising.

据马卡约托说educational系统是非洲共同19创新增长背后的原因之一，并补充说，许多非洲教育机构在全球排名中表现出色。

“Kenyan universities and technical colleges, for instance, rank high on the continent and globally. Top notch research and innovation go on in these institutions all the time,” he tellsSciDev.Net.

“The ideas are being turned into reality in the various tech incubation centres across the country,” Makayoto says.

According to Chibi, the origin of Africa’s tech movement can be traced to Kenya, which has been home to several technological innovations between 2007 and 2010, branding Kenya as Africa’s Silicon Valley.

But despite many African countries having policies, strategic frameworks and investments for innovations, not many African countries are creating and implementing innovations, Chibi says.

Peter Ofware, country director of HealthRight International, Kenya, says that technology plays a key role in thehealthsector, and therefore economies of resource-poor countries.

他说：“因此，令人鼓舞的是，即使是像Covid-19这样的危机，创新者之间的创造力也受到启发。

There is the need to improve on the existingpolicyframeworks and invest in improving infrastructure to spur further growth in tech innovation.

“Governments have a responsibility to sensitise the young people who are behind most start-ups to realise they hold the future of their countries through such innovations,” he tellsSciDev.Net. “Major tech companies and ICT service providers have a corporate social responsibility to give incentives to start-ups.”

这件作品由Scidev.net的撒哈拉以南非洲英语桌子制作。