8 Ideas to SHAPE the coming future
On May 10–12, I had the privilege of attending Shape Africa, a conference hosted by The Global Shapers Community, an initiative of The World Economic Forum. The Global Shapers Community is a network of young people driving dialogue, action and change globally. An objective of the community is to amplify the voices of young people by giving them a seat at the table. In 2018 alone, over 1,500 Shapers will participate in SHAPEs, World Economic Forum meetings and other events aimed at shaping the agenda.
The theme for Shape Africa this year was Transforming Africa through Innovation, specifically inclusive innovation. The purpose of this event was to offer global shapers tools, ideas and insights of global trends that can be implemented within the African continent with a special focus on development, highlighting what is needed for Africa to truly take part in the fourth industrial revolution.
I left with a plethora of insights from thought leaders such as Elsie Kanza (Head of Africa for The World Economic Forum), Martyn Davies (Managing Director for Emerging Markets at Deloitte), Abdullahi Alim (The Global Shaper Community Lead), Temitope Iluyemi (Managing Director at Procta & Gamble), Luvuyo Rani (CEO at Silulo Ulutho Technologies), Avinesh Pillay (Head of Cloud Partners at Google), Rapelang Rabana (Chief Digital Officer at DCX) and of course the African Global Shaper Community.
Some of the key takeaways from my several pages of notes include:
1. We have moved from a linear society, progress happens in incremental changes to an exponential one, rate of progress doubles with time. The post-industrial mindset and systems that got us here, won’t help us achieve the needed development and growth needed for the future.
2. The African continent is at a time that it is confronting many changes. We as global citizens have the vision, expertise and knowledge to pave the way forward. We therefore need to redirect our energy to what we are good at in order to enable the development outcomes we wish to see.
3. We must act more. We talk way too much.
4. It is important that we adopt a security mindset into all that we do digitally to protect ourselves in the period of the fourth industrial revolution.
5. A lot is easy to achieve if we make the right noise.
6. The amygdala region in our brain needs to be firmly under our control in order to acquire the survival and behavioural skills needed in tomorrow’s world.
7. We must stop looking outside as we will not progress. We must begin to look inside, that’s where the real change, resources, energy, drive and motivation lies.
8. Our generation needs to unpack the role technology is going to play in uplifting and accelerating social and economic growth. It should not be a cool add on or a nice investing idea, it is existential to our existence going forward.
It is therefore up to us as youth, individuals, organisations, communities and countries to shape and foster this change to better prepare for the future as powerfully stated by Barack Obama, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
