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Across the world, young people are increasingly earning incomes through freelance work, remote employment and digital entrepreneurship. [Courtesy]
It is ironic that even when, for many decades, nations measured their wealth in terms of natural resources beneath their soil, Africa was still considered poor despite sitting on tonnes of lithium, gold, diamonds and oil. And while mineral wealth will continue to define the wealth of nations many years into the future, we need to reconcile ourselves to the reality that as Africa searches for its place in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we may be overlooking the most valuable resource ever discovered on this continent.
That resource, you will agree, is not in the form of fossil fuels, not even coltan and the rare earths used to make electric batteries and which are increasingly competing with gold and silver in terms of monetary value.
The ‘baddest’ resource Africa has is, ironically, in some quarters viewed as a challenge. This gold, disguised as a challenge, walks our streets, struts between lecture theatres and libraries at our universities, scrolls through smartphones in matatus in downtown Nairobi, rides in driverless cars in Manhattan and creates content on social media.
