Sub-Saharan Africa

Kenyan-Swedish startup Roam is on a mission to build sustainable transport across Africa—and it’s following its own path to get there. In December 2021, the company partnered with Uber to distribute more than 3,000 electric motorcycles, helping the Silicon Valley giant scale its efforts on the continent. Then in July, the company released Roam Air. Based on years of R&D, the new electric motorcycle was designed specifically for “the African use-case and with special focus on affordability, functional design and performance.” The potential is massive: Motorcycles are a booming business in the country. But historically, most of those produced in Kenya have been gas-powered, resulting in huge emission rates and high levels of noise pollution. If Roam can turn the two-wheeled tide in Kenya and other nations, it stands to dramatically transform the way in which Africans get from point A to point B—and ensures they leave a positive impact in their wake.

Africa’s population is booming, but limited mobility option have contributed to uneven economic growth. To address the dire need for a transportation transformation, Zurich’s Afrailways and Namibia’s Groot Suisse Industries unveiled a bold plan to create the Afrail Express, a high-speed rail line that will connect nearly 80 percent of Africa’s population, stretching from Morocco to South Africa, Nigeria to Egypt. Once fully operational in 2033, the Afrail Express could contribute an estimated US$5 trillion to Africa’s economy. The first phase of construction is slated to start in 2024.

The district of Salvokop in Tshwane, South Africa has weathered decades of turmoil. Once primarily a community for workers on a nearby train line, the area was racially integrated in 1994—but has never achieved full economic stability. Government leaders are hoping to instill a renewed sense of possibility with an ambitious construction project that will eventually house several agency headquarters. Launched by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure in June, the ZAR18 billion precinct project will also include mixed-use buildings and a shelter for the vulnerable. This development could mark a strong step into the future, with the first phase alone creating more than 3,000 jobs.

Kenya has a youth unemployment problem: For every 100 students who start primary school, only 68 transition to secondary school, and just six go on to universities or technical institutions to learn the skills needed for a competitive role, according to the World Bank. To help turn the tide on that disheartening stat, nonprofit Startup Lions built a campus on the banks of Lake Turkana to offer 400 students free training in information communications and technology (ICT), as well as free networking and housing. Designed by Kéré Architecture principle Diébédo Francis Kéré—a Burkina Faso native who recently became the first African to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize—the campus is intended as a first step in a vision of spreading ICT networks in remote areas.

The 2021 rollout of billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses was an amazing feat—but one marred by inequity, as many countries lacked the technological capacity to manufacture vaccines. To put more power in the hands of nations in need, the World Health Organization took a new approach: creating a hub-and-spoke model that would establish a central facility for biotech development, which would then disseminate know-how to local manufacturers. The first such hub, sponsored by Afrigen and opened in Cape Town in June 2021, has already developed its own breakthroughs, with a COVID-19 vaccine expected to move into clinical trials next year. And the hub’s utility will extend far beyond the novel coronavirus. In July of this year, Afrigen and the U.S. government announced a partnership to use the facility to develop mRNA vaccines against diseases like tuberculosis and Ebola.

Supply chain snarls have threatened retailers around the world since the pandemic began. But in sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of retail transactions happen in small, informal settings, keeping shelves stocked can be time-consuming at best, impossible at worst. In June, South African fintech Nomanini rolled out its StockNow app, which connects micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses to goods distributors with a few simple clicks, for first-ever digital ordering. The app first went live in Tanzania with partner Nestlé ESAR and will be rolled out to thousands of informal retailers in the country by year’s end. And plans are already underway to scale across the continent.

Announced by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and its sister organization Le Korsa in May, Bët-bi in rural Senegal is intended to bring “the joys of visual art to a population that may not previously have had access to museums.” The building, designed by Nigerian architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara and her firm Atelier Masōmī, will showcase both contemporary and historic art from sub-Saharan Africa and the African Diaspora, as well as pieces from other cultures to illustrate shared visual motifs. Yet what truly separates this project is how it aims to bring the community into the space. The site features accessible, open areas, such as a library, a café and a place for local artisans to showcase their work.

Porridge doesn’t exactly scream innovation. Yet in cultivating the malt powder that gives Nestlé Milo chocolatey beverage its signature flavor, the Swiss food giant was discarding large quantities of the starchy grain sorghum. At the Nestlé R&D Centre in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, researchers looked into blending this previously unused side product with maize and wheat. The result? A low-cost, highly nutritious porridge that could help alleviate widespread food insecurity in West African communities. The porridge rolled out regionally this year. In addition to addressing hunger, it’s also a linchpin of Nestlé’s waste-reduction and upcycling strategy as it pushes to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Rapid advances in data science have the potential to transform health outcomes across Africa, which currently shoulders an outsize share of the global burden of disease. To accelerate impact, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa and the National Institutes of Health in the United States have joined forces on a five-year, US$75 million project to establish a data science research and training network across the continent. The Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa program focuses on everything from using data to boost pandemic preparedness in Nigeria to identifying women at risk for poor pregnancy outcomes in Kenya to improving medical diagnostic accuracy in Uganda. UCT will also oversee an open data science platform and coordinating center, in partnership with the Human Heredity and Health in Africa consortium, aimed at facilitating team research and collaboration. A second phase is already in the works, with the goal of expanding the project’s reach.