Africa’s Unfair Advantage: How Late Adoption Fuels Innovation & Technology
It is widely believed that the earlier a nation industrialises, the more advanced it becomes. This assumption is intuitive, early movers build infrastructure, attract capital, and set the global standard. History however, offers a different perspective. The first companies to build railroads lost dominance when air travel emerged and early banking giants, once indispensable, are now scrambling to keep up with fintech. Nations that industrialised early are now burdened by aging infrastructure, complex regulatory frameworks, and institutions too entrenched to change.
For decades, Africa has been labeled as “behind”, underdeveloped, infrastructure-deficient, and in need of catching up but this narrative assumes that the world is static; that the best way forward is to mirror the past..In a world that rewards flexibility over legacy, decentralisation over centralisation, and digital-first solutions over physical infrastructure, starting late is often an advantage.
Leapfrogging: A Different Growth Model for Africa
In 2000, only 1% of Africans had access to mobile phones. Today, there are over 534 million smartphone subscriptions across Sub-Saharan Africa. The West took a century to build landline infrastructure; Africa skipped that step entirely and moved straight to mobile technology.
The same pattern repeated in finance. The conventional model required brick-and-mortar banks, legal documentation, and layers of compliance but financial infrastructure in many African nations was weak, and formal banking never reached the majority of the population. Instead of waiting for traditional banks to expand, Africa built something entirely different: mobile money.
Kenya’s M-Pesa -launched in 2007- allowed people to send and receive money via mobile phones. By 2024, mobile money services in Africa were processing over $900 billion annually, and this figure now approaches the trillion-dollar mark. This growth was not a result of playing catch-up with legacy banking systems. It was a leap forward, built from necessity.
Energy followed a similar trajectory. The Western model of electrification was centralised, massive power grids, state-owned utilities, and decades of infrastructure development. Africa, faced with a population of 600 million people without electricity, took a different route: off-grid solar and decentralised energy solutions.
Kenya now generates over 90% of its electricity from renewables.
In Nigeria, solar startups are expanding rapidly, building microgrid solutions that bypass state-controlled electricity providers.
Off-grid solutions are providing access to electricity faster and cheaper than traditional grid expansion.
This is not about playing catch-up. It is about reinventing systems that work in Africa’s unique context.
The Efficiency of Scarcity
It is easy to assume that progress is tied to resource abundance, more infrastructure, more capital, more government investment. But in reality, scarcity often forces greater efficiency.
Singapore had no agricultural land, so it invested in high-tech vertical farming.
Estonia had a tiny economy, so it built a fully digital government.
Japan lacked space for massive factories, so it pioneered lean manufacturing and automation.
Africa’s version of this:
It lacked national postal systems, so it built e-commerce models around direct delivery networks.
It faced unreliable electricity, so it pioneered pay-as-you-go solar solutions for rural areas.
It didn’t have legacy banking giants, so it developed a fintech industry that now rivals global players.
Scarcity forces innovation. When a system doesn’t exist, you aren’t constrained by legacy structures, you build from first principles.
First-mover advantage is often overrated. The U.S. healthcare system, once world-class, is now one of the most expensive and inefficient in the world, burdened by outdated policies and entrenched interests while Europe’s railway networks, once state-of-the-art, are struggling with maintenance costs and outdated infrastructure. There are also traditional banking giants that were once seen as too big to fail but are now competing with nimble fintech startups.
For the most part, Africa never had to build these legacy systems and does not have these problems. The opportunity to choose the best available technology, rather than retrofitting old models offers the continent the opportunity to build something different altogether.
The Future: Digital, Decentralised, and African-Led
As the future of the global economy shifts, Africa is already ahead of the curve. Industrial power is no longer the defining metric of success; technology, sustainability, and digital-first economies are shaping the next wave of growth.
While some cities struggle with aging public transport, Rwanda is investing in electric motorcycles and drone deliveries to move people and goods faster.
While legacy banks are stuck with outdated compliance systems, Africa’s fintech sector is expanding at five times the global average.
While traditional economies rely on fixed land ownership, African startups are experimenting with fractional real estate investment and blockchain-based land registries.
Then,there’s the workforce. By 2050, Africa will have the largest workforce in the world. The assumption has always been that this workforce needed factories, manufacturing jobs, and heavy industry. But the economy of 2050 won’t be driven by manufacturing, it will be driven by software, clean energy, decentralised finance, and digital economies. Africa is already investing in those areas today. The world is not waiting for Africa to catch up. If anything, the world is starting to look toward Africa to see what the future of innovation looks like because history is clear.The future doesn’t belong to the ones who started first, it belongs to the ones who move fastest.
By Kayode Adeniyi
