Durban, South Africa — Thousands of people lined the streets in Cape Town, South Africa this week, to salute South African businessman and space traveller Mark Shuttleworth. His status as "the first African in space" has caught the imagination, not only of those in his home town, but of many around the continent and Shuttleworth is using his high profile to advocate for some dearly held convictions - that there is a need for more and better teaching of maths and science in schools, for example. He attended the World Economic Forum's regional Africa meeting in Durban last week, and told guests at a dinner of his conviction that there was an urgent need to push for an expansion of Africa's economic capacity. Akwe Amosu asked him what impact his journey into space had on his goals back down on earth.
You have talked with passion, here at the World Economic Forum, about what it felt like to go to space and about your commitment to developing African business and trade; is there a connection between your feelings for the planet and for Africa's possibilities?
No, except that they're both the dreams and desires of the same person. Going to space was a personal dream. I wanted to do it in a way that would ignite a bit of passion and excitement in other people, particularly here in Africa. And I was very lucky that we were able to do that with the help of the Russians and an exceptional team that I had from here in South Africa that was working in Moscow, working in Houston and working in Cape Town.
Now that it's over, I must say I feel inspired, having been in space, to work towards a re-balancing of the distribution of wealth and opportunity. I've felt for a long time that Africa had tremendous potential and that the time was ripe for Africa's potential to be harnessed, and more and more, I feel that is true. And I have the privilege now of being invited to visit many African countries, of being able to go out and learn about those countries and see where the potential is and of trying to find ways to promote what I do on an international setting.
And what are you planning? What are you finding out about other African countries that you think is amenable to being 'harnessed'?
I must say that the process is only just beginning. I've lived in South Africa all my life. I recently moved to London. There, I've been exposed to a very rich melting pot of Africa expatriates. It's a nice community to tap into because there are representatives there from all over the continent.
I've received invitations to many African countries. I hope that over the next months and years, I'll be able to take up some of these invitations and visit them, primarily, to talk about education and to try, if there's interest on their side, to get some of the excitement, enthusiasm and momentum that's been created around the continent, channeled in a meaningful direction towards building up an education, particularly of science and mathematics. But who knows what else may come of it? That will be my focus of going, but I'm just interested in the process of learning more about Africa.
Here, at the World Economic Forum there's also a tremendous opportunity to see people from different countries in action. And the overriding impression that I get is one of increasing competence, increasing responsibility, increasing commitment from both government and business to principles of good governance, sound economic management and clean business.
Those are all very different to the stereotypes and the prejudices that I think exist elsewhere about Africa and I think if they're an indicator of real trends on the ground then I'm very excited to get out there and learn.
It seems ironic that just when an educated, energetic 'civil society' is finally coming of age all over Africa, foreign aid is shrinking and Aids is devastating the continent, not to mention other problems. There's a concern that it's going to be difficult to make progress, even if we finally have the people to do it. Is that an impression you share, or does it sound too negative?
You need a good furnace to forge good steel. I think that the challenges that face Africa will play a major role in uniting the continent, in getting us to focus our energies on specific issues, perhaps putting in place policies and procedures that could stave off future problems.
We face a time bomb in population growth, a massive time bomb. You look at what has happened in India and how intractable it is to create [wealth]... Despite the perception in international communities of India as a high-tech center, it really is a tremendous tale of poverty.
But perhaps we will avoid those pitfalls because of some of the issues that we're facing right now, that are portrayed as being major negative influences on the continent; perhaps those things will help us avoid future pitfalls.
One of the issues we face is tremendous fragmentation on the continent, 50-something different countries; but again, I think that's potentially going to make it a lot easier for us to move towards a pan-African view because we don't just have to cope with a few neighbors squabbling, we have a whole continent... My sense is that we will be able to move towards a continent-wide view more readily than we would move towards a small, regional view.
Can I ask you about the role of technology? There is often skepticism that new technology has anything to do with Africa. You hear people say, "our literacy rates are too low, how are we going to make good use of this technology?" How important do you think the new technology is for Africa?
Technology's part of the puzzle. Technology has all sorts of roles to play. On the one hand, it's been demonstrated that one can create wealth through technology by investment and creating success in the technology marketplace.
In that sense, India can be an example. A lot is made of the fact that there are booming technology markets there, although this is a tiny percentage of the great story of poverty in India. If we can do the same in Africa - we certainly have the talent and the expertise - and if we can concentrate that effort in a few centers of excellence, we can create wealth in Africa because we have much lower costs for that talent here than we do in the international market; there's a natural arbitrage of opportunity.
So one opportunity technology presents is wealth creation. I've benefited, personally, from being able to do this in Africa - build a company that sells services and ultimately create tremendous wealth. And I think many others will follow that same route.
The other option technology presents is to create infrastructure that reaches out to many more people far faster and for a much lower cost than has been possible in the past.
We're already seeing how cell phone communication, for example, is connecting people at a much higher rate than we've been able to for the last 60 years with traditional land line telecommunication.
I think in something like the last six months the number of cell phone subscribers in some African countries has equaled the number of fixed line subscribers. In South Africa, that took five years, but there's still an incredible opportunity, especially when you think about the penetration rate, which is about 40% of the adult population in the country.
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Doesn't that just tell you that there's been a lot of inefficiency and deliberate constraint of the market by monopolies and over-regulation by government?
It certainly does tell us something about the need to unlock corporate value and untie the hands of the private sector; but it also tells us that new technologies are often easier to deploy and sell than old technologies. To deploy fixed line infrastructure can take months. It's an enormous and slow process because every point needs a line and every line needs to be maintained and so on, whereas wireless infrastructure is far less expensive and is, in order of magnitude far lighter and easier to deploy.
Where do you personally fit in with this? Are you focusing your efforts on making this kind of transition happen?
I have, in the past, made investments in private equity and so on and I've now basically found that often there are two independent needs, so I've allocated a certain amount of capital to technology investments in Africa and a certain amount of capital to promoting technology and education and so on. That leaves me free to learn more.
So at this stage, no, I'm not working personally everyday towards the establishment of a new situation. I've made my investments, I've made my plays and those groups must now carry that torch. My job now is to learn more about Africa, to understand what is happening on the continent, where it's going; and based on that, to see what opportunities I can find that will stimulate a new round of projects and investments.
