Tech trends to leverage in 2025 II
It's part ✌️... as promised
Hiya, Dear Innovator 🎅
How’s your weekend going?
Have the festivities started positively affecting your app usage/website visits yet?
(Side bar: It’s supposed to 👀, so if you’re not getting your share of the festive consumerism pie, you’re probably doing something wrong)
Anyhoo…
We owe you a debt, and it’s time to pay up! 🫶
Remember this? 🤔
⬆️ In there, we recapped some tech predictions made at the start of 2024 and how they played out during the year (you can check it out if you missed it).
In today’s newsletter, we will:
Provide insights into the direction the tech ecosystem (and its users) are heading.
Share a focus plan for 2025.
Highlight pointers on how you can leverage these insights to improve your tech product in the new year.
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AI and automation:
AI continues to take front and centre stage, and reports show that it’s expected to continue its expansion across various sectors. McKinsey & Company estimates that AI could boost Africa’s GDP by up to $1.2 trillion by 2030 🫢and generative AI seems to be the star of the show.
Already, AI apps in healthcare, finance, and other sectors are demonstrating significant impacts, from improving diagnostic accuracy to improving agricultural practices and enhancing customer service via AI chatbots.
There are speculations that the focus on AI could also shift to include developing solutions for data collection and analysis which are currently lacking, offering a significant opportunity for African tech innovators to create solutions around it.
Reports also indicate a rise in AI agent usage across various apps. Challenges for smartphones users are also highlighted due to the computational demands of AI, and how this might drive hardware upgrades.
You’re free to play around with this as much as your tech solution can accommodate!
Blockchain Technology:
With Africa potentially hosting over 15% of global blockchain developers by 2025, there's a growing opportunity in fintech, particularly in creating decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions, secure digital identity systems, and improving transparency in supply chains.
There are also opportunities for Blockchain to be used to enhance e-commerce and logistics for better tracking and fraud prevention.
Does this look like something that you’d want to get into? 🤔
Sustainable/Green tech:
With an increasing focus on sustainability, innovations in green tech, including renewable energy solutions or tech that supports carbon capture have been reported to be significantly beneficial, and people seem to be perking up to it.
Your tech innovations around this could include tools that help in managing or reducing the environmental impact of other businesses. Generative AI particularly seem to have an impact on energy consumption, what with data centers and electricity generators dealing with increased energy demands due to Gen AI.
Others include IoT (internet of things) for climate monitoring and AI for predicting environmental changes.
Growth in local tech talent and remote work:
The trend towards building local tech talent will accelerate, with more educational programs, bootcamps, and international collaborations.
Remote work opportunities will expand, potentially leading to a significant portion of Africa's tech workforce engaging in global projects, enhancing skills and income.
If your tech solution focuses on link tech talent to local/global opportunities, hold on tight!
Cybersecurity:
As digital transformation advances, cybersecurity have continues to remain a critical focus. Reports indicate that more African tech innovators will invest in developing indigenous cybersecurity solutions, adapting to local contexts and the increasing digital interactions.
🤷🤷
Regulatory Tech (RegTech):
Last but not least, RegTech!
As tech solutions permeate more sectors, compliance with increasingly complex regulations will spur growth in RegTech, according to reports. This includes technologies for monitoring, reporting, and automating compliance processes in finance, health, and data privacy.
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There are more tech trends that haven’t been mentioned here, duh 🤪, butttt if you can get a solid handle on any of these ones, you should have a pretty good head-start.
Dear Innovator, endeavour to make 2025 your best year yet. We’re rooting for you!!