Africa no longer wants to import technology. It wants to write the rules

On Thursday, July 23, the International Conference Centre in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, was filled with the familiar language of telecommunications—spectrum, standards, cybersecurity, satellite networks—but underneath the technical vocabulary was something much larger unfolding. For perhaps the first time in decades, African ministers were not gathered to discuss how the continent could adopt the next wave of technology. They were debating how to influence it before someone else did.