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With its colorful hammocks and ping-pong table, its young executives permanently connected to their smartphones, Facebook's new high-tech incubator in Lagos has nothing to envy to the headquarters of the start-up companies the other side of the Atlantic, in Silicon Valley.
The American giant has just set its sights on Yaba – also nicknamed "Yabacon Valley" – in the heart of the bustling Nigerian economic capital, now courted by the global heavyweights of new technologies
To promote innovation and entrepreneurship among an increasingly connected African youth, Google and Facebook both launched new projects in Lagos in May.
But Nigeria, a gigantic market of some 180 million people, is not the only one to whet appetites: the conquest of Africa has become a priority for Silicon Valley companies.
June launch of Google's first artificial intelligence lab in Ghana, one of many 'tech hubs' created in recent months on the continent, is further proof.
Demography plays a key role: the population Africa accounts for about 1.2 billion people, 60% of whom are under 24 years of age. A figure that should double by 2050, according to the United Nations.
"There is clearly an opportunity for companies like Facebook and Google to settle and impose their mark on African soil," says Daniel Ives for GBH Insights, a consulting firm based in New York.
"If you look at Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, where can they still grow? We must aim for the international," says the researcher in technologies .
Facebook does not have a permanent office in Nigeria yet. But Yaba's incubator, created in partnership with local start-ups, is a first step in "cultivating the tech community", which is still in its infancy, according to Ebele Okobi, public policy director of Facebook for Africa
Facebook is committed to training 50,000 people across the country to "give them the digital knowledge they need to succeed," she says.
In exchange for these formations, Facebook, which already counts some 26 million users in Nigeria, intends to continue its expansion, but also to test new strategies for the group.
– Cyber-colonization? –
So far, most African governments have given a warm welcome to tech giants.
This week, Vice President of Nigeria Yemi Osinbajo traveled to California to meet US investors. He promised an "active support" to Google to conquer the famous "next billion users" that makes the digital industry dream.
"We want the next Zuckerberg to be Nigerian", says to AFP Advisor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ife Adebayo
Few sectors give as much hope for development as new technologies to revolutionize the field of health or agriculture.
Ubenwa is an example. This application, designed in Nigeria, is nicknamed the "Shazam for babies". If Shazam can identify a song or artist from a musical excerpt, Ubenwa badyzes the crying of newborns to diagnose asphyxia at birth.
Detect earlier respiratory problems, causing Many cases of infant mortality could save thousands of lives in a country like Nigeria, where most hospitals are under-equipped and understaffed.
"Africans should be the ones who bring solutions" to the problems on the continent, said Tewodros Abebe, a PhD student on new technologies at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
"Nobody can understand the problems we face better than those who are directly affected," he says.
This specialist however sweeps away critics who see a form of "cyber-colonization" behind shares of Facebook and Google.
"I think working together is a good way to transfer technology to Africa," he says. "If they were only there to do business then we could say it's colonization."
– 'Epocalypse' –
As new technologies gain ground, African governments are increasingly in addition under pressure to better regulate the sector and protect personal data.
Legislation regulating privacy remains virtually non-existent in many countries of the continent, unlike Europe, which recently adopted a pioneering text, the General Data Protection Regulation.
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook has been blamed for allowing the use of data from millions of users for political purposes, including in the context of the 2016 presidential election in the United States, NGOs fear that Africa will become the new playground of unscrupulous businesses
"We could end up looking forward with a blind eye to a world where a handful of tech companies would have a monopoly of controlling entire parts of the global economy," noted Global Justice Now in a report dubbed "Epocalypse Now" (May 2018).
"This could aggravate North-South inequalities", if these two regions do not adopt the same regulations, according to this NGO based in London.
Concerns shared by Renata Avila, a researcher at the World Wide Web Foundation, a Geneva-based organization advocating for digital equality
"The message-that we are hearing today-is that Africa it needs investment and it needs to develop these industries (…) But that remains very little controlled, "she says. "Development should not be incompatible with the protection of privacy."
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