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Lagos – 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 start-ups located on 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 Africa's increasingly connected 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 the appetites: the conquest of Africa has become a priority for companies in Silicon Valley.
The launch in June of Google's first artificial intelligence laboratory in Ghana, one of many tech hubs created in recent months on the continent, is another proof of this.
Demographics play a key role: the African population is 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.
" Clearly there is an opportunity for companies like Facebook and Google to set up and impose their brand on the 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 ," said the researcher in technology.
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 for " cultivating the tech community ", which is still in its infancy, according to Ebele Okobi, Facebook's director of public policy for Africa.
Facebook is committed to training 50,000 people across the country in order " to give them the numerical knowledge they need to succeed ," she says.
In exchange for these courses, Facebook, which already has some 26 million users in Nigeria, intends to continue its expansion, but also test new strategies for the group.
– Cyber-colonization? –
So far, most African governments have given a warm welcome to the giants of tech.
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 AFP its adviser for innovation and entrepreneurship, Ife Adebayo.
Few sectors give as much hope for development as that of 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 identifies a song or artist from a musical excerpt, Ubenwa badyzes the crying of newborns to diagnose asphyxia at birth.
Earlier detection of 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 those who bring solutions " to the problems on the continent, said Tewodros Abebe, author of a thesis on new technologies at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia .
" No one can understand the problems we face better than those who are directly affected ," he says.
This specialist however sweeps the critics who see a form of " cyber-colonization " behind the actions 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 that it is colonization. "
– 'Epocalypse' –
As new technologies gain ground, African governments are increasingly 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 was 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 companies.
" We could end up walking blindly to a world where a handful of tech companies would exercise 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 the inequalities North-South ", 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 we are hearing today is that Africa needs investment and needs to develop these industries (…) But this remains very little controlled "she says. " Development should not be incompatible with the protection of privacy ".
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