What Southwood has learned after 25 years of watching Africa’s digital transformation closely

WHEN Russell Southwood first landed in Africa in 2000, he had "almost no contacts.

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Armed with yellow pages and a British passport, he would look up internet service providers, turn up at their offices, and introduce himself as a London-based journalist interested in Africa's internet potential. Imagine.

What followed was a 25-year journey of weekly observation that would chronicle one of the continent's most significant transformations, whilst raising persistent questions about perspective, privilege, and who gets to define African progress.

"There were almost nobody involved in the internet," Southwood recalls of those early days during a yet-to-be-released African Tech Roundup Podcast conversation. "The numbers of people involved in or interested in the internet were in the hundreds or the thousands." His now-discontinued weekly newsletter created what he calls "a village of people who are interested in things digital in Africa," establishing him as an influential agenda-setter during a crucial period of continental transformation. Happily, he has resumed regular journalistic musings via his new(ish) Substack blog.

Privileged access

Yet Southwood's outsider status - travelling freely across borders that remain challenging even for privileged Africans, observing from London while others built businesses on the ground - illuminates uncomfortable dynamics about who gets heard in conversations about African futures. His insights, while undeniably sharp, come from someone who could dip in and out of the continent at will, scrutinising rather than executing, critiquing from a position of remarkable mobility and access. Not to knock or discredit him. It isn’t his fault so, much as it just is how it is, and it’s worth mentioning.