On the recordJanuary 24, 2017
On our codel, our visit to Senegal included a meeting with the CEO of Wari, an 8-year-old company providing an innovative platform offering convenient service and an aggregation of products and services of various partners. Wari has over 220 million users of the platform throughout 40 countries. We also met with the director of Millennium Connect Africa. Formerly with Hughes Satellite Systems, Mr. Diop was educated at Wharton and UCLA and worked in the U.S. for 20 years. His company is a subsidiary of Wari. In Kenya, IT entrepreneurs have excelled in the development of a host of innovative apps. For example, a young Kenyan innovator developed an app called iCow to better enable dairy farmers to keep current with market prices. Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, there are many examples of IT expertise. The importance of an IT-literate population complements the ongoing push for capability training. To the degree the U.S. Government can actively participate in this important process is to the mutual benefit of this country and a spectrum of developing countries worldwide.
