Look before you leap
The notion of leapfrogging poor infrastructure in Africa needs to come back down to earth
CAN entrepreneurs make up for a lack of roads? In Rwanda, where most of the population live in cut-off villages, the government wants to skip straight to drones. Encouraged by Paul Kagame, the president and a darling of the development industry (if not of human-rights activists), some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture-capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and the investment arm of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have bet that tiny, unmanned aircraft carrying medical supplies can simply hop over the rolling green hills and the mud tracks that barely connect people now.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Look before you leap”
From the August 6th 2016 edition
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