Despite major global challenges, including global trade, Africa has the opportunity to “step up to global change” and benefit from the volatility that is shaking up the world, says Thomson Reuters Africa MD Sneha Shah.

“Africa has the richest resource pool in the world, but we always lose, because we don’t come to the table as equal partners,” Shah told delegates at the Growth, Innovation and Leadership Africa 2017 summit, in Cape Town.

She said “inward leadership, from Brexit to Trump”, was also squeezing opportunities. This was changing global trade patterns.

This shift was an opportunity Africa stood to benefit from, she said.

“South–South trade with countries in Latin America, India and China is done on an equal basis. All the minerals that are needed to power the new technology are on the African continent. So we [had] better be able to take advantage of changing global trade patterns.”

Some of Africa’s problems could be unlocked through blockchain, in which a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, are linked and secured using cryptography.

Shah said Thomson Reuters had been applying blockchain to the land registry in pilot projects in Ghana and Nigeria.

“It’s suddenly created an unhackable record of land transfer and ownership. If you can create land registries through blockchain, you will see people doing more and more commercial development.”

The rise in artificial intelligence (AI) and robots could also spark change in unlikely places. Shah said Thomson Reuters had been using AI to predict changes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the second-largest rainforest in the world. A tremendous amount of logging was going on in the rainforests, yet until now there had been little control.

“If that rainforest gets destroyed, we will have a ridiculous amount of climate change in Africa. It’s so large that nobody knows where to start and there’s so much logging going on. But we have been using AI to predict where the biggest impacts will be.”

Smartphones, used widely across Africa, were also prompting more opportunities.

“Smartphones allow for digital education, micro health insurance and mobile retail bonds in countries like Kenya.” This could open up more opportunities for jobs, particularly for young people.

Shah said new career paths were also being carved out as a result of digital transformation, with opportunities being created for behavioural theorists and futurists.

In times of rapid change, she said, organisations needed to develop a strong organisational culture.

“Organisational culture is the glue that allows your organisation to stay together. People fall apart if you don’t have a strong culture. If you study any organisation that has a strong culture, [such an organisation] outperforms its peers in the market.”

Further, “while we may think change is spinning fast, it is going to speed up

“The speed and pace of change in the world today is the slowest it will ever be.”

She urged people to be forward thinking.

“Don’t frame your thinking in today’s world. Frame your thinking in tomorrow’s world.”