NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Editor’s note: Michelle Atagana is the managing editor ofmemeburn.com, a social media and technology news site. She has a Masters Degree in New Media and Journalism, her thesis focuses on social media technologies in the South African journalistic space with some focus on the public sphere. She attended the LeWeb tech conference held in London 18 – 20 June.

London, England (CNN) — Running a technology news site based in South Africa that focuses on tech news from Africa and Emerging Markets it’s to be expected that I am a little attached to the region.

According to a Mckinsey report ICT spend in Sub-Saharan Africa is approximately $70 billion and will nearly double by 2015. There is also no doubt Africa is on fire right now when it comes to being at the forefront of innovation in mobile (which is where the future of the web lies) with hubs in Kenya and Nigeria.

So naturally when the “all star entrepreneur” panel took the LeWeb stage, I asked: “So are any of you investing in Africa?” The panel: “No”. No? why not? TechCrunchfounder and former editor Michael Arrington says it’s because he hasn’t been pitched anything from Africa.

The rest of the panel, included: YouTube founder Chad Hurley, Digg founder Kevin Rose, and Skype founder,Niklas Zennström.

LeWeb is an event that champions the next stage in our online evolution and yet there seems to be very little African presence or discussion around the future of the web there.