The listing of online marketplace Jumia at the New York Stock Exchange stirred debate on the extent to which it is an African company that should qualify for the grand reception that it has received and its perceived benefit to the African technology ecosystem. As a debate with opinions as varied as the pundits who engage in it, I would rather dissect it differently and look at the era in which we are now entering where pure software plays are no longer sufficient to disrupt or add value to industries.
In 2011, well-known entrepreneur, investor and software engineer Marc Andreessen wrote an essay titled ‘Why software is eating up the world.’ It was very apt for its time and in the examples shared about the transformational nature of connectivity and having billions of people getting online.
