Africa’s efforts at securing much needed support to tackle the rampaging Coronavirus pandemic received a boost with the donation of Chinese billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma who through the Jack Ma Foundation, will donate to each one of the 54 African nations 20,000 testing kits, 100,000 masks, and 1,000 medical use protective suits and face shields “to help combat the potential surging for demand for medical supplies and equipment in Africa”, Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation said in a statement.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
The donation came a day after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a coronavirus support package for the whole of Africa. The supplies will be flown to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa from where PM Abiy has agreed to lead in managing the logistics and disbursement efforts. The donation under the aegis of the Jack Ma Foundation confirmed that millions of prevention and containment materials will be flown into Africa.
In addition, we will immediately start working with medical institutions in Africa to provide online training material for COVID-19 clinical treatment,” the statement added. “Now it is as if we are all living in the same forest on fire. As members of the global community, it would be irresponsible for us to sit on the fence, panic, ignore facts or fail to act. We need to take action now!” the statement concluded.
Jack Ma
Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had earlier this week announced that he had secured a continent wide support coronavirus support from Chinese businessman Jack Ma. Abiy said the package which was to benefit all African countries will comprise testing kits, masks and guideline books on treatment methods.
“Great appreciation to Jack Ma for partnering with Ethiopia to distribute 10-20k corona testing kits per country; more than 100k masks for each African country, and guideline books developed recently on how to treat patients with the virus,” he wrote in one of three tweets.
It remains to be known the exact testing kit the PM is referring to given that currently only laboratory tests are being used. The Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal has, however, hinted that it would soon roll out a rapid test kit. Jack Ma, the Ali Baba founder had recently donated a million face masks to the United States as part of measures to help deal with the spreading virus.
In November last year, Ma was in Addis Ababa where he met with Abiy. The two parties discussed the launch of the Electronic World Trade Platform in Ethiopia. The platform was to promote Ethiopia’s export products to the global market and open the door for small enterprises to become competitive. The visit followed a 2018 meeting between the Abiy and Ma at the Alibaba Headquarters in Hangzhou. In January 2019, they met at the World Economic Forum in Davos and discussed a potential partnership to build a tech city in Ethiopia.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Alibaba Group and the World Economic Forum have widened their search for partners to combat widespread issues such as unemployment in Africa, calling again for governments, the private sector and civil society to take up the cause.
Jack Ma, founder and chairman, Alibaba group
Alibaba, the WEF and five other founding members in September launched the Africa Growth Platform to help 100 million startups and SMEs in Africa scale their business operations by 2025. The underlying goal is to create jobs for the two-thirds of Africa’s 420 million young people who are currently out of work. A.T. Kearney, Dalberg Group, Export Trade Group, the Africa Development Foundation and Zenith Bank are the other founding members.
This year, as global thought leaders gathered for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, they have created the Davos Friends of AGP to draw still more partners to the initiative, which aims to increase access to funding and create better business environments for Africa’s startups. So far, the presidents of Botswana and Ghana have agreed to join as member countries of the AGP.
“The AGP recognizes that one of the most compelling ways to create new economic opportunities and support Africa’s digital transformation is to invest in the capacity building and empowerment of entrepreneurs and small businesses,” said Brian Wong, vice president of global initiatives for Alibaba Group, at a press conference in Davos.
WATCH: Alibaba’s Brian Wong explains the Friends of AGP initiative
The AGP aims to enhance funding prospects for young African entrepreneurs in three ways. Firstly, the platform will work with governments to bring about policy reforms that will stimulate and accelerate business growth. Secondly, it will work to create a diverse community of investors as a way to bring together resources to facilitate future funding. Finally, the AGP seeks to build a startup community itself to foster collaboration and idea sharing.
To support the AGP’s 2025 goals, Alibaba has been helping to set up the framework of the initiative while promoting partnership opportunities to foster the growth of a digital economy in Africa. Alibaba will also share lessons learned from China, including case studies on building digital infrastructure and growing e-commerce in rural areas, as well as leverage its training programs to teach young entrepreneurs, SMEs, policy makers, educators and universities in Africa about e-commerce. To date, 119 entrepreneurs from 18 African countries have participated in Alibaba’s eFounder Fellowship program, which was launched by Jack Ma while serving as UNCTAD Special Adviser for Youth Entrepreneurship and Small Business. Twenty-two students from Rwanda have also started their four-year undergraduate-level course on international business and cross-border e-commerce in Hangzhou last September.
Since last September, AGP has hosted a workshop in Nairobi, in December, for fintech entrepreneurs to meet with key stakeholders and executives in the central bank of Kenya. And in Davos this week, the group met with African heads of state, business leaders and other stakeholders to advocate for infrastructure investment, such as for steady water and electricity supply, and training from academia.
For Alibaba, the launch of the Davos Friends of AGP community is another step toward building a more-inclusive business landscape that serves society as a whole, Wong said.
“We are honored to serve as a founding member of the AGP as we work to enhance global cooperation among all stakeholders and to do our part to inspire, train and support entrepreneurs in Africa in order to achieve more inclusive growth,” he said.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer.
He could be contacted at udohrapulu@gmail.com
China’s richest man and e-commerce billionaire Jack Ma has been teaching on the basic traits needed to succeed in life, and in business especially in this age of Internet of Things (IoT). According to Jack Ma who recently relinquished his position as Chairman CEO of e-commerce giant Alibaba.com, there is need for people to focus on continuous education, education he said is the “most important and critical issue” of our time. His concern: the world is changing fast, but education is not. He noted that his formula, however, is not to focus on curriculum or accountability, but on students’ capacity to love.
Jack Ma, Chairman CEO of e-commerce giant Alibaba.com
Speaking on his formula, Jack Ma said that “if you want to be successful, you should have very high emotional quotient (EQ), a way to get on with people”. He highlighted that “if you don’t want to lose quickly, you should have good intelligent quotient (IQ),” adding that “if you want to be respected, you should have love quotient (LQ)—the quotient of love,” he concluded. “The brain will be replaced by machines, but machines can never replace your heart.”
Jack Ma spoke that his formula fits well with the theme of the conference in Paris, where the OECD released the latest results of its worldwide test of 15-year-olds and discussed how to move education systems from traditional exam factories to places where kids learn content, but also self-knowledge, empathy, teamwork and agency.
The head of the OECD’S education unit Andreas Schleicher, applauded Jack Ma’s “radical” approach. Educators talk about the need for holistic reform a lot, but business leaders more often focus on education as a means to train future workers (rather than nurture well-rounded humans). Schleicher said Ma’s key message was spot on: we’ve spent a lot of effort on how we feed people—that is, the education they receive—but not enough on what we feed them.
In the future, Ma said everything had to be on the table: teachers, classrooms, and students. Classes will not be in discreet 40-minute units, teachers will not be the ones with all the knowledge, and educators will emphasize asking the right questions, not just getting the right answers. “If you focus on standardization, everything can be replaced by machines,” he said. Many educators dispute this approach, arguing that knowledge should not be undermined, and that schools should focus on discipline and high academic expectations.
Jack Ma professed himself an “amateur” educator. But he is not without experience: he failed his university exams a few times and eventually got into a teaching school. Back then, he said, people who failed at traditional achievement—top universities—became teachers. He said that teaching imparted important lessons he used as CEO—he even dubbed his job “chief education officer” at Alibaba. “I learned everything I learned from being a teacher,” he said. “Inspire students. Trust students. Believe in students. Enable them.”
Pointing out the essential ingredients for quality education. He suggested investing more in early childhood, when kids are building skills and values, and less in universities, when values are already set. “Please put more resources on the front and not in the back,” he said, suggesting kindergarten and primary schools have tremendous leverage to shape kids. He also advocated supporting teachers more robustly. “If we respect teachers we respect knowledge and we respect the future,” he said. Increase their pay and help headmasters with leadership training, since 60% of teachers leave the profession because they don’t like their headmasters.
He said education needs to change its key performance indicators, namely exams. He often asks students why they work so hard for their exams and they always say it is to get into university and go on to get a job. But at Alibaba, he said, they have to retrain university graduates to do their jobs well.
“University does not mean you are guaranteed a job,” he said, adding that he doesn’t hire from MIT and Harvard because of the names, but because the people come “ready to learn their whole lives.” In a memorable zinger, he said that a university degree was nothing more than a “receipt for the tuition paid.” He joined the zeitgeist by calling for kids to better confront failure. “It is not natural for people to help you,” he said. “You need to learn to be rejected and refused.” Indeed, he was rejected from Harvard 10 times.
Finally, he suggested education had to become more global, and more focused on teamwork. (China, he noted, was terrible at this: it succeeds in individual sports but not team ones.) The way to accomplish this is more arts and dance, painting and team sports. He’s started a school where there is no after-school tutoring but there are after-school sports.
Last century, he said, was won by muscle, while this one will be won with wisdom. Or as he put it another way, “last century we win by caring about myself, this century we win by caring about others.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Jack Ma, the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group will meet with Ethiopian startup founders on Monday. November 25. To that effect, several heads of local startups have been contacted days ago and invited to meet one of the most influential business leaders in the world and China’s richest man. Jack Ma is expanding interest within the African continent which is a late comer to the concept of startups and free enterprise.
Here Is All You Need To Know
While Ethiopia is no stranger to the interest of China and Chinese investment, this is to be China’s most prominent businessman first official visit to the nation and there is unconfirmed speculations that he might be interested in government held enterprises as Ethiopia is set to liberalize some of its sought after institutions and look out for foreign investors.
According to sources, he is to lead a large business delegation and will be arriving in Addis Ababa Sunday afternoon.
In the capital, he is to meet with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) on Monday morning at Skylight Hotel and on the same day; Jack Ma to meet with a number of Ethiopian startup founders at a round table discussion and have an audience with Minister Getahun Mekuria (PhD) of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology.
Earlier this year, Minister Getahun met with Jack and discussed ways he and his Alibaba Group could help build the nations infant digital economy sector.
This followed a visit of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) to the headquarters of Alibaba to discuss investment within Ethiopia earlier this year.
The 55 year old Chinese entrepreneur, who resigned from his position at Alibaba this year is no stranger to the African continent, making frequent visits to nations such as Rwanda, South Africa and Ghana, meeting with young entrepreneurs and being the donor of the Africa Netpreneur Prize that grants 1 million USD to young African entrepreneurs with good and practical ideas.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, has rounded off his meetup with African entrepreneurs in Lomé, Togo, after his short visit to Nigeria.
Togo’s minister of digital technology, Cina Lawson
The Togolese presidency organised the exclusive event hosted by Togo’s minister of digital technology, Cina Lawson, and President Faure Gnassingbé.
Jack Ma resigned his position as the company chief a year ago to concentrate on philanthropic initiatives through the Jack Ma Foundation, and the Paradise Foundation. The Chinese mogul is also an advocate of the UN sustainable development goals or SDGs.
Below Are The Highlights Of His Interactions With African Entrepreneurs
On getting Investors Involved In Your Startup
For founders looking to bring investors onboard their companies, Jack Ma gave the following advice:
‘‘I have a lot of experience with venture capitalists and investors. My company’s value number one is customers. Its value number two is employees and its number three value is shareholders.
When Alibaba went on its IPO, I told potential investors that customers should be the number one priority of the company, followed by its employees and then the shareholders. The investors stared at me confused. They wanted the shareholders to be number one. However, we believed that if the customer pays us the money, the business will be sustainable. On the other hand, if customers do not pay you the money, and investors give you the money, you may end up spending the money incorrectly.
Secondly, the employee. You founders are the mothers and fathers of your companies and not the venture capitalists. Venture capitalists are like the uncles giving you some money to buy some milk. Without the uncles, you still have to keep doing your business. No choice! Trust me, when problems come, those venture capitalists may not continue to be with you. So, don’t trust them to be with you all the time. Your employees will be with you all the time. Some of your customers will be with you all the time.
I don’t like the fact that so many startups are gauging their success today with the number of funds they raise for their businesses. I know the day of reckoning is coming for them. It’s not the money that makes you succeed; it’s the products, the customers. No venture capitalists will give you money free. The past few years have been crazy; people have been bragging about the amount of funds they raise. You don’t win because of the amount of money you raise; you lose because of the number of customers you are not getting.
Please, have a good business model, not a solution model. Keep your customers and your employees happy. I have found that most companies have gone bankrupt not because they don’t have too much money. They have too much money, but when you have too much money, you may get greedy, you lose your mind, you set up beautiful offices, you start to hire people they don’t need. This is a big challenge for most startup companies.
So founders be careful. Get the money you need. As the CEO, when everybody sees bad, keep looking for the good. When everybody sees good, it is time to raise some money, because something bad is coming.
Don’t listen to investors a lot, instead listen to customers.’’
On The Importance Of A Good Team
Jack Ma had this to say:
‘‘When I hire people, I don’t hire friends. I don’t hire relatives. When we are friends, let’s just be friends.When you invite good friends to do things together, long term you have a problem. Big problems. It’s better to hire people and then become friends. This is what I did. When I finally become friends with them, we fight, we kick the table and in the evening we get back to work.
For small companies, what kind of people you use means a lot for the business. For big companies, the kind of people you fire means a lot.
Another important thing: make sure that before a decision is made, you are one of the team. At the time of making the decision, you should be the leader. For example, when I went for my company’s meeting as the chairman, I usually went with goals in mind. During the meeting, I listened to a world of ideas on how to achieve those goals, but at the final fifteen minutes I act like the boss, because somebody has to press the button after all the deliberations.
As a team leader, don’t think you are smarter than your people. Just allow your people to be smarter than you are. A good leader does not have to prove that he is smarter than others. A good leader exploits his team’s smartness to accomplish the organisation’s goals.
I normally allow a period of three years for a leader to turn a stupid or clueless team into a valuable group for the company, otherwise I fire them at that period. If you can’t take a stupid team and make it useful and smarter, then you’re not a leader.’’
On Running An Ecommerce Company In Africa In The Face Of The Prevalent Low Rate Of Internet Adoption
Jack Ma had this to say:
‘‘China was like this when I started Alibaba, however we built our first set of customers little by little, adding at least ten customers everyday, building trust with them gradually. I think the most important thing then was that we understood what they needed, and supplied their needs. It is was not easy, but you have to have a long-term vision for the business.
Fifteen years ago, people didn’t trust to pay money or buy things online. In any case, remember these rules:
Rule number one: Don’t try to convince successful people. Successful people never change. You should help those people who want to be successful. Thirteen years ago, we never tried to convince people thirty-five years of age. We convinced only those 18 years of age. For them, it’s fun shopping things online. They yearned to have a taste of that experience. We grew together with this set of people. Today, most of them are 30 years old and above.
So face the people who are young and make them excited. Successful people are always sceptical and doubtful.
Rule Number 2: As an ecommerce founder, you have to make your shopping site to be fun, otherwise customers would see no need abandoning the physical shops around them to shop on your platform. Just imagine: every night, there are about 70 million people browsing through Alibaba site without buying anything. So what are they doing? People come there just for fun. You’ve got to build your site to be fun-filled.
Dealing with distributors as an ecommerce startup:
Although you have taken away their jobs, most of the distributors are not actually adding enough value to the customers or to the producers. Ecommerce tries to create these values for the customers and the producers. tried to carry the distributors along in my early years, but they refused. They thought that ecommerce meant nothing. But after fifteen years of competition, we grew faster and overtook them. So give it some patience.’’
Dealing With Your Customers
Alibaba had this to say:
‘‘When I built Alibaba, the B2C site, nobody came to use it. We only had about 79 people at the time. Somehow, we started to buy and sell to ourselves as a team. At a time, we opened the site and people started uploading their goods to sell on our platform. We were so struggling that we started to buy what those people uploaded to our platform. But we learned one important thing: Don’t abuse the trust people have in your products when they come looking for you. Always make the customer believe in you, trust in you; value them, take good care of them. Customers are the best sales tool in the world, through their words of mouth.’’
How Your Environment Affects You And What To Do
Jack Ma admitted how China helped him.
‘‘China’s population and economy helped me a lot. However, China was not entirely a perfect country for me. But you have to learn not to complain too much. When you complain, you complain your entire life. China helped me a lot and I also helped China a lot.
In its initial years, Alibaba was a struggling company, but we wanted to use the internet to help businesses, to help China and its people. We feel proud today not because we make a lot of money, but because we changed lives for millions of young entrepreneurs.
The more people you empower today, the more powerful you would become.’’
On How Best To Brand Your Startups
Jack had this to say:
‘‘First is the name you choose. Good company name is very important. But at the first stage of the company’s life, you should focus less attention on branding. You should spend money on people. Set target on how to build more customers per month.’’
Advice For Startup Founders On How To Manage People
He said:
‘‘You should always be transparent to your students. A teacher never teaches lies to his students. As a CEO, you have to hope that your people are better than they used to be. As a teacher, I learn. When I was the founder and CEO, I hoped my people did best. I was transparent to my people. I united them.
When you hire people train them. Discipline them. Support them. As a CEO, the best resources of your company are your people. So train them and invest in them. When you invest in your people, you are investing in your products.
Jack Ma Has Some Advice For Those Wanting To Be Like Him
He had this to say:
‘‘Don’t learn how to be Jack Ma; learn from Jack Ma. In my whole life, I have two words: FAIL; TRY AGAIN. TRY AGAIN; FAIL. FAIL; TRY AGAIN.
If you fail, and give up, you have already failed. If you don’t give up, you always have one chance of succeeding. Don’t always look at the richest man in the world; look at your neighbour, the one who just opened a barbershop or a restaurant and is successful. Learn why they are successful in that small setting.’’
You can listen to the full discussion by clicking here.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
For startups and entrepreneurs looking for a life time opportunity of meeting up with a mentor, Chinese tycoon Jack Ma will be in Lomé, Togo on November 14, 2019. Part of his visit to the West African country will include a meetup with young leaders and entrepreneurs from Togo and other African countries.
The Togolese presidency is organising the exclusive event to be hosted by Togo’s minister of digital technology, Cina Lawson, and President Faure Gnassingbé.
Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce mastodon Alibaba, resigned his position as the company chief a year ago to concentrate on philanthropic initiatives through the Jack Ma Foundation, and the Paradise Foundation. The Chinese mogul is also an advocate of the UN sustainable development goals or SDGs.
How Interested Participants May Participate In The Event
Any person interested in attending the coming event which would among other things discuss digital revolution currently going on in the world is free to do so by submitting an application.
Togo has been partnering with Alibaba since the President met with Ma at the previous FOCAC in China. In this framework, members of the Togolese administration and young local entrepreneurs are regularly trained by the firm on the digital economy.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
Indeed Flutterwave is looking at China’s population of 1.4 billion here. It has just announced it is going into a landmark partnership with Chinese payment solution Alipay, which overtook PayPal as the world’s largest mobile payment platform in 2013, and is today the world’s number one mobile payment service organization and the second-largest mobile payment service organization in the world.
The Flutterwave/AliPay connection is probably the biggest thing to ever happen to African tech if we understand the full implication. China is in play guys. Over One BILLION users are in play. I have always said, don’t build for Africa…..alone! Victor Asemota✔@asemota, a social commentator.
Here Is The Deal
Payments is partnerships and we’re happy to announce that we have partnered with @Alipay to create even more avenues for our merchants to seamlessly receive payments from customers all over the world, Flutterwave noted on its Twitter handle
What this means is “ that all our merchants can accept or install Alipay as a payment type to accept payments from its billion users,” Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola said in an interview.
“There’s a lot of trade between Africa and China and this integration makes it easier for African merchants to accept Chinese customer payments,” he noted.
The partnership is crucial because Flutterwave will earn revenue from the partnership by charging its standard 3.8% on international transactions. Flutterwave currently has more than 60,000 merchants on its platform, according to Agboola.
There’s also a catch for Flutterwave, as being integrated with Alipay now gives all of its merchants access to more than 1 billion users on the Alibaba product.
“Alipay is available in addition to card, Barter, Mobile Money and other payment channels on the Rave checkout modal,” Flutterwave said in a statement.
“We’ve set out to provide the complete payment solution for Africans to thrive in the global economy. The complete payment solution would first require interconnectivity within Africa, then connectivity from Africa to the world,” says Flutterwave.
Flutterwave is a Lagos and San Francisco-based fintech startup. The Nigerian B2B payments platform allows African companies to send out payments to other firms around the world.
Access To Chinese And African Markets
This partnership with Alipay which has a large network in China will help Alibaba capture payments activities between Africa and China, whose volume has been put at USD 200 Bn.
“Because of that I was in China to do meetings with Jack Ma and the only ask I had from that trip is ‘I want to be the Africa payment infrastructure that plugs directly into Alipay,’ ” Agboola said.
Flutterwave has been able to connect African countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda with one another. This makes cross-border payments easy for several companies.
“So it was about time we connected Africa to the world. We started with the U.S already, but you can’t connect Africa to the world without China”. @Honcho_Honips
With this partnership, there is a high probability that you’ll be able to pay your Chinese import agents directly with your naira.
I know #WaverSZN sounds like an empty boast or just a fun term but to us, it means a lot. It’s about living our dreams. Our dreams of building out a platform that empowers everyday African merchants to meaningfully partake in global trade.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma has made several trips to the continent and this March announced the $1 million Africa Netpreneur Prize for African startups and founders. Chinese company Transsion — a top-seller of smartphones in Africa under its Tecno brand — operates an assembly facility in Ethiopia and announced its IPO this year.
Earlier this year, Flutterwave entered a collaboration with Visa, and the team-up launched GeBarter, a consumer payment product for Africa.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Jack Ma, the Co-founder of Alibaba, warns countries that tighten their laws to restrict companies’ ability to innovate. According to Jack Ma, such countries may soon be headed to doom. This was his message at the Viva Tech Conference held in Paris, France.
‘‘When faced with problems, Chinese entrepreneurs start to solve the problems, then think about rules and laws,” he said.
‘‘I worry about Europe,” Jack Ma added. “I worry about the worries of Europe. Africa does not worry. Asia does not worry. What are they worried about?
Jack Ma sees a problem with the way Europe is going about regulating its tech startup ecosystem. For that, he said he is worried because Europe is worried about technology and is tightening regulations that restrict companies’ ability to innovate. The European Union for instance last year introduced stringent new data laws targeted at ensuring consumers’ right to privacy. The EU executive, meanwhile, recently published guidelines aimed at maintaining ethics in artificial intelligence (AI).
“If you think the technology revolution is a problem, I’m sorry to say a problem just started. If you think it’s an opportunity, the opportunity just started. The only thing is your mentality. If the mentality is now a worry, you’ll worry all the time,” said Jack Ma told attendees at the Viva Technology conference in Paris Thursday
“Everything they do is full with rules and laws. And everything they think about, they start to worry. When they worry, they make rules and laws.”
Jack Ma already knows that his home country China which is home to a group of three large technology firms often referred to as the BAT — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent understands this game and is playing it better. China has seen swelling venture capital investment in the tech sector, with Ant Financial raising a record $14 billion funding round from investors in 2018 alone.
This Is Perhaps Why Europe Is Not Doing So Well
Jack Ma hinted that the reason Europe is not doing so well in tech compared to that of the U.S. and China is because of its large regulations.
Jack Ma: Don’t Worry About Regulating AI: It Could Be Used To Catch Thieves
Jack Ma also said there was no need for Europe or other continents to worry about AI.
He said that his firm uses artificial intelligence to detect and trap a lot of criminals.
For example, he referred to his company’s payments platform Alipay. It uses machine learning to discover “cheating” bad actors.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
