When we talk about Africa, most times we picture an uncivilized, uncultured, and underdeveloped continent. We speak great of its beautiful serene environment it’s natural endowment but we cannot even in our wildest dream imagine Africa when it comes to creativity and technical-know how. How shocking it is to know that ancient Africa contributed greatly to the ever revolving technology. It is in fact, the bedrock of civilization.
It began 75000 years ago, Africa was more civilized and mature than even the European countries. They devised means to make life a better place to live, great empires rose from Africa and these kingdom were really doing great. Empires like the Mali empire, the Egyptians and the kingdom of Ghana.
The Advent of technology originated from Africa, speaking of the architectural designs they are of good quality. The perfect example is the building of pyramids by the Egyptians for storage, even the embalming of their mommies and past pharoahs is a good development. Especially at that ancient period, it is really worthwhile.
The pyramids are about 600,000 square foot and are built with 2.25 million blocks of stone. So tell me if not for some sort of civilization and technological know-how, how could we achieve this?.
The invention of the Dendera light bulbs is one to marvel at, it is also known as the Egyptians bulb. It's actually very facinating there could be a light bulb powered by the Baghdad battery even without the Europeans. It is reported to have some connection to the hathor goddess of the temple of Dendera.
It is ludicrous to think that Africans ever had nautical knowledge, but really Africans have been making boats and sailing for at least 100,000 years ago. It appears that during the prehistoric period of the Nile Valley boats were the major methods of communication. Different drawings of boats were found on their ancient pottery between villages and cities, by the various rivers and lakes that crisscross Africa.
The reed boats have been found in Mesopotamia, indus valley and punt: Punt is believed to be ancient Somali/Ethiopia. Among the engraved Saharan boats we see the first use of masts and sails, along with cabins on the decks of ships as early as 3100 BC.
Even though the ancient African technology has been long forgotten, the Africans are still wading through to hit the top in terms of technology. The CAT scan machine surprisingly is an African invention used around the world in the medical field. It was invented by a south African physicist named Allan Cormack in 1972. He was awarded a novel prize in 1979 for his invention, this electronic detectors are rotated around the body to get the map of the cross sectional area.
Cardiopad is another amazing invention of the Africans. A Cameron entrepreneur Arthur Zang in 2009, created the first medical tablet used for conducting electrocardiogram examinations. This is really useful in rural areas or very urgent situation as the electrons in the device transmits the reading to the heart specialist. Therefore, distance is not a barrier for some urgent medications.
There are also some African tech companies that are really doing great, exhuding a bright and promising future. The flutterwave company was established in 2016, by the co-founders Olugbenga Agboola and iyinoluwa Aboyeji. They offer payment services bridging the gap of transactions between Africans and other countinents. It is not an easy task as African banks are rescricted when it comes to some specific payment gateways. Flutterwave makes it way easier as their services supports over 150 countries and accepts over 68 Payment gateways.
Aerobotics is a company founded in 2014 by Benji Meltzer and James Paterson. It's headquarters is at South Africa and expanding, it basically uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide Agricultural Solutions in Africa. This technology made into drones dectect pests and diseases on the farm. 90% of people in the African Continent depends on Agriculture so, this aerobics has a great impact.
Africans has had great contributions to technology in the past but the Europeans took over, making it seems like we were never relevant. Now the African Giants have woken from their deep slumber and making waves to a better future.
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