Emerging Markets: Insights from People Working in Tech Communities of The Global South

The pace of development with regards to internet adoption and technological ecosystem development has been very rapid in many parts of the world for the last 7 years. In 2013 alone, I saw a huge surge of smartphone penetration and startup inception in Latin America. And for this reason alone, I decided to connect Latin America with the NYC tech community in 2014. All this with the purpose to foster partnerships and bridge these communities and ecosystems. Four years later. The GlobalSouthTech community has grown to 43 different cities worldwide.

Nelson Igunma who is the GST community manager explains more about our global community platform and highlights our activities worldwide.
As part of my job. For the past 2 years, I’ve traveled over 30 different countries all around the world with the purpose to connect and explore more ecosystems and see what is happening in the following ares:

• Internet and Smartphone penetration
• Startup development
• Investments
• Innovation policies and regulation
• Technological user adoption

Apart from making connections between these tech communities in all these countries. I noticed a clear opportunity to highlight, educate and inform the global tech audience about the huge opportunities that are opening up in these countries. By creating short video content interviews and putting all this content together in one place and learn more about the tech communities in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand or even Argentina.

Therefore the purpose of our video content series is not only to connect with local key technology community builders in countries of the Global South. But also to dispel the myth that high tech innovation and the big opportunities for disruption are only happening in developed countries. We want to encourage people to learn more about different tech ecosystems, explore the potential for market expansion, and build meaningful partnerships with a diverse set of countries and regions. Human intelligence and creativity is distributed pretty much equally around the planet. And its incredible to see how the internet is empowering people in countries like Ethiopia and Bangladesh. Thereby, the potential for transformational impact that technology can bring is huge.

Through these video content interviews. We will learn more about the opportunities/challenges, technology markets, expansion insights, interviews with key tech community leaders and tech startups/company spotlights in the regions of South East Asia, East Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Check out our GST Video Page.