Attention is All You Need

Hey, Sheriff here 👋 

Let’s do a thought experiment. If you’re reading this on your phone, even better.

How many hours do you spend on your phone each day? Now multiply that by the number of days you might have left.

It’s a big number, right?

Well, hold that thought because this week, we’re talking about the most endangered resource of our time: attention.

But first…a brief announcement.

Now, on to this week’s story….

The average South African spends 60% of their waking hours on their phone, more than anywhere else in the world.

Congrats, you’ve just had your attention harvested.

Globally, attention is the new oil. The most valuable resource. 

Companies like Meta, ByteDance, and Google build trillion-dollar empires on it. 

Their business model is simple: keep your eyeballs on the content for as long as possible and sell access to them to advertisers.

But this isn't just a Silicon Valley story. 

The battle for attention has real casualties in Accra, Nairobi, and Lagos, and across the world.

The playbook, players, and tactics are mostly global. 

The stakes, though? Uniquely African.

But before we dive into what’s at stake, we have to let you in on a secret.

In case you haven’t noticed yet…

We’re all cyborgs now

Look around. There are almost as many phones on earth as people.

At last count, Ericsson put it at 7.2 billion smartphones.

That tiny screen has turned into an extension of your body.

Your brain lives in the cloud. Your friends live on your feed. And you spend your whole day working on apps. 

It’s a constant tug-of-war: real life versus digital life.

And increasingly, digital is winning.

The average person now spends four hours a day on their phone, mostly on social media.

If that person lives to be 80, they’d have spent 10 years of their lives scrolling through tweets and posts on the internet.

To put that in perspective:

• It’s enough time to finish two PhDs.

• A quarter of your working life.

• And the length of two and half presidential terms in the US.

Sure, the digital world opens doors. We’re more connected, informed, and entertained.

But the flip side? 

Control of our feeds rests in the hands of a few companies: Google, Meta, and ByteDance.

Because they’ve figured out a hard truth: attention is everything.

The attention-industrial complex

The biggest monopolies in the 21st century are attention monopolies.

Google owns your questions. Meta owns your social life. TikTok owns your boredom.

These companies have realised one essential truth: once you can capture attention, you can build anything on top.

Google started with search, then piled on Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android.

Meta went from walls to Messenger, Instagram, Marketplace, Dating, Shops, and now the metaverse.

First, these companies won the attention of people, then expanded their empires. That’s the trillion-dollar formula.

But there’s a cost: attention. 

Attention is what makes time useful. Without it, time is wasted.

It’s what lets you learn, build, earn, and contribute to the world.

People say time is your most precious resource. We think it’s attention. 

Time is fixed, but attention is how you spend it.

Since Facebook’s launch in 2004, our brains have been rewired by apps designed to hijack attention.

• Tweets instead of books.
  

• Shorts and skits instead of films.
  

• And more context-switching than humans were made for.

In the year 2000, the average attention span of a teenager was 12 seconds. By 2013, it was down to 8 seconds.

It’s the attention-industrial complex, and it’s built on hacking our dopamine.

But while a few companies print money off our focus, there’s a real decline in the traits that make us capable humans.

And nowhere is this any bigger a risk than in Africa.

The social continent

Quite a number of Africans spend more time on their phones than anyone else in the world.

The global average is four hours a day.

South Africans, however, spend over 9 hours a day. That’s more than 60% of waking hours spent on a screen.

In Ghana, the average is 6 hours 15 minutes. Nigerians and Kenyans hover around the same range.

If attention were currency, Africa might be one of the wealthiest continents on earth.

But attention is not a currency. 

It’s the resource that makes it possible to think, learn, and earn.

And the lack of it could spell huge risks for Africa’s future.

Young people who spend 7+ hours a day on screens are twice as likely to suffer anxiety and depression.

Even 2 hours of daily scrolling can dent memory and focus.

Africa is also the most vulnerable to doomscrolling.

The continent’s median age is 18, and it's set to hit 700 million smartphone connections this year. That’s a lot of young people growing up on the internet.

At the same time, there’s high unemployment, and 30% of school-age kids don’t attend school.

When schools don’t work and jobs are out of reach, a phone is the cheapest escape. 

With the internet at their fingertips, a phone becomes a cheap, always-on university. 

Kids learn about the world through 10-second clips, chase laughs in skits, and get their news from gossip blogs.

It seems harmless on the surface, but when you’re young, attention is all you have.

And right now, it’s under attack.

One analysis found that 34% of high school students in Africa are addicted to the internet.

Hardly any of that attention is sunk in learning skills that prepare them for opportunities.

The result? A future workforce that could be capable, but isn’t.

The wild thing is, the cyborg trend isn’t ending anytime soon.

More mobile phones will be made, and more machines that rob humans of their attention will be built.

It’s the new world order. But sadly, it can make Africa even weaker.

If we lose attention, we lose the century.

The question is…what now?

How do we steal back more attention span for Africa’s youth?

Or build productive tools on top of the new economy for them?

We don’t have all the answers. But we’re starting to see signs of promise.

Africans are turning their phones into an entertainment industry. Not just consuming, but also creating content and profiting from it.

And this has led to a creator economy boom on the continent.

Nigeria, for instance, has built a de facto movie industry on YouTube that’s beating Netflix.

And we’re seeing early signs of AI helping kids learn two years’ worth of curriculum in just six weeks.

Africa’s young population is its biggest resource. And their attention is their biggest resource.

If we squander it on endless scrolling, the future could take a different turn.

If we protect it, nurture it, and channel it, our mobile-native nature could be a strength.

The question is: how do we make sure the better future plays out?

Let us know if you have any ideas.

That’s it for this week. See you on Sunday for a breakdown on This Week in African Tech 

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

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