Bright Continent is a project to develop an online community and online/offline resources to support economic development. The initial geographic focus is Africa, but this project is expected to rapidly extend to other places. The key insight behind Bright Continent is that the greatest engine for African growth is the huge mass of Africans in diaspora in wealthier nations, and especially expatriate professionals who were educated in their native country. These people understand the problems and realities of their homeland, and have present access to advanced technological facilities. They often travel to their native countries and are thus a powerful liaison to those on the ground who do the hardest work of development. Bright Continent primarily aims to create a community to solidify contacts between Africans who have remained at home and those in diaspora, facilitating collaboration for development. Bright Continent also aims to make it easy to gather resources useful to professionals in Africa while they are online, for use (assuming inexpensive, rugged information appliances are available) offline.
Bright Continent is a vehicle for accelerating global development equity by integrating information in a manner that accounts for developing nation realities such as:- .
- Dispersal of key human resources throughout the world (i.e. the ties from Africans in diaspora to relatives and colleages on the continent)
- Variable availability of network connection for professionals in the developing world
- Uneven level of professional training among many of those who have to do the actual work on the ground