Few ideas have been as attractive in discussions about technology and development as the idea of leapfrogging. The argument is simple and powerful. Developing countries do not necessarily have to follow the same developmental trajectory as today’s advanced economies. They can skip technologies, institutions or infrastructure associated with earlier stages of development and move directly towards newer and potentially more efficient alternatives. Countries that never built extensive fixed-line telephone networks, for example, were able to move rapidly into mobile communications. People who had limited access to conventional banks could begin making payments and transferring money through mobile devices. Entrepreneurs who lacked access to established retail networks could reach customers through digital platforms.
These developments are important. They demonstrate that technological change can alter the sequence through which development occurs. History does not have to repeat itself in precisely the same order everywhere.
But somewhere along the way, a useful observation became a much bigger claim. Leapfrogging increasingly came to imply that technology could allow developing countries to bypass not simply particular technologies, but some of the harder foundations of development itself.
This is where the idea becomes problematic.
A country may leapfrog a fixed telephone network. It cannot leapfrog the need for reliable electricity. It may develop mobile banking without first building a large network of conventional bank branches, but it cannot indefinitely leapfrog the need for trustworthy institutions, functioning regulation and a stable financial system. Governments may digitise public services without constructing large physical bureaucracies, but they cannot leapfrog administrative capability, reliable data, institutional coordination or public trust.
Technology can change how these capabilities are organised. It rarely eliminates the need for them.
The distinction matters because developing countries are frequently encouraged to approach digital technology as though adoption itself constitutes transformation. Governments announce digital strategies, establish innovation hubs, launch online portals, encourage fintech firms and celebrate expanding internet penetration. International organisations and consulting firms often describe these developments using the language of disruption and transformation. Yet an economy can become substantially more digital without becoming substantially more productive.
A trader who moves payments from cash to a mobile application has adopted digital technology. Whether this improves productivity depends on what happens around that transaction. Does the payment system reduce risk? Does it improve access to credit? Can transaction histories become useful economic records? Are fees affordable? Is the system reliable? Can the business connect more easily with suppliers and customers? Does digitalisation reduce the amount of time the owner spends managing administrative difficulties?
Without these wider effects, digitalisation may simply change the medium through which an existing activity occurs.
This is particularly important in African economies, where some of the most interesting technological innovations coexist with significant structural constraints. Across the continent, digital platforms, mobile money, e-commerce, online work and technology-enabled services have created new economic possibilities. Young people have found clients beyond national borders. Small firms have gained new routes to markets. Financial technologies have made some transactions faster and more accessible. Governments are experimenting with digital identity systems and electronic public services.
These achievements deserve attention.
But they should not lead us to confuse technological dynamism with economic transformation.
An entrepreneur can sell products through Instagram while still losing hours of productivity to electricity outages. A digital worker can serve clients across several continents while struggling with expensive connectivity and unreliable payment channels. A sophisticated fintech application can operate in an economy where large numbers of small firms remain unable to obtain productive finance. A government can build a beautifully designed digital portal while the agency behind it remains unable to process applications efficiently.
In each of these cases, the technology is real. So is the constraint.
This helps explain an apparent paradox in many developing economies. They can appear remarkably advanced and deeply constrained at the same time. A person may use a smartphone to conduct sophisticated financial transactions while living in an area with unreliable electricity, limited public transport and weak public services. Businesses can integrate cloud technologies into their operations while maintaining generators, manual records and multiple backup arrangements because the surrounding systems remain unpredictable.
Development therefore does not proceed neatly from analogue to digital, old to new or primitive to advanced. New technologies frequently sit on top of older institutional and infrastructural arrangements. Digital and manual systems coexist. Formal and informal practices intersect. Modern technologies are adapted to environments very different from those in which they were designed.
This hybridity is often where the real story of technology in developing countries lies.
The problem is that development policy has sometimes paid more attention to the visible technology than to the less visible systems surrounding it. A new application is easy to photograph. A launch event is easy to publicise. A digital strategy can be announced within months. Building a capable institution is slower. Improving the reliability of electricity networks is expensive. Reforming administrative processes is politically difficult. Improving education takes years. Creating regulatory capability requires specialised expertise that governments must continuously develop.
Technology therefore has a particular attraction for political leaders. It appears to offer transformation without requiring all the difficult institutional work that transformation normally entails.
But there are very few technological shortcuts around weak institutions.
Consider digital government. Moving a public service online can reduce opportunities for corruption, shorten processing times and make services more accessible. But only if the underlying administrative process works. If a poorly designed bureaucracy is simply placed online, citizens may encounter the same delay through a different interface. A paper bottleneck becomes a digital bottleneck.
The same principle applies to artificial intelligence. There is growing optimism that AI could help developing countries overcome shortages in areas such as healthcare, education, agriculture and public administration. Some of this potential is genuine. AI may improve diagnostic support, expand access to educational resources, assist small firms and help governments analyse information more effectively.
Yet the developmental consequences of AI will depend heavily on the capabilities surrounding it. A healthcare system without sufficient medical personnel, reliable patient data or functioning referral systems will not become effective merely because an AI tool is introduced. A school system struggling with teacher shortages, weak infrastructure and basic literacy problems will not be transformed by giving pupils access to generative AI. Governments without reliable data systems will struggle to build effective AI-enabled public administration.
Technological capability is therefore relational. Its value depends on what it can connect to.
This is one reason developing countries should be cautious about adopting development strategies built around technological imitation. The question should not be: What technologies are advanced economies using? It should be: What capabilities does this technology require, and what problem within our own institutional and economic environment are we trying to solve?
That change in question is fundamental.
It moves technology policy away from acquisition and towards capability.
It also requires governments to recognise that technology is not independent of political economy. Digital systems redistribute power. They determine who becomes visible to the state, who gains access to markets, who controls data and who can participate in economic activity. A digital identity system, for example, can dramatically improve access to government services and financial systems. But it can also exclude people whose identities cannot easily be verified. A platform can create employment opportunities while simultaneously changing workers’ bargaining power. A fintech system can widen access to transactions without necessarily expanding access to productive capital.
Technology creates possibilities. Institutions determine how those possibilities are distributed.
The most promising development strategy is therefore not technological leapfrogging in the simplistic sense of bypassing stages of development. It is institutional and technological co-evolution. Countries can use new technologies to construct capabilities differently from the ways today’s advanced economies constructed them. They do not need to copy the past. But they still need to solve many of the same fundamental problems: how to educate people, organise infrastructure, create trustworthy institutions, support productive firms, govern markets and build administrative capability.
The advantage of technology is that these problems can now be addressed in new ways.
Digital identity can make it easier to establish who citizens are. Digital payments can reduce transaction costs. Data systems can allow governments to understand populations more accurately. Online education can broaden access to knowledge. Platforms can connect firms with new markets. Artificial intelligence can augment human capability.
But each of these technologies works best when it strengthens an underlying institution or productive system rather than compensating permanently for its absence.
The real opportunity for developing countries is therefore more ambitious than leapfrogging.
It is to combine technological innovation with institutional innovation.
African countries do not need to recreate every institution of Europe or North America before adopting advanced technologies. Nor should they. Their demographic structures, informal economies, political institutions and social arrangements are different. They have an opportunity to construct forms of digital development suited to their own conditions.
But building differently is not the same as avoiding building altogether.
Technology can shorten some journeys. It can change the route. It can allow countries to avoid expensive mistakes made elsewhere. What it cannot do is remove the need for productive capability, institutional competence and effective government.
The question facing developing economies is therefore no longer whether they can leapfrog.
It is what they are trying to leap towards.
