Showcasing Africa's innovators
The Africa Innovation Summit (AIS II), which will take place from 6-8 June 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda, under the patronage of President Paul Kagame and Pedro Pires (ex-President of Cabo Verde), announced a call for applications last month to innovators across Africa whose solutions have the potential to solve the continent's challenges.
The AIS II sought innovative and disruptive solutions to the major challenges facing African countries, which include energy access, water, food insecurity, health systems, and governance.
As a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue and actions, AIS II will bring together people with the power to act, from all parts of the continent and elsewhere, including Heads of States and Governments, Ministers, corporates, innovators, investors, policy makers and academics, researchers, as well as policy, science and technology experts, with the aim of building robust ecosystems for innovation in Africa to ensure Africa's structural transformation.
Dr Olugbenga Adesida, co-director of AIS, indicated that, "AIS provides more than a robust and dynamic platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue, but rather a catalyst for "Made in Africa" innovations that are already addressing the challenges faced on the continent, but need assistance to take root and scale across the continent."
The AIS has partnered with Enterpriseroom, a transformation consultancy specialising in starting, sustaining, and accelerating businesses, to drive the sourcing and selection of up to 50 Innovations across the continent, to be showcased at the Summit.
The CEO of Entepriseroom, Tracey Webster, said, "We are delighted to partner with the AIS and believe the innovations selected to be showcased at the Summit will have a unique opportunity to engage the right stakeholders when it comes to discussing and unlocking blockages in the eco-system that are preventing solutions from going to scale, or ideas being commercialised."
While the first round of applications closed this weekend, the innovators selected by AIS will meet the following criteria:
- Know or have an innovative idea or solution that can drive positive change in Africa.
- The solution must be at a critical stage: either ready to commercilaise or ready to scale.
The identified innovators will meet influential people, policy makers, and investors who are ready to discuss Africa's development challenges and ways to solve them. They will also have the opportunity to interact with like-minded African innovators and change agents who are driving a new era of change in Africa.
