Yvonne Chaka Chaka to open AfricaCom Awards 2009

8 Sep 2009

The 2009 AfricaCom Awards ceremony takes place on 11 November, 2009 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa. According to the Com World Series, the 2009 event has received a record-breaking number of entries for the ten award categories.

Yvonne Chaka Chaka to open AfricaCom Awards 2009

Yvonne Chaka Chaka aka “Princess of Africa”, will attend to open the ceremony and also to present the Changing Lives Award. Yvonne champions many causes, including literacy in South Africa's townships, promoting the rights of women, and working to protect children. She is a trustee of Tomorrow Trust, which educates orphans and vulnerable children. She is also UNICEF's goodwill ambassador against malaria and ambassador for roll-back malaria. Yvonne has founded her own charity, the Princess of Africa Foundation, to raise awareness of this preventable disease and to eradicate it. Yvonne Chaka Chaka recently received the Most Influential Women in Business and Government 2009 award for the Arts and Culture sector.

The awards is still open for entries and closes Friday, 11 September 2009. The awards shortlist will be announced on 12 October 2009.

The Com World Series, organisers of the AfricaCom Awards and the co-located AfricaCom conference and exhibition has reconfirmed UNICEF as the official awards charity for the second year running. The AfricaCom Awards plans to continue to support the charity and its work in Africa.

Sponsors of the event are Gateway and MTN, as well as for individual award categories. These awards are judged by an independent panel of adjudicators which include analysts and association representatives.

For full details on the judges, go to {www.africacomawards.com/awards/judges.

The AfricaCom Awards also allows the opportunity to continue networking with peers. It follows the first day of business at the AfricaCom conference and exhibition.

The exhibition will host about 220 stands featuring global, African and regional operators, vendors, consultancies, etc., whilst the simultaneous conference agenda features more than 75 speakers - 32 of which will be senior-level operator representatives.

The 12th Annual Africom Congress and Exhibition takes place in Cape Town, 11 - 12 November 2009 at the CTICC.

For more on the congress and exhibition, go to www.comworldseries.com/africa; for more information on the awards, go to www.africacomawards.com.