From June 18th to 21st, top entrepreneurs, technologists and executives will gather in Cape Town, South Africa for the MEST Africa Summit, a yearly event that is happening for the third time.
Held under the theme “The Year of the African Scale-up?”, the Pan-African tech conference will bring together top entrepreneurs, executives from across Africa, Silicon Valley, Europe and Asia to explore the latest innovations in the tech and startup space on the continent.
According to an official statement, this year’s summit will focus on discussing the technological trends like blockchain; how they are impacting the continent and how they can be applied in various sectors across the continent.
The discussion shall also cover challenges and opportunities faced by those companies who are looking to scale into new African markets and how technology can act as a framework for accelerating Africa’s SMEs.
During the 3-day event, several start-ups will face off in a competition that will see the winner bag US$50,000 in equity investment from the Meltwater Foundation.
Some of the startups are Cowtribe, a USSD-based technology that connects livestock farmers with veterinarians who can provide vaccinations and Kenya’s Data Integrated Ltd which specializes in developing end-to-end, customized, enterprise payment solutions for African SMEs.
Other qualified startups include SwiftVEE from South Africa and Accounteer from Nigeria.
Over 20 speakers will deliberate on the main topic topics covering fields like agritech, creative arts, women inclusion in tech, cracking the corporate code among others.
Bubunyo Nyavorceo from AFRadio; Segun Adeyemi, CEO of Ampli; Neku Atawodi-Edun General Manager of MEST; Afua Osei, co-founder and CEO of the She Leads Africa; among others are some of the speakers.
The topics shall further expound on how blockchain technology will shape developing companies in Africa and the impact cryptocurrencies will have on raising funds.
This comes at a time Uganda is also set to host the Block Chain this month on 23rd and 24th May, 2018 – reflecting that block chain technology is set to penetrate into Africa.
