Denis Opudo
Silicon Cape and Wesgro will be hosting the AfricArena 2018 International Africa Tech Conference. The event will take place on 15th and 16th November in Cape Town for the second year in a raw. The two organizers will also incorporate the 2017 conference winners into the world tour of their investors. The 2018 conference will work under the themes SmartTravel, SmartAgri, SmartCity, SmartSkills, SmartCommerce, and SmartMedia. Startups from across Africa will be taking part in the prestigious conference.
The duo made the announcement during the official Press Conference. It was held by Wesgro at the InvestSa offices in Cape Town. Furthermore, there was a panel of discussions on the best ways of carrying out business in the continent. There were several panellists on that day that included; Kerry Petrie from Silicon Cape, AfricArena’s founder Christophe Viarnaud, Alexander Fraser from VC4A. Also present were Guardian Gabriel’s founder Xabiso Lombo, Victoria Jackson from MEST and RCS’ Head of Innovation Acceleration Rudi Visser.
The 2018 event has received the backing of main international participants. Furthermore, firms like Silicon Cape, Saint Gobain, Air France KLM, VC4A, Vinci Energies, RC and Saint Gobain, showed their support. Local players from African ecosystem like ABAN, French Chamber of Commerce, BPI France, La French Tech, Startupbootcamp Africa, SAVCA, and MEST have also come together to ensure that the event is successful. Methys’ CEO and founder Christophe Viarnaud, was happy with the role of the 2017 conference on the African startup industry. Due to that, they promised to give more support to the conference. According to Viarnaud the startup gave more than $2 million to support the conference in impact and especially in commitment. He adds that the startup has decided to reduce their commitments by double-digit. Therefore they will increase their impact.
The 2018 conference will increase its African operations. This will help in coming up with the best African startups. The 2017 AfricArena challenge winners will have an opportunity to attend an investor roadshow in New York and Paris. SAVCA’s CEO Taya van Lil backed the speech by Viarnaud. He said that SAVCA was again ready to offer its support to the AfricArena.
AfrcArena brings together different players in the entrepreneurship space showcasing the creative companies in and around the continent. Other people view it as the largest accelerator space in Africa. It has more than 80 startups pitching to above 100 investors with a representation from 25 countries. But the event plans to make it even larger in 2018 by paying a visit to the fast-growing tech economies in Africa. The visit will have six cities. The cities are Dakar, Reunion Island, Casablanca, Nairobi, Mauritius, and Lagos.
Moreover, the tour will comprise of pitching challenge that will last for three minutes. Sponsors and investors will have a chance to forward situational problems where startups will be required to give potential tech solutions. Winners from every city will then attend a conference that will take place in Cape Town.
WeCashUp who was the 2017 winner talked well of what the conference did to them. According to the CEO Cedric Atangana, getting the award proved that the startup was carrying out a meaningful activity for the continent and the whole world. He says that his startup got investment term documents from 47 investment funds from Europe Africa and Silicon Valley. This came after they had won the AfricArena award.
