The Way Forward for Africa’s Innovators
After a lively and intense three days of debate, discussion and insights, the second Open Innovation Africa Summit concluded with a firm commitment by Africa’s top innovators to boost innovation across the entire continent.
It followed a rallying cry from Kenya’s Permanent Secretary within the Ministry for ICT, Dr. Bitange Ndemo that challenged Africa’s brightest minds to plot an actionable path forward.
The summit attendees took part in discussions in four streams – Ecosystem for Innovation, eTransformation, Technology Financing, and Mobile Information Society. Some of the highlights were:
- In the Ecosystem for Innovation stream, a proposed initiative called StartUp Heaven, a series of events that seeks to increase investment in entrepreneurs across East Africa.
- One of the top ideas in the eTransformation stream was Mobile Banking Services for All, a project to provide banking services through mobile channels.
- In the Ideas in the Technology Financing stream a popular initiative was for an online portal for closing the information gap in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Time for Action
Aware that conferences can sometimes go nowhere and result in nothing concrete, Nokia’s VP of Corporate Relations and Business Environment, Jussi Hinkkanen closed the summit by urging innovators to keep the momentum going:
“The ideas that were presented are fantastic and now we need to focus on execution. The buildings and organizations facilitating innovation are not as important as the spirit of collaboration and openness. It is very clear from the past three days that very small things can certainly create a massive impact.”
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