Hello Ladies & Gents. Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs. Habari wana wake na waun gwana to our Swahili brothers/ sisters. How u de? How's everyone doing!
Welcome to today's Webinar on The State of Tech Innovation in Africa.
Normally it would be at this time, during our tour which would be happening right now we scour the major capitals of the continent in search of the most game changing startups in each region .
So as we cannot continue with our usual tour schedule, the AfricArena team thought it would be a great time to leverage the knowledge of all the stakeholders in our African Tech ecosystem with the goal of putting together a super in-depth and insight packed report to share with everyone on The State of Tech Innovation in Africa.
Shortly I will hand over to Christophe, who will unpack the key drivers behind the report and share his perspective on why this report is so necessary at this time
But before I do, I just wanted to give you a little structure on how today's webinar will go, share some house rules and of course introduce the incredible line up of panelists who have all graciously given their time to chat to us to share their perspectives and ideas on what you're about to hear today.
Today's webinar will be broken down into 3 main sections, which will be presented by Leo Boisnier the AfricArena ecosystem manager and one part of the fantastic research team at AfricArena.
After each section we will have a 15 min discussion
The 3 sections are themed around
- 1) Building & Funding a Venture in Africa,
- 2) The opportunity for corporate open innovation in Africa
- 3) What are the key trends & sector highlights from 2016-2019 and what might the African ecosystem look like post the Corona pandemic
At the end we will run a Q&A with all of you where we will do our very best to get as many questions answered as possible
**Femi Adeyemo - CEO, Arnergy**
a Nigerian startup operating in off grid energy whos mission is to provide Reliable and affordable solar energy solutions to homes and businesses in Nigeria and emerging markets, and it has been super exciting to watch them scale
**Philip KIRACOF - CEO, Startupbootcamp AfriTech**
Philip brings two decades of direct operational and venture financing experience to today's webinar which spans across a diverse range of industries and across three continents. He has also co-founded, led, advised and invested in disruptive companies including a pioneer online grocery service company, two venture capital funds, the first large-scale social networking site, and a New York-based property development firm. He shares the same vision with us at Africa Arena in that he has helped bring world-class accelerators to Africa, and is the CEO and co-founder of Startupbootcamp Africa and to date he has accelerated and/or invested in more than 50 African startups since 2013.
Welcome Philip
**Seraj TOE - FI - Entrepreneur, University lecturer, Strategist.**
Seraj Toefy is a serial entrepreneur based in Cape Town with a rich background in marketing, communication and entrepreneurship .He is a Custodian of Entrepreneurship at the University of Stellenbosch Business and lectures on Entrepreneurial strategy and management at a few leading universities throughout Africa and is a regular guest speaker on the topic in Europe.
Seraj is CEO of Ukondla Holding which consists of Bespoke Media, Centuro Global Africa, Clic Tech, Krest Signs and Ukondla Consulting.
Welcome Seraj
**Tanya van Lill - CEO, Southern African Venture Capital & Private Equity Associaition (SAVCA).**
Tanya is a great supporter of AfricArena and is a passionate about human and organisational development. During her time as a learning and development specialist focusing on management and leadership development valuable experience working with various companies across a wide range of sectors. She spent an incredibly rewarding 10-year career at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) with her last role being Director of Academic Programmes as well as serving on the board of the Executive MBA Council
Welcome Tanya
**Rochelle MOUNTAINY - Strategic ISV partner recruit for MEA at Microsoft**
Rochelle Mountany has been with Microsoft for over 6 years, joining the organisation as a Digital Architect, she set the digital transformation strategy for many of their top customers in sectors spanning from Hospitality and the Financial Industry to various Public Sector organisations.
She currently leads the strategic new partner recruit strategy for the Middle East and Africa Region, working with partners to accelerate their business growth by leveraging the immense Microsoft ecosystem. Prior to her time at Microsoft, she fulfilled the role of CIO for the International AXA ICAS group, leverages this breadth of experience and knowledge to drive impactful results across the broad ecosystem of customers, alliance partners and ultimately society as a whole.
Welcome Rochelle,
**Madjid Harfouuuush- Operation Director, Leroy Merlin South Africa**
Madhid's oversees the groups chain of stores ensuring that they are efficient, innovative and ensuring they are delivering upon their businesses objectives. He has a key role in the elaboration of the global firm's policy and strategy and one of their key strategic vehicles has leveraged our own corporate innovation challenges for the past 2 years.
Welcome Madjid
**Vincent Viollain - Head of partnerships & startups,VivaTech**
Cofounder and Head of Partnerships & Startups at VivaTech, the global leader of Tech events in Europe, with 4 editions, and over 124,000 visitors in May 2019. He has Over 12years of experience in business strategy, digital transformation, entrepreneurship and Open Innovation as a consultant and entrepreneur and has been a fantastic partner of ours at AfricArena
Welcome Vincent.
4.03 : What is AfricArena ? Goals of State of Africa report : Christophe
***4.07 : over to Patrick ->introduces Leo Boinier, AfricArena Ecosystem manager, and credits the team for work (Papama, Leo, Valentin)***
**4.08 : Growing a Venture , Leo**
**4.15 : Over to Patrick for moderation of panelists, with options as follows :**
- Femi : as you represent our start up community today what lessons have you learned, what strategies worked in growing your venture from concept to seed phase to the state which it is in today and since you
- Philip : If I could come you, what have you seen that is working really well for incubators and accelerators in terms of creating better access to investors and skills development when the demand far outweighs the access to supply ?
- Tanya : from a VC"s perspective what's your perspective on this, what have you seen work during your time at SAVCA and how do we navigate around the traditional concentration by VC's on big ticket investments
**4.30 : Over to Patrick who introduces next section : Corporate perspective on Open Innovation
Thank you Tanya, Femi & Philipe we really appreciate your views on that, next we're going to be chatting about the corporate perspective on open innovation which is still yet to find its groove, so to our ecosystem. So I'm going to hand back to Leo**
**4.31 : Corporate perspective on Open Innovation (Leo)**
**4.38 : Over to Patrick for moderation of panelists, with options as follows :**
- Madjid : we've seen some corporate / start up collaborations work really well and we've also seen some fail dismally - are corporates and start ups an impossible marriage or what
- Rochelle :as youre currently tasked to develop a strategy and recruit the best partners to collaborate with, with the goal of accelerating business growth,knowing what you know, how best can global corporates really support african ecosystems
- Vincent : can corporate open innovation help bridge african tech startups with other global tech ecosystems and how have you seen this working really well from your experience.
4.52 : Over to Patrick who introduces next section : Trends of today & tomorrow in post Covid-19 world, what do we expect to see, what should we look out for , where do we see the cards falling once we begin to get back to what will certainly be a new normal
4.53 : Trends of today & tomorrow in post Covid-19 world (Leo)
5pm : Over to Patrick for moderation of panelists, with options as follows :
Will we see more emphasis on Health Tech
- Seraj: wearing both your entrepreneur and academic perspective , what do organisations need to do to remain relevant and in business
- Femi: Covid 19: a mortal cash flow danger or a golden opportunity for digitalization
- Tanya: where will the money go in a post Covid 19 world
Vincent: you engage with a big audience and what's your view on what a post corona world looks like
5.15 : Over to Patrick - Pick 2 or 3 questions from online questions and choose panelist to answer (perhaps you could pick me as last one to answer a question on what’s coming next and what is AfricArena doing in the current context)
Q&A with panelists answering
5.28 : Over to Patrick Closing, final directions (where to download the report etc) and mention the AfricArena / Founders Factory event on Thursday
5.30 : end of recording.