Stuff South Africa

Ghana gears up for Africa Technology Summit

CraigWilson

Stuff editor and publisher Toby Shapshak is chair of the ATS advisory panel for 2015

On 3 and 4 November, Ghana’s capital Accra will play host to the 2015 Africa Technology Summit (ATS), an event that brings together regional and global tech players, financial services and FinTech experts, media and telco operators, along with startup entrepreneurs, VCs and angel investors from across the African continent.

The event will cover a huge range of topics, including how major tech multinationals like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Samsung are expanding their focus on Africa, growing their presence in it and deploying greater resources to it.

Also for discussion is the role venture hubs play and considering how can they better serve and support African entrepreneurs in scaling their startups for success, locally and internationally.

Investors of all sorts — including angels, VCs and Private Equity firms — will all discuss their views on the most compelling opportunities today and how they’re focusing their time, attention, and (most importantly) their money.  

Africa is seeing a boom in online commerce and companies like Mall for Africa, Hotels.ng, Slimtrader, Supermart.ng and MoboFree will all be present at ATS to share their experiences in riding and driving this wave of interest in digital trading. 

FinTech will also get plenty of attention at ATS. Though Africa boasts one of the world’s most successful mobile money rollouts in the form of M-PESA, millions still remain unbanked, uninsured and lack access to credit. ATS will look at how established banks, telcos, and a new breed of upstart financial service providers are disrupting and innovating.

The way people consume media is changing, too, as is the way companies can monetise their content. Various speakers at ATS will look at how traditional media companies are responding to the challenges new media presents.

Some of the confirmed speakers at ATS include:

Stuff editor and publisher Toby Shapshak is chair of the ATS advisory panel for 2015
Stuff editor and publisher Toby Shapshak is chair of the ATS advisory panel for 2015

The event’s keynote speakers will be announced in October.

ATS was created by the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), which provides training, investment and incubation to aspiring tech entrepreneurs in Africa and helps connect them to Silicon Valley.

Since it’s inception, MEST has trained over 200 Ghanaian and Nigerian entrepreneurs and invested $15 million in training programmes and incubators, providing seed funding to over 20 startups in the process.

Our editor and publisher Toby Shapshak is curating the conference as chair of the advisory panel.

“We’re several years into the Africa Rising narrative but we’re still only hearing about media darlings like M-PESA and Ushahidi,” says Shapshak. “There is a new generation of startups and entrepreneurs that are already emerging, and numerous untold stories of prodigious success that need to be told.”

Find out more about ATS or book tickets here.

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