For about 50 weeks since January, Technext has consistently provided you with a list of tech events happening in Nigeria and across Africa.
Over this period, a lot of events have taken place in the tech ecosystem across Africa. From pitch events and local meetups to summits and conferences/expos.
You may have kept track of some of them or not; we understand that it’s easy to lose sight of so much when you are inundated with a lot in your day to day life.
This is why Technext is bringing you a list of the top 5 African tech events that have impacted the space and brought value to a vast number of people in the ecosystem.
#AFFDisrupt 2019
Earlier in May, Access Bank Nigeria through its pan-African accelerator, African Fintech Foundry (AFF) held its 2019 Disrupt Conference.
The event saw it bring together over 2,000 tech enthusiasts, stakeholder and entrepreneurs to discuss how to build a sustainable tech economy.
The event had several panel discussions and masterclasses. It also featured a pitch competition which had 5 startups, Treplabs (Healthtech), SmartTeller (Fintech), Kaoshi (Fintech), GricD (IoT startup) and Seso (Proptech), take part.
IoT startup, GricD, emerged winner taking home the grand prize of $10,000 with Kaoshi and SmartTeller emerging 2nd and 3rd respectively.
There was also a ‘parte after parte‘ for attendees, which saw techies go down hard on the dance floor.
MEST Africa Summit
An annual event, this year witnessed the 4th edition of the MEST Africa Summit. The 3-day event which took place in June held in collaboration with Microsoft in Nairobi, Kenya.
The summit brought together leading entrepreneurs, investors, ecosystem players and tech big guns from across Africa and beyond to discuss challenges and opportunities in the African tech space.
But well beyond the discussion, the event also saw the finals of the MEST Africa Challenge take place. Here attendees were presented with the latest innovations in the African tech ecosystem, as pre-chosen regional winners, Ampz.tv, Seekewa, OZÉ, Snode Technologies, and WayaWaya all pitched to the audience after which the latter three were announced winners.
This saw them receive $50,000 equity funding each from MEST Africa and credit support from Microsoft.
Techpoint Inspired
In the same month of June, the 3rd edition of the #TechpointInspired Conference held.
The “largest tech conference in West Africa” was organised by Techpoint, a news publishing platform and it brought together some of the best tech minds around the continent.
The conference had its discussions and workshops centred around the Future of Work, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. The event also saw the winner of the Inspired Technovation Challenge, Liberty Oyugboh, presented and awarded the prize for his winning innovation Natrics Power Manager.
For the 3rd year running with improvements yearly, Techpoint did not disappoint.
Concatenate Conference
A Nigerian developer conference, turned an African conference, the event held in October this year.
After a successful first edition in Lagos last year, the event expanded to have two locations this year, Lagos (Zone Tech Park) and Nairobi (United States International University).
The week-long event featured speakers from around the world – both on-site and remotely on various topics ranging from JavaScript Frameworks to Design Systems, Performance to Animation. As such, the event provided attendees with a platform to network and learn.
And considering how important it is for developers to do this in the ever-evolving tech space, but are often constrained to go for the global ones, this was laudable.
AfricaCom
Touted to be Africa’s biggest tech conference, AfricaCom held for the 22nd time in November this year.
The event brought together about 15,000 African tech players to discuss a new shared sense of digital transformation in Africa and its importance to strengthening African economies.
From the Fourth Industrial Revolution to the 5G display by Nokia, the event did well to showcase disruptive technologies and connectivity infrastructure to attendees while drawing a suitable ICT strategy that represents Africa’s digital future.
Do you agree with our list? Let us know in the comment section and tell us what your top events were!
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