Testament to the growing influence and importance of the entire digital ecosystem on everyday life, the 21st edition of AfricaCom attracted close to 14,000 record-breaking attendees at the CTICC in South Africa, with the most diverse and informed audience ever.
One of the elements in preventing Africa’s rapid progression is a critical lack of appropriate skills. As in 2017, education and access to learning platforms – especially in the early childhood development phase – were key topics across the three days. Africa has a veritable goldmine of youth. The importance of this was reflected in the number of E-Learning solutions and deployments on display in the Connectivity Hall and the Technology Arena. As pointed out by several speakers, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is now not so much about the technology itself but how to use it to enable advancement.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will have a transformative impact on both African business and African society. And this year’s IoT World Africa proved it. By bringing together a cross-section of the most innovative and forward-thinking enterprises and vendors, this year’s event – a first at AfricaCom – provided a platform for the burgeoning IoT ecosystem to get together and share their expertise, industry insights and transformation stories. From enthralling panel discussions on the importance of reformulating business’ operating structure to enable IoT across all lines of business, through to the creation of Africa-Centric business models that made by African Business, for African Business.
Also disrupting and changing the status quo is the increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AfricaCom 2018 played host to the first staging of the AI World Summit in Cape Town. While Machine Learning and AI have been around in various guises for a number of years, it is now taking an upfront presence in many enterprise conversations, as evidenced by the number of ongoing conversations throughout the Summit and the event as a whole.
Networking and the sharing of ideas are fundamental features of the world’s largest Africa-focused technology, media and telecommunications event. This year also included a number of large announcements. One of these was from Rob Shuter, Group President and CEO, MTN Group who had earlier spoken at the AfricaCom headliners, on the fact that once Africans have access to the Internet, they cannot afford to actually use it. To counter this, MTN announced a partnership with KaiOS Technologies, China Mobile and UNISOC to launch Africa’s First SG Smart Feature Phone which will be available for a competitive price.
“The buzz around the entire AfricaCom precinct was tangible, as those attending and participating in shaping Africa’s digital future appear to agree the time has now come for less talk and more action in order to get things done,” said Tom Cuthell, Event Director at KNect365, organiser of AfricaCom.
“As organisers, we are pleased to have facilitated these conversations, presentations and exhibits and to play a role in Africa’s ongoing digital democracy.”
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