The 1st edition of Afric’Up: Startup Africa Summit will be organised on October 2-3 in Tunis and will bring together nearly 80 African and international speakers (CEO, investors, mentors, experts, institutions, confirmed start-ups) as well as 112 African and international start-ups who will expose their solutions and innovations.
At a press conference in Tunis on Wednesday, event organiser Skander Haddar said that over 20 African countries will be represented at this event and more than 1,000 participants are expected. The aim is to promote innovation, creativity and new digital economies.
“The event seeks to promote Tunisia as a true hub of talent, knowledge, education, research and innovation at the African scale,” he added.
Haddar pointed out that “the summit will present the “success stories” of Tunisian start-ups, inform and discuss the different ecosystems, innovations and talents of Africa today and tomorrow.
“We want Afric’Up to become one of the biggest events in Africa exclusively dedicated to start-ups, innovation and creativity,” he added, specifying that it can be organised in another country of Africa next year.
The official indicated that “it will be a place of exchange and sharing, so that each participant can get the maximum feedback from the ideas and projects that will come from this forum to show the important role of start-ups in the economic and social development of Africa.”
Digital Francophonie will be at heart of this meeting with the presentation of various actions, programs, networks, and the announcement of the 50th anniversary of the Francophonie in Tunis in 2020, Skander Haddar indicated.
“Through afric’Up we want to work to help set up pragmatic actions, influence, networking, mechanisms and discussions with all the actors who make the African Tech to promote a better understanding between the different components of Africa and improve the exchange and knowledge of ecosystems, initiate innovative added-value projects for all stakeholders and contribute to the development of entrepreneurship on the continent,” he said.
For his part, Mohamed Zoghlami, a consultant in business engineering and strategic analysis, underlined that “the block-chain and its applications, the African Legal-tech, e-Health, e-commerce, Fin-tech, mobile payment, e-Tourism, Agritech and Foodtech, IOT, AI & Machine Learning will also be addressed in specific panel courses during these two days, in the presence of many African start-ups.”
Taking the floor, Mix Learning company president Sélima Ghrib Ben Ammar said that concurrently with the conferences scheduled for the forum, a competition will be organised to choose the best African start-up, specifying that over 350 African start-ups had proposed to participate in this competition and “15 Tunisian and African start-ups (Benin, Algeria, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria …) had been selected to present their projects before a jury during the event.”
TunisianMonitorOnline (TAP)
