The Financial Times’ inaugural tech summit: #TechFTlive, themed “Aligning Policy, Strategy and Innovation”, gathered over 2,000 leading business innovators, policymakers, and industry-leading speakers across two days; 30 September – 1 October 2021, sharing deep insights on how technology is transforming business and society.
Okechukwu Enelamah, Chairman, African Capital Alliance (ACA) was a speaker on a panel that discussed the “Emerging Tech Hubs: Africa on the Horizon”. Discussions focused on the opportunities arising for the youngest, fastest-growing, and hyper-connected populations in Africa, and highlighted the most available sectors for digitisation, as well as possible barriers that could limit the impact of tech in Africa, which stakeholders need to be aware of.
The insights gathered from the discussions, reflected a booming tech scene in various countries in Africa, the spike in innovation as well as investment in recent years. There was a clear emphasis that boosting the overall tech potential in Africa would need to be a deliberate process of identifying the opportunities as well as the right funding levels & partners, backed by the right government policies. It was agreed that many countries, like Nigeria, have the ingredients, including the growing talent pool (that could benefit from further development). Conclusions were that though progress was slower than desired, inevitably, the right things are being done and therefore positive, predictable outcomes can be expected to materialise over time. In Okey’s words, “The cooperation and partnership between governments, privates, academic institutions, and trade associations, would be instrumental in building out the talent in Nigeria”.
About #TechFTlive
#TechFTLive is a Financial Times’ technology summit that held virtually, alongside its European leading tech festival, the TNW Conference. The summit explored new ways to harness the learnings on digitization amid lockdowns and provided insight on the key technology trends for the year ahead.