Microsoft has announced a new flagship Africa technology event, it is called NexTech Africa and the 2017 edition will hold next month in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi.
A statement made available to TechCity revealed that at NexTech Africa 2017, Microsoft and local businesses leaders will be exploring ways to build technology that best supports African creators, as well as how companies can start breeding a data culture for success.
Scheduled to hold on 2 and 3 February 2017, Microsoft said the event will connect technology & business leaders, Microsoft engineers, local developers and entrepreneurs, in an effort to listen, engage and collaborate on developing more locally relevant technology.
Commenting on Africa’s tech landscape, the Country Manager for Microsoft Kenya, Kunle Awosika, noted that African entrepreneurs seek to solve business and market related challenges, and developers play a critical role in developing locally relevant solutions across various sectors from healthcare to fintech.
“We believe in the power of the emerging technologies to connect people to key services and boost productivity, while utilizing unique and differentiated business models. Our goal with this event is to bring various players together and collaborate, so that we can equip our innovators with the right technology-based tools and infrastructure, helping them create and scale more of these solutions,” he said.
The Regional Director of Microsoft 4Afrika, Amrote Abdella noted that Microsoft’s 4Afrika has been doing a lot of work on the ground supporting and developing local innovation.
“Through this work, we’re seeing first-hand how mobile and cloud technology is accelerating growth for Africa, but also how our innovators are using these platforms to accelerate technology for the world. NexTech Africa is an opportunity to fast-track the application of products and services, tailored to meet our needs in Africa. Similarly, NexTech will also showcase world-class African solutions that are ready to go global.”
The theme of the event is Building for Africa and is billed to feature speakers including Joseph Mucheru, Cabinet Secretary of the Kenyan ICT Ministry; Ranjith Cherickel, CEO of icolo.co; Regina Honu, CEO of Soronko Solutions; and Andreas Fruhen, CIO of M-KOPA Solar, Toni Townes-Whitley, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector at Microsoft; T.K Rengarajan, Corporate VP of AI & Research; Hoop Somuah, Technical Advisor to the Microsoft CEO and Kunle Awosika, Country Manager for Microsoft in Kenya.
NexTech Africa 2017 will feature talks, sessions and forums on topics including cloud, big data, machine learning, the Internet of Things, digital transformation and technology in emerging markets. Furthermore, participating entrepreneurs and developers can directly engage with Microsoft’s engineers.
For more information, and to register to attend, visit www.nextechafrica.net. Livestream of the event will be available via the website and at Ch9.ms. Updates can also be followed on Twitter using #NXTA.