West Africa This Week: Startup Events Glimpses [22nd – 28th October, 2018]
In case they slipped right under your radar, here are the entrepreneur-focused activities that took place in West Africa in the last seven days.
BUCC Developers Meetup Version 1.2
What was the second leg of the BUCC Developers Meetup was held to convene tech enthusiasts, students, and developers in a bid to expose them to the opportunities available in the tech industry. It saw the influx of final year university undergraduates and emerging student developers from across different institutions. This meeting, which was held in Babcock University in Ogun State on Wednesday, treated topics about the Nigerian tech space, the nuances of being a student developer and the treasure of the open source space. BUCC Developers Meetup is organized with the vision of evolving into a developers’ hub that could serve as an oasis for developers in the Ogun State environs.
SME Economy Conference and Awards 3.0
Held in the Lagos City Mall in Onikan, Lagos, the 2018 SME Economy Conference, which touts as the biggest business tech event in Nigeria, brought together entrepreneurs, innovators stakeholders and the corporate Nigeria, alongside the media, government, the international community, idea hunters as well as investors to network and learn together. It was a two-day event that featured a conference, exhibition, product unveiling, tech sessions, pitching, networking, live market, and an awards ceremony. The event was held yesterday, and the reports disclose that it was a huge success.
AR/VR October Meetup 2018
This tech event was organized primarily for visual and augmented realities, by no other than Imisi 3D to create a learning and networking environment for AR and VR enthusiasts and developers. With this concept, Imisi aimed to build a community of extended reality content creators and innovators in Nigeria. This tech event was held at the NG Hub in Yaba, Lagos on the 27th of October, kicking off at 11 am. Because AR and VR are yet new tech frontiers in the Nigerian ecosystem, Imisi 3D looks to use such an event and perhaps many more to bridge to gap and enables techies to etch out a living from these realities.
NaijaHacks Held in Lagos
Dubbed as Nigeria’s official hackathon, NaijaHacks holds to provide a platform for innovators in Nigeria to leverage technology in the creating of relevant solutions for their respective communities. The event, which kicked off with an online hackathon on October 18, was wrapped up with a featured Demo Day and Award ceremony that held this week. It also features lots of amazing prizes being awarded to participants, alongside networking opportunities, learning and fun. This hackathon has an international team of mentors, speaker and judges hailing all the way from the U.S, U.K, Canada, and Nigeria. The event was held in Zone Tech Park, Gbagada, Lagos on Wednesday and Thursday last week.
Hacktoberfest Held in Enugu
This event was organized in a bid to encourage relevant contributions to the open source ecosystem in Nigeria. It was held under the auspices of Digital Ocean in collaboration with GitHub and Twilio. Hacktoberfest was a month-long celebration of the open source software in Nigeria, which didn’t require attendees to be developers or expert coders to take part in the event. This edition of the program was held in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka at Zilog’s ICT Lab in Access Bank on Friday.
TEF Entrepreneurship Forum
The long-awaited TEF Entrepreneurship Forum has come and gone. Graced by big political names such as Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ghanaian President Akufo-Addo amongst others, the event convened more than 5000 entrepreneurs across Africa. The TEF Entrepreneurship Program is a 10-year USD 100 Mn commitment tailored to identify, train and fund 10,000 entrepreneurs. The platform’s goal was to generate no less than 1 million new jobs and contribute at least USD 10 Bn in new annual revenues across the African entrepreneurial ecosystem. At the event which held in Lagos this week, the CEO of the Foundation, Parminder Vir OBE, disclosed that the program has since inception provided USD 20 Mn of direct seed capital to 4,460 entrepreneurs.