Positioning Africa In Global Tech Race To Top Discourse At 10th Digital Conference

Industry stakeholders across Africa will converge at the 10th Digital Africa Conference & Exhibition in Abuja to discuss strategies and modalities towards ensuring that the continent key into the current global revolution driven by technology.

The Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition is Africa’s premier consumer technology show and is scheduled to hold from 28th to 30th June in Abuja. Stakeholders will look into unlocking some of the barriers that is affecting the digital future of Africa, building capacities and positioning the continent effectively and efficiently in the global technology race, as well as building African contents.

The conference will also provide the perfect platform to showcase various brands and enhance reputation. It presents to its participants a major opportunity for unrivalled networking and privileged access to strategic partners, investors and potential buyers.

Dr. Evans Woherem, chairman, Digital Africa Global Consult and organiser of the event said there Is an urgent need for Africa to bridge the gap between the continent and the developed world in Information Technology, especially the exponential technologies driving the 4th Industrial Revolution.

“I have always believed that you, as an individual or as a nation, can go to wherever or whatever altitude your vision, attitude, willpower and single-minded execution takes you.

He said Africa needs to first affirm to itself that to catch up and even outflank many other continents is an existential imperative for which an eponymous amount of heavy lifting is needed urgently.

“I, therefore, call on the Africa Union and all the countries in Africa to take this project seriously and so, come up with their respective visions, policies, and plans and execute same meticulously and urgently, paying particular attention to human capacity building, research, the establishment of Tech hubs, bricolage centres, funding, etc.

“This, I believe, will go a long way in taking Africa to the desired levels of technological and economic development needed as we complete this century and head to the 22nd century,” he said.

Woherem said that it has been established time and time again that there is no development, no high standard of living without a commensurate level of development in technology, adding that in today’s world, no one or country can hope to become advanced in the area of technology without first being advanced in the development and use of technology.

“From whichever way you look at it, Information Technology is very vital and pivotal for whatever countries would want to do in order to achieve development. It is for this reason that some of us came together, not solely from Nigeria but people from the United Kingdom, Germany, Kenya, and Cameroon and said we should have an organization called Digital Africa,” he said.

According to Woherem, “Digital Africa Conference & Exhibition is about enabling Africa to bridge the gap between us and the rest of the World. This is because today, there are Companies and Countries that are already winners when it comes to IT and there are those that are losers.

“The losers are merely countries in Africa; the winners are those developed Countries in Europe, America and now on the increase many Countries in Asia and even Countries in South America such as Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. They are the winners of evolving technology we have today.

“Something needs to be done and done very urgently for us to bridge the gap. So far, Africa has been a consumer continent when it comes to IT. We just sit and consume some, not even all of what is being produced in other parts of the world.

“The IT systems that we are going to use in the next 30-40 years are already being fabricated in the laboratories of Countries in the West and some other countries like China, India and so on. But here in Africa we are not doing much. Even in creating content in IT, Africa lags behind the rest of the world.”

Some of the confirmed speakers for the conference are Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, Hon. Minister, Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy; Mallam InuwaKashifu, Director General of NITDA; Mitchell Elegbe, Managing Director, Interswitch; Ghazi Triki, Chief Executive Officer, RIADVICE, Tunisia; Dr. Vincent Olatunji, National Commissioner/CEO of the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB); Dr. Krish Ranganath, Chief Technology Officer, Africa Data Centres; Dr. Krish Ragnath, C.T.O, Africa Data Centers; Dr. Yele Okeremi, C.E.O, Precise Financial Systems, Peter Oluka, Editor at TechEconomy.ng.

Ghazi Triki will be sharing his insights and playbook on how he has been able to lead a digital transformation company in Tunisia at the Digital Africa Conference.

Ghazi grew RIADVICE technology stack 10 baremetal server to around 70 in the first week of COVID19 spread in the third week of March 2020. Then reached the summit with around 173 servers in March 2021.

As a former Adobe Flex (Apache Flex) developer with strong development background, Ghazi combines the expertise development knowledge for PHP & Java (rare developers who can combine the 2 of them), Golang & Ruby.