Last year, HumanIPO set out to bring you a series of upcoming African startup events as they happened. To commit to the same spirit this year, we begin with a look at major tech events that are set to be held in Africa in 2013.
Startup Weekend
Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend.Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds.
Wireless Wednesday
Wireless Wednesday is an event organized by m:lab East Africa for the purpose of encouraging interaction between developers/entrepreneurs and potential users of sectoral innovations using mobile tech platforms. m:lab East Africa is a consortium of four organizations aiming to be a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy.
Girl Geek Dinners
The Girl Geek Dinner event is a series of tech events that are organized by ‘Geeky Ladies’ around cities of the world. The long term vision of these events is to bring Geek (or if necessary Girl Geek) Dinners into schools, colleges and universities around the world to encourage people to embrace their passion for something like technology and to explore what they can do with it. The Cape Town chapter of Girl Geek Dinner launched in January 2011 to bring together the fabulous Geeky ladies of Cape Town, and their male counterparts.
AfricaCom
AfricaCom Awards brings together great companies and individuals to showcase their business solutions in the industry and how they have impacted the society they belong to. The awards aim to recognize the best from ICT, Media and Telecoms.
Mobile Web Africa
Mobile Web Africa is a series of events focusing on the potential of the Internet, entertainment and apps on mobile devices in Africa. Following four sell-out successes, the edition features a day dedicated exclusively to mobile marketing and represents the industry’s foremost opportunity to share knowledge and do business.
DEMO Africa
DEMO Africa is one of the flagship initiatives of LIONS@frica and aims to connect African startups to the global ecosystem. DEMO Africa will be the place where the most innovative companies from African countries come to launch their products and announce to Africa and the world what they have developed.DEMO has been held in other continents for close to two decades now, and has been the launching pad for many recognisable products and services including Adobe Acrobat, WebEx, E-Trade among others. By coming to Africa for the first time ever, DEMO recognises the potential in Africa’s technology.
JoomlaDay
A Joomla!Day is a local, regional or national gathering of the Joomla! community. The meet-up is arranged in different cities of the world including Africa to bring developers, site administrators, online content producers and end-users to discuss issues affecting the content management system.Joomla is one of the top used CMS (content management system) products worldwide. The software boasts of about 30 million downloads since it launched in September 2005.
Tech4Africa
Tech4Africa is the premier mobile, web & emerging technology conference, bringing global perspective to the African context. Culminating in an annual event over two days, which brings together attendees and speakers from around the world, our vision is that technology can catalyse economic and social change in Africa. It’s an exciting time for African technology and we hope that you enjoy the opportunity that Tech4Africa presents, as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it all together.
Silicon Cape VC Office Hours
VC Office Hours is monthly initiative by Silicon Cape where startups get a chance to ask an investor specific questions regarding the funding processes and aspects different of your entrepreneurship. The format of the sessions will be that six start-up teams and will get a 30-minute question slot on the first Friday of each month with a funder.
88mph Friday DrinkTank
Friday DrinkTank is an event by 88mph in Cape Town where startups, techies, hustlers, overworked, underpaid, daring & crazy people of Cape Town meet other tech startups, exchange, pitch, criticize, & create ideas while kicking back and enjoying the view and startup buzz. The event is limited to startups and investors of web-mobile tech companies only.
G-Africa (G-Days)
G-Days are a series of large scale events across several Sub-Saharan African countries for developers, tech enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs who are looking to make a splash online and in mobile. These events typically last for two days, split into the developer day (for developers and technologists) and the business day (for entrepreneurs) with the aim of showing them how to leverage Google tools in taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet and mobile.
Africa Gathering
Africa Gathering draws inspiration from the traditional, symbolic African Baobab tree: the place where people can gather to share knowledge, exchange ideas and learn from each other.
TEDx
Created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” the TEDx program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.
Has your event been left out of this list? We intend to list all major upcoming events in the African startup scene through our weekly series of ‘Upcoming Africa Startup Events’. Send us your event information to events(at)humanipo.com if organizing a Tech Event in Africa.
