Africa Innovation Summit 2018

<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; justify&semi;">The AIS is an Africa-wide and home grown initiative aimed at harnessing the innovation potential of the continent&period; It aims to mobilize the people and&comma; especially those with the &OpenCurlyQuote;power to act’&comma; including investors&comma; the people with the ideas&comma; the policy makers&comma; the researchers and academics&comma; the business community&comma; the youth&comma; as well as innovators and thinkers into a coalition for collective action to promote and build an enabling environment for innovation in Africa&period; The goal is to engage as many people as possible in order to build a broad constituency in support of innovation in Africa&period; The basic fact is that Africa cannot outsource its development&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; justify&semi;">Addressing the fundamental challenges facing the continent will not happen through a laissez-faire agenda and&comma; more importantly&comma; Africa’s structural transformation and sustainable development will only happen if African countries are able to build innovation-driven economies and societies&period; This is a pre-requisite in the emerging world&comma; with accelerating pace of change and hypercompetitive economy&comma; in which the only competitive advantage&comma; according to Aires de Geus&comma; is the ability to learn faster than one’s competitors&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; justify&semi;">African countries must transform and diversify their economies through value addition to primary commodities&comma; efficient resource consumption&comma; the use of low-carbon energy forms and services&comma; and the development of services sector&period; Innovation is the single most important prerequisite for this to happen&period; Innovation must become a way of life on the continent&period; Through innovation&comma; Africans can develop the solutions to address the developmental challenges such as poverty&comma; health&comma; energy&comma; water&comma; productivity&comma; competitiveness&comma; economic diversification&comma; food security&comma; climate change and governance facing the continent&period; The AIS aims to serve as a key platform to promote innovation in Africa&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; justify&semi;">The 2018 Summit will be a multifaceted event that will bring together stakeholders from various sectors&comma; including decision makers to seek innovative and disruptive solutions for the challenges facing African countries&period; The focus of AIS 2018 will include energy access&comma; water&comma; health&comma; food security and climate change&period; AIS II will be a three-day event and the program will include five plenary sessions to introduce major thematic issues followed by a series of facilitated workshops&comma; which will take place in focused workgroups to deepen the dialogue and to seek solutions to address the key challenges facing African countries&period; Each workshop will focus on a specific theme with three to four panelists and will be led by a facilitator&period; The aims of the discussions are to seek solutions&comma; develop an agenda and mobilize the people and stakeholders for collective action going forward&period; The AIS 2018 will include activities before&comma; during and after the Summit&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; center&semi;">Register <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;africainnovationsummit&period;com">Here<&sol;a>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;