Companies news
AfricArena2018 | 15-16 November | Cape Town
AfricArena a lead African tech ecosystem accelerator has some exciting news to share with regard to their AfricArena conference and AfricArena tour. They provide the opportunity to showcase Africa’s best startups and innovators in front of an audience of local and international investors looking for world-class talent.
The AfricArena tour recently completed its Johannesburg leg, with the startup FinChatBot qualifying for AfricArena. The tour, which covers 9 African countries with showcase events in NYC with La French Tech New York and in Paris with our partners BPI & Vivatech, has been an incredibly impactful initiative both for the local ecosystems, the AfricArena brand – now very well established as the lead pan African ecosystem accelerator – and for the brands of our Tour sponsors
In light of the approaching Global Entrepreneurship Week & AfricArena and are pleased to announce the following:
- In September Global healthcare leader Sanofi has joined as an AfricArena partner and has launched an innovation challenge about treatment tracking
- We will hold a media event in Cape Town on October 29th at the Investor Center to announce the final selection of start-ups, our headline of speakers and the program details. If you are interested to participate to the media event please let us know. We are happy to report that our lineup of start-ups is going to be incredibly strong. Profiles of all start-ups present will be emailed to all partners and investors two weeks before the event. At this stage, we expect over 80 startups from more than 25 countries to attend.
- US media Techcrunch (author and African specialist Jake Bright will also deliver a keynote), French lead business media Les Echos and several other African media will be present and cover AfricArena 2018.
- We are pleased to announce that we will be renewing for the second year, in partnership with Air France KLM & Joon our Pitch is in the Air operation on the Paris-Cape Town flight of November 13th. Several startups will be pitching in front for Corporates VCs, investors and media (Les Echos will be on Board) on the flight, which will be a special AfricArena flight. We encourage all coming from Europe to try to fly down on this day flight.
- In partnership with FSATLABS (the SEDA/Methys supported accelerator) we are organizing Innovation Tours on November 14thon the day before AfricArena. Some tickets (5 for each of the tours) are still available for Fintech and 4th Industrial Revolution tours
- On the evening before AfricArena we will be holding two events: aStart-up event in partnership with Vivatech at Workshop17 and in partnership with ABAN/VC4A an Investor Icebreaker dinner open for angel investors, Corporate VCs and VCs. Tickets for tor the dinner are available here (last option).
- In addition to a very exciting keynote, panel and pitch programme (a draft is attached to this email), we will be holding several masterclasses on key investment topics with the support of Proparco and our other partners.
- We encourage you to finalize your flights and hotel bookings soon to mitigate any cost increase (hotels in particular are getting very full during Global Entrepreneurship Week in Cape Town). Please remember you can use the Air France Global Meetings code 34074AF booking here and hotel package available here.
The AfricArena team cannot wait to welcome you to Cape Town next month for a fun and action-packed week.
