Africa’s Largest B2B AI Trade Show, AI Expo Africa, is showcased by Cape Invest in their latest news letter
After Having recently concluded its 2nd annual AI Expo Africa, Invest Cape Town caught up with the co-founders of Africa’s largest Artificial Intelligence b2b, supplier-focused trade event, to gain some insight into the African AI landscape, and the reasons behind choosing Cape Town as a venue for such an innovative tech community. The ground-breaking community event and its showcase Expo, Conference and AI Workshops are served by new media additions to the stable, AI TV and a community publication called Synapse – the first of its kind in Africa.
Nick Bradshaw and Roy Bannister have a collective 40+ year track record of technology and journalistic reporting, publications, events and community building, and a passion to see AI used to benefit Africa socially and economically through education, implementation across all business and government sectors, and investment into African AI initiatives. One of the key aims of the event is to demystify the hype around AI and 4IR, and showcase real-world applications available to business and government from African innovators, as well as global leaders in the AI space.
“We believe the tech media industry is changing. We are leveraging new formats and platforms to communicate the business opportunity in the African AI & Data Science landscape for entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders and corporates. We make our content accessible across the whole of Africa by removing price and knowledge barriers to content, creating new event formats and sharing the fastest growing business opportunity across the continent with our community,” says Nick.
“Choosing Cape Town as a base to showcase the continent’s AI offerings, was a no-brainer” says Roy, “with a forward-looking approach to new ideas, a can-do approach to all things, especially tech, and a willingness to invest in this sector, it’s no wonder that Cape Town has been named Africa’s leading digital city. AI Expo Africa and its goals fit perfectly with goals of the City of Cape Town to entrench the city as one of the leaders in this space globally.”
While AI Expo Africa is mainly business-focused and designed to bring users across all sectors like retail, banking, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, mining it also has a strong skills-development and capacity building element and offers AI Skills workshops not only to c-suite business executives looking to understand AI at a practical level, but also offers free AI to students, young data scientists and engineers. These are all backed up by a world-class conference offering and expo space showcasing start-ups, vendors and platform providers ranging from local tech companies, to continental innovators like Telkom and global leaders like SAP, Amazon, UIPath, Blue Prism and Hitachi to name a few.
“We’ve been really amazed by the interest AI Expo Africa has garnered,” says Nick. “In 2019 we achieved significant growth of the community as a whole with 50+ sponsors and 375 companies represented as sponsors, delegates or speakers – all with an interest in AI/4IR. We achieved our goal of achieving a mix of global players down to the smallest/newest start-ups and businesses of every size in between. Overall, we achieved growth of over 30% in c-suite attendees, community and conference. Of significant interest this year, was not only the support from Wesgro and the City of Cape Town, and a phenomenally successful bi-lateral trade delegation from France that resulted in an AI deal being signed, but a visit and speech by Telecommunications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, who pledged her support for next year’s event and the ground-breaking work our event and community are doing.”
Original article link https://www.investcapetown.com/cape-town-ideally-suited-for-african-artificial-intelligence-showcase-event/
About Cape Invest
The Invest Cape Town initiative was launched by the City of Cape Town to strengthen and promote our status as a high-performance, African business hub that supports big ideas and innovation. The City of Cape Town enables growth by linking businesses to new insights, opportunities and solutions. Invest Cape Town is a demonstration of the City’s commitment to creating a platform that contributes to the increased awareness, attractiveness and competitiveness of the city as a place to do business.
Our mission is to attract and retain foreign direct investment which is of strategic importance to the economic development of Cape Town. We work with international and local entrepreneurs, SMEs and multinationals that wish to set up a business in Cape Town. On the ground we collaborate with partners from business formations, investment promotion agencies and sector support entities, and all spheres of government. The Invest Cape Town team offers a wide range of customized services, free of charge, for any business stage you are in. Explore our website to learn more about what we do.
Our services include, amongst others:
- Investment facilitation
- Information on sector-specific business opportunities
- Expert knowledge, support and development opportunities to small and medium sized businesses
- Enterprise & Supplier Development (market access, match-making)
- Overcoming regulatory processes that create red tape (licenses, permit approvals)
- Navigating City Services landscape (connecting businesses with the right official)
- Business Operation & Expansion (running & growing a business)
- Facilitate incoming visits from international delegations
- Supports development processes for strategically important investments in the manufacturing and business services sectors
- Provide specialist facilitation services in the Atlantis Industrial Area, with a particular focus on implementation of the Atlantis GreenTech Special Economic Zone
- Manages the City’s investment incentives programme
- Linking investors to our sector specific industry partners
- Provincial and National Government department liaison
- Facilitating skills programmes in partnership with SME’s and large firms for in-demand occupations and growth sectors
About AI Expo Africa
AI Expo Africa is the largest business focused Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Data Science B2B trade event and conference in Africa. Our 2020 conference and expo will run on 3rd-4th September 2020 and builds upon the phenomenal success of the 2018 / 2019 events that were held in Cape Town, that cemented it as the largest gathering of its kind, with over 1000+ registered decision makers, investors, buyers, suppliers, innovators, SMBs and global brands in the region focusing on real world AI and Data Science business applications.
