Africa's first Global Startup Awards to showcase the continent's most promising innovators

At the first-ever Global Startup Awards Africa Summit that will take place in Cape Town on 14 and 15 June, various sectors of the value chain from government and banks to corporates and educational institutions will converge to cover topics around breakthroughs in advanced technologies, the proliferation of blockchain across the industry, and more.

Hosted by the Global Innovation Initiative Group (GIIG), the event is a culmination of a six-month-long process of extensive and rigorous research, networking, and collaborations across the globe, with the aim of finding Africa’s most promising innovators.

African innovators, thought-leaders and decision-makers will have access to the most comprehensive network of key industry experts that will leapfrog/accelerate African innovation in line with the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs).

Together with corporate partners that have evolved within the startup ecosystem, these representatives from world-leading organisations will help co-create a future market that will stimulate trade within Africa and Africa to the world – stimulating cross-border collaborations and trade.

Unlocking Africa's growth
Industry leaders such as Ian Putter, head of the Blockchain Centre of Excellence at Standard Bank Group and Regional Director of the Blockchain Research Institute Africa, will share their insights on unlocking Africa's growth and cascading opportunities through blockchain and digital assets. By sharing insights on the evolution of corporate innovation, industry leaders will explore how the opportunity that trends like 'intrapreneurship' and open innovation present to corporates looking to future-proof their operations, and to startups looking to harness potent partnerships for growth and scale.

The event will allow startups representing ten countries from across the African continent the opportunity to present to and workshop with industry experts, corporates, policymakers, and institutions and universities such as Stellenbosch University, who are seeking to collaborate and invest in SDG-aligned technologies from Africa. The Director for Technology Transfer at Stellenbosch University, Professor Madelein Kleyn will speak to how policymakers across the continent are adapting their Intellectual Property (IP) strategies to promote innovation and boost the competitiveness and sustainability of African businesses in the global market.

Unpacking how corporate partnerships have evolved
As the summit is the first of its kind, corporates will have the opportunity to unpack how corporate partnerships have evolved over the past years in the innovation ecosystem. The value-chain of innovative solutions, which are SDG-aligned, will collaborate with some of the leading significant corporate partners such as RCS, the V&A Waterfront, Africa-Berlin Network, and Fetola, to name a few.

By bringing all these stakeholders together in this manner, the Global Startup Awards Africa Summit aims to give all attendees access to a network of innovators, world-leading organisations, and decision-makers by sparking conversations around blockchain, Intellectual Property, the future of funding and gender-lens investing, global market access and partnerships and megatrends – innovating for sustainability and circular economies in Africa.

The result will harness a collective power in efforts to attract global investment and collaboration, and in the same sentiment, co-create a future market that is a win-win scenario for all, across the value chain – providing the ecosystem with the ability to amplify and scale globally.