Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, will be the first host of 2018 Demo Africa Innovation Tours that will rotate in eleven African cities, namely: Kigali, Nairobi, Gaborone, Harare, Cairo, Tunis, Casablanca, Lagos, Accra and Yaounde.
For the past seven years, DEMO Africa has been the launch pad for African technology and trends, attracting a global audience of over 2,000 people to experience the finest African innovations as they venture into markets.
During this program, start-ups are introduced to an audience of investors, corporate acquirers, strategic partners and global media, according to Demo’s website.
In Kampala, the event will be held at Hive Colab on June 11, 2018, starting at 2.00pm.
The last tour will be hosted in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon on July 5.
During the Innovation Tours, officials say, DEMO Africa alongside partners engage with technology startups to “share the DEMO Africa vision, coach and mentor interested startups, as well as share tools that can help them build and grow their businesses,” according to the website.
Benefits
Participants are exposed to various opportunities during this period, including accessing tools worth more than US$120,000 from Microsoft, access to infrastructure worth more than US$15,000 from AWS.
Participants are also mentored and coached, they meet investors and buyers, gain publicity for their startups, there is also a chance to join a fully paid US Innovation Tour among others.
Thirty companies will be selected to launch their products at the main event in October. Casablanca, the capital city of Morocco will host the main event on October 18, 2018.
Ahead of the main event, the 30 selected companies will attend a 2-day Bootcamp in order to prepare their pitches and allow their founding teams to dive deeper into learnings and extended knowledge resources in addition to the virtual training program.
The program also includes introduction and access to a myriad of technology resources, speakers and sector specialists, investors, advisors and local innovation actors, officials say.
