The third annual Africa startup launchpad and conference, DEMO-Africa will be held between 22nd and 26th September 2014 in Lagos, Nigeria, TechMoran can reveal.
DEMO Africa will be hosted in collaboration with the Nigeria Federal Ministry of ICT, the LIONS@FRICA Partnership, VC4Africa, and Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
Set to take five days, the conference will be spearheaded by a local organizing committee unveiled today by the Honorable Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson. It will be kick started by the DEMO Africa BoomCamp for the invited start-ups and a strategic meeting of the LIONS@FRICA partners, and will culminate with a two-day DEMO Africa stage event.
“We are excited to host DEMO Africa 2014 in Nigeria. This presents a great opportunity to cross-fertilize ideas across African startups, as well as showcase our talents and skills in the innovation ecosystem,” said Mrs Omobola, the Honorable Minister of Communication Technology expressing optimism in Africa’s journey towards being a fully ICT enabled continent.
DEMO Africa 2014 is inviting start-ups who are ready to launch to submit their applications between 15th March and 15th June 2014 to be subject before a panel of judges comprising of key players in the ICT sector in July, 2014 to pick the best forty.
The teams with the most compelling products and business models will then be given a chance to launch their products to an ecosystem of investors, IT buyers and the global IT press.
According to Harry Hare,, the DEMO Africa Executive Producer, “The teams will receive professional training and mentoring on demonstration and presentation, as well as support on their technical set-up from our production team. These start-ups also stand to benefit from PR support and the promotion of the launch video during the event and beyond.”
Hare maintained that such training has in the past proved to be fruitful in selling noble ideas by the startups during the previous annual conventions. He confirmed that last year alone, more than 600 start-ups applied to launch at DEMO Africa but only 40 out of these were selected to launch at the DEMO Africa platform. Several of these are said to be already engaging with investors while others are in the final stages of closing their initial round of funding.
This year, the entry categories have been revised to include Health, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Leisure and Hospitality and Manufacturing. This was found to be more inclusive and is expected to provide better fit and competitiveness among the participants.
“Technology is used in different verticals so we thought we should make align the technology being launched with the verticals,” Hare concluded. The DEMO Africa 2014 outreach program will include the DEMO innovation Tours which will take place between April and May 2014 and DEMO Africa Investor Roundtable which will take place in the months of July and August.
