Marcello Schermer – The Africa I Know

While Africa is often portrayed as the ‘hopeless continent’ in the West, the reality on the ground couldn’t be more different. In every corner of the continent, entrepreneurs are creating ecosystems (hubs, accelerators etc.) to enable a grassroots entrepreneurship movement that is enabling more and more entrepreneurs to leverage technology to create innovations to solve local problems of global significance. Based on my experience from working in the startup ecosystem across 20 African countries over the past 5 years, this talk will take you on a tour of the buzzing entrepreneurship scene across the continent and highlight incredible innovations that are fundamentally transforming the reality on the ground. The tour will expose you to a new world of innovation that is already contributing to further accelerating the ongoing transformation, development and growth of economies and societies across the African continent.