The second edition of the GSMA’s flagship Africa-focus tech industry event, Mobile World Congress 2023, is set for October 17 – 19 at the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda, which hosted the maiden edition in October 2022.
The maiden edition in 2022, being GSMA’s first post-COVID in-person MWC, brought together thousands of participants from over 90 countries and territories, who were addressed by over 60 speakers including industry experts, business leaders and policymakers on sub-themes drawn from the broader theme of “Building a Digital Future, Together”.
2023 Themes
This year, Kigali is again home to the second edition of MWCAfrica, which will attracts thousand of participants from over 78 countries, and focus on the broad theme of VELOCITY: Unleashing Tomorrows Digital Technology Today, with four main sub-theme: Accelerate Africa, FinTech, Healthtech and Powering Digital.
Each of the four technology themes is focused on exploring how the digital era could be driven forward, particularly on the continent of Africa. Find more details about the topics to be discussed under each of the four main theme on this link.
Some speakers you might know:
So far, some 164 speakers have confirmed their participation. They include Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, who will the deliver the opening keynote; MTN Group President and CEO, Ralph Tendai Mupita, GSMA Director-General, Mats Granryd, ITU Secretary-General, Doreen Bogdan-Martin and several other industry leaders and policymakers.
There are also several speakers from the MTN Group, which includes Ghana’s own Ruth Badoo, who is currently in charge of API partnership at the MTN Group Fintech, where she leads and manages partnership across the API ecosystem within the MTN Group and across all its operating countries.
Some of the speakers who Ghanaians may be familiar with are three-time Emmy-nominated speaker, entrepreneur & producer, Derrick N. Ashong (DNA), who is the founder of Take Back the Media (TBTM), a 21st-Century Tech-Driven Studio targeting the Global South and Diaspora.
Derrick is also the creator of The Mic: Africa, which has won 7 major international awards competitive against the biggest companies in Media & Entertainment. His TBTM Interactive Festival was recently nominated for a Webby Award. Derrick also created the blockchain-based TBTM entertainment platform to reward fans and creators with a digital reward token called, Kola, that helps bank the unbanked with partners like Mastercard.
Another speaker from Ghana is Louis Manu, the Co-founder and CEO of Wi-flix – a live streaming and video-on-demand streaming platform that offers localised premium content at an affordable price point coupled with internet to Africans and those in the diaspora. Wi-flix is the first African-owned Dolby-powered platform that offers immersive audio, visual, and living room experience to mid to low-income population of Africa leveraging on partnerships with Telecom companies like MTN, Vodafone, and Safaricom. Louis’ career spans telecom business, technology, legal-tech, and media-tech companies like Airtel, Vodafone, Millicom, 5StarLives (now Bolt Pay), 24iMedia, and Clocktimizer in Europe and Africa.
Also attending from Ghana is the CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Ing. Dr. Kenneth Edem Ashigbey, who will be on focusing on topics that ensures partnerships between regulators and operators to drive digital and financial inclusion underpinned by affordability and accessibility.
Sponsors and partners for this year’s event include the following:
All tech industry policymakers, players, thought leaders, experts, innovators, analysts and journalists will be in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, between October 17 – 19, 2023. Techfocus24 will also be there to bring you up to speed on some of the big decisions and innovations that will impact the tech ecosystem on the continent and the world at large going forward.
