Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Investors, innovators discuss roles of tech at High Growth Africa Summit

By Desola Lanre-Ologun
19 November 2016   |   10:45 am
High Growth Africa Summit 2016, organised by Starta and Ingressive held on the 17th and 18th of November 2016 at Landmark Centre in Lagos, Nigeria.

High Growth Africa Summit 2016, organised by Starta and Ingressive held on the 17th and 18th of November 2016 at Landmark Centre in Lagos, Nigeria. The summit had entrepreneurs, investors, government officials and other stakeholders among the attendees.

The summit featured a general session as well as smaller round-table group sessions that held across four different conference rooms.

The keynote Speaker, Afam Edozie (Partner at Grow Africa) shared strategies on how entrepreneurs can “scale” their business with particular reference to the fact that the process of scaling a business usually takes two people with desire, the right attitude and the right team.

To scale, companies need to focus on putting the right design and processes in place, have a keen understanding of how their business will generate revenue while focusing on scalable metrics such as cost of acquisition, cost of delivery and customer lifetime value.

He also commented on the reality that for companies to scale they have to be designed with scalability in mind from the onset.

The keynote address was followed by a presentation by Ebi Atawodi, General Manager of West Africa for Uber. During her presentation, she pointed out that while disruption comes with its challenges, entrepreneurs who are convinced of the validity of their idea must not give up but persist and come up with creative ways to overcome challenges.

The general session featured a panel session of discussants that included Omobola Johnson (Partner at TLcom and former Communications Minister), Tomi Davies (President, ABAN), Dotun Olowoporoku, founder, Starta, and Jill Moss (USAID Fellow).

The panelists spoke on the fact that government needs the help of the tech ecosystem to understand the tech ecosystem. The ecosystem has a responsibility to educate the government on ways to facilitate its growth. Tomi Davies, President of the African Business Angels Network emphasized the need for government to formulate policies and regulations for the tech ecosystem without hampering the growth of the sector.

The smaller round-table sessions had speakers such as Debola Williams, Afua Osei, Deepankar Rustagi, Kola Aina, Raphael Afaedor, Seyi Taylor, Olamide Bada, Chris Schultz amongst others. The round-table sessions covered topics ranging from marketing to growth hacks to advice on how to get funded.

0 Comments