Mobile phone giant, Nokia is spearheading really amazing initiative with Capgemini and World Bank infoDev to explore and foster the innovation eco-system in Africa. The Open Innovation Africa Summit is happening the week of November 29th in Nairobi, Kenya. The summit aims to promote creation of new innovation services and collaboration models, which ensure continuous alignment between different players of the innovation ecosystem as well as to embed end-user driven co-creation and open innovation as critical elements to African innovation systems. As part of the initiative, they’ve launched a great ideation platform to serve as a resource and space for everyone working in Innovation in Africa to connect! The site revolves around the four main streams of interest and focus for the summit:
- Ecosystem for Innovation– to identify the primary barriers to innovation and, particularly, what can be done to overcome these challenges.
- Emerging Market Business Models- how do business models differ in the BoP context? How and what kinds of services should we offer to the BoP consumers? Who are these consumers? What can we learn from experiences in other parts of the emerging world?
- Mobile Services Revolution- The continued growth and eagerness of consumers to access high quality content and services will offer African developers the potential to create sustainable businesses locally and globally.
- Human Capital – Education for All- Using the Education for All framework, the summit intends to identify revolutionary ideas that can be translated into working solutions to address goals related to literacy, quality and access to education, among others.
You can check out the website and find more information here, and add to the conversation via @nokconv which suggests you move over to @nokia and @changeconnect with the hash tag #innovateafrique
