Kenya To Host Major Global Data Conference In 2020, First Time In Africa
Kenya has won the right to host the next International Open Data Conference (IODC), which will take place in two years’ time.
In what is a first for the African continent, the International Open Data Conference will be held in Nairobi in 2020, according to IOL.
It will be the sixth edition of the biennial global tech conference which brings the global open data community together in one location in order to learn, share, plan, and collaborate on the future of open data, defining strategies to advance open data both globally and locally.
The winning bid from the East African country was confirmed at the closing ceremony of the IODC 2018 event held in Buenos Aires, which was organized by the government of Argentina, the World Bank, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Open Data For Development (OD4D) with the support of Google and other tech partners, according to CapitalFM.
The 2020 conference is expected to attract over 3000 participants from more than 100 countries, with over 50 global tech firms expected to attend, with the opportunity for these international tech players to exhibit and invest in Africa’s tech ecosystem, according to Ventureburn.
The theme of the 2020 conference will be “Bridging Data Communities”, with the successful bid to secure the hosting of the event led by Kenyan vice-president William Ruto, a politician who has been vocal about the need to create an inclusive data ecosystem that seamlessly integrates government, the private sector, academia, civil society, local communities, and development partners.
Data conference for tech-savvy Kenya
Kenya is an example of innovation and tech adoption within sub-Saharan Africa. ‘Silicon Savannah’, the term used to refer to the bustling technology ecosystem in Kenya, describes a growing and thriving tech scene that has experienced interest and investment alongside the developed tech scenes in Nigeria and South Africa.
Kenyan tech companies received $145,6 million in investment during 2017, making up 26 percent of tech funding in Africa during that year, lagging only behind South Africa, according to Partech Ventures.
In a sign of Kenya’s importance in the African tech space, the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), a training program, seed fund and Africa’s largest tech incubator based in Ghana, recently launched a new incubator space in the country, according to ITWebAfrica.
In addition to the flagship incubator spaces in Accra, Lagos and Cape Town, MEST has launched a flagship East African space in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, which will offer the same facilities and services available at the other regional MEST hubs, with support, mentorship and resources available for entrepreneurs, as well as co-working facilities.
The incubator has links throughout Africa, and since launching in 2008 it has already invested over $20 million in African startups, reports GhanaWeb.
Over 350 individual entrepreneurs have graduated from the training program and over 30 tech startups have been launched via seed funding and mentorship courtesy of the incubator.