During this conference, I (david basock) meets very active Nigerian blogger Loy Okezie. It was at the coffee break that Joel Nlepe introduces me Loy Okezie and quickly, we begin to talk about the challenges facing African startups and how they can resolve that challenges. That's when he told me he will make a statement on this topic during his presentation.
During his presentation Loy Okezie has emphasized that: Nigerian and Cameroonian startups and even African startups must work together. Why? Here are some quick reasons.
The reasons why African startups should collaborate.
This collaboration will bring us this advantages:
- Facilitate the deployment of startups in Africa.
- Share accurate and real information of the market.
- Facilitate the creation of partnerships between African startups to create great companies.
- Facing competition from developed and emerging countries that have greater financial resources and are very well organized in an increasingly globalized market.
- Create jobs and wealth in Africa.
Already I see that there are some initiatives to foster collaboration among African startups. Among these are:
- The support structures for startups : Activspace, ihub, The silicon cape, Hive Colab, Bandwidth Barn, Umbono etc.
- Technological Events: Barcamp, 9 ideas conférence, Tech4africa, Net Prophet, Mobile Monday, Mobile Web Africa, Africa Web Summit etc..
- A guide to startups and innovation in Africa will aim to foster the emergence of startups in Africa and create an ecosystem around them. You can participate in the drafting of the guide here
- The use of hashtags "# as" on Twitter, which means African Startups whose objective is to consolidate all that is said and done in the world of African startups. Honestly, I think that the hashtags “#as” avoid us missing a single idea, event, action, initiative, etc.. in the world of African startups.