The Africa Innovation Summit (AIS) which will hold from 6 to 8 June 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda under the patronage of His Excellency President Paul Kagame and Pedro Pires ex-President of Cabo Verde and 2011 Mo Ibrahim Laureate,  has announced the selected innovators from across the continent who will exhibit their solutions at the forum. The forum will this year focus on innovation as a tool to address Africa’s most pressing challenges. AIS serves as a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue and also a drive for coalition and action towards building strong innovation ecosystems in Africa.  Home-grown innovations on the continent will also be showcased at the exhibition.

AIS announced that; “An important aspect of AIS 2018 will focus on profiling and supporting solutions that are already examples of how Africa is addressing her challenges with new and innovative thinking. As such, AIS 2018 Innovation Track and Exhibition is an integral part of the Summit.”  The Director of the AIS, Dr Olugbenga Adesida said, “It is heartwarming to see so many Africans engaged in trying to find solutions to the pressing challenges facing the continent. The hope which we have is to build the AIS into a platform that will support innovators, refine the ideas and scale them up across Africa and the World,””Also important, we need all Africans, especially those with the power to act, to actively engage in building innovation-driven societies in Africa.”

AIS has partnered with transformation consultancy, Enterpriseroom who specialize in starting, sustaining and accelerating enterprises, to move the sourcing and selection process. Enterpriseroom CEO, Tracey Webster stated; “The evaluation process was extremely thorough, and we are grateful for the valuable support of a panel of 25 leading African experts from across all sectors and regions, who served as evaluators in the review process. We ensured that we had French speaking sector experts vetting the francophone countries to ensure that every application received an equal chance in the process.” More  than 600 innovation submissions were received from 44 African countries this including Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, Gambia, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Comoros, Mozambique, Lesotho and Namibia, to name a few, with the majority submissions from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Ghana and Tanzania. Sponsors of the Innovation Summit include the Government of Rwanda, Government of Cabo Verde, the European Union, Luxembourg, African Development Bank, Development Bank of Southern Africa, NEPAD, United Nations Development Programme and Accenture.