Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH) will stage the second instalment of Innovation Botswana from the 25th of October 2018 at the Botswana Innovation Hub Science and Technology Park.
Innovation Botswana reiterated its commitment to showcasing national innovations and to presenting a platform for dialogue that advances progress of the innovation and entrepreneurship agenda.
The platform is a festival of inspiration, creation and innovation that brings together more than 250 stakeholders from civil society, business and academia, public sector and industry. It aims to celebrate innovation through exhibitions, networking, thought leadership presentations and panel discussions. This year’s theme, “Igniting the Innovation Spirit”, seeks to stimulate new thinking and spark action.
Innovation Botswana 2018 opens with an all-day hackathon activity on the 24th of October that will see 65 youthful Batswana developers collaborating in computer coding to provide a solution to a real-life problem statement.
The second installment of Innovation Botswana has seen an increase in the number of companies exhibiting. More than 50 exhibitors are expected to showcase their innovations ranging from indigenous knowledge based products and unique knowledge-based business services to mobile applications.
The programme for Innovation Botswana 2018 comprises of a thought leadership talk, presentations and panel discussions on topics including; Creating Efficiencies Using Innovation, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data for Big Benefits. The morning engagement will be followed by an exhibition of products and services mainly in the cleantech, ICT services, indigenous knowledge, mining technologies focal areas of BIH. During Innovation Botswana 2018, BIH will also launch an App Factory in collaboration with Microsoft. The App Factory is a platform that provides tools for developers to test new products and services.
Innovation Botswana 2018 has been made possible through partnerships and collaboration with key partners including Sunday Standard Newspaper, Microsoft, Alpha Direct, Virtual Business Network, BOFINET and Dimension Data in preparation for the event. The event is a platform through which BIH further demonstrates its support to innovative entrepreneurship by providing opportunities to showcase, engage, connect and learn from one another.