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Chanzo Capital has partnered with Africa.com to make virtual the 8th Angel Fair Africa which was scheduled to be in Senegal. The new normal is making everything virtual so the theme of this year’s event is “doing deals in a virtual environment” on 5th November 2020 on the www.virtualconferenceafrica.com platform.
“This year, we are launching the Africa Virtual Accelerator (AVA) to replace the physical bootcamp which prepares the entrepreneurs to be investor ready. Angel Fair Africa chose Senegal for the dynamism of its entrepreneurial ecosystem. The objective is to showcase Dakar as the francophone hub for investors, entrepreneurs and Entrepreneur Support Organizations while facilitating cross border deals,” said Managing Partner, Chanzo Capital, Eric Osiakwan.
On 27th May 2020, Angel Fair Africa worked with Africa.com to host a virtual pitch competition at which six African startups pitched to judges who honored three winners with cash prizes, mentoring sessions and media packages at virtualconferenceafrica.com/brilliant-african-innovations/.
This year’s event will start with a keynote fireside chat with Lucy Quist, author of the book, “The Bold New Normal”. The conversation will center on situating the bold new normal within the new normal of “virtuality” and how that can enable deal making in Africa. Teresa Clarke, Chairman and CEO of Africa.com will follow with a lunchtime keynote fireside chat on how she exemplified the bold new normal by leaving Goldman Sachs in New York, relocating to Johannesburg, South Africa to build Africa.com from the ground up into a media empire, which last year acquired iAfrica. The day will end with Tim Draper sharing his bold new normal of investing globally from Silicon Valley into companies like Baidu, Tesla, Hotmail, Skype, etc which all redefined their industries.
The event, which has been held in Johannesburg (SA) 2013, Lagos (Nigeria) 2014, Accra (Ghana) 2015, Nairobi (Kenya) 2016, Abidjan (Ivory Coast) 2017, Maputo (Mozambique) 2018 and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) 2019 resulting in about $23M worth of deals and 1 exit, will this year bring investors, entrepreneurs and ecosystem players unto the virtual platform to do deals, network and share experiences at the 8th of www.angelfairafrica.com
CEO of WIC Capital, Evelyne Dioh Simpa, said “bringing together a diverse mixture of the business community, innovators, and investors within Senegal, across Africa and the world would create the right environment to facilitate strategic investment, foster partnerships and strengthen the network that would catalyze the African ecosystem and drive change”.
According to Madji Sock, Partner of Dalberg, the virtual experiment would prove worthwhile if we can make deals happen as that would become a standard for the continent’s investment ecosystem.
Director General of Impact Hub, Dakar, Aziz Sy, reckons that the event would help consolidate the various efforts locally and within the continent towards investments in innovative ventures that would spearhead Africa’s leadership of the 21st century in which Senegal has a critical role to play.
