MTN supports Tech4Africa as a Platinum Sponsor

The MTN Group will support to this year's Tech4Africa conference, to be held at the Indaba Hotel, Joburg from 31 October to 1 November, 2012, as a Platinum Sponsor. The conference is for mobile and emerging technology and is themed "Unlocking the next billion consumers".

Now in its third year, Tech4Africa attracts over 600 delegates from across Africa, including developers, project managers, company executives, digital marketers and the media. Tech4Africa aims to put Africa in a global context and incorporate international lessons into African opportunities.

"MTN identifies with Tech4Africa's vision that 'technology can be a catalyst to economic and social change in Africa'. Through its various products and service offerings, MTN has been a catalyst for social and economic development on the continent," said Rich Mkhondo, executive from corporate affairs of the MTN Group.

New ideas

Mkhondo said: "MTN stands for innovation and customer experience, and we see a strong alignment with Tech4Africa, which is bringing new ideas to the technology ecosystem".

Delegates can look forward to insights from speakers from across Africa, who will discuss, among other topics: enterprise opportunity, entrepreneurship, financing, social business and innovation.

The agenda for the conference is:

Wednesday, 31 October

• Agile workshop - demonstrations, pair programming, continuous integration, test-driven development, problem solving, illustration of real projects, facilitation
• Ignite start-up pitching competition. Go to www.tech4africa.com to apply
• Social media marketing workshops - monetisation, social, building on Mxit
• Hackathon - Windows 8, Js/JQuery/Node,js, Hacking Android, PHP/Python/LAMP, Virtualisation/EC2/Scala/Hadoop

Thursday, 1 November

Opening with MTN
• Tom Rosamilia, vice-president of corporate strategy and GM of enterprise initiatives of IBM
• Ralph Simon, founder and CEO of Mobilium

Mobile device and content development
• Alan Knott Craig Jnr, CEO of MXit
• Emma Kaye, founder and CEO of Bozza
• Verone Mankou, CEO of VMK, Congo

Around Africa
• G+ Hangout with tech hubs around Africa
• Desigan Chinniah, firestarter of Mozilla
• Neal Ford, director and meme wrangler of Thoughtworks

Enterprise opportunity across Africa
• Amolo Ng'wena, MD of Digital Divide Data, Kenya
• Sim Shagaya, CEO of DealDey Nigeria
• Jon Hoehler of Deloitte Digital

Entrepreneurship and financing
• Mbwana Alliy, Savannah Fund, CEO I/O Ventures
• Nadav Ossendryver, founder of Latest Sightings
• Ignite - Brett Commaille, CEO of AngelHub

Social business and innovation
• Josh Adler
• Kim Pilaelo, CEO of DiepTweets
• Brett Loubser, mobile strategy director ofBlazingchilli
• Claudia Fan Munce, MD of IBM Venture Capital Group

For more information, go to www.tech4africa.com.