South Africa

Michael Ehst is a Senior Private Sector Specialist with the World Bank’s Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice. His work focuses on entrepreneurship support and innovation policy. Michael has led World Bank lending and research related to SME support, entrepreneurship, and early-stage venture finance for the Africa and East Asia regions of the World Bank…. read more »

Will Green has forged a successful career as an emerging market tech entrepreneur (Sky, Yahoo! and Sizmek Africa). He now invests his energy advising start-ups and accelerating high-growth Scale-ups as part of the Grindstone’s Alumni (70+ companies) and Grindstone cohorts (21 companies). Previous alumni have been iKubu (exited to Garmin), Payfast (excited to DPO), WhereIsMyTransport,… read more »

Davis is the CEO of RIIS, the leading innovation-focused strategy advisory firm in SA; he is also a Director with ZASpace (the industry body for the SA space sector), and non-exec roles with the SA Innovation Summit and Anza Capital, an early-stage Africa-focused VC. With a track record in strategy and development focused work in… read more »

Bridgette Morris is the Manager, Innovation and Operational Effectiveness at the City of Cape Town responsible for the development and implementation of innovation programmes and projects to drive customer-centric service performance across the organization and external stakeholders. Her innovation journey has been mainly within the public sector space in State-Owned Enterprises (The Development Bank of… read more »

Scott is an angel investor in a number of technology start-ups and a minority shareholder in Contactable where he is a member of the Executive team. Before joining the team at Contactable, Scott spent 19 years in the Dimension Data Group where he held numerous roles such as VP of Finance, MD of Conscripti and… read more »

Adv Pieter Holl obtained the degrees B. Iuris and Bachelor of Laws from the North-West University and University of South Africa (UNISA) respectively. He completed several courses in leadership and management and is an admitted Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He is also a member of the Institute of Directors, Southern Africa…. read more »

Colin is the Acting Executive Manager: Seda Technology Programme. He has been with Seda for the past 14 years, where he took on various roles. Colin is passionate about SMME development, with a specific focus on entrepreneurial competencies and the role of credit guarantee schemes within small business development. He has been participating in many… read more »

Amy Benn is the Innovation Co-Lab Lead for Innovate Durban, an entity set up to support and promote innovation in Durban. Her background is in community development and design thinking. She has been involved in community and business development throughout her career. Her passion lies in social justice and development and using design thinking to… read more »

Emma joined KTN’s Emerging Technology and Industries team in April 2020. Since joining the organisation, Emma has played a key role in supporting innovation that drives the transition to a circular economy and accelerates progress towards the UK’s target of net zero by 2050. She currently works across multiple cross-sector programmes, connecting businesses, government, funders… read more »

Shayan leads the business development team for AWS Game Tech in EMEA, and his team helps game developers, studios and publishers build and distribute awesome games on AWS. Before this, he spent 3 years helping out startups build and scale on AWS Cloud, and then prior to that, nearly a decade as a startup founder… read more »

Ilari Patrick Lindy is the Lead Expert at the SAIS 2 regional (SADC) innovation Programme based in Windhoek, Namibia. Before joining to SAIS he worked as Senior Operations Officer at the World Bank in Washington D.C. on digital innovation and development. Ilari has served as a Senior Advisor in Ministry for Foreign Affairs for Finland… read more »

Annika’s mission at Startup Estonia is to help people out with everything related to Startup Visa and Foreign Relations. Having lived and studied in Italy, she has mastered how to improvise, adapt and overcome any obstacle on her path. She has previous experience in the tourism and event management field and always likes to take… read more »

Prof. Askwar Hilonga is the winner of 22 reputable awards, including the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Prize, Pitch@Palace, and the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation 2015, which is sponsored by the British Royal Academy of Engineering. He invented the Nanofilter®, a low-cost water filter. Prof. Hilonga holds a patent and trademark for the Nanofilter,… read more »

Innocent Mallya is a technology fanatic who came from the banking sector before joining the fast-growing tech ecosystem in Tanzania in mid-2018. He now manages one of the largest hubs in East Africa, Seedspace Dar es Salaam, which has the main focus of investing in tech startups in emerging markets. As the Seedspace General Manager,… read more »

Stephan Lamprecht is the founder of VS Nova, a South African based management consultancy. He is a qualified industrial engineer with a masters degree in management (specialising in new venture creation and entrepreneurship). As an experienced and professional strategy and workshop facilitator, he has amassed a broad range of strategy development and planning experience in… read more »