IBEX Frontier at the African Diaspora Investment Symposium 2018 - Silicon Valley, USA

IBEX was pleased to participate at the African Diaspora Investment Symposium 2018 that took place during January 26-27, 2018 at the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley, California. Founded by Almaz Negash and now one of the most impactful African focused annual events, the platform gathered policy makers, investors, innovators and entrepreneurs doing business in and with Africa.

IBEX's founder and Managing Director Zekarias Amsalu attended the event and spoke at two panels sharing his perspectives and wealth of knowledge on African investment landscape.

The two panels Zekarias spoke at are described here below:-

Friday 26th Jan - 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM - Dialogue with Entrepreneurs, Innovators, and Investors What does it take to become a successful and impactful entrepreneur?

Zekarias was able to provide insights into planning for and executing business ventures in Africa drawing from IBEX's and clients experiences and the take away was:- Do detailed due diligence, local knowledge and local partner is critically important and hence partner and collaborate, develop resilience and patience and be ready to fail and rise up.

Some pictures of this panel discussions are here below:-

Sunday 27th Jan, 11:15 AM - Accelerating African Development through Higher Education and Skills Training - This was the second panel Zekarias spoke at in his capacity as Investment Adviser to Gebeya - the Ethiopian headquartered Edtech startup producing Best of African Talent with a slogan of “Empowering Africa Through Technology".

Zekarias brought up the best case examples of Ethiopia's educational budget allocations that stands at 12% of national budget, the 70% STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) ratio policy makers enforced in Ethiopia's school system, and the role of the private educational system in refining and specializing the STEM graduated in particular fields as in Gebeya's stellar example of generating the best of software engineers and innovators in world class standard. The case example of KUKULU, the first 3D mobile game launched by young software engineers from Ethiopia was discussed. These young engineers are products of the 70% STEM system as well as beneficiaries of the 12% educational budget spend in Ethiopia, however, the linkage with the private education was important as it was GEBEYA that trained the engineers in specialties of their choice that led to the creation of KUKULU. Gebeya also incubated their idea that led to the production and launch of Ethiopia's first 3D mobile game that is going global as a result and no wonder both Gebeya and KUKULU were in Hong Kong in February 2018 as part of the global event entitled 'Africa's Next Unicorns'. Hear the full story from the Founder in this video:-

Some pictures from this panel are herebelow

Are you looking for more indepth analytics into route-to-market and investment opportunities in Ethiopia and Africa? Please visit our website www.ibexfrontier.com and reach out to us, happy to help!