The Ghana India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT is organized an event dubbed innovation week (i-Week) which was held from the 5th-9th June, 2012. Mobile Web Ghana was present at some of the week’s events.
The AITI-KACE Innovation week (i-Week 2012) is an annual event that has been held since 2008 with the prime focus of promoting ICT innovation in Ghana and the ECOWAS sub-region using a combination of seminars, interactive presentations /case studies, hands-on practical training as well as the showcase of innovative products. A special emphasis will be placed on showcasing ingenuity and innovation as a means to inspire creative achievements among the entrepreneurs and youth.
This year’s i-Week centered on the need to engage Open Source tools in Business Innovations so that we transform innovative ideas into real business delivering real value.
For any young entrepreneur who was able to attend i-Week 2012, this event was a perfect platform to acquire knowledge and insight from the perspective of industry players in diverse fields ranging from Finance to Mobile Web and other online platforms and other pressing issues in the area of ICT. For a start-up looking to know how to fund your business idea and get hooked up with potential investors, then i-week was also the right platform.
The first day centered on Business Model Innovation. The second focused on Financial Products and Technologies for Business Growth where Mobile Web Ghana as well as some others made presentation on some web products. The third placed emphasis on Government and Open Data and the fourth Open Education and Open Health and the final day was a showcase of Innovative Projects & Innovation Challenge 2012
During the i-week interactions were organized in a more informal fashion to allow participants have a more relaxed atmosphere to share and interact with resource persons as well as other participants. Key among some of the events that took place was the speed mentoring sessions where participants had the chance of having a few minutes to interact one-on-one with resource persons and ask them questions and also connect.
Another significant discussion that took place was on the issue of leveraging mobile payment platforms. Mr. Kola Sonala, Airtel Money Director, was present and he shared some insight on the future of Mobile Money in this country and the efforts his outfit (AIRTEL) were putting into making Mobile Money payments more accessible and better patronized by the public.
Some very innovative products were showcased during the i-Week 2012 and among them was iKwery from Mobile Web Ghana. iKwery is a solution aimed at digitizing business cards by transferring the information from your business card to an online platform then this information can then be shared via sms short-code 1945. Also TicketGhana.com also demoed their e-ticket which…
There was so much to learn and so much to see but a very important point was made by Madam Dorothy Gordon, Director-General, AITI-KACE said; she advised that as young entrepreneurs, if you have a very well developed business idea/proposal
1. It’s not advisable to leave it around.
2. Don’t give out too much information submitting proposals. It better to provide concepts
Then entire program was climaxed over the weekend, Saturday, 9th June 2012, with a hackathon to round up the weeks activities.
The entire event was streamed live via ustream (http://www.ustream.tv/