This webinar aimed to explore how digital technologies (including key developments in data analytics, big data and AI) can be leveraged by social entrepreneurs in Africa.

Questions of interest include:

• What opportunities do experts in the space see or anticipate that civically-minded young Africans could explore?
• Who is already doing what, where and how (exemplars) in terms of building innovative data-driven solutions to address social and sustainable development issues as social enterprises?
• What are the commercialisation, financing, sustainability and support models for such enterprises?
• What are the critical challenges or risks that must be considered/addressed?

Claudia Juech is the founding CEO and a board member of the Cloudera Foundation, based in Silicon Valley. Working with partners around the globe, she and her team identify and support large-scale, data-driven opportunities to address the world’s pressing challenges in any area of critical need. She is pioneering a foundation model with nonprofit grantees that helps build their data engineering capacity through direct access to technology, data expertise and long-term technical support. Read More

Dr Turgay Celik received his second PhD degree from the University of Warwick, U.K., in 2011. He has decades of both industrial and academic experience in several sectors. He is currently a Professor of Digital Transformation Engineering in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE) and Director of the Wits Institute of Data Science at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits). Read More

Malvin Nkomo is an electronic engineer by training, academic by passion, a data scientist and an entrepreneur at heart. He is the Founder of Hailer Technologies, a pan-African on-demand mobility service. Read More

Lesley Williams is the CEO of Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, an international public speaker and dialogue moderator. She is also the founder of Impact Hub Johannesburg. Read More