The Africa Business Club at the Harvard Business School will be hosting the 20th Annual Africa Business Conference on March 2nd – March 4th, 2018 at the Harvard Business School Campus in Boston, MA. The conference is the world’s largest student-run event focused on business in Africa, bringing together preeminent keynote speakers, expert panelists, and approximately 1,000+ passionate students and professionals from across the globe to discuss and debate important topics on business in Africa. The Africa Business Conference also supports promising African entrepreneurs through grants and expert coaching offered during the New Venture Competition and the Startup Lab offered during the conference.
For the 20th anniversary, the conference will focus not only on the incredible opportunities and developments happening in Africa, but also on how individuals, businesses, and the continent at large engage within the larger global ecosystem. For this reason, the theme for this year’s conference is “Values and Value Chains: Africa in a New Global Era.”
The global landscape is changing at a seemingly more rapid pace than ever before. Now is the time for the African continent, with its rich history, resources, values, and institutions, to provide the global dialogue with unique perspectives and ideas that contribute towards making the continent and the world a better, more inclusive, place.
Much of the current conversation around Africa’s current and growing economic prowess over-emphasizes its resource potential of a large and growing middle class of consumers, a passive receptacle to whom globalization can be “brought to” or “done to.” We believe in a more proactive, vigorous form of African potential. Consequently, the conference will feature discussions that focus on Africa’s potential as a hub for secondary and tertiary industries. The good news is that because there are not too many entrenched technologies or distribution channels or legacy infrastructure, we can be creative when thinking about solutions that address the continent and the world’s ever-growing needs.
For more details on the upcoming conference, please visit https://www.africabusinessconference.com.