Report: Freetown Pitch Night- April 11th 2018

The theme for the April 11thh  Freetown Pitch Night was “Digital Disruptors ”.

“You cannot disrupt what does not exist.”

O what a night, mid April back in 2018! Freetown Pitch Night was awesome last night. The Keynote Speaker, Kwame Luke made an amazing speech. Only a corpse could not get inspired. He left a lot for us to think of in a most uplifting way. Not taking away from the pitchers that had excellent ideas.

Lets go through the Pitchers:

1) Moinina of Thinklight pitch an idea for a “Robot Riot Police Officer”.

2) Andrew of Science Resource pitched a “Wind Turbine” idea.

3) Adepoju of Medal Technology & Software pitched “An Artificial Intelligence Personal Assistant” with multiple features.

4) Anika of Aptec Africa pitched her company that is a Renewable Energy Firm.

Thinklight & Science Resource were in ideating stage. They are fabricators in their own right and have previously produced other prototypes in the past like Solar powered tricycles, toy helicopters and speaking robots.

Adepoju delighted us with his pitch. His idea could be best described as somewhere in the middle of ideating and concepting. My description of “An Artificial Intelligence Personal Assistant” may also be limiting. There are a plethora of uses that his idea could possibly be used for.

Anika presented the full length and breadth of the services and products offered by Aptec Africa in Sierra Leone.

The keynote speaker, Sir Kwame Luke, I salute you Sir. “You cannot disrupt what does not exist.” Can births and deaths allow me to name my next child that way?

Honestly though, apart from that message Kwame Luke took the crowd through an entrepreneurial journey on disruption. Guiding us with practical examples that where very relevant to us here in Sierra Leone. Vivid examples that included some of his personal experiences. Summarizing the crucial other lessons he inspired us to overcome were:

  1. You can be too early
  2. Learning when to pivot
  3. How and when to scale
  4. How to aggregate
  5. Do not think or operate in Silos

I felt guilty giving him signals that he had exceeded his speech by a few minutes, I am rather glad that he overlooked my signals. His energy and his passion was not only just coming out of him but it also seemed to transfer unto everyone else.  The delivery was original and authentic as Kwame Luke had been a Digital Product Consultant for 20 years. I am really glad to have heard him share his knowledge and expertise with us.

O Yes, back to “You cannot disrupt what does not exist.” That message was another way of explaining the usual adage of how one should understand the market that we wish to exploit. However, he went on further to explain that there may not be systems to support the actual business model that one plans for. You end up needing to put in place other systems to actually support your business model. These other systems (he gave an example of problems with our postal delivery) are actually opportunities!

The next Pitch Night is on May 16th 2018!

Report Written by Salia Fawundu Jnr.

We wish to thank our main sponsor- Mützig; our partners, Cordaid, Sensi Tech Hub, Innovation S and Insight Media.

PDF Version: Report_April_digitalDisruptors

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Adepoju Toluwani

My name is Adepoju Toluwani, I am a Nigerian currently pursuing  B.sc Information Technology at Ipam USL and I am currently in year two.  I love thinking and creativity which inspired me to teach myself programming, graphic design, 2D animation and right now am currently interested in robot programming, robot design and building.

WHAT I HAVE CREATED AND WHAT AM GOING TO CREATE:

I have successfully created a face recognition system , speech recognition system, text recognition system, real-time image analyzing system and an artificial intelligence bot capable of learning, doing mathematical calculations, teaching and reacting to its physical world, all this is an objective for my main goal of making a humanoid robot  that can be trained by each individual on an android application and when inserted into its body, it can perform various task according to its various training.

MY VISION:

My vision is to show the world that Africa has thinkers, innovators and inventors that hasn’t discovered their talent due to lack of exposure and enlightenment, it only takes a spark to light a fire and I am sure I would make an impact and that we as Africans are great.

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Digital Disruptors

The theme for the next Freetown Pitch Night is “Digital Disruptors”. Date: Wednesday April 4th 2018. Venue: 232 Lumley Beach. Time 18:30-21:00

“Disruptive innovation is transforming Africa’s economic potential, creating new target markets and unprecedented consumer choice. Capitalising on these potential opportunities demands a complete rethink of customer engagement and business development strategies”. Pwc
Is your start up or company tapping into this huge and still largely untapped commercial potential.
Are you doing any of these-
1.Driving efficiency in business and public service?
2.Strengthening trust and combatting corruption using blockchain?
3. Improving market access and ease of doing business?
4.Healthcare and crisis prevention-using disruptive technology to overcome the traditional barriers of distance and limited access to healthcare
5.Education, innovation and job creation
6.Bringing the informal sector into the mainstream economy

 

The technologies that are driving change and innovation-

  • Big data analytics
  • Blockchain
  • Drones
  • Sensors/Internet of Things
  • FinTech
  • Renewable energy
  • Robotics
  • Shared economy
  • 3D printing
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