The 6th edition of the Transform Africa Summit held in Victoria Falls; Zimbabwe has come to an end. Notable among the things that transpired during the summit is new memberships in the Smart Africa Alliance namely The Kingdom of Eswatini which became the 37th member state of the alliance which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.
The Republics of Gambia and Botswana are also closing the process to join the Alliance. Private sector members including Irembo, Ascend Digital and Asmos Consulting Africa also formalised their memberships during the summit.
The highly expected summit has kept all its promises and has been graced by the presence of the presidents from the republics of Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia and his majesty, the King of Eswatini.
This year’s summit gathered 5 Heads of State including a King, 44 ministers and attracted around 4,000 delegates from 91 countries. Director General Lacina Koné observed that this is a testimony of Africa’s political commitment at the highest level in our actions for the digital transformation of our continent.
The summit was characterised by signings of various agreements including a $1.5 million project by Smart Africa and the African Development Bank to streamline digital trade and e-commerce policies across 10 African countries, an agreement between Smart Africa and the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat to enhance collaboration in information, communication and technology to develop a Single Digital Market for Africa within the African Continental Free Trade Area and the signing of the Smart Africa Trust Alliance by 8 founding Member States to connect all systems through a trust framework.
Other partnerships in the areas of connectivity, digital infrastructure, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, and capacity building among others were also signed notably with I4Policy foundation, Hitachi Systems Security, Zhejiang, Gaia-x European Association for data, Internet Society and Estonian Association of Information Technology & Telecommunications, ITL.
This qualifies Smart Africa as an international organisation as it celebrates its 10 years anniversary this year.
