Nana Akufo, President of Ghana is among the 200 speakers’ list that comprises world leaders, CEOs of big tech companies, startup entrepreneurs, investors and regulators at the 2019 edition of the Web Summit taking place in Lisbon, Portugal from Monday, 4 to 7 November.
With nearly 70,000 attendees from over 160 countries, over 1,800 promising startups, Fortune 500 companies, 24 tracks to follow and over 200 employees working very hard to prepare it, Web Summit has grown to become one of the largest technology conferences in the world.
Ghanaian President is arguably the first African President to grace the big stage. Last year, the continent was not well represented in nearly all the sessions of the event. BusinessDay was the only mainstream media organisation from sub-Saharan Africa in 2018. Paystack and Carbon (former Paylater) were the only two startups that showed up from Nigeria.
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In a statement sent to BusinessDay, the organisers of the Web Summit said new themes in technology such as gaming and streaming will be made more prominent at the 2019 conference. In that regard, the CEOs of Hulu (Randy Freer) and Microsoft Xbox (Phil Spencer) will be speaking for the first time in the history of the summit.
Other technology leaders expected to speak at the event include Anna Gedda, CSO of H&M; Sri Shivananda, CTO of PayPal, Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com; Vladamir Klitchko, founder of Klitchko Ventures GmBH; Julia Goldin, CMO of Lego Group; Elie Seidman, CEO of Tinder; Kristen Garcia Dumont, CEO of MZ; Adam D’Angelo, co-founder, Quora; and Laura Miele, Chief Studios Officer of Electronic Arts.
The organisers have also expanded the Venture session to a three day conference, with the stage being made available to all attendees. This will be alongside the invite-only event for the world’s most influential inevstors from top international funds.
