State of the Map Africa 2021

Keynote Speech
11-20, 12:45–13:15 (UTC), Room 1
Language: English

Bitange Ndemo is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Nairobi’s Faculty of Business and Management Sciences. His research centers on the link between ICTs and small and medium enterprises with emphasis on how ICTs influence economic development in Africa. He Chairs the Kenya Distributed Ledgers and Artificial Intelligence Taskforce that is developing the country’s a road map for digital transformation. He is an advisor and Board member to several organizations including Safaricom one of the leading telecommunication company in Africa, a member of the: OECD Expert Panel on Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, World Economic Forum’s Global Blockchain Council (part of the World Economic Forum’s Global Fourth Industrial Revolution Councils). He is a former Permanent Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communication in Kenya where he was credited with facilitating many transformative ICT projects including building of the undersea cables, open data initiatives and the Silicon Savanah. He is a Senior advisor to UN’s Global Pulse (Big Data initiatives) and the UNCDF’s Better than Cash Alliance and UNICEF’s Innovation Council. He is an Open Data/Big Data evangelist and dedicated to simplification (visualization) of data for ordinary citizens to consume. He writes two columns every week for the Business Daily and Nation on-line.