The Fak’ugesi- Digital Innovation Festival was officially opened on October 13 at the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Hub in Braamfontein.
The festival will run until October 21, culminating with the digital awards ceremony that will recognise and honour some of Africa’s outstanding digital innovative minds and creatives.
In her address at the official opening, Tshimologong CEO Lesley Donna Williams lamented the outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic and the death it caused in the entire world but equally recognised the quick shift it created towards the use of digital to communicate and drive business in one of the harshest lockdowns ever seen world-wide.
She described the festival as a mass celebration of the digitally creative minds abundant in the continent of Africa and a showcase of their outstanding innovations designed to precisely alleviate the suffering and hardship being experienced on the continent.
“Technology is nothing if it cannot solve the problems and hardships being experienced by its people just in the same way as business or businesses. Technology is in the business of solving peoples’ nightmares just like the advent of sliced bread.
“At Tshimologong, our business is to strive to fuel and power that fire and passion that creatives have in order to create solutions to the many nightmares that continue to afflict the lives of ordinary citizens of the continent and also take Africa to another level of development.
“It takes an eco-system to make this festival work and I am grateful to all our partners for making it work once again, especially after the harsh lockdown that the world faced,” Williams said.
Renne Smith of the Wits School of the Arts, who is a co-founder of the Fak’ugesi festival, said she was in cloud nine with the innovations that were coming out of Africa and the fact that digital innovation was taking root in the continent.
Eduardo Cachucho, the director of the festival was equally amused with the direction of innovation in the continent and urged ordinary people and family members of some of the creatives to also visit festival and see for themselves the work of some of their own.
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