Global ocean changemakers will arrive in Cape Town from the 21st to the 23rd of February for the fourth Ocean Innovation Africa summit, this year taking place in conjunction with The Ocean Race Cape Town Stopover. The summit puts African ocean innovators in the spotlight, highlighting opportunities to leverage their innovations for sustainable, equitable development of the ocean economy.
The ocean supports the 8th largest economy in the world¹, with an annual GDP of approximately US$2.5 trillion. But the resources, industries and services that make it up depend on a healthy marine environment. The African ocean economy is poised for massive growth, with predictions estimating that it will be worth over US$400 billion by 2030. This growth can be leveraged to provide socio-economic and environmental benefits for African nations, but to do so it must take place in a radically more sustainable and equitable manner than we have seen in the past.
Says Ocean Innovation Africa cofounder, Alexis Grosskopf: “To bring about change at the pace and scale needed to address sustainable development goals we need disruptive innovation, not incremental. As businesses cannot self-disrupt it is up to innovative startups to bring that agility and flexibility to the model. Innovation is key not only to unlocking the potential of the blue economy in a sustainable way, but, more importantly, to finding solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change, overexploitation, and pollution in the ocean space.”.
The Ocean Innovation Africa summit brings together leaders from the African blue economy ecosystem and beyond to identify challenges and opportunities for sustainable blue growth in Africa, and to put in place actions to address them. Pitch competitions, demo sessions, exhibitions and B2B programmes are all geared to showcase African ocean-impact initiatives to the global blue economy community. Plenary sessions bring on board the perspective of stakeholders and decision makers while sector-specific breakouts take it a step further, putting in place actions to address shared blue economy goals.
Ocean Innovation Africa will form part of the activities of the final week of The Ocean Race stopover in Cape Town, giving delegates the chance to catch some of the race action before the boats depart for Brazil on Sunday 26th of February.
Take a look at the summit website – https://ocean-innovation.africa/ – to find out how you can learn more and get involved in Africa’s blue future.
Join The Movement
- Dates: February 21 – 23, 2023
- Times: 9:00 – 17:30 (all day)
- Location: The Avenue Conference and Events Centre, 40 Dock Road, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
- Website: https://ocean-innovation.africa/
- Registration: https://ocean-innovation.africa/registration
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Concept Note: https://ocean-innovation.africa/wp-content/uploads/OIA-2023-Concept-Note.pdf
[¹] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/human-impact-ocean-economy
