Rawanda’s President Paul Kagame is to be the keynote speaker at the 5th Annual Oxford Africa Business Conference due to take place at the Said Business School, University of Oxford.

He is among a number of leading businessmen and women, community leaders, academics, industry leaders and MBA students from all around the world taking part in the conference entitled Leading From the Frontier, which is scheduled to take place on May 18th.

The conference will consider what exactly the opportunities are and what is driving Africa’s current growth story which has been well publicised.

The World Bank predicts that the continent’s combined economies will grow at an average rate of over five percent, which is more than the global average, and the rate of return on foreign investment is greater than in any other developing region.

The student-led conference will discuss the rapidly increasing levels of intra-African trade, and discuss a range of topics from the tech revolution to frontier investing and the role private equity is playing in unlocking value on the continent.

Other speakers include Tewolde GebreMariam, Chief Executive Officer of Ethiopian Airways; Mthuli Ncube, Vice President of the African Development Bank; Dr Julie Taylor, Google Africa’s Head of Communicaitons and Abdirashid Buale, CEO of Dahabshiil.

The Oxford Buisiness Network for Africa is a student led group created to organise and channel the substantial interest in business in Africa among Oxford students, alumni and faculty. The group is run by current MBA students at Said Business School, University of Oxford.

The third Clean Technology business and investment matchmaking conference for the African continent,Viridis Africa, will bring together investors and entrepreneurs wanting to establish clean technologies in businesses.

The event which is being held at the Killarney Country Club, Lower Houghton South Africa, from October 15-16, will enable them to meet with potential global partners both in technology and finance.

They will be able to evaluate projects in renewable energy, provision of potable water, solid waste, recycling and effluent treatment that aside from their commercial merits would have even greater socio-economic benefits and impact on the people and environment of the continent for years to come.

Much of this year’s event will concentrate on adaptive and appropriate solutions for particular instances.

Some projects in the past, although technologically sound, could not be justified commercially, nor technically, as support infrastructure – human resource and even reliable energy supply - could not be sustained.

As Africa is now becoming the focus of the developed nations as far as inward investment into the continent, so as to fire up economic development, there is much anticipation that infrastructural development will ensue.

Thus, the provision of energy, water (for drinking, agricultural and industrial use) as well as other objectives such as road infrastructure and telecommunication will become a priority.

Therefore in Africa the concept of clean technology is more about the ability to answer to the said needs in a more independent manner, than what is currently possible - that is deploying energy generating capacity that is not reliant on massive infrastructural setup, but rather small scale and scalable solutions adapted to remote and rural regions within a country.

Similarly innovative solutions regarding water treatment and purification coupled with that of industrial effluents can also be deployed on the basis of  small-scale and scalable range of solutions, thereby commercially justified as per community/regions’ needs.

Viridis Africa will showcase Clean Technologies initiatives and innovative solutions about appropriate technologies which balance commercial promise with cost affordability to users.

For more information, visit www.viridisafrica.com or contact the organiser, Spindle Communications on suza.adam@spindlecommunications.com