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The DEMO Africa startup launchpad event will take place in Morocco for the first time this year, with Casablanca named as the host city for the October event.

The most recent editions of DEMO Africa have been held in Johannesburg, with the last one taking place in November of last year, after previous events in Nairobi and Lagos.

The African Technology Foundation (ATF), managing partners of the Liberalising Innovation Opportunity Nations (LIONS@FRICA) partnership, have now announced this year’s event – as well as next year’s – will be heading to Morocco.

“Over the last six years, the DEMO Africa conference has travelled through Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa, and launched leading African technologies while showcasing the continent’s evolving entrepreneurial ecosystems and startups,” said Harry Hare, executive director of DEMO Africa.

“As codified within our conference charter, we are heading to Northern Africa for the 2018 and 2019 editions of the annual event, and we are excited to announce Morocco as our host country.”

DEMO Africa connects African startups to the global ecosystem, and allows innovative companies to launch their products to diverse audiences filled with innovation stakeholders.

Over the last six editions of DEMO Africa, over 200 African startups have presented their solutions, and the summit has successfully positioned startups to receive over US$50 million in aggregate funding.

As a precursor to the main event, the DEMO Africa Bootcamp provides African startups with capacity building and training in venture creation, opportunities for connectivity to global innovation grids, access to capital, opportunities for further partnership expansion, and promoting best practices and successes in African-led innovation solutions.

“We are quite thrilled to witness the incremental progress around the North African entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly Morocco, and we are quite grateful for the support of some remarkable local partners to ensure that the next two editions of DEMO Africa do an effective job of globalising the regional ecosystem,” said Stephen Ozoigbo, managing partner of the Lions@frica initiative.

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