Ansu Sooful, CEO of Aizatron, attended the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) and Connect Africa Summit last week in Durban. He presented on behalf of the Non Profit “Partnership for a Digital Africa” (P4DA) on creating Sustainable Open Innovation Ecosystems. He explained the model and how they have tested it in various situations, including expressing a few key lessons learnt. In a world where there is much hype around the Fourth Industry Revolution, he provided practical examples of how they are creating these sustainable open ecosystems for various communities.

The new economy is based on innovation through sharing and collaboration by using open standards and platforms. The model involves Communities, Private Sector, Governments and Academic institutions working through an open technology stack that enables each party to collaborate, innovate, create, test and commercialise new innovative solutions. The P4DA as a non-profit company is able to independently drive unbiased collaboration between all parties.