Mitchell Elegbe – Founder / Group Managing Director, Interswitch
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Mitchell Elegbe is Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors at Interswitch, a business he conceptualized and has led since 2002, when the company went into operation. Apart from leading Interswitch to win numerous coveted industry awards, Mitchell’s leadership abilities have earned him several awards, including the CNBC/Forbes All African Business Leader (AABLA) for West Africa in 2012, the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the International Finance Corporation’s Inclusive Business Leader Award and the acclaimed African Leadership Network (ALN) 2013 Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship (AAE)Under his leadership, Interswitch has remarkably diversified its business, broadened  distribution channels and expanded into new markets across Africa,  driving revolutionary payment innovation and social impact and delivering strong growth in revenue and profits.

Apart from leading Interswitch to win numerous coveted industry awards, Mitchell’s leadership abilities have earned him several awards, including the CNBC/Forbes All African Business Leader (AABLA) for West Africa in 2012, the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the International Finance Corporation’s Inclusive Business Leader Award and the acclaimed African Leadership Network (ALN) 2013 Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship (AAE)

Moulay Hafid Elalamy | Minister of Industry and Trade, Morocco

Moulay​ Hafid Elalamy is the Minister of Industry, Investment, Trade, and Digital Economy of Morocco. As a graduate in information systems from the Université de Sherbrooke, where he was also governor of the Faculty of Administration, Moulay Hafid Elalamy, began his professional career in Canada as a senior advisor to the Quebec Ministry of Finance before holding the position of Director of Information Systems within a Canadian insurance company.

In 1995, back in Morocco, he created his own company, Saham Group, a key operator in the service sector (finance, insurance, assistance, consumer credit) and an industry leader that would acquire two of the largest Moroccan insurance companies. He is also Vice President of the Moroccan Federation of Insurance and Reinsurance Companies and a member of the Investment Committee of the Moroccan Retirement Pension Fund. Moulay Hafid Elalamy has launched two programs dedicated to the creation of companies: The Sherpa Club which actively participates in the emergence of permanent, competitive and job-creating structures in Morocco and the MHE Young Entrepreneurs competition, which consists of financial support and mentorship to young entrepreneurs.

Ruth L. Okediji | Professor, Harvard Law School 

Ruth L. Okediji is the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Co-Director of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She teaches contracts, international intellectual property (IP), copyright, and courses on Biblical Law.  Professor Okediji’s research and scholarship examine issues of innovation policy, economic development, human rights and global knowledge governance.  As one of the foremost authorities on international intellectual property law, Professor Okediji is widely cited for her research on the design and implementation of IP norms to promote access to knowledge and human development.  She advises governments on a variety of issues on copyright law and is helping to shape global policy agendas on challenges at the intersection of copyright, Big Data, AI and human welfare.
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Professor Okediji served as the lead technical negotiator at the Diplomatic Conference to Conclude a Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities (Marrakesh VIP Treaty) and has continued to provide expert assistance to countries regarding the Treaty’s implementation in national copyright laws. In 2015, Professor Okediji was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to the High Level Panel on Access to Medicines. She was recognized in that same year by Managing IP as one of the world’s 50 influential leaders in the field.

Claude Grunitzky | Co-Founder, TRACE | Chairman, TRUE Africa

Claude Grunitzky is the founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa, a media tech platform championing young African voices all over the world. In 2017, TRUE Africa was funded by Google’s Digital News Initiative. In 2003, Grunitzky and two business partners completed a multimillion-dollar financing deal led by Goldman Sachs Group. As a result, the TRACE brand is now being leveraged globally across various television, event and interactive platforms. TRACE, which now reaches an audience of more than 200 million people across 160 countries, was successfully sold to a French investor group in 2010. A graduate of London University and MIT Sloan, where he obtained an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, Grunitzky is also a trustee at The Watermill Center, a laboratory of inspiration and performance, at MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum in Massachusetts, and at Humanity in Action, a foundation that works internationally to build global leadership, defend democracy, protect minorities and improve human rights. Grunitzky is a Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative.

Dr. Tavneet Suri | Professor of Applied Economics, MIT Sloan 

Tavneet Suri is the Louis E. Seley Professor of Applied Economics and an Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her expertise is in the role of technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. Tavneet’s work cuts across multiple sectors, such as digital financial services, agriculture, and governance. Tavneet is editor-in-chief of VoxDev; Scientific Director for Africa for J-PAL; Co-Chair of the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative at J-PAL; a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a board member of BREAD. She holds a BA in economics from Cambridge University, UK, and an MA in International and Development Economics (IDE) and a PhD in economics, both from Yale University.

Thione Niang | Co-Founder, Akon Lighting Africa

Social entrepreneur, political strategist, global youth advocate, author and farmer, Thione Niang, was born in a modest family of 28 children in Senegal. Thione Niang immigrated to the USA in 2000 with only 20 dollars, and worked his way through the hardships while getting involved in his new community. His efforts led him to participate as a community organizer for President Obama in the historic 2008 presidential election and to become national Co-chair of Gen44 for the 20012 re-election campaign. Thione Niang now leads three structurally different, but substantially similar international organizations: Give1project, Akon lighting Africa and Solektra Intenational.
 
GIVE1PROJECT
Created in 2009, this global organization promotes global leadership and entrepreneurship for young people through its incubation centers, women empowerment and global leadership programs. Give1Project is now present in 34 countries around the world including: the United States, France, Japan, Ghana, Guinea, Benin, Senegal.
 
AKON LIGHTNING AFRICA 
As an entrepreneur in the energy field, he co-founded Akon Lighting Africa and Solektra International along with the renowned artist Akon and Malian Businessman Samba Bathily in 2014. The mission is to provide electricity to 600 million African households and communities through sustainable solar energy. Today, 16 countries benefit from the initiative, more than 5000 jobs have been created across the continent, enabling a solar academy to open in Mali for the training of young Africans in the field. In 2015, Thione Niang was appointed by President Obama as Ambassador to the US Department of Energy. Thione advocates for inclusion of minorities in all aspects of the energy sector, with a special focus on energy economic development, STEM education, and climate change awareness.