Africa Games Week starts tomorrow 23 February, with Xbox, PlayStation, Ubisoft, Nintendo and many others

Africa Games Week starts tomorrow 23 February

The Africa Games Week, the largest videogame themed event on the African continent, starts tomorrow 23 February 2022. It will take place in Cape Town and will last until February 25, 2022. The event will be attended by companies such as Xbox, PlayStation, Ubisoft, Unity, Nintendo, Sega, Focus, Devolver, Landfall and many more.

Africa Games Week , the logo of the event Africa Games Week will essentially be a gathering of African video game developers located on the continent or active in the rest of the world. More than 150 will participate. It will also be a hybrid event, which will take place partly in presence and partly virtually on the event platform.

"Africa Games Week 2022 brings together representatives of the gaming industry and community, creators, developers and publishers from all over Africa to meet and connect over 3 days," says Bowden. "Our program focuses on creating more personal opportunities for connecting and sharing resources between the greatest minds of the African gaming industry; another reason why going fully virtual in 2021 would have diminished the value of the event. Hopefully this will foster partnerships in the growth of the African Game Dev industry locally and internationally. "

Photos from a past edition of Africa Games Week Geordin Hill-Lewis, Mayor of Cape Town, says who are proud to support and be the host city of Africa Game Week. "Gaming is fast becoming one of the most important and innovative sectors in technology. It is an area that spans various industries, creating solutions in entertainment and education, and has the potential for investment and great job creation opportunities. . "

"As Cape Town, our aim is to provide more support to this industry, including putting in place infrastructure and other mechanisms to help it grow. Our support for events like Africa Games Week aims to ensure that game developers, especially young people, have platforms to showcase their work, while also meeting industry experts who can elevate their skills. "

Read more details from the official press release:

Africa Games Week 2022 is the umbrella event for multiple sub-events.

The Make Games Africa conference - Business of Gaming is joined by the Nordic Game Discovery Contest (Sweden) and will present the A MAZE (Berlin) Train Jam, which took place online in December 2021.

Africa StreamCon, a conference and meeting for creators of African and international content, brings together advertising agencies, platforms, brands, lawyers and creators to explain to each other how they view the development of the industry to create a shared perspective and goals.

Games for Change, which empowers game creators and social innovators to lead real world change using engaging games and media, will launch its African chapter at this year's event; in preparation for their first African satellite event in 2022.

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Never waste a crisis - so start building Covid research in Africa

As European and African heads of state gather in Brussels today and tomorrow (17-18 February) to discuss deepening ties – including the burning issues of equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines and treatments and the need for drug manufacturing in Africa – we, as African and European scientists, believe another issue should feature high on the agenda: the development of robust clinical research infrastructure across the continent.

This is critical, not only to be prepared for future disease outbreaks, but also to support the summit's objectives of building lasting prosperity across Africa.

Outdated, trickle-down approaches to scientific cooperation, inherited from colonial times, will not work. And the EU-AU summit presents a historic opportunity to do things differently by discussing investment in science infrastructure in Africa.

We speak with the confidence of researchers who have witnessed the outstanding achievements of African scientists who, with adequately resourced research infrastructure, have more than proved their capabilities.

But throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we have also observed with dismay the lack of proper global investment and coordination in key areas to address the health needs of African communities. Fewer than six percent of clinical trials for Covid-19 worldwide have been carried out in Africa.

This story is not new. The African continent is home to around 15 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the global disease burden. Yet only 1.1 percent of global investment in health research and development (R&D) is spent in Africa.

This imbalance increases the risk of a brain drain of Africa's talented scientists, who may have no choice but to exercise their skills outside the continent in research environments with better funding and more modern equipment. .

Covid-19 has highlighted the importance of building African clinical research infrastructure to support pandemic response and preparedness.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control (CDC), based in Ethiopia, has played a major role in coordinating pandemic control efforts. We have seen how those African countries with strong medical research capacity were better able to respond to Covid-19.

For example, Botswana was the first country able to detect the emergence of the Omicron variant, thanks to its sequencing capacities.

That is why investing now to strengthen African-based, African-led collaborative research platforms is a smart move. True global pandemic preparedness requires robust infectious disease surveillance and control networks everywhere on the globe, including in the Global South.

Bolstering African research infrastructure will allow the continent – and the world – to respond more effectively when faced with the next infectious threat.

The good news is that African medical research expertise and experience is plentiful; too often missing, however, are the resources and platforms needed to bring that talent together.

Ebola and west Africa

For those diseases for which such platforms do exist, there has been an impressive track record of success. An outstanding example is the response to the 2014-2016 Ebola crisis in west Africa, which saw African and global networks mobilising quickly to conduct robust vaccine research in one of the most difficult social and medical environments ever faced by researchers.

Or take the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where scientists have carried out clinical trials to the highest international standards in extremely remote areas and under challenging conditions. The game-changing drugs they developed for a neglected disease called 'sleeping sickness' have helped the DRC to envision the elimination of a disease that killed hundreds of thousands in the past century.

The ANTICOV consortium is another collaborative medical research initiative in Africa, now testing treatments for patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19 across 13 African countries with researchers from leading African institutions in the driver's seat.

ANTICOV could be seen as an example of the wider research platforms that we are calling for to connect science and public health institutions, ensure research is relevant to the needs of different countries, support faster development of treatments and testing tools, and later provide rapid response to future disease outbreaks.

Competence, commitment...but frustration

From past successes, we believe that building such a clinical network is within our reach. However, to be sure of achieving this, we need to see sustained investment in the human and technical resources needed to ensure platforms can be flexible, autonomous, able to respond promptly and effectively to emerging outbreaks, and capable of supporting efforts to tackle ongoing health priorities across the continent.

We see enormous competence and commitment among African scientists, but also the frustration and anxiety that comes with not having all the tools needed to respond to future health crises. With dedicated resources and political will, we believe the future of medical research on the continent could be bright.

We need European and African decision makers gathering this week in Brussels to see and harness this potential, to promote scientific excellence, and contribute to a shared healthy future for us all.