ELECTRIC AFRICA: WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE IMMERSIVE SPACE RIGHT NOW

Judith Okonkwo is a Technology Evangelist and Business Psychologist and is currently a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for Augmented and Virtual Reality. In 2016 Judith set up Imisi 3D an XR creation lab in Lagos focused on building the ecosystem for extended reality technologies (AR/VR/MR), and connecting XR communities across the African continent. The lab provides learning opportunities and access to XR resources for creators and enthusiasts, while supporting engagement and adoption by the wider community, and consulting and creating content for clients. In 2018 she set up AR/VR Africa which held the largest XR event on the continent, an AR/VR hackathon across 7 African countries simultaneously. Imisi 3D’s most recent VR film production, Lagos at Large, made the Forbes list of the Top 50 XR Experiences of 2019.

As an early African XR adopter, I hold a peculiar vision of designing, democratizing and demystifying what Extended Reality (XR) and new emerging technologies will look like and how they will impact African communities. I believe that democratizing access to these technologies is a key ingredient to building awareness around the potential of what the youth in Africa can achieve. It’s my sincere wish that through exploring synergies, partnerships and collaborations we will be able to equip the African youth to be the XR innovators and inventors of the future. I have been involved in numerous XR projects within the African continent, Europe and America with focus geared towards the cultural and creative industries. I'm passionate about leadership and mentorship and this is reflected from the outreach programs we run under the BlackRhino VR banner (State of the ARt, The Moran StoryLab and XR Without Borders) respectively.

Daliso Ngoma is the founder and Managing Director of African Technopreneurs, which is focused on providing the best AR/VR/360 camera hardware into South Africa. His background extends to having graduated with BSc in Software Engineering from Asia Pacific University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and also being the monthly host and co-organiser of the WeARVR Jozi meet up that aims to get like-minded and also new people into the XR space.

Dr. Tegan Bristow is a South African artist and developer of interactive digital installations; Senior Lecturer at the School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival since 2016. In 2017 Bristow completed PhD on Decoloniality and Actional Methodologies in Art and Cultural Practices in African Cultures of Technology, which she wrote with the Planetary Collegium at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts at Plymouth University in the U.K. Outside of Bristow’s curatorial practice in the Fak’ugesi Festival, large curatorial project have include in 2018 Digital Imaginaries: Premonition with Afro Pixel (Senegal), Wits Art Museum and the ZKM (Germany)and 2015 Post African Futures exhibition with the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. Outside of her curatorial and development practices with art, culture and technology in Africa, Bristow has exhibited her own practice widely. Bristow has published her research in various journal and book chapters, most recently in Critical African Studies.

Nada Bakr is an independent curator, researcher, and cultural manager based in Berlin. Her research-driven projects straddle the fields of visual arts, digital art and culture and networked activism, and unfold between Berlin and Cairo. Nada is Community and Project Manager at Disruption Network Lab, Berlin, and Managing Director and Co-Curator of Cairotronica.