JULIUS O.AKINYEMI
Julius is a Resident Entrepreneur at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab in the USA, working on the commercialization of Technology Innovation. He is the Founder of UWINCorp, was Global Director of Emerging Technologies for PepsiCo Inc and the Senior Vice President of Wells Fargo Bank's Emerging Technologies and Wireless Business Technologies in the USA.

Julius obtained his MBA from Ohio University and a graduate of Christ's School, Ado-Ekiti. Nigeria. He has been a regular Judge in the MIT African Business Club competition. He holds US patents in "Method and Apparatus for a Broker Entity" -Virtual Private Message Broker for secure financial transactions and co-owns a patent with MIT in Interactive Vending Machine, currently commercialized by PepsiCo.

AMEENAH GURIB-FAKIM
Ameenah Gurib-Fakim is Managing Director of the Centre for Phototherapy Research (CEPHYR) is also Professor in Chemistry at the University of Mauritius. Chairperson of ICSU (Regional Office, Africa) (2011-2014), she has served as Dean of the Faculty of Science and Pro Vice Chancellor (2004-2010). She has been Manager for Research at the Mauritius Research Council (1995-1997).

Author and/or co-editor over 25 books in the field of biodiversity and sustainable development, she is author of numerous international scientific articles. Fellow of the Linnaean Society, London (2007), Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Science, Jordan (2009), she received the l'Oréal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science and that of the National Economic and Social Council, Mauritius in 2007 and the special prize of

DR VIVIANE ONDOUA BIWOLE
DR Viviane Ondoua Biwolé is Deputy Director at the l'Institut Supérieur de Management Public in Cameroon. She holds a PhD in Management Science and her research fields include human resources management, sustainable development and entrepreneurship.

Viviane was involved in many evaluation and selection processes mainly at the African Union and World Bank. She was also Manager of various scholarship programmes, namely the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), Agence Canadienne de Développement International (ACDI), Centre de Recherche et de Développement International (CRDI). She has seven publications on sustainable development and four on entrepreneurship.

EMEKA OKAFOR
Emeka Okafor is a venture catalyst and entrepreneur of Nigeria origin who lives in New York City. Among his entrepreneurial ventures, Emeka is partner in Caranda Fine Foods. He is also the Maker Faire Africa curator and was the Director for TED Global 2007 that took place in Arusha, Tanzania.

His other interests include sustainable technologies in the developing world and paradigm breaking technologies in general. His blog, Timbuktu Chronicles seeks to spur dialogue in areas of entrepreneurship, technology and the scientific method as it impacts Africa. "Timbuktu is a city unsullied by the worship of idols...a refuge of scholarly and righteous folk, a haunt of saints and ascetics, and a meeting place of caravans and boats" -Al-Sa'Di.

MR HERMAN CHINERY-HESSE

Herman Chinery-Hesse is a software engineer by profession. 19 years ago he co-founded the SOFTtribe, one of the leading software houses in West Africa. The SOFTtribe has won a number of awards, including the prestigious Millennium Excellence Awards for IT in 2005. The company has been featured on BBC, CNN and the IEEE Magazine (of the United States) amongst others. He holds a number of directorships and is an Assessor of the Commercial Court, Ghana. He has won a number of personal awards including Outstanding Ghanaian Professional from the GPA Awards (UK), as well as the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Texas State Alumni Association and Texas State University-San Marcos (USA) - the first and currently only African recipient of the award.

Herman has also been a resource person and visiting speaker at the Wharton Business School, Harvard Business Schools, Cambridge University, the University of Ghana, and the TEDGlobal Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, amongst others. The SOFTtribe employs around 70 people and has a client base of more than 250 organizations, including major multinationals such as the Ford Foundation, Nestlé, and Unilever; it is also a Microsoft development partner in the region.