News Details
Wavetec Participates in “commodity Exchanges in Africa” as Technology Consultants
Commodity Exchanges in Africa held on 8th – 9th November, 2011 at Sheraton Addis, was a unique forum which gathered an audience of nearly 300 for the first ever Convening on Commodity Exchanges in Africa, with an opening call to engage with passion and creativity, in honest dialogue and reflection on the future of Africa’s agricultural markets and its rightful place in the emerging new global commodity order where the push for better coordinated, more transparent, and better regulated markets will shape the next few years
Wavetec was requested to be a part of the discussion panel which focused on “Powering markets with technology”. Mr.Ziauddin Siddiqui represented Wavetec at the event shedding light on the importance of technology, transparency and information dissemination. He said “Technology is usually perceived to be expensive which is a myth, because technology is always an investment it is never an expense. With technology we buy time and perform tasks in no time which used to take days before the emergence of technologies. With technology we are able meet the challenges of growing population and rapid urbanization. With technology we have helped the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) in achieving their goals of market information dissemination, transparency and capacity building. ECX has set itself in leading through a unique example in Africa by disseminating the information and taking it to the farmer, displayed on large LED tickers in villages and rural areas, which will be installed throughout the Ethiopia, which has never been done before. Now the farmer will know the exact value of his crop, its grade and they will be motivated to grow the best crop to earn maximum revenues on it.”
With an early principle that, all protocols observed, this was a coming together of minds and spirits rather than yet another conference, workshop, or summit, the Convening engaged with open dialogue format rather than formal presentations, with superb moderators, including top African journalist Komla Dumor of BBC World News, Tumi Makgabo formerly CNN, and Belinda Obura of Citizen TV Kenya among others, to keep the discussion sharp and on focus, timely, sometimes combative, and leaving no stone unturned.
Mr.Ziauddin further comments on the role of Governments “the Government has to invest in the technology infrastructure and create a level playing field for the private sector to empower markets with their innovations. For any market to grow, it needs a large investor base, with use of technology; market information has become much easier to disseminate through Internet, SMS, Tickers, etc. Another very critical role of the government is to regulate the technology industry which will ensure a smooth transition. If the Governments are able to lay down concrete legislations to regulate this market, they will see an optimized result in the best interest of Africa”
Participants to the Convening hailed from government, commodity trading, exchanges, regulators, technology solution providers, bankers, farmers’ groups, development agencies, and many more. Not less than 17 African countries were represented as well as Europe, the US, and India. Among these were CEOs of commodity exchanges from Zambia, Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, South Africa, and host Ethiopia, in addition to representatives of MCX India, CME Group (Chicago), JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Exchange projects under formation were represented from Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan, Botswana, Mali, and Senegal.