Welcome to Connecting Africa

Welcome to Connecting Africa, the dedicated online community "for the architects of Africa's digital future."

Who are those architects? They're the people funding, planning, building and running communications and digital entertainment networks; the people developing and launching the services and applications that run over those networks; and in a way, the people at the end of the "line'" who use and pay for those applications and services - they're playing an important role in developing and shaping the future.

And there's an increasing number of all of those architects - more network operators, more developers, more users: According to research house Ovum, Africa is expected to cross the 1 billion mobile subscriptions mark during the second half of 2016 and top 1.3 billion by the end of 2020.

So it's more important than ever for the African market to have a dedicated online community that can track the key developments in the market, identify and analyze the most important trends and talk to the most influential individuals and companies impacting the continent's digital transformation.

That's why Light Reading, in partnership with KNect365, has launched Connecting Africa to be the online portal that provides year-round coverage of a market that meets at KNect365's market-leading events - AfricaCom, Nigeria Com, East Africa Com and West Africa Com.

In fact, AfricaCom, a week-long festival of thought-provoking content, immersive satellite events and unique networking experiences, is only days away (November 14-18 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre): Check out all the details by clicking here.

This community will provide year-round coverage of all the key topics covered at those events - mobile money, mobile content, broadband connectivity, digital inclusion, the role of OTT content and applications, 4G and road to 5G, cloud, virtualization, big data, IoT, smart cities, startups and more.

That coverage will come in many forms - news analysis, interviews, contributed blogs, slideshows, video reports, webinars, online radio shows, infographics and more.

What'll really make this community thrive is you - we want you, the architects of Africa's digital future, to get involved in any and every way possible, by sharing your views, participating in the radio shows and webinars (all of which are free) and even contributing your views with a written blog if there's something you want to share with the rest of the community. You can reach us at [email protected] if you've got any suggestions, hot tips or views to share.

To get the full benefit of this community, please register for the site. It costs nothing but one minute of your time and enables you to join in the conversation on the message boards; sign up for the upcoming webinars, radio shows and other educational resources; and receive the Connecting Africa Insights email newsletter (and yes, it's all free!).

So, once again, welcome to Connecting Africa - and I hope to see you at AfricaCom!