Conference on Living Labs, organised by Africa Europe Science and Innovation Forum

ENoLL @ AERAP23 
Africa Europe Science and Innovation Forum
Brussels, 9th of March 2023 at 17h00 CET in-person and online
Living labs: an emerging area of collaboration between Africa and the EU

Africa is building its own way to a digital society. A new generation of entrepreneurs, policy officers, and social innovators are working on setting up new African digital innovation ecosystems.

The EU can collaborate with this effort, sharing experiences peer-to-peer and learning with African colleagues. One of the areas identified by African Countries for creating more sustainable and collaborative digital societies in innovation ecosystems is to envisage open living labs as a strategy.

Within the context of the AERAP Africa-Europe Science Collaboration Platform, a dedicated session on living labs will take place on the 9th of March 2023 at 17h00 CET in person and online. The in-person meeting will take place at the South Africa Embassy, Rue Montoyer 19, 1000 Brussels.

Living Labs (LLs) are open innovation ecosystems in real-life environments using iterative feedback processes throughout a lifecycle approach to innovation to create sustainable impact. They focus on co-creation, rapid prototyping and testing and scaling-up innovations and businesses, providing (different types of) joint value to the involved stakeholders. In this context, living labs operate as intermediaries/orchestrators among citizens, research organisations, companies and government agencies/levels. Within a wide variety of living labs, they all have common characteristics but multiple different implementations.

The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) is an international non-profit association that aims to promote and enhance user-driven innovation ecosystems, particularly the Living Labs concept globally. ENoLL focuses on facilitating knowledge exchange, joint actions, and project partnerships among its almost 600 members, supporting EU policy implementation, promoting living labs, and enabling their adoption worldwide. ENoLL currently has 164 active Members: 80% in Europe and 20% globally.

The session will promote an open debate on how to foster future collaborations and support the creation of open innovation ecosystems in Africa while sharing the experiences of existing running projects.
Speakers include:
Martina Desole, ENoLL Director (Moderator)
Mamadou Ndir, Alboury Ndao, Ndeye Astou Sene, FDSUT Senegal
Artur Serra, i2cat Foundation, Barcelona. Spain
Samia Chelbi, DigiArtLiving Lab, Tunisia
Karim Sy, Jokkolabs Network, Senegal

The Session link is here: https://aerapforum2023.sched.com/event/1GcEZ/09097-living-labs-an-emerging-area-of-collaboration-between-africa-and-the-eu
Please register here: https://aerapforum2023.sched.com/signup
For in-person registration, please contact declan.kirrane@iscintelligence.com
For ENoll, please contact Martina Desole martina.desole@enoll.org