The second High-Level Advisory Board Meeting update which took place on October 20th 2021.

Experts from different areas of the innovation and logistics sector in Europe and Africa shared peer discussions sparked by our two core activities conducted by DIGILOGIC: the smart logistics Trend Radar and the Mentoring programme for innovators.

Smart logistics Trend Radar
DIGILOGIC presented to the High Level Advisory Board the recently published report describing the most important digital technologies for smart logistics which triggered further suggestions and input from our experts, among the others:

• reverse logistics (return products to manufacturers/ retailers)
• just-in time distribution and just in time production
• the challenge of reaching African rural areas and the opportunity to apply the elastic model used in India, where community representative act as aggregators in rural villages
• logistics cyber-security
• the importance of the African Continental Free Trade Area and how technologies can help to implement it across Africa

The participants also discussed the key challenges of logistics in Africa, among the others: lack of physical addresses, digital payments platforms reliability and lack of trust of consumers, micro-financing, digitalization of paperwork and limited penetration of smart phones. Moreover, the participants suggested some case studies that could be analysed, such as: computer vision and machine learning to track palettes in warehouse and mega-trends such as: green logistics. then a discussion on the aspects to consider.

Mentoring Innovators
DIGILOGIC is developing a mentoring programme for innovators and vulnerable youth in Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia which will be hybrid in person and hosted on DIGILOGIC Community online platform. DIGILOGIC will leverage existing mentorship programs and resources (i.e. VC4Africa, SAIS). DIGILOGIC will also consider the suggestion to provide guidelines (i.e. a handbook) on how to mentor and develope adequate M&E processes and measures. The experts recommended to balance also a demand-driven mentorship program to offer our innovators what they actually need. Know more about the members of DIGILOGIC High Level Advisory Board.