RENOWNED tech visionary and former Google executive Stafford Masie is set to headline this year’s fourth edition of the Ideas Festival, set to be held later this month in the resort town of Nyanga.
The fourth edition of the festival will run under the theme The Future of Human Capital, Innovation, and Ethics in the Age of AI’ and will run from October 28 to 31 at the Troutbeck Resort.
The convener of the festival is media mogul, Trevor Ncube, owner and chairman of Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), publishers of weeklies The Standard and Zimbabwe Independent, as well as a daily NewsDay.
AMH are also the proprietors of Heart & Soul TV, under which his In Conversation with Trevor platform falls.
Ideas Festival has emerged as Zimbabwe’s own version of Davos — the annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland that convenes over 3 000 global leaders from business, politics, academia and civil society to tackle urgent issues like climate change and economic uncertainty.
Masie, widely recognised as a Bitcoin maximalist and innovation strategist, is expected to unpack how the convergence of AI and decentralised finance is reshaping economies, power structures, and the very fabric of human interaction.
This will be done as he tackles the Digital Clash of Civilisations — Opportunities and Risks from Bitcoin and AI.
He is known for his bold insights and ability to connect technology to real-world transformation and joins a stellar line-up of speakers at the festival, representing diverse industries from technology and finance to agriculture and investment at the festival.
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Masie is a pioneering South African technologist, entrepreneur and futurist with over three decades at the forefront of digital innovation.
His career began in the early 1990s as a software developer at one of South Africa’s largest telecommunications company, followed by technology leadership roles at a major technology integrator.
He went on to launch his own start-up, leading him to the United States tech scene in 1997, where he spent seven years immersed in Silicon Valley’s ecosystem of innovation at Novell’s HQ in Utah.
Upon returning to South Africa in 2004 as managing director of Novell Sub-Saharan Africa, Stafford later established Google’s first presence in the country in 2006, serving as its founding country manager.
He later launched Thumbzup that invented the Payment Pebble, a world-first globally adopted fintech innovation backed by Visa Inc.
During 2014, he was first exposed to Bitcoin, sparking a lasting fascination up until today where he is known in South Africa as a Bitcoin maxi.
Since then, Stafford has become a leading voice and investor in the African Artificial Intelligence, Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem.
He has angel-invested in and advised multiple AI and blockchain start-ups, co-founded BitMach, a Bitcoin mining venture in South Africa, and is currently launching a crypto audit and analysis platform in the United States.
