Speakers

Melvyn Lubega is an experienced technology entrepreneur and investor who has built businesses that serve customers on multiple continents. Most notably he built and scaled Go1, a leading technology platform used by 17,000 organisations and governments in over 60 countries. Go1 became the first South African unicorn (valued at +$2 billion) attracting over $450 million in investment from SoftBank, Salesforce Ventures and M12 (Microsoft Ventures) among other tier-1 international investors. Built through his passion for developing people, every 1.2 seconds someone somewhere in the world starts a course on Go1. Prior to Go1, he built, exited and invested in leading fintech companies in South Africa. He is a Partner at Breega, one of the fastest growing early stage venture capital investors in Europe and Africa, with over EUR600 million in assets under management, investing in disruptive technologies that solve significant economic and social challenges. He is also a referenced thought leader and invited speaker both abroad and locally on digital transformation, the future of work, venture capital, disruptive innovation, corporate governance as well as business strategy.

He has been recognized by Forbes and was the first-ever African recipient of The Lindas in 2021, Endeavor Global’s most prestigious accolade. The award is given by a community of 2,300 leaders from many of the fastest-growing companies in the world to the person to embodies the spirit of “dreaming big, scaling up, and paying it forward”. In 2023, given his success in building businesses from Africa that scale globally, Melvyn was recognized as a leading business person on the continent at the 11th All Africa Business Leadership Awards.
He began his career as one of Boston Consulting Group’s first consultants in Africa, where he worked in over 10 countries, advising forward thinking organizations on topics including financial inclusion and digital disruption. Today, he is a trusted advisor to governments and leading enterprises across Europe and Africa: serving on boards of listed companies as a non-executive director as well as on presidential and ministerial committees. His expertise are primarily focused on investments and the how to harness
the global transition to both digital and green economies.

Giving back and paying it forward resonate strongly with Melvyn. He serves on the Council (Board of Governors) at St John’s College, where he is Deputy Chairperson of the St John’s College Foundation Board and its Investment Committee as well as Chairperson of the IT Committee leading the school’s digital transformation. An advocate for bolstering entrepreneur ecosystems, in South Africa he serves on the board of Endeavor where he remains one of its most active mentors, and is part of the team pioneering the Startup Act, which aims to create a policy framework conducive for ambitious tech entrepreneurs and high growth businesses.

An actuary by training, he holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cape Town and postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford, Melvyn completed a double masters (MPP and MSc), receiving a distinction for his research into disruptive technologies in emerging markets.