More than 700 Sage Business Partners across Africa gathered at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg for the Sage Business Partner Conference 2016.

The conference, featuring keynote presentations from Sage (http://www.Sage.com) CEO Stephen Kelly and Sage International President Ivan Epstein, took place from 26 to 28 January. It brought together Sage’s African business partners representing all of its major software solutions and brands at one venue for the first time.

It marked a significant milestone in Sage’s vision of becoming a true global market leader for an integrated portfolio of accounting, payroll and payment systems that address the needs of businesses of all sizes. Other speakers at the conference included Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp and a pioneer and maverick in the business incubation industry, social media law expert Emma Sadleir and Gilan Gork, South Africa’s Mentalist.

“Thousands of business leaders, business owners and financial professionals trust us to help them to focus on their business and leapfrog to the future. In turn, we depend on our vibrant, motivated and professional network of business partners to help our customers use our solutions to drive their growth,” said Ivan Epstein, President of Sage International and Chairman of Sage Foundation.

“We’re excited to be able to bring so many members of our business ecosystem together to share the latest news about our technology and solutions over the past three days. Together with our business partners we can help entrepreneurs and enterprises that create jobs and prosperity to turn their business dreams into reality.”

Stephen Kelly, CEO of Sage, was in South Africa to present at the conference, meet with African business partners, and support the African launch of Sage Foundation (http://www.sage.com/company/sage_foundation).  The Sage Foundation sets a new benchmark for corporate partnerships with charities, social enterprises and non-profit organisations through its innovative 2+2+2 model for working with the community.

“Sage is inventing the future for the world’s small and medium businesses, those true heroes of the global economy. Africa is central to that vision, and we want to build closer links with our network of business partners as they embrace the cloud, and so that they can continue to help their customers contribute to the growth this region is seeing,” said Kelly.  “It is an honour to be here to meet some of these partners, and to launch our global philanthropic initiative, Sage Foundation.”