Clay Shirky, celebrated author of Here Comes Everybody, a book on how the Internet is changing social behaviour, is a keynote speaker at the inaugural Tech4Africa conference, to be held in Johannesburg in August.

Shirky, who divides his time between consulting, teaching and writing on the social and economic effects of communication technology, is a sought-after international speaker.

Other well-known international and local speakers who will share a stage with Shirky at Tech4Africa include leaders from companies such as Twitter, Mozilla, Digg and Yahoo.

Tech4Africa is a Web and emerging technology conference and is the brainchild of Technovated MD Gareth Knight. The main conference will take place on 12 and 13 August at the Campus in Bryanston but there’ll also be networking events in Cape Town and Johannesburg prior to the conference.

Workshops are also planned for the two days leading up to the main conference.

TechCentral is an official media partner to Tech4Africa and the publication’s editor, Duncan McLeod, will host a panel discussion on telecommunications with high-level industry executives on the first day of the conference.

More information can be found at the Tech4Africa website.