ICTworks by Inveneo

Although investment in Africa has traditionally focused on commodities rather than technologies, the explosion of mobile usage has opened up opportunities for small-business development.
Memeburn explores some of the continent’s incubators for entrepreneurs to consider before taking the next step. It’s worth remembering that the investor climate is often make or break when it comes to finding angel investors.

Nigeria
Enspire is more than an incubation programme as it aims to support the establishment of businesses that graduate from the initial stage of developing an idea.
The group’s vision encompasses seeing incubating business through to the forefront in developing new and innovative technologies, directly creating products and services, according to TechLoy.
In August 2010, the initiative incubated three ideas, including software engineering and web-portal solution projects that were carried out over a six-week period.
Nigeria has a massive population, which is ideal for cultivating a large market. It is projected by development economist Jeffery Sachs to serve as Africa’s powerhouse within the next two decades — if not sooner. In this context, the international tech media sector has given Nigeria some attention. It is evidently well deserved.

Ghana
Ghana is certainly not short on opportunities for innovation, and both the private sector and the state are committed to startup culture.
The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) trains and mentors aspiring African software entrepreneurs. The European-based company says its goal is the creation of wealth and local jobs in Africa. Working in partnership with the UN, the Ghana Multimedia Incubator Centre was set up in 2005, and aims to advance ICT entrepreneurship development through the incubation of ICT business startups.
The venture is in partnership with the country’s government and aims to help young businesses that have “ground-breaking and innovative ICT ideas to mature into viable business ventures”, according to Ghana Unlimited.

South Africa
Memeburn recently broke the news of one of the country’s most exciting ventures yet: Google’s latest venture for incubating South African startups.
Identified startups receive six months free office space and bandwidth, between US$25 000 to US$50 000 investment capital, access to Google mentors, and free publicity.
The venture, called Umbombo (Zulu for vision), has Cape Town as its home as Google is confident that the city is positioning itself as a hub for innovation and technology.

Egypt
Tahrir2 is a the first technology hub based in Egypt’s city of Alexandria and is backed by Mohammed Gawdat, Google’s managing director for emerging markets and businesses in Southern, Central, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
According to a report by ArabCrunch.com, Tahrir Square offers startups physical location, mentorship and funding. The amount of money placed in each business will vary, though successful entrepreneurs can look at around US$15 000.

Tanzania
The first phase of the Nelson Mandela African Institute for Science and Technology (NM-AIST) is complete. Construction of the institute’s vital structures has been under way at the site since August this year at a cost of Sh38.7-billion (around US$25 000), reports africanbrains.net. There are scholarships now available and applications are open. The centre may serve as an entry point for the East African nation’s startups.

Kenya
Kenya, Africa’s mobile rising star, is a growing hub that has attracted a number of East Africa’s entrepreneurs. Technologically, one can argue that Kenya has made the biggest strides when it comes to internet connectivity.
NaiLabs is one of four fresh incubators that has opened in Kenya in the past two years, providing fast internet connections with a specific focus on web, mobile and social media solutions. NaiLabs caters for a 100 startups per given period and, of those, the most promising 10 are incubated at the NaiLabs facilities, TechZim reports.
There’s no doubt that Africa’s incubators are growing, with new centres opening each year. The next five years may provide a snapshot as to how the investment in facilitating the next big innovation correlates with success. And, for investors who have chosen wisely, the payoffs should be good.

Source

Last week I attended the much anticipated iHub Nairobi launch, as well as participated in a pre-launch gathering of African tech hub pioneers (more on the latter in a follow-up post). A number of bloggers in Kenya and elsewhere have already covered the iHub event much better than I could have.

The event was aptly described as “Geek Heaven” with a broad cross section of techies, entrepreneurs, university students, journalists, hackers, financiers, researchers and digirati all converging on the top floor space overlooking the Nairobi skyline.

I later told Erik, half-jokingly, that you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting half a dozen TED Fellows as well.

Long before the March 3rd iHub launch, it became clear that something truly unique was taking shape here. Too often, young African software engineers, designers, researchers and innovative thinkers (often referred to as the “Cheetah generation”) labor in isolation and with limited resources, working on the same or similar problems that someone else, somewhere has likely already solved. Just as important, others may be venturing down a path filled with insurmountable obstacles and dead ends.

The idea behind the iHub - and other new technology labs cropping up across Sub-Saharan Africa - is to put a group of exceptionally smart “doers” under one roof, provide them with a top notch work environment, generate ideas at a rapid pace, filter out the dead ends, present the best candidates to investors and produce viable businesses (and success stories) along the way. The end goal isn’t to generate wild profits for the iHub itself under an exclusive brand, but rather to grow a stronger technology community that hackers, researchers, policymakers and VCs are naturally drawn to.

iHub opening party

It’s not a far-fetched idea that world class products and services can grow out of a place like the iHub. Africa is a continent renowned for innovations conceived and built from limited resources. Countless examples exist of indigenous technologies borne from constraints that have led to hugely successful solutions. Among them is M-Pesa, Kenya’s popular mobile banking and payment system, whose model has only recently been prototyped in the West.

Likewise, witness how Ushahidi, an open source software effort conceived in the wake of Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence has elevated Africa’s global tech status and attracted worldwide acclaim for its rapid deployments in conflict and crisis zones such as the DRC, Gaza, Haiti and Chile, as well as serving as an invaluable tool for election monitoring. Even Washington DC has Kenya to thank for the part it played in cleaning up after Snowmageddon.

When the “Why I blog about Africa” meme made the rounds of the blogosphere awhile back, I mentioned the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship I observed in Cameroon and elsewhere on the continent. I made reference to bearing witness to “an African Renaissance” fueled by ICT and led by a young generation of idealists.

It’s an open secret now that the African Renaissance is already in its early stages. The continent is undergoing a period of rapid transformation due in part to increasingly faster and cheaper bandwidth which is being utilized by young Africans armed with laptops, smart phones and bright ideas.

This video, produced by the iHub’s neighbors the 1Percent Club in the iLab, captures some of the buzz and creativity on the ground in Nairobi:

We’ve observed the same enthusiasm and immense potential for open collaboration in our coworking and incubation space at Limbe Labs. Ideas get cross-pollinated, professional networking occurs spontaneously and businesses are accelerated at a faster pace.

In a follow-up post, I’ll discuss some ideas brainstormed in Nairobi for how this emergent tech hub network can better support African entrepreneurs.

Why Open Collaboration Spaces like the *iHub_ Matter was originally published on 27months