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SECTORAL POLICIES
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Box 4.9 Tech hubs in Africa
The recent development of tech hubs across Africa (see
map 4.3) exemplifies how technology clusters create a
snowball effect whereby initial preconditions for success
generate additional, mutually reinforcing innovation
drivers. Though nowhere similar in scale to Silicon Valley,
technology clusters in Africa nevertheless demonstrate
that close collaboration between academia, government,
and the private sector can help develop a vibrant ecosystem
that facilitates ongoing innovation and market
entry. Tech hub clusters, such as in Cape Town, Lagos,
and Nairobi, show that once a certain threshold is passed,
new hubs and ongoing entrepreneurial activity can be
stimulated through enhanced access to finance, services to
entrepreneurs, and the demonstration effects of successful
“first mover” startups. The development of Nairobi’s tech
cluster dates to the founding of iHub in March 2010. Growth
has spread, first to the rest of the Bishop Magua Centre
where it is located (including Nailab, m:lab East Africa,
and the longer-established Ushahidi), and then to nearby
Strathmore University (where iBiz and iLab are located)
and along Ngong Road to the GreenHouse and 88 mph/
Startup Garage. a
As with the creative destruction of the original dot-com
bubble, many new startups, including some of the hubs
themselves, have overestimated market demand for their
products and services and ended up with short lifespans.
Thus the turnover of hubs and incubators in Africa has been
relatively rapid over the last five years, b but the growth
path is still upward, with a net increase of around 15 percent
since the start of 2014. Tech hub performance also depends
on context-specific dynamics, and the situation of the local
business community. However, the comparative success of
certain clusters, while others remain stagnant, suggests
that organic, multistakeholder ecosystems work better
than initiatives led by government, the private sector, or
academia alone.
a. Firestone and Kelly 2015.
b. http://www.gsmaentrepreneurshipkenya.com/GSMA_KENYA-AR2014-060214-WEB-SINGLE-PGS.pdf.
higher rates of service take-up. 145 As of mid-2013,
some 134 countries had already developed national
broadband plans, and a further 12 planned to do so.
Once developed, plans need to be regularly refreshed
and updated, ideally on a cycle of three to five years,
according to the United Nations Broadband Commission,
which has set a target that all countries should
have a national broadband plan by 2015, with at least
40 percent of households in developing countries
served with broadband. 146 National broadband plans
are also more effective when they include specific
benchmarks, or targets, that are relevant, measurable,
realistic, and actionable. For example, Estonia has set
a target that at least 100 Mbit/s broadband service
should be available to each citizen by 2015.
What seems to be important is not so much the
plans themselves, which vary enormously in quality
and scope, but the consultation process for devel-
oping them and whether they can be easily implemented.
In the same way that international internet
governance has evolved toward a multistakeholder
model, so too national strategies can benefit from
ensuring that there is an opportunity for all stakeholders
to express their views and that those views
are reflected in policy making and regulation. In
an era in which mobile subscriptions exceed the
world’s population, and with each internet user having
within easy reach a vast library of global knowledge,
ICT policy is too important to be left to the
bureaucrats. Broad multistakeholder collaboration
is the key. Equally important is the fact that digital
development strategies need to be broader than they
are today, strengthening the country’s ICT infrastructure,
but also the foundation underpinning
its digital economy—an issue explored in the next
chapter.