Making African Tech Incubation Hubs Count.

We’ve been told times without number, that Africa is on the verge of a technological revolution. That is, if we get certain things right, then the technology sector, or more precisely the technology scene in Africa, will be booming. One of the things that has caught the attention of African policy makers are incubation hubs. Incubation hubs make it easier for people to gather together, share ideas, and hopefully raise enough capital to start their businesses. Some of the most famous incubation hubs include Ihub in Nairobi, Kenya, and hypercube in Harare, Zimbabwe. But can incubation hubs really lead to a tech boom, and ensure that more start-ups are created, and eventually lead to more jobs being created.

Incubation hubs are important in that they could stand in the place of angel investors and venture capital. Too often, many African entrepreneurs have complained that it’s next to impossible to raise capital, and therefore, their ventures usually face an early extinction even before they have started. For sure, there are some venture

capital funds such as VC4Africa that are trying, but the hard truth is that capital has not been as overflowing to the tech scene in Africa as it has in the rest of the world.

Still, one of the challenges of incubation hubs is in picking the winners. For established entrepreneurs, it’s very easy to pick the winners. The market simply decides who the winners are by accepting or rejecting your product or service. However, in the case of incubation hubs in Africa and elsewhere in the world, the winners are picked by judges, and sometimes, the winners may not meet the same level of enthusiasm in the real market. So then, the real challenge for incubation hubs is in ensuring that they are able to pick the right winners and that they don’t end up throwing too much mud on the wall and none of it ends up sticking.