The innovation and entrepreneurship play an
ever-increasing role in growing Africa’s emerging technology ecosystem.
According to research by the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator, over the past two
years alone, Africa has seen the number of innovation hubs double. Whilst the
big 3 cities – Nairobi, Lagos, Cape Town – have been dominating the Sub-Saharan
growth narrative, the next wave of incubators are arriving from new ecosystem
cities in North Africa.
And the cities driving this growth, Casablanca, Cairo,
Sousse and Algiers, are serious about generating sustainable operating models
in the fast evolving ICT landscape to overcome core business challenges around
viability, future-proofing the business and most importantly, producing
continuous success stories.
Funding in North Africa is shifting from relying on
public spending
According to the Disrupt Africa Tech Start-ups
Funding Report 2017 (http://disrupt-africa.com/funding-report), funding in
African tech start-ups surged 51% to reach $195 million in 2017, as compared to
figures of the same period in 2016. When it comes to funding, the majority of
Africa’s tech hubs are grant funded by Governments and foundations, however
there has been a growth of social ventures and a trend toward for profit and
self-funded endeavours to fast track growth.
Rabeh Arezki, Chief Economist for Middle East and
North Africa Region (MNA) at the World Bank stated, “When it comes to
sustainable funding, African tech hubs tend to focus on demand-driven service
models that solve problems and support the specific needs of an ecosystem. To
succeed, a modern innovation hub needs to pinpoint a niche in growth areas and
deliver that proposition. Key areas ripe for development are start-ups looking
at improving Internet infrastructure, payment systems and education. These are
the types of businesses we see succeeding.”
Eric Chan, Digital Investment Expert, Xona Partners
remarked, ‘What’s important is that we are seeing the gaps in infrastructure
that impact technology development, digital entrepreneurship, and innovation
closing. What’s powerful is that technology hubs are facilitating the
development of that infrastructure. A lot of hubs are driven by forward
thinking, young entrepreneurs who are looking to improve their skillset. The
hubs are filling those skill gaps which will only continue to progress the
development of the local ecosystem in a positive way.’
Algiers has been claiming a highly favourable
investment climate and hosting major regional events like the upcoming Global
Smart Cities Technology and Investment Summit (http://bit.ly/2LONCiz) on June
27-28 2018, where 4,000 smart city leaders from around the world will discuss
how smart technology and ecosystems, smart data and sustainability and the
Government’s role in stimulating new technology are changing the landscape.
Founder of Smart City Algiers, Fatiha Slimani said "Algiers smart city
project is in a way our commitment to develop our city based on principles of
durability, sustainability and innovation. We’re trying to find solution to
what we call - the cascading technology trap - where technology moves way
faster than policy makers' decision making."
Innovation hubs are diversifying their scope
We are also seeing the new innovation hubs adopting
hybrid systems to enable sustainability. Many choose a mix of community tech
space and ‘paid-for’ co-working space, though corporate partnerships are
increasingly becoming more common, especially though mobile operators. Over 14%
of active tech hubs in Africa now supported by mobile operators like MNT, due
to the opportunity to scale quickly. Examples of this include Orange–Start on
in Morocco and Djezzy’s ENP Incubator Algeria (https://goo.gl/oRcmXf). Others
create their own private funds by taking equity in early stage start-ups whilst
offering business support.
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