Business
African Tech Hubs and Funds Hope to Bridge the Digital Divide
While iHub has connectivity among startups as one of its main objectives, other clusters have developed followed their own path. Bosun Tijani is co-founder and CEO of CcHUBNigeria, a innovation center launched in 2011 in Lagos that focuses on solving social issues. “From the beginning, we focused on social innovation and how you use technology to solve social problems,” explains Tijani. “The Internet has been the major driver of technology in Africa because it has removed the barriers for people to learn. The education system in Nigeria is still weak so most people learn by downloading resources from the Internet.”
Tijani believes the opportunities for technology investors and firms in Nigeria are huge – particularly in the wake of the rebasing of the country’s economy, which saw its GDP jump by 89 percent. However, young companies operating in Africa also see challenges ahead.
Sim Shagaya is the founder and CEO of Konga.com, Nigeria’s largest e-commerce platform, which was set up close to two years ago. “There is quite a bit of energy and some of it is justified but some of it is unwarranted,” he says. “The potential market is quite large but growth is constrained by the penetration of the Internet and broadband.”
There are human resources constraints too. “The quality of our educational sector is not very good,” Shagaya asserts. Shagaya concluded, “This means we need to convince many Africans who left the country who have the skills we need to return and we need to be willing to train our people.”
Source: Wall Street Journal
