How Africa grew more than 200 local tech spaces

Before 2010, Africa had a handful of tech hubs. Botswana had its Innovation Hub; South Africa had its Innovation Hub in Pretoria; and there were a few more places that served to actively encourage the development of digital technology on the continent. Now, 5 years later, there are 220, according to an exhaustive list maintained by Fab Lab.

From the Center Songhai in Benin to the Hypercube Hub in Zimbabwe, there are tech hubs, business incubators, hacker spaces, and maker spaces, all of which serve as indicator species for the health of Africa’s tech ecology. They offer collaborative spaces for programmers, nerds, entrepreneurs, and designers who can usually join on an affordable sliding scale and gain access to excellent connectivity, technology, and training.

The big question is, why? Why has this specific expression of the continent’s digital zeitgeist come out on top? How was it even possible?

Large scale technological movement in Africa has become possible because of a number of ICT elements that have only recently come together: improvement to high speed computing, advancements in material sciences, increasingly affordable connectivity, and the growth of fiber optic cable on the continent, including submarine cable systems.

Read more: The Daily Dot