Tech boom in Kenya: Africa’s Silicon Savannah

App developers at work in Nairobi, Kenya. PHOTO/File

Kenya’s fast-growing tech sector, dubbed the Silicon Savannah, already accounts for 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The Kenyan government intends to boost that share to 35 percent. Its technology exports have soared from US$16 million to US$360 million in the past decade. Much of these exports are born in tech hubs and incubators such as the iHub – one of six such hubs in Kenya and more than 50 that now exist in at least 20 countries across Africa.

Entrepreneurs in Kenya have given the world new innovations like the M-PESA mobile money application –

The tech boom was originally fueled by cellphones. Africa’s mobile connection rates, among the cheapest in the world, have attracted more than 650 million cellphone subscriptions, with the total projected to reach more than a billion by 2015.

As the tech boom gains strength, companies like Google, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia and IBM have flocked to Kenya to set up research labs or to support incubators such as iHub, where more than 50 startup companies have emerged since the hub’s launch in 2010. The iHub has become an icon of African geekdom, attracting more than 11,000 techie members to work and brainstorm ideas over endless cups of what its website boasts is “the best coffee in Nairobi.”

Read more: The Globe and Mail