Kevin Nyango
Tech Hub, Incubator, or Startups are words used to refer to a community’s formal or informal ways that bring together young talents to improve innovation. Tech hub creates a healthy environment to encourage and support the upcoming entrepreneurs through experimentation and provision of materials and moral support. Startups at the same time help in linking the entrepreneurs with other innovators and enterprises.
Therefore tech hub places innovators with the same idea at the same point to the problem-solving team in the economic infrastructure of the community. The centre helps to streamline ideas and to develop products in a faster way. The system is compared to putting people who are required to solve the same mathematical problem in the same place at the same time. The success of any tech hub is measured by the number of products sold or companies that have been developed because of its presence.
Silicon Valley located in California US still stands up as the best startup. Apple, Facebook, Alphabet (Googles Parent Company), Intel and Netflix are hosted by Silicon Valley. Most tech startups and established global technology players are found in London making it the leading tech hub city in the world. Singapore is gradually rising to cope up with the tech pressure. Cape Town is nicknamed ‘Silicon Cape’ since it’s the most developed tech city in Africa.
Ethiopia is posting a challenge to most African countries by offering a market to most tech innovation companies. The nation’s first startup platform Iceaddis was founded in May 2011 however there was a slow expansion into another tech hub. The xHub established in 2013 is a branch of the Center for African Leadership Studies, a leadership development and communication training center started in 2012 by Tewodros Tadesse. Tadesse and his colleagues believed that solution to Ethiopian problems would only come from the youthful Ethiopians.
It’s believed that xHub was formed to empower the countries younger generation with the right tools and surroundings to help bring out their ideas through technological entrepreneurship. The growth of Ethiopian economy should be supported by entrepreneurs’ innovations which will help create more employment opportunities for the increasing number of degree holders from the local universities. The hub is providing leadership, business plan development idea entrepreneurship, communication and presentation skills and training which are facilitated by global and local professionals, university professors, and entrepreneurs.
xHub platform has been able to train 6000 individuals and 70 organizations in 8 different countries. Initially, the platform was meant only to teach and improve the young entrepreneur’s innovations, but from May 2016 the platform has been working towards solving social problems through their social entrepreneur. In October 2017 the platform was able to offer solutions to maternal mortality, and currently, they are working on solutions to the rising rate of traffic accidents in the country. The platform has helped university graduates like Abrar Abdo to host their software’s on how to solve different problems. The platform has enabled them to promote their ideas, trained them and connected them to various organizations hence making them sell their products and boost their finances.
According to the Manager of the xHub platform Mr Elias Tadesse, the platform is establishing partnerships with other international and local hubs. In conjunction with the Kenyan hub (iHUb), Addis Ababa will be hosting the East African Hubs meeting.
