Kevin Nyango
TechInAfrica – Technological innovations are changing the way running of business done, and the interaction with the world. Data and internet distribution is accessible in most parts of the world. It’s believed that technological innovations are going to play an integral role in the 21st-century economy. The US has been in the forefront of innovation for the most of the previous centuries. Silicon Valley is one of the US ideas; the country has been leading the rest of the world in churning out successful technology companies that have global impacts. In many years several countries have copied the Silicon Valley idea to boost their innovation moves. Silicon Fen in Cambridge and UK, Silicon Wadi in Israel, and Silicon Bangalore in India are some of the companies that are trying to replicate and compete with Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley was invented in the 1930s on a land that was leased to them by the new dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University. The property was a university asset. William Shockley who was an investor in silicon transistor at a research and Development Company Bell Labs come up with the name ‘Silicon.’ A branch of Silicon Valley located in San Francisco has been in apposition to produce more startup companies than the rest of the world coming together. The valley has created some of the successful names in the market like Yahoo and Google, Oracle, Sun microsystem, Apple, Cisco and Facebook that are used by most people worldwide.
A viable source of engineering talent, an active stream of venture capital funding, and entrepreneurial business environment have been the secret behind successful thriving of the Silicon Valley in the market. Stanford University has been pivotal in that it has been supplying the Valley with engineering technical know-how. VC funding has been making a mark in the Silicon Valley development by funding its ideas, hence making its plans to thrive in the market. The company has been viewing risks and failures as the primary point of their future development. They, therefore, embrace risks and failure positively.
Africa as a continent has been on the rise of striving to have its own ‘Silicon Valley’ replica. By June 2016 a total of 173 such companies came to the limelight. South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, and Egypt making it in the top five African countries with the most such companies. However, amongst the top five Kenya and Nigeria are the most promising technologies in the continent and hopefully, this can be realized soon since VC funding in the African states has been on a steady rise.
For the idea to succeed, Africa has to find ways of training their software engineers to minimize the cost of hiring. The continent has to view taking of risks and failure as part of development rather than seeing it as a loos only. The idea will just go through if the states can think big on soft wares rather than concentrating on solving the minor problems that already exist. All the stakeholders must pull together in the same direction to achieve the dream, failure to which it will just be but an idea.
