Building A Thriving Innovation Economy
Africa is the most diverse continent on the planet. Africans and those of African descent are the most genetically diverse among all racial groups. There are at least 3000 ethnic groups and 2000 languages spoken in Africa. Africa is the second largest continent in the world, by land and population. Africa is made up of 55 countries with diverse climates, politics, religions, business environment and innovation cultures. Since inception, we have made a practice of constantly working with our community of hubs, friends and partners to understand their priority areas and pain points, and where these align with focus areas for AfriLabs and our members. The primary role of innovation hubs is to catalyse and sustain an ecosystem that supports communities to learn, build, guide each other, innovate and deploy solutions. How these ecosystems form and function may vary depending on the country, political environment, geographical location and so on. What is right for Niger may not work in Namibia; what is right for Nairobi may not be right for Kakamega even though both are in Kenya and only seven hours apart by road. AfriLabs turning 10 presents the perfect time to work with our hubs to re-evaluate models, collect data and make informed decisions on the type of hubs that will work and provide the biggest positive impact across the African continent. This may call for going back to basics and creating hubs as meeting points, conveners, teachers and community builders. It may call on us to redefine the hub success matrix and develop our own standards for expectations of African hubs based on what our diverse innovation communities needs are. It may call for increasing the capacity of hubs to support scientific and engineering challenges. Different hubs in different ecosystems will require different types of support.
efficiency, a desire for opportunity, a desire to create or identify new markets for solutions. Innovation hubs continue to be well positioned to offer these.
Each innovation community will have to determine the ideal structure for the innovation ecosystem they are building. AfriLabs role will be to provide best practices from our Research, Evidence and Learning, that will set new ecosystems on the path towards delivering effective programming and transformative impact. In this way, AfriLabs continues to fulfil its purpose to form, build, enable and strengthen hubs as catalytic agents that create opportunities for communities across Africa to find and build innovation and skill, and develop channels for deploying this innovation and skill in ways that work for them including entrepreneurship, public office, civic engagement, academics and so on. In re-evaluating African hubs, we will consider personas of different users, different funders, and different beneficiaries. We will also consider specialisations based on geographical location and needs of local communities as well as needs of specific demographics within those communities. Our efforts to re-evaluate African hubs will also interrogate acceptable evaluation matrices to consider when defining impact and success of hubs, and the effect of these hubs on their communities. In doing this we intend to collectively, with friends, partners, hubs, innovators and entrepreneurs, determine the standards by which we will hold ourselves accountable as African hubs working towards the Africa we want. Our hubs have had an incredible impact in the communities they serve. We have certainly seen this in the media and in the individual hub impact reports. We have heard the stories of Africa rising. The hubs and their communities are the heroes
What will likely be similar for innovation communities regardless where they are located or what the socio- political climate is, is a desire for relevance, a desire for
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