She arrived straight from Kinshasa, in the democratic Republic of the Congo, and his eyes shine with excitement. “The iHub is a source of inspiration for the whole continent,” says Krystel Kalanga. I am coming to understand how to develop the same thing in us. “The iHub ? Incubator based in Nairobi, this platform is the most influential of the region, or even the whole of Africa.
It is in the premises of this distant cousin of the French Station F the Medef, on a visit to Kenya (with travel to which The World was invited to), organized a forum on youth entrepreneurship. A tribute, in a hollow, the skill technology in the country, a pioneer in the field of mobile payment with the famous M-Pesa system. It now counts 20 million users (with over 48 million inhabitants) and 900 transactions per second. This revolution led to others, such as M-Kopa, which provides access to solar energy systems that are managed by mobile.
“We always speak of the same stories, but there are many other innovations that are emerging here, insists Nekesa Were director of operations iHub. Kenyans love to invent a product based on our frustrations. “One of the successes of the incubator, the young woman cited Ma3Route, an application of real-time monitoring of urban traffic, valuable to Nairobi.
A cruel lack of funding
The iHub itself is much more than a collaborative workspace. The fact of its origin, first of which dates back to the 2007 presidential election. On the bottom of disorders and irregularities, a site activist named Ushahidi puts in place a tool for reporting on the Internet in any act of violence in order to stem the flare-ups. Three years later, his team gave birth to the iHub. The concentrate of the digital stage kenyan endorse today several costumes, between research laboratory, tester, application, and nursery…
