The first stage of the Geonet project aiming to broadly understand the diversity of new practices in Sub-Saharan Africa’s knowledge economy is off to a good start. Beyond collecting data about the quaternary sector, IT-enabled services, and knowledge production in the region, we have started drafting the first articles. We will start by reviewing the… Read More »
“Ecosystem” has become one of the most common terms in tech innovation. It rolls easily off the tongue, probably because it has a communal connotation, and evokes ideas such as “collaboration” and “multi-stakeholder.” Where “innovation system” sounds like a technocratic term that emphasizes institutions and deemphasizes people’s agency at the grassroots, “ecosystem” sounds like a… Read More »
If you go to Rwanda and you’re interested in ICT and tech, chances are, you will soon pass through kLab, Kigali’s tech innovation hub. And so it was for me two months ago, when I started data collection for my research on innovation networks in Sub-Saharan Africa. I had a clear strategy: Through interviews, I… Read More »
New article examining historical and contemporary expectations of connectivity in East Africa
Also refer to related posts in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and innovationmanagement.se where colleagues and I expanded on some elements outlined in this post. Innovation and entrepreneurship “hubs” and “labs” are all the rage these days. A wide range of actors is convinced that hubs represent a genuinely new and exciting model for… Read More »
This third stage of the project centres on the specialised services being nurtured in Sub-Saharan Africa’s innovation hubs. Innovation hubs have been variously termed ‘tech hubs’, ‘business incubators’, ‘collaboration spaces’, and ‘innovation labs.’ They are locations in which programmers, developers, service providers, funders, and the public sector come together (usually in a space with large… Read More »