Scaling Internet-Based Startups in African Markets

We’ve all heard of the idea that entrepreneurs are people who see a ‘gap’ in the market and then create a product or service to address that gap. The implication is that there’s a ready market there that will snap … Read More

Spot Check on User Experience Design in Africa with Shikoh Gitau

Shikoh Gitau is a pioneer in User Experience (UX) design in Africa. A Google Anita Borg scholar, she was one of the first African women to win the prestigious scholarship. Shikoh currently works as a UX researcher/designer for emerging markets … Read More

Renewable Energy in Kenya (Part 2): Policy Tools and Anticipated Effects

Originally posted on the Invested Development blog by the ID team

As we introduced in our last post on this topic, Kenya is using several policy tools to stimulate renewable energy development and grow its national energy supply. With rapidly growing … Read More

Energy in Kenya: Potential for Renewables (Part 1)

Originally posted on the Invested Development blog by the ID team

Kenya’s National Energy Policy is designed “to facilitate provision of clean, sustainable, affordable, reliable and secure energy services at least cost while protecting the environment.” The efforts come alongside … Read More

Technology Transforming Elections in Africa

This article is a follow up to a previous article on ‘The Influence of Technology on Governance in Africa‘ in which we observed how technology is shaping how governments operate, how citizens expect their governments to operate, and the interaction … Read More

Kenya’s Propensity to Crowdsource

About two weeks ago, following a strike by transport operators in Kenya, residents of the capital city Nairobi resorted to social media to solve the problem. The hashtag #CarPoolKE was a result of an emergent self-organised effort by Twitter users … Read More

Powering Up: Innovating to Solve the Cost of Energy in Africa

Oil and natural gas discoveries across multiple African countries have graced the headlines of many local and international media outlets this past year. 2012 has seen many governments in Africa experience renewed enthusiasm as prospects for economic progress loom amidst … Read More

Comparisons and Lessons from the Kenyan and Jordanian Startup Ecosystems

In 2009, Yahoo acquired Maktoob a thriving Arab online community that had 16 million users at the time, Mashable.com reported a suspected price of $85M

Sitting at a lively roundtable discussion between young technology entrepreneurs during Amman’sMixNMentor at Oasis500, a leading seed investor … Read More

The Silicon Savannah: Of Vanity Capital and Vanity Companies

This article was originally written by Jonathan Kalan for ImpactIQ.

NAIROBI – Here at ground zero for the new era of African innovation, investors are learning what an impact investing “bubble” looks like. Too much money, too few investment-ready … Read More

Government efforts, Spillover effect and the Kenya Tech Ecosystem

Just over a week ago, iHub hosted Dalberg, a consulting firm to collect feedback from the iHub community about the Konza city project spearheaded by the Kenyan Government and investors inc. the IFC.

In my opinion, I thought the session … Read More