Appfrica

Last March (almost a year ago) I mentioned that a group of the various Labs in East Africa were forming a loose association of networked hubs that would serve two purposes: to pool resources, knowledge and lessons learned for entrepreneurs and to ultimately build a rotating fund that will be invested in East African tech startups. Any resources raised by this fund, will be reinvested into the fund.

This structure serves a couple of purposes. One, it allows any participating lab to share knowledge (even space and other resources) with other labs across the continent. Two, it allows the labs to operate knowing that there’s a seed investment fund that exists solely targeting the African tech sector, it’s talent and it’s businesses, that serves to match investment capital with startups. As a rotating fund, it won’t be dedicated to one specific city, region or country, but will take turns investing in different entrepreneurs and businesses in each. Finally, it’s decentralized in ownership, which means outside of the actual fund manager and investors, there’s no one member that has more of a say than the others in how funds are allocated.

The iHub is a co-founding member of AfriLabs. Erik Hersman writes:

In 2008 a couple of tech guys sitting around a table after Barcamp Nairobi first discussed the idea that eventually would become the iHub. In January 2010 there was another group, this time of people trying to setup their own labs, hubs and coworking environments in other countries across the continent.

It was there that the idea for Afrilabs was born: an association of these facilities across the continent. The association is for linking the spaces for learning, growth, and to provide greater mass for the entrepreneurs that we work with.

The labs serve as an accessible platform for bringing together technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area. Each lab shares a focus on young entrepreneurs, Web and mobile-phone programmers and designers.

And from the AfriLab blog, Ben White continues…

From our discussions it was made clear that there was not only a need to start working more together but to see how we can support new iniatives just starting out. And at the same time coming to the realization that the entrepreneurs with the best ideas still need support if they are going to successfully transition to the market. These are some of the initial motivations that have been transformed into the network organization Afrilabs. We have two primary activities where on one side we are looking to support the development of healthy/sustainable labs and on the other we seek to support the most promising entrepreneurs ready to escape their walls.

We are pleased to announce that the foundation has been registered and we are now working to secure the partners and support we need to roll out a number of exciting plans and activities.

Watch this space, let’s join forces and connect soon!

Hive Colab is a project that Appfrica International co-founded last year, dedicating our old offices and equipment to the entrepreneurs of Uganda to use as they wish. I’m excited to see it taking part as a founding member of AfriLabs. We’ve been working to get this going for a while now so it’s great to see it finally taking shape!