Written by Jake Bright

The rise of Silicon Savannah

Most discussions of the origins of Africa’s tech movement circle back to Kenya, which laid down four markers between 2007 and 2010 to inspire the country’s Silicon Savannah moniker: mobile money, a globally recognized crowdsourcing app, Africa’s tech incubator model, and a genuine government commitment to ICT policy.

In 2007, Kenyan telecom Safaricom launched the M-Pesa mobile money product. It grew rapidly to become perhaps Africa’s most recognized example of technological leapfrogging: launching ordinary citizens with mobile phones right over bricks-and-mortar banking into the digital economy. Shortly after M-Pesa’s introduction, four technologists created the Ushahidi crowdsourcing app, a highly effective tool for digitally mapping demographic events anywhere in the world. Ushahidi has since become an international tech company with multiple applications in over 20 countries.

In 2008, Ushahidi co-founder Erik Hersman hatched Nairobi’s iHub innovation centre after identifying the need to create a “nexus point for technologists, investors and tech companies”. Since 2010, iHub has produced 152 companies and grown a membership base of nearly 20,000 techies. iHub influenced Africa’s incubator movement, inspiring the upsurge in tech hubs across the continent.

Another Kenyan milestone was the government’s 2010 completion of The East African Marine System (TEAMS) undersea fibre optic cable project. TEAMS increased East African broadband and led to the establishment of Kenya’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Authority.