According to GSMA, telecoms are some of the pillars onto which African tech hubs stand. According to its recently released 2018 report, there are 442 tech hubs in African. Yet, 13% of these were partnering with mobile operators to ensure they thrive. (See: There are 442 active tech hubs in Africa, GSMA 2018 report)
The report pointed out MTN, Orange, and Vodacom as the mobile operators leading the pack.
But, Liquid Telecom, which was missing on the list seems to be slowly taking its place. The Econet Group company is securing partnerships with hubs across different African countries.
According to Oswald Jumira, Liquid Telecom Group’s Head of Innovation Partnerships, they are currently partnering with 10 tech hubs across 7 African countries.
They have partnerships with The Innovation Village (Uganda), Venture Labs (Uganda), Nairobi Garage (Kenya), Twig (Kenya), MSU Hub (Zimbabwe), Muzinda Hub (Zimbabwe), kLabs (Rwanda), Impact Hubs (Rwanda), NameYourHub (Tanzania) and BongoHive (Zambia).
Additionally, the company is also supporting academic institutions.
“We also support academic institutions across the continent and makerclubs such as Fundi Bots in Uganda and MakerClub in Zimbabwe,” Oswald Jumra wrote in an email.
Also read: Uganda’s Outbox Hub partners with Kenya’s Moringa School
On top of the above, Liquid telecom also has a couple of partnerships in the pipeline. These are with Pretoria Hub (South Africa), MEST Hub (South Africa), Sahara Sparks (Tanzania) and Impact Hub (Zimbabwe).
In all these partnerships, they provide products and services aimed at mainly startups. "We have built extensive infrastructure that African startups can leverage on to build their business," Oswald Jumira said.
These range from the internet, skills development, funding for events, funding to startups through partners, as well as services from partners like Microsoft, especially cloud products like Microsoft Azure and Office 360.
Oswald maintains that they are not running a CSR campaign or a non-for-profit program. Adding that these partnerships are profit initiatives that can self-sustain. “This is not a CSR initiative and is actually a profit driven initiative for sustainability,” he said.
“We believe partnerships are key to our growth into the future and African founded and nurtured startups are the ones we are working with."
Commenting on their partnership, Ck Japheth, the founder of The Innovation Village said that “Innovation is the new competition.”
“Our partnership has a lot of benefits for us and our startups. For example, if a startup is to launch a new market where Liquid Telecom is, they give them a soft landing. Additionally, we are about to roll out cloud services for startups,” Ck Japheth said.
While as telecoms and other enablers are continuing to support hubs across Africa, the GSMA report indicated that “in the past eighteen months, around eighty hubs have shut down across the two regions [of the Asia Pacific and Africa].”
Read more: Liquid Telecom releases report on “the generation that will define Africa’s digital future”
This is due to a lack of a perfect understanding of the uniqueness of each market. This implies that in all these partnerships, telecom companies ought not to only look out for their interests by providing anything they can. Rather, they should study what needs these hubs have and go ahead to provide exactly that.
“One-size-fits-all business models, no matter how widely tested, are not necessarily successful in such fragmented markets,” read part of a statement in the GSMA 2018 report.