The History of the Kenyan Startup Ecosystem

Kenyan culture is one that is rich in storytelling for learning and sharing ideas. However, most Kenyan innovations and great startup stories never get to see the light of day because we haven’t yet made a concerted effort to highlight them. I have set on a journey of telling the whole world what we are doing, to help us learn from our own stories as well as to help the world better understand our thriving innovation ecosystem. But first a little bit of history here and there -- please feel free to jump in and share your thoughts.

The trends and the future of the Kenyan entrepreneurial ecosystem are, like most living communities, highly influenced by its history. Over a decade ago, in the year 2002 after the general elections, Kenyans were considered as one of the most hopeful people in the world. This was after Kenyans managed to successfully vote out President Moi, who was in power for over 20 years. The country was ready for a new beginning and change was promised by the incumbent. This made it very easy for some people to come up with the small enterprises that they wanted to build. However, the reality was that there was no structure in this sector or anything that directly spurred entrepreneurship and innovation.

Kenyan ecosystem’s advent really began with the coming of mobile phones and undersea internet fibre cable in 2006. This sparked innovation and the birth of some of the world’s most transformative ideas. This year saw the birth of the innovation that the country has become known for, M-Pesa. M-Pesa opened up the country to financial literacy. Banks and savings were no longer a thing for the elite and rich. It also opened a lot of opportunities in the Fin-Tech space which led people to innovate around it, including mainstream banks. M-Pesa opened up the East African ecosystem.

This was at this moment overshadowed by the country gearing up for the elections in 2007-2008. Fortunately or unfortunately when we faced the post-election violence, it spurred a “crowdsourcing” innovation called Ushahidi. Ushahidi means witness in Kiswahili. Instead of relying on the limited capacity and reach of mainstream media, Kenyans could utilise this technology to share their own news updates, make urgent requests for help and highlight the atrocities that were happening in the country.

This has since been used all over the world including the United States election of 2016. This clearly indicated that Kenya had the potential of producing world class innovations and ideas. The founders of Ushahidi went ahead to launch the iHub, one of the continent’s pioneering co-working and incubator space, in 2010.

The entrepreneurial culture and the calibre of innovations coming out of Kenya made the Kenyan government take notice and support the entrepreneurial space, they even went ahead to start the approval of constructing the first Techno City in Africa in 2008 (Konza City). The city will bolster the innovative minds and facilitate employment in a big way.

Since then the government, the private sector and the public have been trailblazing on the startup and entrepreneurial journey.

Cities and countries like Lagos (Nigeria), Cape Town and Johannesburg (South Africa) overtook Nairobi (Kenya) as an innovation hub due to the countries resources and the private sector involvement. Hence the upcoming of KINGS (Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa) as the tech innovations hubs of Africa. Innovation, disruption and entrepreneurship as we can see do not happen in isolation. They need a lot of support from governments, corporate, industry experts and business.

This leads on to my next articles around how the currents state of entrepreneurship is in Kenya and what could be done better. I will also look into the role of each player.