Formation 2010 Origin Nairobi, Kenya Executive Director Josiah Mugambi Founded 2010 | Purpose Hackerspace Founders Erik Hersman Founder Erik Hersman | |
Location Bishop Magua Centre, Ngong Road, Nairobi, Kenya Address Senteu Plaza, Galana Road / Lenana Road Junction, Nairobi, Kenya Hours Closed today SundayClosedMonday8AM–8PMTuesday8AM–8PMWednesday8AM–8PMThursday8AM–8PMFriday8AM–8PMSaturday8AM–6PM Profiles | ||
Inside kenya s ihub
iHub is an Innovation hub and hacker space for the technology community in Nairobi that was started in March 2010 by Erik Hersman a blogger, TED fellow and entrepreneur. This coworking space, in the Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Road, is a nexus for technologists, investors, young entrepreneurs, designers, researchers and programmers.
Contents
- Inside kenya s ihub
- Ihub startups
- Physical space
- Sustainability
- Events
- Research
- MLab East Africa
- Consulting
- iHub UX Lab
- Services offered at iHub UX lab
- Cluster
- Events held at iHub
- Speakers
- References
iHub was a pioneering incubator in Africa, but in 2014 was one of many technology hubs across the continent, with a dozen in Nairobi in 2015, and NaiLab operating within the same building.
iHub provides a space where young entrepreneurial members can receive mentorship, Internet connectivity and the possibility of venture funding through connections with the international venture capital community. iHub has been called the "unofficial headquarters of Kenya's tech movement".
iHub has a number of initiatives designed to build an ecosystem around the Kenyan tech entrepreneur: iHub Research, iHub Consulting, iHub Supercomputing Cluster, and the iHub User Experience (UX) Lab.
The space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers, designers and researchers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part vector for investors and venture capitalists, and part incubator.
The space was funded by Omidyar Network and Hivos. The lease is covered by Ushahidi and the 20 mb Internet connection is covered by Zuku. Wazi WiFi has also installed free Wi-Fi. Current partners include Intel and Microsoft.
Ihub startups
Physical space
iHub is located on the 4th floor of Bishop Magua Centre, on the corner of Ngong Road and George Padmore Lane, Nairobi, in the Upper Hill/Kilimani area. It is in the same building as another tech incubator, NaiLab.
Sustainability
iHub is trying various sustainability models, some of which double up as community initiatives. Current sources of revenue (outside of funding) are:
Events
iHub charges for some of the events that are held in the facility.
Research
iHub started a research arm in March 2011.
MLab East Africa
MLab East Africa (stylised as m:lab), is an initiative that "aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship within the Kenyan community, with a focus on Web and mobile services." It is not revenue generating for the iHub. It is a consortium of four organizations (eMobilis, World Wide Web Foundation, University of Nairobi, and iHub). It has had input from the World Bank Group's infoDev program, under its Digital Entrepreneurship Program that is "scaling Mobile Application Labs (mLabs) ... in Kenya, South Africa, and Senegal".
Consulting
Consulting is an arm built to both improve the skill set within the community and generate revenue for iHub.
iHub UX Lab
The iHub UX lab is the first open user experience lab in Sub-Saharan Africa. The UX lab has a mission to develop a user-centered design culture in Africa by helping the local community learn human centered design methods that put the user at the centre of product development. As it stands, most solutions are still built with a tech-centric approach and therefore do not fully understand and design for the users' needs and context. Inevitably, most of these solutions therefore fail to meet the needs of the user and therefore have minimal or no adoption.
Services offered at iHub UX lab
- Training on human-centered design methods
- A usability testing lab with a sound proofed testing space and observation environment to test products with users
- User experience research
- Design thinking and ideation (for groups trying to use creative thinking to develop new ideas and products)
The organisation believes that Africans have the intelligence and drive to solve their own problems, and that their job is to help start-up, corporates, social entrepreneurs and development organisations design smarter, contextualised solutions that have relevance and ownership with their users.
It developed and executed Tajriba, the first user experience month in Africa. During the month, it involved user centered design experts who helped with workshops for the local community (university students, start-ups, designers, developers, etc.)
Cluster
Building Africa's second high-performance computing cluster.
Events held at iHub
Speakers
Notable people to have given talks at iHub include: Marissa Mayer, Larry Wall and Vint Cerf.