Abstract
Driven by a wave of excitement, dozens of innovation hubs emerged across Africa in the 2010s. Yet critical voices soon began to surface, pointing out that start-up creation and development were mostly elusive. Aspirational voices across the donor landscape became pitted against a more hard-headed narrative, seeing hubs as nothing but ineffective incubators. This chapter sidesteps the question of whether hubs work and instead tries to clarify what work hubs do for African digital entrepreneurs. The chapter is thus an attempt at empirically grounding and testing both hopes for and criticisms of African innovation hubs. Specifically, the study examines in more depth how hubs’ supposed connection function plays out within the complex and challenging realities of African cities as contexts of digital entrepreneurship.
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Notes
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Since this study was conducted, Hub Accra and The Office have become part of the Impact Hub network, rebranding as Impact Hub Accra and Impact Hub Kigali. Muzinda Hub became an impact sourcing and training provider, moving away from the innovation hub model as it is typically understood in Africa.
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Friederici, N. (2019). Innovation Hubs in Africa: What Do They Really Do for Digital Entrepreneurs?. In: Taura, N.D., Bolat, E., Madichie, N.O. (eds) Digital Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa. Palgrave Studies of Entrepreneurship in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04924-9_2
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