Photographer: Waldo Swiegers /Bloomberg
Inside Nairobi's Tech iHub
In a four-story building on the fringe of Kenya’s capital, “Ninjas” and “Pirates” are working on finding solutions to problems. The young tech entrepreneurs, laptops plastered in stickers, dress casually and sit around big tables, on couches and sometimes on the floor at the iHub, a tech incubation center that has spawned 150 startups and created more than 1,300 jobs. Photographs by Waldo Swiegers.
Sophie Mongalvy
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Inside Nairobi's Tech iHub
In a four-story building on the fringe of Kenya’s capital, “Ninjas” and “Pirates” are working on finding solutions to problems. The young tech entrepreneurs, laptops plastered in stickers, dress casually and sit around big tables, on couches and sometimes on the floor at the iHub, a tech incubation center that has spawned 150 startups and created more than 1,300 jobs. Photographs by Waldo Swiegers.
Sophie Mongalvy
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A BRCK telecommunications provider logo sits on the wall of the hardware development workshop.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg -
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"The importance of ecosystems like this is to create startups that then create jobs, that create value and that give back to the economy," says Juliana Rotich, one of the trustees of iHub, pictured.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
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A young tech entrepreneur works with a laptop on a balcony overlooking the Nairobi skyline.
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The four-storey building houses startup incubators, a user-experience lab, an under-construction hardware-development workshop and a community space.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
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Tools of the trade including memo notes and cabling sits in the windows of the innovation center.
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Young entrepreneurs sit with their laptops and listen to a lecture.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
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A tech entrepreneur works in the m:lab East Africa center for mobile entrepreneurship and innovation, a consortium of enterprises within which iHub is one of four members.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg -
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Together, the entrepreneurs come up with concepts such as Ushahidi, the open-source software that’s used to share information and interactive maps to prevent conflicts and help aid agencies provide relief in disaster zones.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers /Bloomberg
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The “Ninjas” are the ones who develop ideas for products. “Pirates” are the people who go out and help raising cash for projects.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg -
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Ecosystems such as iHub hope to create startups that ultimately fuel the creation of new jobs.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
