In Nigeria, we have MTN, Glo, Zain, Visafone and other giants like Etisalat, Motorola, etc. We will need to find a way to reach them to give us what is very close to Pivot25. Pivot25 has emerged as a genuine innovation pipeline for the continuous leadership of East Africa in mobile app development, in Africa. How can this be done? Who will do it? Nigerian app developers, come together and chart a roadmap. There needs to be an order.
What is Pivot25?
It is an mlab initiative to bring focus on the Mobile developer and entrepreneur community in East Africa. m:lab East Africa is a consortium of four organizations aiming to be a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy. The consortium members and their roles are :
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- eMobilis, Education, training, accredition and certification.
- World Wide Web Foundation – curriculum and content, training and Education
- The University of Nairobi School of Computing and Informatics for rigorous academic research
- iHub for community interaction, development space, events and access to capital and markets
The consortium’s mission is “to facilitate demand-driven innovation by regional entrepreneurs, ensuring that breakthrough low-cost, high-value mobile solutions can be developed and scaled-up into sustainable businesses that address social needs”.
Activities and undertakings of m:lab East Africa will be guided by the following strategic objectives:
- Providing world class business and technical training to high potential individuals on mobile application development and entrepreneurship
- Facilitating demand driven innovation through rigorous and ground breaking market research
- Supporting developers and entrepreneurs in achieving their potential with a world class knowledge repository on ICT4D, business advice, couching, mentoring and professional services
- Providing a high quality and appropriately subsidized physical infrastructure for the initial operations of high potential start-ups
- Facilitating access to finance and access to markets for scale up of innovative mobile applications
- Providing quality assurance services for consumers and implementers of mobile solutions through a world class application testing facility
- Fostering competition for ideas among applications developers and entrepreneurs to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship
- Facilitating the replication of successful mobile applications, between countries, languages and operating systems.
- To maintain a regional reach, supporting the growth of entrepreneurs with a mobile focus in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Somalia and Southern Sudan
- Achieving profitability and sustainability within the first 24 months of operations