What is the Silicon Savannah?
A brief peek into Nairobi’s tech ecosystem.
The term “Silicon Savannah” has frequently been used to refer to the tech ecosystem in Kenya and is a play on San Francisco’s Silicon Valley moniker. Although the term was initially associated with the Konza Techno City project, it has come to represent the greater tech and innovation movement in Kenya. With many tech companies and ‘techpreneurs’ shunning the grand and ambitious Konza development, attention has shifted to the ‘grassroots’.
Today, the heart of the Silicon Savannah lies within a specific suburb. Tech startups, hubs and civic innovations cluster in Kilimani suburb, and specifically in the Ngong Road region.
Ngong Road and the adjacent Kilimani neighbourhood seem to be popular with innovation hubs and co-working spaces. Co-working spaces save the start up and the entrepreneur from the hassle and cost of office logistics and provide a space where they can interact with like-minded individuals and companies. Add to this the fact that most techies and entrepreneurs of the time are Gen Ys and late Gen Xers who are averse to the traditional suit-and-tie office culture and it’s easy to see why they are drawn to these hubs like ants to sugar cubes.
The number of innovation hubs and co-working spaces in the Kilimani area alone shows how evergreen the concept is with the constantly expanding tech scene in, Nairobi. Spaces such as the Nexus, Nairobi Garage, Gearbox, Nailab, Akirachix, the software engineering, talent accelerator and placement campus Andela, and the one that started it all, iHub, are all a stone’s throw away from each other.
A few probable reasons why many of these companies choose to set up shop in the Kilimani area include:
- Convenience The area has a number of shopping centers, social amenities, and access to major public transport routes to other business districts such as Westlands and the Central Business District (CBD).
- Relatively low human traffic Kilimani is not as hectic and as populated with foot and vehicle traffic as the CBD.
- Proximity to residential areas Kilimani is a middle income, mixed residential and business area and is easily accessible from other residential neighbourhoods.
- Synergy & organic growth The tech industry today is a collaborative process where even competitors share knowledge and resources.
Over the last 12 years this area has been transformed by the influx of young technologists, and remains the heart of civic tech innovation in Eastern Africa. We can only imagine how much it will change again by 2029.
BONUS: Map of some of the tech hubs in Nairobi
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AfricanCOMMONS is a platform that allows people and organisations in Africa to find African-built civic tech tools as well as submit projects that they are working on and showcase how they are re-using similar tools built across the globe in civic tech.
To find out more about the project, visit commons.africa.
AfricanCOMMONS is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through its local Code for Tanzania chapter, and the World Bank, in partnership with a coalition of local civil society organisations, with additional support from the International Center for Journalists(ICFJ).
