Philip Kiracofe, co-managing director for Startupbootcamp Africa.
The future of innovation will come from Africa, said Philip Kiracofe, co-managing director for Startupbootcamp Africa, speaking at the ITWeb Digital Economy 2017 summit in Johannesburg yesterday.
Referencing, a study conducted by the UN, Kiracofe pointed out between now and the end of the century, the world's population will increase by four billion, about 90% of that increase coming from Africa. This will increase unemployment and poverty as well as make resources scarce, he added.
All the systems and solutions that are available today are simply not scalable to support that kind of growth; noted Kiracofe, adding it's going to require disruption across every aspect of life.
"So the obvious question is – who is going to provide the infrastructure, the services, the products, the systems?"
It is almost guaranteed the answers and solutions will come from Africa – and not from some far distant land where they simply don't understand how Africa works, said Kiracofe.
He asked how the continent can then build the ecosystem and programmes to ensure that the ideas and concepts are fostered into viable and scalable companies locally? "We need disruptive solutions – that's where start-ups comes in – their thinking is fundamentally different."
However, the current situation is still quite dire, the current viable start-ups in SA are very few, he said. The country has a very robust concept and early stage funding mechanism, but the later stages of the financing lifecycle are very limited, noted Kiracofe.
He believes the reason the US is attributed as the hub of innovation, is because it has mastered the innovation ecosystem – it has a reinforcing system for start-ups.
Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have access to funding, local universities that nature talent and also corporates as well as established entrepreneur innovators converge there, he said.
Most of these innovators are not American – they come from everywhere else in the world and reside in Silicon Valley, noted Kiracofe.
"Some of the entrepreneurs are South African. They dreamed big in SA, but they had to leave to find the support and resources to bring those dreams to reality.
"In fact, arguably one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the last century Elon Musk [Silicon Valley entrepreneur billionaire] is from SA. He wouldn't have achieved all of his success if he had remained in SA; he needed the supportive Silicon Valley ecosystem."
Supporting innovation ecosystems is the only hope SA has for moving forward and upward, said Kiracofe. "We need to scale up to tens of thousands of start-ups and SMEs – and we need to do it fast." This is where accelerators like Startupbootcamp Africa came in, noted Kiracofe.
The accelerator supports early-stage tech founders wanting to rapidly scale their companies by providing direct access to an international network of the most relevant mentors, partners and investors in their industry.
