The fading facades of century-old buildings in a neighborhood of the Nigerian megacity of Lagos house a vibrant technology cluster that’s caught the eye of Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
The Yaba area, home to the Yaba College of Technology and the University of Lagos, is an emerging technology ecosystem — from fewer than 10 startups in 2013 to more than 60 today, including businesses
Story from Bloomberg. Story by Yinka Ibukun and Gwen Ackerman.
“Lagos, like other major cities such as Nairobi and Accra, is at the height of this exciting expansion in innovation across tech, with Yaba quickly finding itself at the center,” said Chimdindu Aneke, program manager of platform partnerships for sub-Saharan Africa at Facebook, which last year launched a hub space in the neighborhood.
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Fola Olatunji-David, the head of startup success services for Google Launchpad Africa that started a development boot camp in Yaba in 2017, said Lagos has a “buoyant, characteristic ‘anything-can-happen’ feel,” fed by budding entrepreneurs seeking to address
Yaba’s path into the spotlight started from the bottom up, bolstered by a grassroots movement that lobbied for support from a government not immediately sold on economic benefits of technology. The group’s first success came in 2013 when, anchored by the Co-Creation Hub, which now manages a space for Facebook and partners with Google to run programs, it convinced the authorities to waive taxes for a company, MainOne, that agreed to lay Yaba’s internet infrastructure.
“That was how Yaba was conceived: to demonstrate the power
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