The world today is all about solving problems or making it an interesting place to live in. This is the reason for the launch of many startups today. The quest for uniqueness, fame, and money is everybody’s dream. Lagos, one of the largest, interesting and busiest cities in the world has been ranked 7th amongst the top 10 emerging cities in the world to launch a startup. It’s no longer necessary to launch your startup in Silicon Valley — thanks to the internet, you can do it anywhere. Cities that were once business backwaters have emerged as formidable contenders in the new economy, in many cases leveraging the very things that once disadvantaged them.
A lack of infrastructure in places like Nairobi or Lagos, for instance — once places where it took years to get a fixed line — have skipped that generation of technology entirely and now offer tantalizing potential for a range of mobile services. Where should you launch your start-up?
“They are not held back by infrastructure issues and they’ve got nothing to lose by being in the startup space,” said Simon Squibb, CEO of Hong Kong-based Nest Investment. “There’s a whole opportunity around e-commerce or ed-tech.”
Without basic access to schools and banks, for example, sub-Saharan Africa has been at the cutting edge of ed-tech developments and mobile financial services. “They get forced into creative solutions and technology can often end up being that creative solution,” Squibb said. “They end up being these pockets of activity partly by the need to create the infrastructure that was never built.” Even so, those cities that will have the edge in the new technology race often have several fundamentals in place: a functioning education system, the rule of law and access to capital.
