Sweden’s Norrsken Foundation is building the largest startup hub Kigali, Rwanda

For the past five years, the Norrsken Foundation in Sweden has helped social tech entrepreneurs in Africa and elsewhere solve societal and environmental challenges by investing financially in their ideas.

In one of its most recent ventures, the nonprofit is constructing the largest startup hub in East Africa in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.

The Norrsken House Kigali hub aims to house 1,000 entrepreneurs by the end of the year. It is banking on Rwanda’s relative ease of doing business and the country’s desire to position itself as a proof-of-concept country to attract them.

What is the function of startup hubs?

Startup hubs are critical to the growth of Africa’s tech ecosystem. They encourage technological startups to innovate. They assist businesses in scaling and reaching their objectives by providing them with working spaces, electricity, internet connectivity, and other infrastructure, incubation programs, business advisory and legal services, and other forms of assistance.

According to a report by the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator program and the Briter Bridges research firm, Africa had 618 tech hubs in 2019. Kenya’s iHub, Nigeria’s Wennovation Hub, and South Africa’s Silicon Cape Initiative are a few examples.

The Norrsken Foundation intends to establish 25 hubs around the world.

In Stockholm, the Norrsken Foundation already has a startup hub with over 300 entrepreneurs.

Norrsken House Kigali, which will open in December 2021, is the first of 25 hubs planned by the foundation around the world over the next decade. It currently accommodates 250 entrepreneurs.

According to Pascal Murasira, managing director of Norrsken East Africa, the hub’s goal is to provide entrepreneurs with infrastructure, networks, and capital. “Those three items are critical and much easier to access if you’re part of a hub rather than being dispersed and trying to survive on your own every day,” he told Quartz.

Murasira believes it is critical to establish hubs such as Norrsken House Kigali to address the three challenges and assist African startups in raising more early funding.

Rwanda is a proof of concept country

Rwanda is an ideal base for the Norrsken Foundation because it is easy to do business in, has good road and internet infrastructure, strong academic institutions, and is geographically well connected to other east African countries, according to founder Niklas Adalberth.

Rwanda could be an appealing destination for startups because it has established itself as a proof-of-concept country where companies can test their ideas and innovations before expanding to the rest of the continent. Notably, Zipline, an American logistics company, used Rwanda to test its concept of delivering medical supplies and blood to hospitals, and it has since expanded to deliver packages in Ghana and the United States, with plans to expand into Nigeria and Japan.

“Say you have a crazy innovation anywhere in Africa or the world and you want somewhere to prototype it, Rwanda is a perfect place to do that,” Murasira says.

The Norrsken Foundation also runs an accelerator, the Norrsken Impact Accelerator, which is a pre-seed program that invests up to $100,000 in early-stage technology startups.

The Norrsken22 African Tech Growth Fund, a $200 million tech growth fund for African startups, was launched by the foundation last month.