With CcHub‘s acquisition of iHub in September, Nigerian Bosun Tijani is on the helm of (arguably) the biggest tech community in Africa.
He is now CEO of each organizations, together with their strong membership rosters, startup incubation packages, world partnerships, and VC actions from Nigeria to Kenya .
One may conclude Tijani has turn into probably the most highly effective figures in African tech with the CcHub iHub merger. But that may be a bit of shortsighted.
The techie from Lagos nonetheless faces loads of challenges and unknowns in integrating two innovation hubs that lie 3,818 flight kilometers aside. Several sources talking on background over the past yr have indicated iHub was experiencing monetary difficulties.
Tijani supplied TechCrunch some preliminary particulars final month on how the acquisition will fall collectively.
But extra just lately he shared larger element on his technique for working the multi-country innovation community. An enormous check for Tijani shall be aligning the organizations on a path to sustainability. The buzzword is normally code for producing constant working earnings past bills.
The development of innovation areas, accelerators and incubators in Africa — which tally 618 per GSMA stats — is usually lauded as an achievement for the continent’s tech ecosystem.
But debate on how these focal factors for startup formation, coaching and IT exercise fund themselves is ever-present.
Grant earnings has served as a dominant income supply for Africa’s tech hubs — together with iHub in its early days — although many have labored to diversify.
That contains CcHub, in response to Tijani, who plans to proceed the development throughout the expanded CcHub, iHub group.
“When people talk about sustainability, we’ve been in business for 9 years,” he notes of CcHub Nigeria.
“We de-emphasized grant funding six years ago; most of our revenue is actually earned revenue.”
On earnings sources Tijani appears to be like to foster throughout each organizations, he named consulting companies (for corporates, governments, and improvement companies), occasions companies, and producing larger return on funding.
iHub has been energetic with startup seed-investments and CcHub has a portfolio of corporations by way of its Growth Capital Fund.
“Our size will become a major part of us being able to invest in startups and the longer we stay invested the more we will start to see significant returns and exits,” mentioned Tijani.
The CcHub iHub nexus may also use its measurement to leverage extra partnerships. Tijani and staff have already mastered gaining collaborations with large African and world tech names, equivalent to PredominantOne and Facebook.
Tijani will look to attach iHub to CcHub’s Google sponsored Pitch Drive — which has carried out African startup excursions of Asia and Europe — and probably take the present to the U.S.
“We’re talking about it,” Tijani mentioned, of a U.S. pitch journey. And this might result in a everlasting presence in San Francisco for the brand new CcHub, iHub entity.
“Beyond just a tour, we want to build strong presence in the Bay Area,” Tijani mentioned, however didn’t provide extra specifics on what that might imply.
So on the checklist of issues to emerge from the CcHub-iHub acquisition, African tech planting an enormous flag in San Francisco is a future chance.
A extra instant results of the union between the innovation areas shall be Bosun Tijani changing into an everyday sight on flights between Lagos and Nairobi.
