Building ICT Entrepreneurship Ecosystems in Resource-Scarce Contexts: Learnings from Kenya’s “Silicon Savannah”

Abstract

Abstract Establishing information and communications technology (ICT) entrepreneurship ecosystems in resource-scarce contexts is difficult because these contexts lack important preconditions, such as financial resources, established ICT sectors, and relevant human capital. Current theoretical perspectives and policy prescriptions about them stem mainly from the Global North and provide little insight into how to establish these conditions “from scratch.” In 2016, numerous African countries are looking toward the continent’s ICT vanguard, Kenya, and its gradually maturing “Silicon Savannah,” asking themselves, “How did they do it?” This chapter will shed light on the evolution of Kenya’s ICT ecosystem and explore the barriers and subsequent enabling processes encountered when growing an ICT ecosystem in a resource-scarce context. The insights offered here were developed over three years of doctoral research and especially through four months of qualitative research in Nairobi in 2013. The chapter provides a holistic perspective on the barriers and enablers encountered in the areas of culture, human capital, finance, policy, entrepreneurial support systems, and markets. Together with relevant theory on how ecosystems emerge and develop, these insights will be used to propose a model that explains how ICT ecosystems can emerge in resource-scarce contexts. The model shows how locally available enabling processes can be drawn on to substitute and establish the missing condition factors. Entrepreneurship support institutions, for example, emerged as pivotal enablers that can kick-start industry emergence processes, train human capital, and help establish conducive sociocultural norms. Further, the creation of initial market demand through developmental stakeholders and the inflow of expatriate entrepreneurs also emerged as enablers. The chapter ends with a call for critically needed research and specific recommendations for development stakeholders, governments, and practitioners in tackling current barriers in order to help develop ecosystems in resource-scarce countries beyond their nascent phase.

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