Supporting start-up businesses at the Ken Saro-wiwa Innovation Hub

The Ken Jr Award for Innovation is a 6-month ‘incubation’ programme for aspiring tech entrepreneurs, providing a grant, free work-space and office amenities at the Ken Saro-Wiwa innovation hub, training, mentorship support, and soft skills to four teams of people who have a business idea and minimum viable product that they want to take to market.

Context

Nigeria has experienced significant flows of people from rural to urban areas, where opportunities to continue traditional livelihoods, such as agriculture, are limited. Alternatives are limited in urban areas of the Niger Delta, where a dependence upon the burgeoning oil and gas industry has stunted the growth of other industries. Without creating viable, alternative livelihoods, unemployment and poverty will undermine the potential for socioeconomic progress in these expanding cities.

SDN therefore partnered with the Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation to create the Ken Saro-Wiwa Innovation Hub (KSIH) in Port Harcourt—the largest city in the Niger Delta. The KSIH is a physical space intended to test and support the growth of livelihood opportunities in digital and online technology, through providing training, infrastructure, and mentorship.