Silicon South Africa: Google Launches Incubator For African Startups | Hacker News Reader

Silicon South Africa: Google Launches Incubator For African Startups

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53 pointstimlindinct38 comments

Missed a word in the title: South Africa.

That changes things a lot. If it were in Kenya or Nigeria, this would be a bold move. South Africa, on the other hand, is not really all that much different to a middle of the road Western country.

As a result, this news is more on par with opening an incubator in New Zealand or Italy. Certainly cool to hear, but not really "Startups in the Congo" cool.

I would put it more on par with Brasil, there is still a large amount of poverty in SA.

"South Africa, on the other hand, is not really all that much different to a middle of the road Western country."

How many western countries have 30% unemployment, roving gangs of looters, and an average literacy level of 2nd/3rd grade?

roving gangs of looters

I've live in South Africa my entire life, but have yet to encounter a "roving gang of looters". Citation?

From people in the country I've heard that there is often a lot of violence that spills out of the slums around election time.

Not to mention that it fights with Congo for the title of rape capital of the world.

Thats BS.South Africa does have a high crime rate i agree but its not as drastic as people make it out to be.

You just say that because you've not lived in a country where you can walk the streets alone safely at night.

7 years in KZN 5 years In Jozi the Rest in Mpumalanga. Yes you are right at night safety levels drop but i think its like that in most developed countries too.But what are you doing walking at night anyways boet? Alone nogal

> i think its like that in most developed countries too.

See that's where you lack perspective. In safe countries (like here in Australia) you can name any suburb in the country and I'll go for a stroll at 3am with no fear for my personal safety. Why? Maybe I was out drinking and I'm catching a bus home.

From people in the country I've heard that there is often a lot of violence that spills out of the slums around election time.

Citation? The only thing I've heard about are "service delivery protests" that happen in townships, usually due to internal power struggles in the ruling party. The worst effect on the average middle class person, is that a road next to a squatter camp or township that they commute on may be blocked with rocks for a few hours, before police clear the scene.

South Africa does have a relatively high rate of violent crime (and a trend towards organised crime) and a corrupt ruling party.

But the people you are speaking to are exaggerating, and could be a bit disaffected, and are probably not the most reliable sources of information.

I've live in South Africa my entire life, but have yet to encounter a "roving gang of looters". Citation?

My wife was born in South Africa and always wanted to go back (her family left when she was a baby), so when an opportunity came to make a sales trip there she jumped at the chance. This was perhaps 5 years ago. One evening in Johannesburg she and a Brit were driving back from dinner when, stopped at a traffic light, they saw gunmen step up to a car ahead of them, one on each side, and force the passengers out with their hands behind their heads. IIRC, it was a one-way street. Luckily for my wife and the Brit, they were the last car in the queue and were able to make a u-turn and zoom out of there.

Was that a "roving gang of looters"? I don't know, but they exemplify Alex's point.

No, that's an example of a hijacking, not a roving gang of looters. Here in SA, hijackings are a risk. Burglaries are a risk. Government corruption, a risk. Roving gangs of looters...not a risk.

SA is a country with reasonably developed cities surrounded by huge rural stretches, at the bottom of the wildest continent in the world. Hard to generalise. However, the biggest challenge for a software startup is more likely to be "raise our game" rather than "avoid the next roving gang of thugs". :)

Middle class South Africa, (still largely white), is pretty Westernised. Private (and semi-private) schools, private hospitals, high end shopping malls, cheap domestic labour - those would be better descriptors for the South Africa most programmers experience.

While South Africa is more industrialized than other African countries, I think you are selling Google short here. They are intentionally expanding to the African continent- a hugely populous region currently under-served. While South Africa might be more developed than the rest of the continent, people there must undoubtably know the African market better than Googlers in Silicon Valley. Seems like a smart move to capture a growing mobile market.

Having an incubator in South Africa is actually more noteworthy than if it were "Startups in the Congo".

Here in South Africa, as other commenters pointed, we still don't have a strong software industry, neither from the academic side, nor from the hacker culture side.

However, in comparison to other African countries, we have a developed infrastructure. We have fast broadband access (although only recently), and access to current technology (smartphones etc), which is not as much the case in north african countries. That means that the sort of startups could be on the same global level, as opposed to targeting different (region specific) problems or technology.

We also have strong universities that could become strong software universities, given enough pressure.

One other significant difference that I've come to realize after lots of thinking about it, is that South Africa is one of the very few countries in the world that is first language English...outside of America and England (Australia would be the other). This obviously makes a huge difference in terms of potential for first class membership in the same industry / network. So to some degree we have had South Africa almost hiding away as an unattended asset in this regard. This is probably acts as a large hurdle in European / Asian / other African countries and puts SA in a different category.

Also noteworthy, is the fact that (as far as I know) this is Google first proper incubator project anywhere in the world. Viewing this as part of Google's "Africa Project", for all these reasons, would be looking at it from completely the wrong point of view (IMO).

This is awesome!!!! Calling SA just Africa is not cool in the title, the economies of African countries vary as much as they do in the Americas (almost).

This is wonderful news though!!!

Hmmmm...

The software industry in South Africa faces several problems. Probably the first problem is that computer science teaching and research sucks. This is not my opinion but based on research (http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/EBIT-Innovate/Local%20sci...) – the relative citation index of computer science is at 0.57. Engineering is much higher (at 0.73).

This problem is compounded by the fact that the financial services industry absorbs the most talented of those who study computer science.

Another problem is the sheer expense of broadband internet connection. Hosting is too expensive for many would be internet start-ups. What is worse, internet start-ups cannot use the only competitive advantage that S. Africa has – fairly cheap unskilled labour (cheaper than developed countries, much more expensive than China and India).

Personally, I think the local electronics industry will do better (with medium scale production). Firstly, Engineering education is still a lot better than computer science (thanks in part to international agreements such as the Washington accord which ensures (some) independence of engineering councils and keeps the government and political meddling to a minimum). Secondly, it is not as affected by the problems (bandwidth) and can at least use some advantages (cheaper skilled and unskilled labour).

I know of two electronics companies which recently gained quite big multi-year contracts from large US companies.

In the long term I am pessimistic though – the quality of primary and secondary education is falling (according to international rankings such as TIMSS and other studies). This creates a problem feeding the universities. The quality of research in universities is also under pressure and decreasing in most technical fields (see linked articles and personal experience as a lecturer). Unfortunately political considerations are before academic excellence. The industrial economy relies on people qualified in technical areas – and it will follow the downward trend.

https://www.up.ac.za/dspace/bitstream/2263/14593/1/Pouris_St...

> Another problem is the sheer expense of broadband internet connection. Hosting is too expensive for many would be internet start-ups.

Fun fact: AT&T played a large role in f###ing SA's internet up; with dodgy political deals, lousy infrastructure support and horrific bandwidth caps.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/07/08/26/1642210/How-SBC-ATam...

[edit] Slashdot article link is dead, copy here: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/1090.html

Although this is for South Africa, Google is really taking initiative in Africa in general. I was part of an MIT student group that Google funds every year to go to different African countries/universities to teach a mobile programming/entrepreneurship course. I went to Rwanda last year and the experience was fantastic. The end of the class culminates in a business plan competition using the technologies and business ideas they have learned with the winners receiving healthy cash prizes to jump start their businesses. It is a pretty amazing program that has seen the birth of lots of successful companies. It's no surprise to me that Google is investing more into Africa.

Edit: Nokia also funds the program.

I am applying, but I do have a few small points:

- As seed capital goes, that's not going to get very far. It is, however, great that other aspects will be supported.

- Given the failure rate, likely worse than international par - that's not really enough ideas being sponsored to see many graduate.

- There are other incubators here, offering similar services (however, not Google's name as a sponsor, nor generally the capital)

- Competing internationally from .za will be hard. Perhaps prohibitively so. Ideas with primarily local applicability will be more likely to succeed, which means ...

- You should really be developing (and selling) a _business_, not an application.

I'd certainly be more happy to see investors pouring $40M into some local African project than into Color. (Though it won't happen, as they offer $20—50K.)

I doubt you need that much($40 mill) funding in SA. Look at Mxit for example do you think they need that much? What SA needs is younger people getting in on The Techscene instead of finding safe jobs at the Banks,Lawfirms and accountancy Firms.

As a South African, this is really awesome news!

There is however a far bigger problem than just funding here, I have never even heard of the Twangoo (Acquired by Groupon) mentioned in the article. I suppose its down to the almost total lack of any sort of hacker/startup community, and I don't know how that is going to be fixed.

I'm surprised you missed Twangoo. Facebook, Megavideo and my friends all blasted it at me. It's a popular site in SA.

I doubt Twangoo will be around in SA for more than 2 years.Group buying will never catch in SA until there is one online payment system that EVERYBODY uses as well confidence in eCommerce.

PS I read an article on mybroadband about false pricing by businesses on Twangoo.I feel that things like this will hinder the growth of the group buying model in SA.

I agree with regard to the payment gateway, but its been a very long time since I met someone who said they wouldn't use eCommerce. Most people I know do a lot of online shopping, and I am not talking about my tech friends.

Im fresh out of Varsity(UJ) and i have done surveys (informal) at varsity ,all the people i have surveyed (black,coloured and indian) have never bought a single thing online.I ask them why and they tell me ''We dont have credit cards'',i then tell them ''but you can use bank deposits '' they still wont budge.Now if these groups of people who make up majority of the population and aslo the group with the largest buying power(Gen Y) are not buying online;this means that eCommerce in SA has a long way to go.

I personal don't even regard our eCommerce Market as having begun yet.But i do shop online now and then. Im also working on a couple of projects and startups to address the confidence issues that the majority and youth have about the internet.

PS Iam a black Attorney lol

All true... But how many of them even have access to the internet, let alone credit cards?

One word OperaMini. That would be +- 11million. As for credit cards forget that people dont need those to buy online.Bank Deposits work. Just like New Zealand and China. I dont own a credit card but i buy alot from the Prophecy and Sybaritic I also got Paypal linked with my FNB. Moral of the story lets stop with the Telkom and Creditcard excuses and start building shit relevant to the Whole of SA.

I don't spend any time on Facebook, so I thought that may be a reason why as well, but I asked my wife (Who most certainly DOES use Facebook), and she had also never heard of it.

Are you refering to Twangoo?

WooThemes is from SA - http://mixergy.com/woothemes-adriaan-pienaar/

Woothemes I definitely know about, but again, I only learned about them through Mixergy.

Has any group done a similar thing to promote Indian startups? Sounds like a more sustainable and helpful thing in the long run. Give a man a job in your company, and he'll work for you for the rest of a life. Teach a man to build his own company, and he'll work for himself.

I can't wait till something similar happens in our country. This is pretty cool.

Google ought to also fund startups in Chile, Italy, and Australia. Lock down every single Mediterranean climate in the world.

Your point is flippant, but you do make an interesting point. There is huge demand for skilled programmers in South Africa, and very few skilled graduates. Most are employed in Johannesburg, and the majority are snapped up by the financial industry, as someone else pointed out in this thread. Convincing them to consider Cape Town will be difficult. Apart from UCT graduates, it will be interesting to see who else they manage to attract.

Cape Town is a great city (and the best run municipality in the country), but it lacks the dynamism of Johannesburg. I have to wonder if "tourist" considerations, rather than serious business thinking drove the decision to put the incubator in Cape Town.

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