Co-Creation Hub, Africa’s largest technology innovation centre, in partnership with GSMA Africa, has launched a pan-African Internet of Things community platform to better connect different players in the IoT space.
Chief Executive Officer of CcHUB and iHub, ’Bosun Tijani, made the announcement alongside GSMA Head of sub-Saharan Africa, Akinwale Goodluck, on 29 September 2020 at the just concluded GSMA Thrive Africa event.
Dubbed ‘Building Wakanda,’ the platform is expected to facilitate conversations relevant to the growth of the African IoT ecosystem, build awareness about the work being done by various stakeholders and foster knowledge sharing and collaboration towards common goals.
According to CcHUB, to complement this thriving community, physical labs will be created across the continent to enable collaborators to build and test their ideas and solutions.
The first of these labs will open to community members this year at iHub in Nairobi, Kenya, making it the first open IoT lab in East Africa and the second on the continent.
In his remarks, Tijani shared CcHUB’s belief in the power of an ecosystem approach because of its inherent ability to allow every player to focus on what they do best, thus yielding higher quality solutions.
He stated, ‘‘We believe that for us to do great and sustainable things, we need to identify and bring together critical stakeholders who can put in resources to inspire new thinking, create awareness and support IoT innovators.’’
Goodluck highlighted the need for enterprises to rethink the way they run their operations and interact with the rest of the economy, especially following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all sectors of the economy.
‘‘IoT solutions will be central to efforts to improve productivity and efficiency,’’ he said.
