This year, Kano entered the list of top 1,000 startup cities in the world for the first time. In the past four years, the city, known as the commercial capital of northern Nigeria, has seen a spike in startup activities, owing to the success of pioneer tech entrepreneurs and a buzzing tech community.
When in 2016 a group of four young people collaborated to build one of the first tech incubation hubs in Kano, they had no idea that this singular goal to participate in the tech revolution happening in the country would become the foundation of the states tech ecosystem. In eight years, this hub, Startup Kano, has become one of the biggest in the northern region and the entry-point into tech for over 50,000 youth in Kano, helping early-stage entrepreneurs raise over $1 million for their tech-enabled businesses.
A tech ecosystem in Kano is vastly different from ones in other parts of the country, like Lagos or Enugu, and while the growth of the former might have inspired Kano, that didnt make building any easier.
According to Aisha Tofa, co-founder of Startup Kano, there was no blueprint for them in the beginning as the environments were severely different. There was zero tech awareness in Kano communities, and despite its deep entrepreneurial culture, the concept of investing in technology rather than actual brick-and-mortar businesses was still largely absurd.
People understood technology only to the extent of using social media platforms like Facebook, she said. Anything outside that and they didnt trust it.
