Missed a word in the title: South Africa.<p>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.<p>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.
Having an incubator in South Africa is actually more noteworthy than if it were "Startups in the Congo".<p>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.<p>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.<p>We also have strong universities that could become strong software universities, given enough pressure.<p>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 <i>world</i> 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.<p>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).<p>This is wonderful news though!!!
Hmmmm...<p>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 (<a href="http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/EBIT-Innovate/Local%20science%20needs%20a%20booster%20shot.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/EBIT-Innovate/Local%20sci...</a>) – the relative citation index of computer science is at 0.57. Engineering is much higher (at 0.73).<p>This problem is compounded by the fact that the financial services industry absorbs the most talented of those who study computer science.<p>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).<p>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).<p>I know of two electronics companies which recently gained quite big multi-year contracts from large US companies.<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.up.ac.za/dspace/bitstream/2263/14593/1/Pouris_State%282009%29.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.up.ac.za/dspace/bitstream/2263/14593/1/Pouris_St...</a>
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.<p>Edit: Nokia also funds the program.
I am applying, but I do have a few small points:<p>- As seed capital goes, that's not going to get very far. It is, however, great that other aspects will be supported.<p>- Given the failure rate, likely worse than international par - that's not really enough ideas being sponsored to see many graduate.<p>- There are other incubators here, offering similar services (however, not Google's name as a sponsor, nor generally the capital)<p>- Competing internationally from .za will be hard. Perhaps prohibitively so. Ideas with primarily local applicability will be more likely to succeed, which means ...<p>- 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.)
As a South African, this is really awesome news!<p>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.
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.