Legatum Center For Development & Entrepreneurship at MIT Foundry Fellowship Kenya Ecosystem Immersion

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT founded on the belief that entrepreneurs are critical to advancing inclusive and sustainable prosperity around the world, launched the Foundry Fellowship.

A first-of-its-kind fellowship for Africa-based founders who have scaled innovation- driven companies and find themselves at an inflection point in their entrepreneurial journey. The Fellowship brings Fellows together to consider their present and future leadership roles as entrepreneurs, investors, policy influencers and thought leaders building entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems.

Always Super grateful to Dina H. Sherif and team Felicia Appenteng Jacque Gasparek

Haitham Khoury Jennifer Brady for the opportunity to share my reflections and experience with the foundry fellows.

Key points of discussion were:

1-Unpacking factors driving Kenya’s innovation ecosystem and if the growth can be sustained with the current trajectory. My reflection here is that the innovation ecosystem has grown organically in response to addressing current socio-economic challenges hence the sustained good performance of startup addressing financial access and energy coupled with high ROI and short payback. Kenya needs to find to adopt a stakeholder collaboration model ie localisation of MIT Stakeholder Framework ensuring that critical stakeholders such as government, private sector and wealthy Kenyans see value in the supporting innovation outside of FinTech

2-Unlocking IP for commercial value. I shared current programs such as R2C program led by Dr. Tonny K. Omwansa, PhD at Kenya National Innovation Agency (KeNIA) but most importantly is the need for the innovation ecosystem to actively engage with private sector industry through Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) Kenya Association of Manufacturers to unlock RnD through startup corporate collaboration as opposed to the Silicon Valley ‘’Disruption approach’’

3-Sustainability Startup Funding model. Here the conversation centred around if there is available funding for startups, why startups with failed models continue to receive funding going bust after a few years among others. My reflections is that innovation stakeholders need advocate for recognition of startups in law to enable KNBS and CBK collect data on socio-economic impact of the sector in order for suppliers of capital be it individual or cooperate angels, pension funds, financial institutions to systematically allocate risk and better understand the sector. Secondly the ecosystem needs to engage CBK to explore development of risk models similar to what happened with green financing. Last but not least is if government of Kenya stopped borrowing locally which has continued to make Banks et al lazy with very little appetite to fund local startups or MSME

4-We agreed that Kenya and Africa in general must focus on building local ecosystems in Kenya as an example are counties. Focus must be on: supporting counties strengthen current MSME and Startup support programs, capacity building of county executives and legislators on innovation, greater collaboration of stakeholders as mentioned under MIT Stakeholder Framework, alignment of all development partner programs supporting startups and MSMEs at the counties to ensure they are focussed on most impactful programs and not just fluff.

There is a lot more that we discussed but I concluded by inviting all foundry fellows to InnovateKenya Tech Summit 2025 where we hope to create a collaboration platform that brings national and county government and the broader innovation ecosystem to explore marination of innovation into government strategy and programs espoused in MTP IV and CIDPs/ADPs

Emeka Ajene Guy Brennan Iness Elamine Onyekachi Ginger-Eke Douglas Hoernle

Dupe Killa-Kafidipe Alim L. Linda Mabhena-Olagunju Hussein Mohieldin Thapelo Motlogeloa Wallace Ngige Ahmed Nounou Ese Owie Ayo Sopitan TENIOLA STUFFMAN