The guys behind 2wheels2africa, Jeremy Brown and Keith Lynch alongside Bill Zimmerman have started Limbe Labs, a not-profit IT training centre and incubator for IT start-ups in Cameroon.
Limbe Labs is based on Y-combinator / Appfrica model–identify good ideas, mentor, give seed funding and develop a sustainable business.
The guys also hope to develop a strong IT community by organising BarCamps which will bring together local developers and entrepreneurs to provide local solutions.
Limbe Labs is still in the early stages of development and you follow their progress on their blog.
(via Kerawa_Coder)
Great review
Limbe labs ! great concept.
— Francis Oghuma · 4 July 2009, 00:26 · #
wonderful they are good partners with afrovisiongroup.com and we have along way to go here in Buea/Limbe.
nice write up Agegelabs. keep the good work.
— mambe nanje churchill · 13 July 2009, 14:45 · #
This is great news. We started TECHDEV iNSTiTUTE website: www.techdevinstitute… a few months ago and we are very excited that many more Africans are joining the trend. Keep up the good work. Let’s create 1000’s of small businesses in Cameroon within the next few years.
— eric · 20 August 2009, 21:54 · #
It should be noted that it doesn’t have to be foreigners coming in to start up these incubators as has been shown with the examples of Limbe and Appfrica which were started by British and American, respectively. ‘Busy’ (Labs or Internet) in Accra was a homegrown model of an incubator that worked quite well in its time and I don’t see much ever written about it, which is unfortunate.
I don’t have any issue with Limbe or Appfrica and find they are doing a good job, but there can most definitely be Africans fueling innovation in Africa who just might understand what to fund better as they know the local markets/conditions the best
-miquel
— Miquel · 16 September 2009, 21:19 · #