01 May HUBIQUITOUS KICK OFF: Paving the Foundation for Disruptive Technologies in Tomorrow’s Digital Innovation Hubs

Posted at 10:59h in blog by
HUBiquitous project concept by Henry

DRESDEN, GERMANY – Today, we officially launched the HUBiquitous project, an innovative initiative funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020.HUBiquitous is an Innovation Action aiming at creating a joint Africa-Europe Startup & Innovation Ecosystem for long-term collaborations and partnerships. The project has the ambition to increase the technology level and capacity building of 30 local DIHs/TechHubs in 5 African countries.

The project proposes highly innovative concepts called Innovation Enablers (i.e. Solution Lab, Application Business Box and MeetHub online platform). The purpose of these enablers is to provide technical (e.g. IoT, AI and BigData disruptive technologies) as well as entrepreneurial development skills to DIHs and startups/entrepreneurs. Thanks to these Innovation Enablers, the project will further demonstrate and build the local innovation and ecosystem capacity through 3 programs:

Talent Program

Building digital skills for local talents

Accelerator Program

Creating innovative applications and products

Community Program

Developing the Africa-Europe start-up and innovation communities

HUBiquitous Innovation Enablers and Programs will therefore support and empower the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystems from both continents with the development of a rich and sustainable collaboration between African and European DIHs. HUBiquitous consortium is composed of a partnership of Nine (9) entities, five European and four African, coming from nine different countries. It builds on the existing cooperation and partnership stemming from two previous H2020 ICT International Collaborations with Africa projects (WAZIUP and WAZIHUB). The ultimate target of HUBiquitous is to pave the way for long-term and sustainable innovation for the African DIHsThe HUBiquitous Innovation Enablers will,, support and empower the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystems from both continents with the development of a rich and sustainable collaboration between African and European DIHs. At the end of the 40 month duration of the project, we will have:

  • Developed 30 Solution Labs deployed in Africa, associated with each identified DIH;
  • Developed 5 Application Business Boxes addressing five vertical application domains in Africa;Onboarded 5000+ ecosystem’s partners and actors;
  • Developed and demonstrated 4 types of DIH services based on the Innovation Enablers
  • Mentored 75 “Train the Trainer” experts. Local “Train the Trainer” teams will be developed for each of the 25 associated DIHs;
  • Trained 150 local individuals within the Talent Program (i.e. online course + bootcamps & hackathons), to improve digital skills and competences for local young Communities.
  • Created 50 new products and services in the Accelerator Program. The Accelerator Program will launch two open calls to support entrepreneurs/startups for the creation of new products and services.
  • Organized 3 African innovation weeks, 5 softlanding mission events, 8 co-design events, 20 bootcamp and hackathons organized to support a strong community building.

The entities who will be responsible for the successful implementation of the HUBiquitous project are the following: INNOTEC21 (Germany), Orange (France), European Startup Network (Belgium) WAZIUP (Germany), Insomnia DIH (Spain), CLOUDPORT (Ghana), DAR TEKNOHAMA BUSINESS INCUBATOR LIMITED (Tanzania), INNOVATION GROWTH HUB (Nigeria), Kmt house ( District Egypt).

Coordinator

Elke Goering | INNOTEC21 GmbH
Elke.goering@innotec21.de