Mckevin Ayaba, Setup A Startup. Photo: Karolina Komendera

It’s a well-known statistic that by 2050, two in every five children will be born on the African continent. A lesser-known stat is that of the 11 million young people joining the continent’s job market every year, there are only 3.7 million new jobs being created. Clearly, something needs to be done, but to what extent can startups, incubators and innovation hubs play a role in this?

Mckevin Ayaba is the founder and CEO of a local non-profit called Setup A Startup, and says he’s seen a surge of interest in the sector over the last couple of years with any number of innovation centres and hubs opening shop. While he says these have an important role to play, ‘the majority are unintentional in their targeting of businesses and lack appropriate entrepreneurial programmes’.