A large group of students and faculty members pose in front of Simad University entrance, showcasing academic community.
Somalian incubator SIMAD iLab has undergone an upgrade and expanded its offering after making a serious impact on the local startup ecosystem in the five years since its launch. Founded in 1999, SIMAD University is a private university based in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. It offers a range of undergraduate courses, but five years ago revised its mandate to make it an “entrepreneurial university” with “social impact” as its primary metric. As part of this, it established a tech hub called SIMAD iLab, which has had significant impact in the years since. The innovation hub has so far incubated almost 50 startups, who have raised more than US$500,000 between them, not a small amount in such a nascent ecosystem. It also manages a micro-finance fund of US$3 million, through the support of DirectAid. Off the back of this success, the hub has now expanded, opening an innovation theatre, a creative digital studio, an executive space, and a dedicated space for startups and MSMEs.