m:lab East Africa is the region’s new incubation facility for entrepreneurs and innovators with a focus on mobile technology. The lab aims to facilitate demand-driven innovation by local and regional entrepreneurs, ensuring that breakthrough low-cost, high-value mobile solutions can be developed and scaled-up into sustainable entreprises that address social and economic needs. The facility’s services include business incubation, training, consumer research and application testing. The facility will also assist developers and entrepreneurs to access capital for scale up of their innovations as well as to access markets and business partnerships. The lab’s activities are aimed at helping to make the East Africa region a global hub for mobile innovation.
Anyone following protest movements in the last few years has witnessed how mobile phones have become an integral part of the mass organizing of protests and demonstration. In the Philippines, South Korea, Nepal, Bolivia, China, the Ukraine, the United States, and most recently Burma and Pakistan, cell phone have connected activists and ordinary people, giving civic voice to individuals and creating communication channels for organizing, mobilizing, and reporting.