iceaddis — Ethiopia's First Innovation Hub and Startup Incubator

iceaddis (Innovation, Collaboration, Entrepreneurship) was founded in Addis Ababa in 2011 by Markos Lemma, Florian Manderscheid and Oliver Petzoldt, three former staff of the German development agency GIZ who were inspired by a visit to Nairobi's iHub. It became Ethiopia's first dedicated tech innovation hub and startup incubator, running a co-working space and a six-month incubation programme called ice180.

By its ten-year mark in 2021, iceaddis reported having supported more than 160 entrepreneurs, incubated 45 startups, accelerated 31 more, helped launch over 75 products, and hosted around 300 competitions, hackathons and networking events. Partners cited across its history include GIZ, the Mastercard Foundation, USAID, the British Council, Ethiopia's Ministry of Innovation and Technology, the EU and UNIDO.

iceaddis later packaged its model as a "Hub-in-a-Box" consulting service to help other organisations and universities build their own innovation spaces, extending it to South Sudan, South Africa and Somalia, and spawning a wider "icehubs" network including icecairo and icealex in Egypt.

Caveat: the cumulative figures above are self-reported by iceaddis and repeated consistently across two independent Ethiopian media outlets, but they are not independently audited. No public data was found on the survival rate, revenue or jobs created by alumni startups, so the evidence supports iceaddis's activity and longevity more strongly than its downstream economic impact.

Read the full analysis: https://www.iceaddis.com/