Outside of Silicon Valley, there are two types of tech ecosystem. The ones that have a nod to the global Mecca of tech in their names, and the ones that don’t.
Most people could care less what moniker an ecosystem goes by, but there is a small faction of people that really, really do. And some of those people really hate it when things appear to be named after Silicon Valley. You know, like Silicon Cape, Silicon Roundabout…the amount of polemic that this topic inspires is nothing short of amazing. I know people who can filibuster endlessly about this travesty of identity. No kidding.
Anyways, sometime in 2014, people took to calling the Yaba tech cluster, “Yabacon Valley”. I used the term a few times myself, in speech and posts. Which made some people in the private Silicon Africa group on Facebook really angry. Which is weird because the group is named Silicon Africa. But hey.
In any event, the anti-Yabacon faction of Silicon Africa will be chagrined to learn that Yabacon Valley now has a Wikipedia page. It reads like a press release, but the information is on point, even if Wikipedian purists won’t be too happy with the obvious boosterism. I’m pretty sure I know who wrote it. Naturally, their startup is in, er, Yabacon Valley.
What’s in a name? That’s up to you really. But if you’re ever in Lagos, are interested in a tour of the technology ecosystem, don’t have a lot of time, and don’t care about names, Yaba is definitely where you want to go. Hotels.ng, Paga, Konga, the CcHub, Slimtrader, Rocket Internet startups, Andela and MANY more are all there now, and mostly within walking distance.
