Assessment of the Challenges and Prospects of Information Communication Technology Business Incubation Centers in Ethiopia

Abstract

Information Communication Technology (ICT) has been acknowledged by the Government as enabler for development, economic growth, and combat poverty. ICT Business Incubation Centers’ were established in Ethiopia as part and parcel of poverty reduction strategy for the country in generating employment opportunities and self-employment of young youth university graduates within the country. On top of this, promoting of the private sector through support of entrepreneurial skill development has been another strategy to exploit the sector’s benefit. For the country, supporting the establishment of ICT BICs is a recent beginning as the sector itself has not yet developed. The rationale of this study was to assess the challenges and prospects of ICT BICs established in four regional national states, Ethiopia. In this study the emphasis has been given to BICs, Tenant-companies, company members, and Service users of the companies. The analysis and discussions were mainly focused on contribution of BICs, the current status, sustainability and factors affecting it, and exploring satisfaction of service users. Furthermore, the analysis of the study has incorporated the ideas, and opinions of interviewees at different level including the informant interviewees, and feedback from group discussions. The study results reveal that with the given number of BICs employments generated and tenant-companies realized are very few, current financial position is weak, and contribution to rural development is not significant yet. The centers lack clear institutional structure and hierarchical accountability norm. The analysis of assessment of Tenant-companies result shows support from government is inadequate, access to credit is deprived which resulted for less performance in ICT services. The result of the assessment of Service Users shows there is satisfaction on the services/products provided by tenant-companies although service users recommend ideal office location for the companies. By and large, the findings of this study demonstrate, long way to go in enabling the BICs institutionally well-built, technically efficient, structurally well-organized, and financially self-sufficient.