The Anchor Institution Question: Who Holds a Ugandan Startup Community Together

Kampala’s startup community runs on a split arrangement. The institutions with land, licenses and statutes in the city (Stanbic, MTN, Makerere University, the Ministry of ICT) mostly fund and host, while the independent hubs that convene founders week to week are the organizations most likely to close. An institution anchors a startup community when three ties bind it to founders: it earns when they grow, a charter or standing budget obliges it to serve them, and founders hold a say over what it does for them. Few Ugandan institutions hold all three on the public record, and that gap is where an ecosystem builder’s work now lies.

Key Takeaways

• Kampala’s convening work sits with small hubs and their association, Startup Uganda, formed in February 2019 after a UNCDF meeting found support organizations working in silos.
• The institutions that stay put fund the hubs and host programs: Stanbic Uganda Holdings puts about UGX 2 billion a year into its incubator, and MTN Foundation Uganda has committed UGX 4 billion over three years to university hubs and the Nakawa hub.
• In a 2019 AfriLabs and Briter Bridges survey, corporate sponsors supplied 21 percent of African hubs’ funding and universities about 3 percent, and almost half of hubs were non-profit or donor-funded.
• Brad Feld’s Boulder Thesis says founders must lead and institutions should feed. The editors of Entrepreneurial Communities and Ecosystems concede that younger communities, Kampala among them, lean on institutions to convene.
• The Tether Table scores any candidate anchor on three ties (revenue, mandate and founder voice). The voice column is the one Kampala’s institutions have left blank.

Who convenes Kampala’s founders now

Start with the room. In January 2019, UNCDF called a meeting of people running Kampala’s hubs and support programs, and its account of the meeting is plain: support organizations were multiplying, yet “most ESOs are young and small, and work in silos, with scattered impact and perceived competition.” By February a larger group had formed Startup Uganda as an association of innovation and entrepreneurship support organizations. By October 2020 it had more than thirty members, and its first Kampala Innovation Week, in 2019, had drawn about 1,000 people. Its 2023 account lists joint programs run by Outbox, Hive Colab and The Innovation Village, and a seat in drafting a Startup Act with the Ministry of Trade.

That is the convening layer, and it is made of small organizations. The money and the buildings come from a second layer.

Stanbic Uganda Holdings set up Stanbic Business Incubator in 2018, and its chief executive said in April 2024 that the group puts “about sh2 billion” into it each year. MTN Uganda opened its mobile money API to outside developers; its FAQ puts go-live at about ten days, against more than two months before. MTN Foundation Uganda is now spending UGX 4 billion over three years on innovation hubs at Kabale, Busitema, Gulu and Soroti universities and on refurbishing the National ICT Innovation Hub in Nakawa. The Ministry of ICT built that Nakawa hub under NIISP, its UGX 13 billion fund for ICT startups, which pays seed grants, and at the program’s first expo in December 2019 the President directed ministries to buy local ICT solutions first. Government also gave Makerere UGX 30 billion for research and innovation in 2019/20 through the Research and Innovations Fund.

The first layer is the fragile one. Across the continent, the 2019 AfriLabs and Briter Bridges survey found that almost half of hubs were non-profit or donor-funded. Among roughly 90 hubs and builders who answered on funding, corporate sponsors supplied the largest share at 21 percent, and universities one of the smallest at about 3 percent.

The Boulder Thesis: founders lead, institutions feed

Brad Feld, the Boulder investor whose 2012 book Startup Communities gave this field much of its vocabulary, would read that arrangement as a warning. His Boulder Thesis has four parts, and the first two carry the weight: a startup community “must be led by entrepreneurs,” and those entrepreneurs “must take a long-term view.” Everyone else, from officials and universities to banks, is a feeder, welcome and expected to follow. In Morgan Clevenger and Michael Fortunato’s summary of Feld, feeders in most successful ecosystems “take a back seat to ‘leaders’ (entrepreneurs).”

His reasoning is strong. An institution convenes on its own calendar and for its own reasons. A bank’s program fills the bank’s pipeline, a ministry’s expo reports to the ministry, and founders learn to perform for whoever hosts the room. A community led by founders speaks a founder’s language, and sponsors struggle to buy that credibility. That is why founder voice gets its own column in the table below.

Feld’s own allowance is also generous. He says only a critical mass of entrepreneurs need to lead, giving perhaps a fifth of their time to it. Until that mass exists, someone else carries the room. A UN fund convened Startup Uganda; support organizations own it; its 2023 account thanks UNCDF as “the first champions of the cause” while the association “grows beyond UNCDF patronage.” Clevenger and Fortunato reach the same place from the American side. In their closing chapter they write that “in many younger and non-traditional entrepreneurial communities, clearly feeders and outsiders play a central role,” above all in lending the effort legitimacy. Kampala fits that description closely, so the practical choice is which feeders to trust with the room.

Immobile buildings, mobile attention

The phrase “anchor institution” comes from American urban policy, and its definition rests on one property. The version Gomez and colleagues quote from Community-Wealth.org in a 2019 Metropolitan Universities paper calls anchors nonprofit institutions “that once established tend not to move location.” Universities and hospitals are the classic cases, fixed to a neighborhood by land and mission, so the community can plan around them.

Run that definition through Kampala and half of it transfers. Makerere, Stanbic, MTN and the Ministry of ICT are as fixed as any American anchor. Their attention follows their core business. The Stanbic grant program with the US African Development Foundation targets small firms whose earlier funding proposals to financial institutions were declined, and then links them back to Stanbic and other lenders, which is a bank doing sensible banking. Makerere’s government money is for research that serves national priorities, and a startup reaches it through a researcher’s project. Meanwhile the hubs that convene founders every week, and the association that stitches them together, hold few comparable assets: their income comes from sponsors, donors and consulting work.

So in Kampala the organizations that stay and the organizations that convene are mostly different organizations. The American definition expects one institution to do both, and on that point the book’s picture does not carry over to Kampala. Nor does the public floor the book assumes beneath its anchors. In the same volume Morgan Clevenger and Garrett Munro write that “All U.S. citizens have access to Cooperative Extension Services” and to the Small Business Development Centers network. None of the Kampala support named above reaches a founder that way: the bank grant is for firms lenders turned down, the ministry fund pays seed grants to the startups it picks, and the research money arrives through a researcher’s project. Churches are the other institution every Ugandan town keeps for generations, and their role as anchors needs an essay of its own.

The Tether Table

Before a hub lead signs a partnership, or a founder gives a season to an institution’s program, ask what binds that institution to the founders it hosts. The Tether Table asks it three ways. A revenue tether means the institution earns more when founders grow, as a bank does when incubator graduates borrow or a telco does when apps built on its API carry transactions. A mandate tether means a charter, statute or standing budget line obliges it to serve founders, so the work survives a change of chief executive. A voice tether means founders hold a decision seat over what the institution does for them, such as a place on the selection panel.

Here is the table filled in for Kampala’s main candidates, from their own published material.

The bank and the telco hold the most durable tie, because their own revenue grows with the founders they serve, and that interest keeps the budget line alive in a lean year. The university and the ministry hold the strongest mandates and the weakest commercial reason to care whether a particular startup survives. The hubs hold the closest relationship with founders and the thinnest finances. The voice column is blank in all five rows: each institution’s published material describes what it gives founders and says little about what founders decide.

One tether makes a sponsor, and two make a partner you can plan around. An anchor holds all three, and in Kampala today that position is open.

What an interest cannot promise

Every tether in that table is an interest, even the mandate, which holds because a ministry must report to Parliament and a university must justify its grant. Building on interest is honest, and a bank lending to the firms it trained is doing good work well. Interests also turn when the numbers turn, and a community whose anchors are all interests will be held as long as holding it pays. Jeremiah bought a field at Anathoth while the Babylonian army was besieging Jerusalem and he himself was confined in the court of the guard. He weighed out seventeen shekels of silver, signed the deed before witnesses and before the Judeans sitting in that court, and had both copies sealed in an earthenware jar “that they may last for a long time.” On the table’s terms the purchase made poor sense, with the land about to fall and its owner in custody. It was a covenant act, made in public in front of the people who would live with it, on the strength of a promise that houses, fields and vineyards would again be bought in that land. The voice tether is the secular form of that public signature, and it asks the same of an institution: commit where the founders can see it, before the place has proved itself. The deed went into a clay jar in a city under siege.

Writing the founder seat into the agreement

A hub lead can start with a list of the institutional partners the program could least afford to lose. Mark their three tethers from what they have published and said, and pick the one with the strongest revenue tie. That partner has the most to gain from founders who succeed, so it is the likeliest to accept a founder seat on one decision: who gets selected, or what the curriculum covers. Put the seat in the next memorandum of understanding, with the founder named by the cohort rather than by the sponsor.

For a founder choosing between two programs, read the table from the other side. Prefer the host whose income rises when you grow, and ask in the interview who decides what the program teaches. The answer tells you whose calendar you are joining.

For Startup Uganda, whose members are support organizations, a founder voice could start small: a seat for founders on the Innovation Week program committee, chosen by founders. Institutions would still carry the room, with founders deciding more of what happens in it each year.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an anchor institution in a startup ecosystem?

An anchor institution is an organization fixed to a place by its land, mission or license, such as a university, bank, telco or ministry, that commits resources to the founders around it. In Kampala the strongest candidates are Stanbic, MTN, Makerere and the Ministry of ICT. An anchor earns when founders grow, is obliged to serve them, and gives founders a say.

Who funds innovation hubs in Africa?

In the 2019 AfriLabs and Briter Bridges survey of about 90 hubs and ecosystem builders, corporate sponsors supplied 21 percent of total funding, philanthropic organizations 16 percent, foundations and grants 15 percent, private investors 12 percent and venture capital 5 percent. Universities supplied about 3 percent. Almost half of hubs were non-profit or donor-funded.

Should founders or institutions lead a startup community?

Brad Feld’s Boulder Thesis says founders must lead and institutions should support. Clevenger and Fortunato add that younger communities lean on institutions to convene and lend legitimacy. In Kampala both hold: institutions carry the room today, and founders need a written, growing share of the decisions made for them.

What does Startup Uganda do?

Startup Uganda is an association of innovation hubs and entrepreneurship support organizations, formed in February 2019 with UNCDF as convener. It runs joint programs among members, organizes the annual Innovation Week, and took part in drafting a Startup Act with the Ministry of Trade. Its members are support organizations, so founders reach it through their hubs.

How can a bank or telco program become an anchor?

It already holds the strongest tie, because its revenue grows when founders grow. It becomes an anchor by adding the other two: a standing budget line that survives a change of leadership, and a written decision seat for founders, chosen by founders, on selection or curriculum. Publishing both lets founders judge the commitment for themselves.

Next Step

Which partner would your hub or program miss most if it left next year? Mark its three tethers from what it has published, and circle the blank column. That blank is the agenda for a strategy call with Joshua, where we draft the founder seat for the partner’s next memorandum, down to the single decision the seat should hold.

Related Reading

• Co-opetition for Ecosystem Builders: Accelerators, Funds, and BDS Providers
• University Incubators: An Audit of the Model
• Corporate Accelerators Inside East African Banks and Telcos
• Why Uganda Has No Startup Act, and What One Should Say

Sources and Evidence

1. Clevenger and Fortunato (eds.), Entrepreneurial Communities and Ecosystems: Theories in Culture, Empowerment, and Leadership, Routledge, 2022: feeders and leaders (ch. 2), the US Cooperative Extension and SBDC floor (ch. 6), feeders legitimizing younger communities (ch. 9).
2. Yesware, “Brad Feld Talks Success Factors for Startup Communities”: the four parts of the Boulder Thesis and Feld’s critical-mass and 20 percent remarks.
3. Gomez et al., “Purpose-Driven Partnerships That Transform People and Places: Cal State LA’s Anchor Mission,” Metropolitan Universities 30(1), 2019: definitions of anchor institutions, including the Community-Wealth.org definition.
4. UNCDF, “Changing the face of Uganda’s Startup Landscape: The Startup Uganda Story”: the January 2019 meeting, the silo diagnosis, formation, membership and the first Innovation Week.
5. UNCDF and Startup Uganda, “Doing More Together: The Coming-of-Age of Startup Uganda as an Ecosystem Builder”: joint programs, Startup Act drafting, and the move beyond UNCDF patronage.
6. BusinessDay, “African tech hubs get least funding from venture capital, university”: AfriLabs and Briter Bridges 2019 funding shares.
7. ITWeb Africa, “Africa tech hub ecosystem surges”: almost half of hubs non-profit or donor-funded; revenue streams.
8. Eagle Online, “Stanbic Business Incubator launches two programs to boost access to finance for SMEs in Uganda,” April 2024: about UGX 2 billion a year into the incubator; MTN partnership.
9. Eagle Online, “Stanbic Uganda Holdings, USADF offer entrepreneurs Shs1.5b in seed funding,” December 2023: incubator inception in 2018; grants for firms whose proposals were declined, linked back to lenders.
10. MTN Uganda, MTN Open API FAQ: public Mobile Money API, go-live in about ten days against more than two months before.
11. allAfrica, “MTN Foundation Uganda Scales Digital Push With Second Innovation Hub At Busitema University,” September 2026: UGX 4 billion over three years for four university hubs and the Nakawa hub.
12. Ministry of ICT and National Guidance, “Government to stop importing locally available ICT solutions,” December 2019: NIISP grants and the Nakawa hub; the directive to procure local ICT solutions first.
13. Makerere University News, “Mak rolls out Government Research and Innovations Fund,” August 2019: UGX 30 billion for research and innovation in 2019/20.
14. Jeremiah 32:1-15 (ESV), Bible Gateway: the field at Anathoth bought during the siege.