Omidyar Network and The Indigo Trust to Fund New Social Innovation Center in Nigeria

REDWOOD CITY, California and LONDON, July 19, 2011 -

Omidyar Network and The Indigo Trust announced today their
support and intent to fund the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria.
The Hub is a non-profit, social enterprise centered around a shared
work space where stakeholders from multiple walks of Nigerian life
come together to collaboratively create tech-based solutions that
address social challenges facing Nigerian society. It will be
Nigeria’s first multi-functional, multi-purpose space dedicated to
the creation of social technology ventures. Omidyar Network will
grant up to US$200,000, and The Indigo Trust has provided a grant
of US$45,000.

The Hub will accommodate 50-60 tech start-ups at one time and
will provide pre-incubation services including: advice, training,
mentorship and access to funding through a network of local and
international partners. The Hub will also serve as a place for
stakeholders to meet, brainstorm, share ideas and collaborate
through partnership events, meet-ups, focus groups, hackathons,
competitions and talks by guest speakers.

The Hub founders, ‘Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe, saw first-hand
the impact of focused social innovation efforts through their
leadership in the Social Innovation Camp Nigeria and Tech in
Governance camp that took place this year in Nigeria. The camps
yielded a number of technology initiatives focusing on issues such
as government accountability, health information and crime tracking
and reporting. Their goals for The Hub include helping to stimulate
the creation of more than two dozen social ventures over the next
two years. The Hub will open its doors in August this year.

“The Co-Creation Hub promises to foster the development of
technology-driven social enterprises that will address many of
Nigeria’s most pressing problems,” said Stephen King, Omidyar
Network investment partner. “The Hub will provide the environment,
stimulation and connections to capital and expertise necessary to
help Nigerian entrepreneurs launch their social missions to improve
the lives of millions of Nigerians.”

The grant represents Omidyar Network’s latest investment in
innovative uses of technology for development and support of
entrepreneurship in Africa. It follows the recent creation of the
Africa Transparency and Technology Initiative and support of the
African Leadership Academy and the Africa Awards for
Entrepreneurship.

“We are delighted to support a venture which will create an
enabling environment for African-led innovation, contextualized to
local needs,” said Francesca Perrin, founder and director of The
Indigo Trust. “The Hub will bring together developers, innovators
and business professionals, creating the right conditions to
stimulate innovation and generate technology-led solutions that
improve governance and support development objectives across
Nigeria. We’re excited about the potential of Hubs. It seems
natural to us that people should come together to share technical,
human and social bandwidth.”

About The Indigo Trust:

The Indigo Trust is a grant making foundation that funds
technology-driven projects to bring about social change, largely in
African countries. The Trust focuses mainly on innovation,
transparency and citizen empowerment. The Indigo Trust makes grants
to African projects or programmes, or to organisations which
operate at least partly in African countries. We believe that
access to information for all empowers people to change their own
lives and communities. Fran Perrin founded the trust that she now
runs with her husband William. The Indigo Trust is one of the 18
Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (SFCT). The Trusts work and fund
autonomously across many different sectors and geographic regions
but share offices and administration. For more information see The
Trust’s blog: href="indigotrust.wordpress.com/">indigotrust.wordpress.com

About Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to
harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to
improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre
Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps
scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social
change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $448
million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that
foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation
across multiple investment areas, including microfinance,
entrepreneurship, property rights, government transparency,
consumer Internet and mobile. To learn more about Omidyar Network,
please visit href="www.omidyar.com/">www.omidyar.com.

Greg Pershall of Omidyar Network, +1-360-607-8901; or Dr Loren Treisman of The Indigo Trust, +44-(0)-20-7410-0330