Kenya and Nigeria traditionally steal the spotlight regarding African innovation centres, but South Africa quietly leads the continent with the highest number of such facilities.

The lead policy specialist with the World Bank’s ICT sector department, Tim Kelly, has put together a list in a blog post that illustrates how South Africa has Africa’s largest number of tech hubs.

Sourcing information from Kenya’s iHub Research, the World Bank and an African tech hub crowdsourcing website run by innovation space Bongohive; Kelly has attempted to put together a list that highlights over 90 such facilities.

Kelly adds that more than half of African countries have at least one tech hub while South Africa is the first nation to hit double digit figures.

South Africa has 18 hubs, according to the list, while Kenya and Nigeria respectively have eight and nine each. Ghana; meanwhile, also has nine such facilities.

Kelly, in a second blog post, has admitted that his list risks being incomplete. For example, Kelly's list excludes Johannesburg's JoziHub.

But it nevertheless provides a rough picture of the continent’s burgeoning tech and startup scene.

“The list of hubs is growing on an almost weekly basis, and BongoHive maintains a current list based on a crowdsourcing model,” says Kelly in his blog post.

“But tech hubs also disappear, particularly those that are based on informal gatherings of developers, or hackerspaces. A high failure rate is an inevitable consequence of innovation, and the testing of ideas,” adds Kelly.

Kelly notes that the “tech hubs vary a lot in their scale, objectives and business models” with some looking to be “fully-fledged ICT business incubators” while others have started their lives in universities.

African governments; though, are looking to get more involved in tech hubs, explains Kelly.

“Increasingly, governments are seeking to get directly involved in funding tech hubs, attracted in part by the jobs that can be created, particularly for young people, or the chance to create a new MPesa, Kenya’s mobile money service,” says Kelly.

“Botswana Innovation Hub is an example of a government-driven initiative, now transitioning to a more sustainable model, with assistance from the World Bank under a reimbursable advisory services contract aimed at promoting economic diversity and competitiveness in Botswana’s economy,” Kelly adds.