With a strong and growing start-up ecosystem in Kenya, one of the country's tech hubs, Nairobi Garage has announced the launch of its Business Services initiative.

The initiative is intended to help make the country's top professional service providers accessible to start-ups and small businesses at affordable rates.

The Tech hub, which regards itself as the largest in Africa, says start-ups need to receive more support and better value from service providers.

Members will have the opportunity to access accounting, legal, and leadership coaching packages, offered through specially negotiated partnerships.

"Even the best start-ups need access to key professional services - but it can be tough to identify the top providers, and agree on a reasonable fee. This can lead to start-ups failing to make use of vital business support services," says Hannah Clifford, Director of Nairobi Garage.

"The goal of leading tech hubs is not only to offer space and services to start-ups but also to create a large community of stakeholders (partners, start-ups, investors etc.) Social networks are often a powerful tool used by tech hubs to build up these communities," noted a 2016 GSMA report.

Kenya has seen an increased number of investors and innovators helping to boost its start-up ecosystem.

To mention a few, recently, an investment company called Wamda Capital recently awarded US$10.3 million to a Kenyan start-up platform called Twiga Foods.

The platform allows retail outlets to purchase bananas, tomatoes and potatoes, becoming the country's largest basic food distributor, having sold 55 million bananas alone and delivering over 4 000 orders a week.

M-Shule, an SMS and web-based learning management platform, was reported to have received investment worth US$40 000 earlier this month from Canadian seed-stage investor Engineers Without Borders Canada.

According to the GSMA report, Africa had a total of 314 tech hubs and incubation centres last year. This was more than double the figure recorded by the World Bank for the previous year (117 centres).

GSMA reported that although 50% of the tech hubs were concentrated in 5 countries (South Africa [54 hubs], Egypt [28 hubs], Kenya [24 hubs], Nigeria [23 hubs], and Morocco [21 hubs]), almost each of the other African countries have at least one or two active tech hubs.