Zambia’s tech community is quickly gaining ground thanks in a large part to the work being done at the BongoHive innovation hub in the country’s capital, Lusaka.

The name of the hub is derived from the local Bemba language word for brain, which is bongo, and the idea of a beehive. And the space is definitely living up to its name.

The BongoHive initiative, which began in May 2011, was as a result of a larger project launched by the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance (VVOB). The project is a six-year intervention and it was in the midst of this intervention that co-founders Bart Cornille and Lukonga Linduna began to put together a knowledge centre strategy.

“We did a lot of research into what that actually meant and established a think tank to see what the people would think would be best and how they would identify a knowledge centre,” explains Cornille.

The feedback they received soon pointed them in the direction of offline and mobile resources as local techies expressed a desire to work with equipment such as mobile devices, tablets and ereaders.

BongoHive initially began by hosting bi-weekly meetings as it faced the ongoing challenge of developing the skill sets of college and university students as it related to the developer skills on offer.

“The skill set for a graduate from college or university is still quite low when it comes to mobile application development of developer skills,” says Lukonga Linduna.

“What a couple of friends and I would do is to have meet-ups on weekends where knowledge could be shared. We would usually have a more experienced developer who would come in and train and some of our first sessions were very hardcore developer trainings,” continues Linduna.

According to Linduna, the focus has since changed to include more motivational events, focusing less on technical skills and instead on how to take ideas and build them into prototypes or actual products that can be sold. The area of entrepreneurship and so-called ‘out of the box’ thinking is one in which Lukonga and Cornille are eager to see BongoHive plug the metaphorical gap.

“We are filling a gap that the universities or colleges are not offering and these are hands-on practical skills and the need for entrepreneurship,” says Cornille.

An excited Linduna backs this up saying, “We are in the business of changing mindsets. It may take a few years but we are already seeing success stories. We are hearing from the guys in BongoHive that they are feeling more empowered now and not just in technical skills but also in learning how to think outside of the box and to view their environment differently in terms of the skills they have and how they can fit into solving the problems around them.”

One of the other initial challenges that the tech community battled with in the creation of BongoHive was the issue of a working space.

While similar hubs around the continent have been fortunate enough to find private corporate space, the Zambian crew was forced to think somewhat creatively. Thanks to the partnership with the education ministry space they were give access to their current location inside a public library, the next step was furnish the space with the necessary equipment.

“We have an internet connection which the Indigo Trust helped fund while another benefactor, named Brenda Davis, donated 15,000 dollars, which we used to purchase a variety of computers and test devices including an iPad, iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. This has how we are able to test the mobile applications which are being built,” says Linduna.

While happy in their current home BongoHive remains committed to finding their own independent space.

And while still less than a year old, the hub has quickly become incredibly popular amongst Lusaka’s aspiring tech entrepreneurs, and membership is growing rapidly. At the moment BongoHive runs on an open membership principle and has neither a vetting process or paid membership structure.

“Because of the past experiences with tech groups it was difficult to implement a membership model in which people have to pay, the space we use is public so we don’t pay for anything except the internet connection. This makes it a good environment to provide free service without asking users to pay,” says Cornille. Membership numbers are touching 300 while the BongoHive Twitter account has nearly 500 followers.

While the rank and file tech community has embraced the BongoHive concept, the two co-founders admit that convincing local organisations of its value has been quite difficult. Much of this reluctance has been due to an unwillingness to move away from a traditional approach and towards the idea of social innovation.

It was at the end of 2011 that a group of techies decided to develop an app that would coincide with Zambia’s rewriting of its constitution.

“The constitution app was only launched in May at the opening of Mobile Monday Lusaka and is available on Google Play. It’s interesting though and we have learnt quite a bit from developing that app,” says Linduna.

Looking ahead BongoHive believes the next crucial step is to get its own building and employ a permanent manager for the space. It has launched an ideas competition, called Ideas for Zambia, linked to the themes of agriculture, education and governance.

Cornille and Linduna are confident that the future is bright for the Zambian tech scene and that the potential is limitless.

“There are really very brilliant minds in tech here in Zambia, I have been working for almost 15 years in development and we have tried almost everything but I am most proud of this. The diverse technology and the things that are being developed here have the potential to impact internationally,” Cornille enthuses.

BongoHive began from scratch only a few months ago and has developed at such a terrific rate that it is inevitable that the optimism that Cornille and Linduna have the project will prove well-founded in time.