Gearbox Lite

Gearbox is a new initiative led by Nairobi’s tech community to support innovative, hardware-based solutions to local problems. Many of Africa’s greatest challenges — providing clean energy to all, solving the sanitation crisis, building affordable housing, or achieving lasting food security — require hardware-based solutions. We believe there is no faster way to bring these solutions to bear than to give the next generation of African entrepreneurs the tools to design and build it themselves.

Over the last six years, Nairobi’s tech community has built an ecosystem to support software entrepreneurs to rival anywhere else on the planet. Led by companies like the iHub, Ushahidi, BRCK and Sanergy, many young entrepreneurs have realized that the same strategies — shared working space, affordable access to powerful tools, and connections to global resources — can benefit those developing new hardware technologies, too.

Gearbox is building that ecosystem. We are offering low-cost access to tools that most African designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs could only get by looking overseas. We are offering training in design, prototyping, and manufacturing tailored to the needs of entrepreneurs. We are connecting the worlds of engineering, design, development, entrepreneurship, and investment to pool our resources towards building sustainable solutions made in Africa, for Africa.