Navigating institutional voids in African entrepreneurial ecosystems: insights from innovation hubs in Ghana and Kenya

Over the last two decades, tech and innovation hubs have proliferated across Africa, becoming a ubiquitous feature of the entrepreneurial ecosystems in many African countries. A recent report revealed that over 1,000 hubs have been in operation as of 2024 (International Trade Centre, 2024), with various designations, including incubators, accelerators, innovation labs, hackerspaces, and co-working spaces. They differ in organizational forms, services, and business models (Züfle and Bickenbach, 2025), and “hub” has become an umbrella term with fuzzy meanings for entrepreneurs and researchers alike (Friederici, 2018; Züfle, 2023). At the same time, many hubs struggle with viability and sustainable business models, resulting in frequent failures (De Beer et al., 2016; Kolade et al., 2021). The high expectations for hubs to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in Africa (Atiase et al., 2020) are often contrasted with sobering on-the-ground realities (Friederici, 2018). Research has thus called for further investigation of African hubs, particularly regarding how they promote start-up development (Jiménez and Zheng, 2018; Littlewood and Kiyumbu, 2018).

Drawing on institutional theory (North, 1990), we argue that the entrepreneurial ecosystems of numerous African countries are characterized by institutional voids (Mair et al., 2012). While a supportive institutional environment is crucial for fostering innovative, productive, and sustainable entrepreneurship, in African countries, institutions such as regulatory bodies, financial systems, and legal frameworks show varying levels of quality and dynamics across African countries but also between regions and cities within individual African countries (Carlowitz, 2023; Pindado et al., 2023; Sydow et al., 2022). Weak institutional environments significantly constrain entrepreneurial activity and negatively influence the overall quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems (Isaga, 2019; Sheriff and Muffatto, 2015; Sutter et al., 2013). However, informal institutions often compensate for weak or exclusionary formal structures by enabling entrepreneurial activity through community norms and relationships (Simba et al., 2023; Omeihe et al., 2021). This institutional substitution reflects rational responses to systemic poverty, limited access to capital and education, and deficient state services (Adeyeye et al., 2023; La Porta and Shleifer, 2014). Therefore, scholars argue for a context-sensitive approach recognizing “informalisation” as a durable and functional feature of African entrepreneurial ecosystems (Simba et al., 2023).

Within the growing research field of entrepreneurial ecosystems (Acs et al., 2017; Wurth et al., 2023), some authors argue that formal institutions such as incubators and, in our case, innovation hubs can offer support services and infrastructure that are crucial for start-up growth and expansion (Apa et al., 2017). Building on mixed findings on the potential of African innovation hubs to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship (Jiménez and Zheng, 2018; Littlewood and Kiyumbu, 2018), we aim to examine the hubs' role within the entrepreneurial ecosystems, simultaneously overcoming institutional voids. We therefore raise the following research questions: (1) How do African innovation hubs promote start-ups in entrepreneurial ecosystems characterized by institutional voids? (2) To what extent can innovation hubs develop into key stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, facilitating the navigation and mitigation of institutional voids for entrepreneurs? To answer these two research questions, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 28 start-ups of Innohub in Accra, Ghana, and iHub in Nairobi, Kenya, between November 2023 and March 2024. Our multi-staged qualitative analysis employs open and axial coding to advance the analysis by integrating first-order concepts into second-order themes (Magnani and Gioia, 2023).

We contribute to the literature in three ways. First, by employing institutional theory, we expand the understanding of innovation hubs as institutional intermediaries that help overcome institutional voids by providing funding, reliable and cost-effective infrastructure, and services that enhance start-up and founder capacities while creating informal communities of peer learning and collaboration. Second, we challenge deficit-oriented views of institutional voids by showing that African hubs do not merely compensate for missing institutions but create hybrid support structures that integrate formal mechanisms and informal networks. In this sense, they are locally embedded institutional innovations rather than underdeveloped replicas of Western models, e.g. formalized incubators or accelerators. Third, we answer calls on the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial ecosystems by linking micro-level hub practices to broader ecosystem dynamics across several of Isenberg's (2010) dimensions.

Institutional theory, as articulated by North (1990), provides a foundational lens for understanding the structures that govern economic behavior. According to this framework, both formal and informal institutions shape the behavior of individuals and organizations. Formal institutions refer to codified laws, regulations, and enforcement mechanisms that create a predictable and structured environment for economic activity. In contrast, informal institutions encompass the unwritten rules of society, e.g. cultural norms, traditions, and shared values, that guide behavior and influence decision-making on a more implicit level (Williams and Vorley, 2015). Together, these institutional dimensions, namely, regulatory, normative, and cognitive, form a critical part of the environment in which entrepreneurs operate. A robust institutional framework not only reduces transaction costs and uncertainty but also enhances trust, collaboration, and innovation. It is widely acknowledged that such an environment is conducive to the growth of innovative, resilient, and sustainable entrepreneurial ventures (Khavul et al., 2013).

However, in many developing economies, including those in Africa, the institutional context is often marked by profound deficiencies. Mair et al. (2012) define these “institutional voids” as situations in which key market-supporting institutions are underdeveloped, weak, or absent. This includes deficiencies in regulatory systems, legal infrastructures, financial intermediaries, and other support structures essential for business development. These voids hinder the formalization and scalability of entrepreneurial activities by increasing uncertainty, raising the cost of doing business, and limiting access to essential resources, including capital, skilled labor, and information (Khanna and Palepu, 2010; Mair and Martí, 2009). However, some scholars argue that institutional voids spur alternative entrepreneurial responses and adaptations, fostering innovative, informal, or hybrid business practices tailored to the specific context of challenging environments (Igwe et al., 2020). Institutional voids, therefore, not only create barriers but also generate opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation (Doh et al., 2017).

Institutional voids are not merely peripheral constraints but central forces shaping the entrepreneurial ecosystem in developing economies. The concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, introduced by Isenberg (2010), encompasses a multidimensional system comprising policy, finance, culture, support infrastructure, human capital, and market dynamics. Spigel (2017) expands on this by conceptualizing ecosystems as complex configurations of localized cultural norms, informal social relationships, and formal institutional arrangements that collectively facilitate or hinder entrepreneurship. While formal institutions provide legal legitimacy, informal institutions offer social legitimacy, particularly where formal systems are absent, inaccessible, or ineffective (Simba et al., 2023). In practice, entrepreneurs often navigate between these two institutional spheres, and the congruence, or lack thereof, between them can significantly shape entrepreneurial outcomes.

While entrepreneurial ecosystem research has been consolidated over the last two decades (Acs et al., 2017; McMullen, 2018; Wurth et al., 2023), further studies are necessary to understand and explore the African context. This is because the African entrepreneurial ecosystems are characterized by a complex and dynamic interplay between formal and informal institutions due to state fragility, limited state capacity, and deeply embedded informal norms. Research has documented that institutional inefficiencies, including corruption, policy inconsistency, and bureaucratic hurdles, directly undermine entrepreneurial success (Pindado et al., 2023; Sheriff and Muffatto, 2015; Sutter et al., 2013). Legal frameworks are often unpredictable, with ambiguous regulations and arbitrary enforcement practices that deter business formation and scaling. Funding, which is central to business survival and expansion, is another area severely affected by institutional inadequacies, as entrepreneurs face limited access to credit, high interest rates, and a lack of formal investment channels. Additionally, infrastructural shortcomings, such as unreliable electricity, water shortages, and poor transport systems, directly influence the operational capacities of start-ups and SMEs (Adomako et al., 2019; Garrone et al., 2019; Isaga, 2019; Sydow et al., 2022). Some scholars conclude that the challenges of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in African countries are burdened with institutional voids: “In African countries, however, many of these institutions are ineffective, weak, incapable of performing their functions or else completely non-existent” (Atiase et al., 2020, p. 648).

Another stream of the literature has urged scholars to embrace a more context-sensitive view that foregrounds “informalisation” as an enduring feature of the African entrepreneurial ecosystem, in which informal institutions enable innovation, resilience, and survival. Across sub-Saharan Africa, where informal employment accounts for most economic activity, informal institutions often serve as de facto governance systems. In environments where formal institutions are weak, corrupt, or exclusionary, informal norms, community networks, and cultural traditions step in to facilitate entrepreneurial activity (Simba et al., 2023; Omeihe et al., 2021). This institutional substitution can legitimize otherwise “illegal” practices and enable economic participation in contexts where legal compliance is either impractical or counterproductive. However, this dynamic is a rational response to systemic socio-economic hardships, including chronic poverty, weak welfare systems, and limited access to education and capital (Adeyeye et al., 2023; La Porta and Shleifer, 2014). Many African entrepreneurs rely on informal institutions, such as family and friends, for financing their entrepreneurial ventures due to limited access to credit, lack of venture capital infrastructure, and high interest rates charged by formal banks (Carlowitz, 2023).

Among the formal institutions of entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa, innovation hubs and their equivalents have gained significant prominence and proliferated, particularly since 2009, according to a survey (Sarangé and Chuku, 2021). Countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana host a relatively high concentration of innovation hubs. Existing research has demonstrated that both Kenya (Atiase et al., 2020; Ndemo and Weiss, 2016; Wahome, 2023) and Ghana (Delle, 2022; Dosso et al., 2021) – where this study is situated – exhibit dynamic and evolving entrepreneurial ecosystems. However, considerable heterogeneity exists not only across national contexts but also within them, particularly between urban and rural regions. This underscores the need for a more nuanced understanding of sub-Saharan Africa's entrepreneurial ecosystems (Stam et al., 2025). To advance such a nuanced understanding, we focus on a specific actor, namely innovation hubs, and examine two leading urban hubs in Accra and Nairobi. Both share core features, including age and scope of services, and adapt their services, community-building practices, and external linkages to the distinctive institutional conditions of their respective entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Innovation hubs are part of a broader global trend in entrepreneurial ecosystems, where accelerators and incubators play an increasingly visible role in supporting start-ups and fostering entrepreneurship and innovation (Crişan et al., 2021; Deyanova et al., 2022). The diversity of innovation hubs and cognate structures in Africa, including incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces, makerspaces, or innovation labs, has led to conceptual ambiguity in the literature. Recent work has sought to clarify the nature of innovation hubs by developing more precise definitions and differentiation criteria. For instance, Züfle and Bickenbach (2025) define innovation hubs as “organisations that provide and manage facilities where (mostly) early-stage companies and entrepreneurs closely co-locate, typically in the same building or room, and that offer them, to a varying extent, support services, such as (…) training, mentoring, and financing services, to promote their entrepreneurial ventures or innovations.” Their categorization includes four key dimensions: (1) organizational form (e.g. government-led, NGO-led, hybrid); (2) types of services (e.g. incubation, acceleration, co-working); (3) target groups (e.g. early-stage entrepreneurs, sector-specific start-ups, marginalized communities); (4) business models and financing mechanisms (e.g. donor-funded, fee-for-service, or corporate-sponsored).

This definition of innovation hubs is sufficiently inclusive to encompass various fundamental types, including co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators. These entities differ in their participant selection processes, interaction structures, and the scope and depth of support services provided (Madaleno et al., 2022). Crucially, their orientation toward early-stage ventures sets them apart from serviced or managed office providers that primarily lease fully equipped spaces to established companies. Moreover, defining hubs as discrete, individual organizations excludes broader interpretations of the term found in the literature, such as “cluster hubs” or “country hubs” (De Beer et al., 2016). In addition, the definitional aspect of close co-location makes innovation hubs connectable to other established concepts such as discretionary spaces, which refers to flexible, self-organizing zones in which entrepreneurs can convene, experiment, and shape their entrepreneurial ventures within an ecosystem. The close co-location fosters informal relational dynamics, allowing start-up founders to curate interactions, place meanings, and community norms (Pauwels et al., 2016; Schäfer, 2021). Within entrepreneurial ecosystems, innovation hubs can be understood as prime forms of discretionary space. They grant founders autonomy to tailor how they engage, e.g. with whom, when, and in what configuration, facilitating not just access to services but enabling peer collaboration, trust-building, identity formation, and adaptive innovation.

Building on these insights and prior empirical studies, we argue that innovation hubs operate within broader contexts, often characterized by institutional voids, which are macro-level deficiencies in formal market-supporting institutions such as finance, regulation, or infrastructure (Khanna and Palepu, 2010). While these voids constrain entrepreneurial activity systemically, innovation hubs attempt to mitigate their impact by targeting support at the micro-level—namely, individual entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures. By answering calls on expanding the limited knowledge on the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial ecosystems (Cosenz et al., 2023; Roundy and Lyons, 2023), we advance the study of micro-dynamics and link them to macro-level factors. Drawing on Coleman's (1990) bathtub model, this relationship can be conceptualized as a movement from macro structures, in our case institutional voids, to micro-level mechanisms, such as individual mentoring and resource access, which in turn influence emergent macro-outcomes like firm creation and ecosystem development. We conceptualize innovation hubs as actors that translate structural gaps into tangible forms of start-up promotion, such as peer learning, trust-based networks, and investor readiness programs, empowering individual entrepreneurs to navigate and potentially reshape their institutional environment. In doing so, innovation hubs exemplify how collective organization can produce micro-level effects that, over time, feed back into macro-level change.

Previous research has found that African tech and innovation hubs are a complex phenomenon whose consequences for both entrepreneurs and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem remain largely unexplored (Züfle, 2023). Notably, the relationship between the emergence of innovation hubs and their role in fostering start-ups, particularly in the context of institutional voids, has yet to be systematically analyzed, drawing on an inductive and theory-building approach (Siggelkow, 2007). The inductive approach is suitable for examining complex phenomena (Suddaby, 2006) because it enables an in-depth understanding of the research context, while simultaneously ensuring a firm grounding in theoretical assumptions (Birkinshaw et al., 2011). In our case, the theoretical framework is the institutional theory, applied to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in African countries. Guided by this theoretical framework, which formed the basis for revealing key theoretical constructs, we were open to identifying different ways in which innovation hubs promote start-ups within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This theoretical framework is enriched conceptually by applying Coleman's (1990) bathtub model with the aim of relating the macro and micro levels to each other.

We conducted our research on start-ups that are actively involved and benefitting from the services offered by the innovation hubs. Following a replication logic (Yin, 2014), we selected Ghana and Kenya as our focus countries. We expect comparable mechanisms of institutional intermediation to emerge across differing national contexts. Both hubs in Accra and Nairobi operate in dynamic yet institutionally challenging entrepreneurial ecosystems (Sarangé and Chuku, 2021). By examining how each hub supports start-ups within these distinct settings, we aim to demonstrate how similar hub practices can generate convergent outcomes in mitigating institutional voids while being locally adapted to contextual specificities. Innohub and iHub were selected because they are both large, well-established innovation hubs that have been operating for over a decade and are widely recognized as reputable organizations within their respective entrepreneurial ecosystems. Both offer co-working spaces, acceleration programs, and employ administrative staff to provide business advice. We therefore argue that these two cases share many common characteristics, as outlined by Züfle and Bickenbach (2025), and are most likely to promote start-ups in innovation hubs.

The research team employed purposive sampling to gather data from start-ups across various industries, aiming to assess how they are promoted by innovation hubs. To sample start-ups with the highest possible theoretical relevance for our research (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), we purposefully sought officially registered start-ups that had existed for more than one year and that had been active for at least six months in the innovation hub to be able to assess the services of the hub supporting the start-up. Based on these criteria, all start-ups registered with the hub were approached by the hub management based on an invitation authored by the research team. As it is almost impossible to get in contact with start-ups in innovation hubs from the outside, approaching them through the hub management was a pragmatic decision. In the invitation, it was clearly noted that the interviews would be conducted strictly anonymously and that the hub management would not receive any information, which was reaffirmed before the start of the interview. Reflecting on these selection criteria, we recognize some limitations, as one might argue that we focus on the successful members of the hub. This seems to be acceptable in light of our research focus on the successful promotion of start-ups through innovation hubs and their position in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Yet, the alternate perspective on why start-ups fail could contribute additional insights. However, some of the interviewed community members reported on failed applications for acceleration programs, thereby increasing the variance of our data.

In total, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 28 start-ups at iHub in Nairobi (Kenya) in November 2023 and at Innohub in Accra (Ghana) in February and March 2024. The interviews, led in English, were conducted in the respective hub either in person or via secure video calls, lasting between 45 and 80 min. All interviews were audio-recorded with participants' consent and subsequently transcribed verbatim by the research team for analysis. While Nairobi and Accra are widely recognized as dynamic centers of innovation and entrepreneurial activity in Africa (Atiase et al., 2020; Dosso et al., 2021) and their respective countries, describing them as sites of “institutional voids” requires careful reflection. The term does not imply a total absence of institutions, nor does it suggest a lack of state presence or economic dynamism. Rather, following Khanna and Palepu (2010), institutional voids refer to specific gaps or inefficiencies in formal market-supporting institutions, including venture capital markets, regulatory clarity, or legal infrastructure for IP protection, that impede entrepreneurial scaling. In Nairobi and Accra, entrepreneurs often navigate fragmented financial systems, bureaucratic delays, or unpredictable regulatory enforcement, which can create uncertainty and reliance on informal mechanisms (Mair and Martí, 2009). Therefore, the concept is applied here not as a blanket statement, but as a heuristic tool to illuminate particular structural frictions that shape entrepreneurial experiences within otherwise institutionally rich urban ecosystems when compared to other cities and regions within Ghana or Kenya.

The majority of interviewees were the founders of the entrepreneurial venture and occasionally sales managers (see Table 1). We categorized the 28 interviews with start-ups across six industries. We opted to conduct semi-structured interviews as they facilitate consistency in questions and enable comparability between start-ups while also allowing for the emergence of unanticipated issues (Myers, 2008). The interview guideline covered personal and start-up information, hub selection and the entrepreneur's participation in hub activities, innovation, and the promotion of start-ups within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We kept the order of questions flexible and refined the guideline iteratively to accommodate emerging topics.

The analytical process was initiated in parallel with data collection, using an open coding technique (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). After transcribing the interviews, we utilized the software MAXQDA to attribute every passage with tentative codes. We followed an inductive logic to generate the codes directly from the data. This procedure was brought to a more conceptual level by assembling first-order concepts. In line with the Grounded Theory reasoning (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), we conducted several comparative analyses of the data. First, we examined whether the different parts of each interview are consistent. Second, we compared interview transcriptions with those of start-ups in the same industry, such as fintech. Third, we juxtaposed the transcriptions from all start-ups to evaluate our first-order concepts. Following this approach, we detected connections between the codes of the various interview transcriptions. We conducted this iterative process of contrasting and comparing data, codes, and categories until we achieved saturation (Locke, 2001). The first author was primarily responsible for coding the data. At the same time, the second-order themes, as well as the aggregated constructs, were constantly debated among all authors throughout the analytical process. Based on the consensual coding approach, in cases of diverging interpretations, the coding scheme was adjusted (Butterfield et al., 1996). Additionally, to elevate the degree of abstraction and further move from a descriptive to an analytical level, we generated theoretical memos to connect the insights from the data to prior literature. As a result, we were able to expand the validity of inductive theory-building and to reflect on our theoretical assumptions (Glaser, 1978; van Laer and Janssens, 2011).

While the number of interviews may appear modest in light of the large and heterogeneous population of innovation hubs across the African continent (Züfle, 2023), our research design follows a theory-building case logic (Siggelkow, 2007) focused on two leading hubs and their embedded start-ups. Accordingly, we aimed for theoretical saturation rather than statistical representativeness (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). During the iterative coding process, we observed that after the 23rd interview, no substantially new first-order concepts emerged, and subsequent interviews primarily refined and corroborated existing categories. Given the convergence of themes across sectors and between the Ghanaian and Kenyan cases, we deemed the final sample of 28 interviews sufficient to support the level of abstraction and theorization pursued in this study. To strengthen methodological transparency and validity, we complemented the interview data with secondary sources such as publicly available reports (e.g. International Trade Centre, 2024; Sarangé and Chuku, 2021). These materials were not treated as primary data but were used to triangulate interview insights and provide contextual understanding of each hub's history, activities, and positioning within its national entrepreneurial ecosystem.

We concluded our data analysis process by clustering the first-order concepts and relating them to one another, as well as to prior literature and our theoretical assumptions (Magnani and Gioia, 2023). Based on this in-depth contextual analysis, we elevated our analysis to identify second-order themes (Gioia et al., 2013) and subsequently the aggregated constructs. The aggregated constructs, namely (1) institutional voids in entrepreneurial ecosystems of African countries, (2) services offered by hubs, and (3) internal and external community-building promoted by hubs are displayed in Figure 1. The following section will show our findings along these constructs.

Entrepreneurs across African countries face numerous institutional voids that significantly hinder the development of a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. These institutional voids often arise from weak regulatory frameworks, fragmented policy implementation, and limited coordination between public and private sector actors, collectively constraining the formation of supportive entrepreneurial ecosystems. Regarding their individual experiences, interviewees describe the entrepreneurial journey as isolating and arduous, characterized by a lack of mentorship and advisory support, which hinders the refinement of the business model and growth of the entrepreneurial venture, leading many to abandon their venture in favor of more stable employment opportunities (#AT07; #ET04). As some respondents reported, one of the primary challenges is the severe lack of accessible funding in the entrepreneurial ecosystem (#FT01). Securing business loans remains particularly challenging, compelling entrepreneurs to rely heavily on personal relationships for capital, including remittances from the overseas diaspora, due to prohibitive interest rates and the sparse presence of venture capitalists (#AT07; #FT03; #LT02). This limited access to financial capital not only constrains entrepreneurial survival and growth but also exemplifies a core institutional challenge, namely the absence of supportive financial intermediaries and formal funding mechanisms that are essential for entrepreneurial ecosystems to thrive. From a theoretical perspective, such financial constraints highlight how institutional challenges shape entrepreneurial behavior, reinforcing particularly informal financing and reliance on personal relationships. Other entrepreneurs report high operational costs, such as long-term office lease requirements, which place additional strain on new ventures (#AT03; #FT02). Furthermore, navigating the legal and bureaucratic barriers without institutional support is particularly challenging for entrepreneurs (#HT03). In sum, these accounts from the entrepreneurs highlight enduring institutional challenges that shape both ecosystems and underscore the theoretical premise that innovation hubs contribute to navigating and mitigating them.

Innovation hubs do far more than provide co-working spaces; they function as enablers of structured business growth, offering start-ups a supportive infrastructure, access to expertise, and pathways to capital. A key differentiator among innovation hubs lies in the degree of personalization they offer. Start-ups enrolled in structured acceleration programs typically benefit from tailored support, while non-participating ventures often access more general services such as events, workshops, or open co-working environments. Acceleration programs, in particular, are instrumental in guiding start-ups through critical early and growth phases by helping them build teams, refine products, push to market, and professionalize their operations. Many of the interviewed founders attributed their accelerated growth to the hub environment. What might have taken years to learn independently was achieved within months due to structured support and concentrated resources. “It would have taken much longer,” one founder commented, “but the support from the hub's programme has strongly boosted the growth of the business” (#ET02). Others emphasized how their participation in hub programs shortened the learning curve and helped them identify business risks early on (#AT09; #ET02; #ET04). As one Ghanaian founder explained: “Innohub helps you really put your ideas together and they help you get onto the market. When you encounter the real market demands and challenges, they are there to help you through the acceleration program to keep pushing and keep going” (#AT01).

A central offering of many hubs is access to capital. Competitive programs attract private-sector foundations that may inject significant funding, for example, up to USD 100,000 for a six-month growth phase, enabling start-ups to scale operations, hire staff, and advance product development (#ET04; #ET03). This suggests that while innovation hubs do act as vital entry points into funding opportunities, offering investment readiness training and opportunities to pitch to local angel investors and venture capitalists, they cannot fully resolve the broader underfunding of African start-ups. As one entrepreneur highlighted: “African start-ups are overtrained and less funded” (#ET02). These observations underscore how innovation hubs act as institutional intermediaries that partially fill institutional voids in financing by mobilizing donor partnerships and venture networks otherwise inaccessible to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs appreciate the reliable and relatively low-cost infrastructure, indicating that they perceive hubs as helping to mitigate the lack of formal institutions. Hubs provide essential infrastructure that creates a comfortable and productive working environment for entrepreneurs. A stable and reliable internet connection is a foundational service, enabling daily operations and digital communication (#LT03; #ET04; #FT02; #HT01; #HT03; #LT01; #LT02), as well as supporting content creation, such as the production of videos for educational apps (#ET03). Beyond connectivity, the physical environment of many hubs features well-maintained amenities, including lounge areas, kitchens, refrigerators, complimentary breakfasts, and clean restrooms, all of which contribute to a welcoming atmosphere (#HT01). Good customer support further enhances the experience, allowing entrepreneurs to feel comfortable seeking assistance without intimidation. Cost-effective access to this infrastructure is another advantage, allowing users to book co-working space or fixed offices on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Renting space in a hub, often equipped with air-conditioning and other essential utilities, offers a far more affordable alternative to maintaining a permanent office. This flexibility proved especially valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when remote and hybrid work models became more prevalent and viable (#FT02; #HT01). This suggests that by providing stable digital and physical infrastructure, hubs offer a micro-level institutional response to systemic infrastructural deficiencies within the broader ecosystem.

Relating to the micro-level of the analysis, entrepreneurs benefit from key services such as the organization of a broad range of events, including presentations, specialized training, workshops, and highly individualized mentorship, all of which facilitate know-how transfer. These events are circulated via newsletters (#CT01; #FT02; #HT03). Attending events with international CEOs, investors, or other stakeholders enlarges the professional relationships of entrepreneurs (#CT01; #CT02; #FT01; #FT05; #HT01; #HT03; #LT01; #LT04). Such pitch events regularly feature one to two venture capitalists and local angel networks, and are realized, for example, as elevator pitches every Friday (#LT03; #HT03). In workshops, various topics are discussed, e.g. presenting in front of investors (#ET01), gaining technical expertise through, e.g. apps training (#AT05; #ET01; #ET04; #FT02; #FT04), business model innovation, design thinking and gamification (#AT06; #AT07; #ET01; #FT01; #HT04), legal issues such as concluding Non-Disclosure Agreements with partners to protect innovation (#HT03), leadership including hiring and retaining talents (#ET01; #ET02; #FT05) or setting up an organization structure (#FT04; #LT04). Innovation hubs also offer critical support in areas such as digital marketing, branding, and sales strategy. Founders receive coaching on storytelling, social media marketing, and customer-targeting capacities essential for scaling but often overlooked in early- and growth-stage ventures (#AT01; #AT05; #FT03; #HT03; #HT04). As one entrepreneur reflected, “Just making sure your company is run in a professional way (…) Entrepreneurs sometimes just think about the product and the selling. But then you end up forgetting all these other things” (#ET04). Another important area of support is accounting, which is an indispensable prerequisite for positioning the start-up for investment. Some entrepreneurs considered finance, particularly accounting, to be the most crucial skill to be trained in the hubs. They help start-ups manage their finances effectively by providing guidance on managing incoming and outgoing funds, setting up accounting structures, and establishing finance policies. They support entrepreneurs in becoming investment-ready by helping them produce income statements, balance sheets, and other key financial documents. Hubs also assist start-ups in setting clear financial targets and milestones to track growth and prepare for funding opportunities. Even outside formal programs, hubs facilitate access to experts who review financials free of charge, offering vital support to early-stage ventures(#AT02; #AT06; #AT08; #AT09; #ET01; #ET02; #ET04; #FT04; #LT03).

Innovation hubs shape entrepreneurial ecosystems by fostering strong internal community-building among like-minded entrepreneurs. These hubs are more than physical spaces – they serve as dynamic environments promoting collaboration, community, and peer learning. Many founders reported that they visit iHub and Innohub primarily for networking, exchanging insights on market dynamics, particularly within shared sectors like education (#ET04). Regular interactions embed entrepreneurs in ecosystems rich in peer advice, technical support, and funding access (#AT07; #CT01). One Kenyan founder described this atmosphere vividly: “You meet other entrepreneurs who are facing the same struggles, and you exchange ideas every day (…) That really helps you stay motivated” (#ET01).

A hallmark of these communities is their open and informal nature, which encourages creativity, idea development, and innovation (#CT03). Hubs create a safe space where entrepreneurs can brainstorm, share struggles, and learn from one another's failures and successes (#AT03; #ET01; #CT02; #FT02; #HT01; #HT02; #LT04). This peer-to-peer learning dynamic reduces barriers to knowledge exchange, enabling founders to draw on each other's experiences to avoid common pitfalls, such as legal missteps when establishing companies, and to make better-informed business decisions (#AT09; #CT01; #FT04; #HT02). Practical collaborations often emerge, including platform co-development, talent sharing, or short-term support in areas like marketing or logistics. These may lead to longer-term partnerships or even co-founding relationships (#ET01; #CT02; #HT02; #FT01). Digital tools like WhatsApp groups foster regular communication and enhance informal knowledge flows (#HT04). The presence of successful founders as role models further reinforces learning and resilience (#CT02; #FT05), while hubs also connect entrepreneurs to external expertise, broadening their resource base (#AT01; #ET04). These findings suggest that hubs cultivate informal institutional arrangements, particularly shared norms of trust, reciprocity, and collaboration, that partially substitute for the absence of formal support and governance structures.

Innovation hubs are also instrumental in helping start-ups connect with external stakeholders. They connect entrepreneurs with stakeholders to access market intelligence, funding, and business opportunities (#CT01; #ET03). Affiliation with a hub can boost a start-up's credibility (#FT04). Events such as investor pitch sessions hosted by iHub and Innohub help start-ups showcase their ventures (#ET03; #ET04; #FT05). Hubs also facilitate meetings with government officials to guide regulatory compliance and licensing (#FT05). For instance, Kenyan edtech ventures receive guidance from the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (#ET03). Hubs often organize events to link start-ups with test users, customers, and suppliers to aid product development and implementation (#ET01; #FT05; #HT03; #LT03). In agritech, Innohub fosters production and processing partnerships and hosts exhibitions for customer outreach (#AT04). However, some entrepreneurs feel that the arrangement of relationships with external stakeholders remains limited, especially in forming deep ties with partners in R&D, marketing, and finance (#AT05; #AT06; #FT02; #FT04; #HT02). One entrepreneur noted that while hubs have made progress, greater integration with external actors is needed to fully support start-up growth and innovation (#AT01). Additionally, many start-up founders reported that for the growth of their entrepreneurial ventures, they would rather rely on their own efforts for building ties with suppliers, customers, and government officials (#AT05; #FT04; #HT02). These observations support the notion that hubs occupy a hybrid role: by promoting entrepreneurs, they actively shape and strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This paper advances two key areas of entrepreneurship research in the African context. First, it delineates how innovation hubs promote entrepreneurs at the micro level, and second, it provides insights into their role as pivotal actors within the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem marked by macro-level institutional voids. These levels are analytically interrelated through the application of Coleman's “bathtub” model. Building on institutional theory, we confirm prior studies on how institutional voids hinder African entrepreneurs (Adomako et al., 2019; Garrone et al., 2019; Isaga, 2019; Sydow et al., 2022), including inadequate regulatory frameworks, limited access to capital, and unreliable infrastructure. Based on our empirical evidence, we expand on the actors that help entrepreneurs overcome these institutional voids. Innovation hubs provide access to capital in acceleration programs, run a reliable and cost-effective infrastructure for the co-location of start-ups, and offer various tailored services to enhance the capacities of both the start-up and the founder, including workshops and trainings on digital marketing, leadership, business model refinement, or accounting, to grow the start-ups further and to navigate the complex legal and bureaucratic environment in the entrepreneurial ecosystems of African countries. They also enable informal community-building. Internally, iHub and Innohub create cohesive communities of like-minded entrepreneurs characterized by trust, shared norms, and mutual support. The internal community facilitates peer-to-peer learning, experiential knowledge exchange, and practical collaboration, all critical resources and dynamics for entrepreneurs navigating uncertain environments. The availability of fast, ad hoc feedback, mentorship, and business support accelerates the entrepreneurial journey, particularly in ecosystems where formal consulting services or incubator structures are scarce or inaccessible. The selected hubs also facilitate access to external stakeholders, including venture capitalists, donor organizations, policy actors, and other firms. These relationships expand the opportunity set available to start-ups and integrate them into wider knowledge and funding communities that would otherwise be out of reach. In this sense, hubs enhance the visibility of nascent and growing entrepreneurial ventures (Apa et al., 2017; Spigel and Harrison, 2018).

Based on Coleman's (1990) bathtub model, relating these insights from the micro (promotion of entrepreneurs) to the macro level (hubs as stakeholders in the ecosystem), we argue that innovation hubs play an active role across nearly all of Isenberg's (2010) entrepreneurial ecosystem dimensions. First, they indirectly influence the policy environment by identifying regulatory bottlenecks through their work with start-ups and by channeling these insights into policy discussions. Hubs facilitate meetings with government officials and offer regulatory compliance guidance. However, our data suggests this engagement is often shallow and inconsistent, highlighting an area where deeper policy integration is needed. Second, hubs attempt to bridge the funding gap through investment readiness programs, pitch events, and connections to angel investors or venture capitalists. They offer, for instance, access to capital through affiliated foundations. Nonetheless, the broader funding ecosystem remains severely challenging, reflected in entrepreneurs' recurring critique of being underfunded. This illustrates that while hubs provide crucial support, they cannot substitute for systemic financial infrastructure. Third, hubs cultivate a pro-entrepreneurial culture by encouraging peer learning. Their informal, collaborative environments counteract the social isolation commonly reported by founders. The presence of successful role models, open knowledge sharing, and daily social interaction all contribute to fostering an entrepreneurial mindset.

While these dimensions illustrate hubs as stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the following dimensions emphasize their role as promoters of entrepreneurs. Fourth, support infrastructure is the dimension where hubs are most impactful. They provide stable internet, co-working spaces, business services, and critical amenities at affordable prices. Fifth, regarding human capital, hubs contribute significantly to entrepreneurial skill-building, particularly in areas often neglected in early ventures: digital marketing, accounting, business modeling, legal literacy, and leadership. Tailored programs accelerate organizational learning and build core competencies needed for scaling. Ultimately, innovation hubs create limited but important access to markets. They connect entrepreneurs to test users, early adopters, suppliers, and sometimes customers through events and exhibitions. Yet, as our data indicates, many founders still rely on personal initiative to access key external stakeholders, signaling that hubs' capacity to forge sustained market linkages is limited.

By leaning on these observations that innovation hubs offer a broad range of services and facilitate internal and external community-building, we reinvigorate the debate of innovation hubs as institutional intermediaries in the entrepreneurial ecosystems of African countries. Prior literature showed mixed findings on how innovation hubs promote start-ups in the entrepreneurial ecosystems of African countries (Jiménez and Zheng, 2018; Littlewood and Kiyumbu, 2018). Based on our empirical findings from two preeminent hubs in Ghana and Kenya, we argue that the hubs have emerged as institutional intermediaries, providing crucial resources, information, and business opportunities to start-ups in entrepreneurial ecosystems where formal institutions, such as regulatory bodies, financial systems, and educational infrastructure, are weak.

In response to institutional voids, innovation hubs have learned to operate in hybrid institutional environments to serve their entrepreneurial communities. Expanding on previous research (Omeihe et al., 2021; Simba et al., 2023), we argue that these adaptive strategies suggest that innovation hubs are not merely transplanted models of Western entrepreneurial infrastructure, including the recent wave of incubators (Deyanova et al., 2022), but are institutionally embedded responses tailored to African entrepreneurial ecosystems' socio-economic and institutional realities. This leads to a more fundamental reflection: While institutional voids theory (Khanna and Palepu, 2010) has become a dominant framework for analyzing entrepreneurship in emerging markets, its application to African contexts warrants reconsideration. Our study confirms that entrepreneurs in Ghana and Kenya frequently navigate what appear to be weak institutional environments. However, framing these environments primarily in terms of what they lack risks obscuring the rich, adaptive responses that emerge within them. Rather than functioning as passive victims of institutional failure, entrepreneurs and intermediaries like innovation hubs actively construct and shape alternative support mechanisms that fill, bypass, or even reconfigure these “voids.”

Our findings reveal that innovation hubs play a central role in creating micro-institutional environments that provide access to mentorship, training, digital infrastructure, and financial literacy. These services are not simply weak substitutes for absent formal institutions, but represent context-specific institutional innovations. Hubs act as relational infrastructures that accelerate learning, foster trust-based networks, and offer structured pathways to growth, even in the absence of state-backed financial systems or venture capital ecosystems. This resonates with critiques of the voids theory advanced by Mair and Martí (2009) and Ahlstrom and Bruton (2006), who argue that entrepreneurial activity in institutional voids often depends on informal rules and social networks, which are under-emphasized in traditional institutional analyses. Furthermore, the “voids narrative” often carries a normative bias, implicitly holding Western institutional configurations as the ideal benchmark. Such a lens tends to interpret institutional differences as institutional failure. Yet our data show that innovation hubs are not “underdeveloped” versions of Silicon Valley incubators, but purpose-built intermediaries aligned with local needs, constraints, and opportunities.

In light of this, we argue that the concept of institutional voids should be reframed through the lens of institutional multiplicity (Greenwood et al., 2011) and entrepreneurship under constraint (Roundy et al., 2018). These alternative perspectives more effectively capture the coexistence and complementary interplay of formal and informal institutions. Rather than empty spaces to be filled, so-called voids may be productive tensions that spur innovation, adaptation, and the rise of new institutional forms. Our findings suggest that innovation hubs are not just coping with institutional voids but actively reshaping the institutional landscape, thus serving as sites of institutional emergence rather than merely compensation, which is strongly influenced by the dynamics of the entrepreneurial ecosystems in African countries.

This paper primarily sought to identify common patterns in how two reputed innovation hubs support entrepreneurs, rather than to conduct a systematic comparison of hubs or national ecosystems. Nevertheless, our findings show a set of indicative similarities and differences that raise important questions for future research. Both hubs provide a broad portfolio of business development services, such as accounting, human resources, marketing, and communications, which entrepreneurs widely regard as essential for venture growth. Moreover, community-building emerges as a central element in both cases, although its expression varies. At iHub, daily co-location fosters informal peer learning, mentoring, and collaboration, whereas Innohub's more geographically dispersed client base, including rural entrepreneurs who attend only periodically, results in a different pattern of community engagement. These observations raise the question of whether such differences stem from the distinct characteristics of the respective entrepreneurial ecosystems or from divergent organizational models and strategic orientations of the hubs themselves, which lies beyond the scope of our analysis but warrants further investigation.

At the same time, the institutional voids shaping each setting also appear to differ in important respects. For example, in Ghana, limited access to finance remains a particularly severe constraint, with commercial bank interest rates often exceeding 30% (#FT05), rendering hub-mediated investment-readiness programs especially salient. The extent to which such offerings reflect ecosystem-level constraints or strategic choices by hub managers constitutes another avenue for comparative research that our study can only point to.

Finally, both hubs depend heavily on partnerships with external donors to sustain their programming, highlighting their institutional fragility. Yet even here, notable variation exists: iHub's partnerships with actors such as the Mastercard Foundation enable it to provide substantial financial support to selected start-ups, positioning it closer to a resource-intensive accelerator model. Together, these findings suggest that while African innovation hubs share foundational functions, their operational configurations appear to be shaped by an interplay of contextual conditions and hub-specific strategies, which requires more systematic comparative research.

The findings underscore the need for policy interventions that address both structural and operational gaps in African entrepreneurial ecosystems. While innovation hubs have the potential to play a critical role in reducing entry barriers and accelerating learning for start-ups, their capacity to support scaling remains constrained by broader systemic challenges, e.g. access to finance and regulatory clarity. Importantly, by equipping young entrepreneurs with technical, managerial, and digital skills, hubs also function as engines of youth employability and capacity building, translating entrepreneurial training into wider human capital development. Strengthening these functions can generate multiplier effects for local economic development, especially in creating employment, formalizing the economy, and promoting economic growth. Policymakers should therefore not only invest in expanding the reach and quality of innovation hubs but also create enabling environments that tackle institutional bottlenecks, such as high borrowing costs, bureaucratic opacity, and legal uncertainty. Targeted public-private partnerships could help bridge funding gaps by linking hubs with local banks, angel networks, and international development finance. Furthermore, policy frameworks should support the professionalization of hub services through capacity-building grants, while also incentivizing hubs to deepen their external linkages with R&D institutions, corporate actors, and government agencies. In sum, hubs can become powerful levers of promoting entrepreneurship if embedded within a coherent and well-resourced policy architecture.

This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of innovation hubs in African entrepreneurial ecosystems by drawing on institutional theory and qualitative insights from two hubs in Accra and Nairobi. Regarding our first research question, we show that innovation hubs act as institutional intermediaries, providing access to capital, reliable and cost-effective infrastructure, training, and informal communities of like-minded entrepreneurs engaged in peer-to-peer learning and collaboration. Regarding our second research question, we showed that, at the systemic level, hubs' influence across policy, finance, and culture is uneven, yet they have emerged as important actors that address institutional voids and foster more enabling environments for entrepreneurship. Drawing on both research questions, we contribute to the literature by rethinking deficit-oriented views of institutional voids and demonstrating that African innovation hubs function not only as locally embedded institutions that integrate formal mechanisms and informal networks, but are actively reshaping entrepreneurial ecosystems and reframing voids as sites of institutional emergence rather than absence through their activities.

While our analysis has centered on two leading innovation hubs, recognized as successful examples within their entrepreneurial ecosystems, this focus presents important opportunities for future inquiry. First, these cases illustrate the potential for hubs to positively influence start-up development and ecosystem vitality. However, as we have indicated in a brief comparative analysis of both hubs, such outcomes may not be generalizable and must be substantiated by a more explicit comparative analysis between Kenya's and Ghana's entrepreneurial ecosystems to examine the specific manifestations of institutional voids in each country and how they specifically drive hubs' hybrid role in the ecosystem. Second, future studies could explore a broader spectrum of hub models within a country to assess which business model is sustainable and supports the mitigation of challenging institutional environments (Züfle, 2023). Such research would deepen our understanding of when, how, and why innovation hubs contribute meaningfully to entrepreneurial success across different settings.