The African tech ecosystem has grown rapidly over the last decade, and yet, the deployment of capital from foreign and local markets is lagging behind. Local funding sources that exist in other markets either don’t exist in the same capacity in Africa, or aren’t comfortable investing in African tech. Foreign capital isn’t really that different - there are several reasons investors blame for overlooking this powerful continent - all of which come down to their perception of risk. Primarily, the risk of the unknown. There is no formula for building and growing African startups. Our success stories are still being built, and best practices are still being established. However, that does not and should not diminish the enormity of Africa’s potential.
We are building The Africa Playbook to create a blueprint for what success could look like for African startups. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re hoping to learn and share them. We will be learning from entrepreneurs, investors and other key stakeholders in African tech. The future of African startups may not look like our counterparts in developed markets, and perhaps they shouldn’t be the ones we aspire to. It’s time to rewrite the rules with our systems and infrastructure in mind. Not as a means to limit us, but as a means to fuel our success.
So why us? Well, we are both African and passionate about the future of Africa and tech. We firmly believe that entrepreneurs in Africa are well positioned to build sustainable solutions to critical problems. We bring different perspectives and have different experiences: Lewam comes from an investment background and Odunayo is a serial entrepreneur. Most of all, we’re friends and we talk about this all the time anyway, so we figured we’d build a space where we can learn and share, to help support African entrepreneurs, and attract additional capital to the continent.
The Africa Playbook will include a series of newsletters, blog posts and eventually podcast episodes on critical issues facing startups in emerging markets and their proposed solutions. Subscribe to our substack so you don’t miss the first issue!
Follow us on twitter and let us know what you want to learn about: @Africa_Playbook.
Thank you Odunayo and Kefam.
Brilliant and timely