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“The Shortcut Problem” African Start-up Ecology 101
VICTOR ASEMOTA (Ghana)
“Always being in a hurry does not prevent death; neither does going slowly prevent living.”
― Ibo Proverb
I have a friend named Bob who really likes to walk and knew all the pedestrian shortcuts in
the town where we grew up. There used to be a joke that if you make the mistake of going
to visit him at home on weekends without notice, his mum will tell you that he had gone
searching for shortcuts.
It seems that habit is not only limited to my friend but also widely prevalent in African
entrepreneurship. We always want the quickest and most efficient way to get to our
destinations and it is not necessarily a bad thing. It is actually a default human trait that
perhaps led to some of the greatest entrepreneurship ventures of our time. In Africa, this
quest for shortcuts ideally should lead to great innovation but instead I have noticed that it
leads to opportunism. Shortcuts no longer become mechanisms to enhance efficiency when
the sole motivation is to “get the money as quickly as possible”. The average young
entrepreneur is not interested in building a sustainable venture but only to be prosperous or
appear prosperous in the shortest possible time.
Image Credit: asemota.posterous.com