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"We believe that the shift away from backing transformational technologies and
toward more cynical, incrementalist investments broke venture capital."
The Venture Capitalists (or VCs) are at the top of the food chain in the Silicon Valley
ecosystem and they make no pretensions about their motive. They exist to make significant
returns for their limited partners and investors; they rarely hide in “sheep’s clothing”. The
VCs are going broke and they are looking for new hunting ground, they actually need Africa
more than Africa needs them. It is therefore worrisome for people to think that to grow a
delicate ecosystem like we have in Africa we must bring in the VCs first.
If you bring lions into the savannah too early all the game will be eaten and the lions will
starve to death eventually. The VCs themselves know it and they have however been very
cautious not to run to Africa until the ecosystem has shown some maturity and is ripe for
harvest.
The usual excuse of distance and the need for intimacy with the ventures they fund are just
“excuses” as the intimate relationships they speak of are analogous to the relationship a
shepherd has with a calf he is fattening for slaughter at a feast. It is not a long-term
relationship.
An Attempt at Descriptive Taxonomy of the African Tech Ecosystem
This is not an exhaustive “descriptive” or “phylogenetic” taxonomy of all the players in the
African technology ecosystem but an attempt to provide background on the role of each
player as well as their significance or consequence of their actions.
The Entrepreneurs
Opportunistic entrepreneurs are parasites in an ecosystem. They rarely have original ideas
and sometimes feed on their own kind or put themselves in a position where they bleed the
customers and eventually the ecosystem to death. They are the bottom feeders and the
leeches; the opportunistic entrepreneur typically seeks VCs and exits early and hardly builds
a transformational venture, only incremental ones.
There is usually very little passion for what they do or for growing any ecosystem, they
never collaborate and their only passion is to make money and move on to the next host.
They typically seek for shortcuts or do quick and dirty ventures. Does that sound familiar?