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y changing the way the community perceives things. Money alone as a motivation will only
bring more opportunists to the ecosystem and it won’t bring passionate entrepreneurs.
I came back to Africa from the UK bright-eyed and with a vision to contribute to the
transformation of Africa but found an Africa struggling to survive not thrive. The
opportunities to thrive abound yet we still struggle as individuals.
The struggle to survive as individuals usually leads to behaviours in the opposite direction of
collaboration and nobody wins long term. Surviving as individuals is hard but there is
strength in numbers and a true ecosystem creates its own support mechanisms. What we
have to our advantage is the numbers and it is strange that we don’t realize that advantage
and push it. 100 million+ entrepreneurs is a formidable force globally so let us become a
force rather than fodder.
There are no shortcuts to building great enterprises and even more awesome ecosystems
but we keep making the mistake of thinking that throwing money at problems will solve
them. Money does not solve problems; thinking of solutions solves problems.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me... Going to bed at night
saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me”
– Steve Jobs (Summer 1993)
Chimamanda Adichie said:
“There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power
structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be
greater than another."
For the African tech ecosystem to thrive the type of “Nkali” we need in Africa is a collective
not singular one. “Ubuntu” needs to come before Nkali.
Ubuntu:
"I am what I am because of who we all are."
Shameless plug you can ignore:
We at Afrinnova believe that the only way African start-ups can be viable is not only to
prove their model locally and build critical mass but they should also look at models that can