I got disinvited to many parties after I shared the original post below last year on Twitter. Well, I needed fewer friends anyway. The reason you have an MTN in Africa today is not because a poor boy from South Africa got VC funding and became a billionaire. I know some others try to force a similar narrative but it is not true. People gained experience, put together plans, and then got investors. No magic. Each base station was built one site acquisition and equipment deployment at a time. Financing was tough but they hired the best to get it. I worked with an investor in a telco built up from scratch in Nigeria. It was a humbling experience. You just have to work or create work. It is in the creating work that we end up building the things that likely become venture scale. Scale builds upon scale and we have very few things already at scale. Scale is not built upon dreams and wishes but upon solid ground first. I remember my observations the first time I visited America. My cofounder Salil previously told me that America runs like a well oiled machine. Femi Edun also told me that they build scale by dumbing things down to the basics. I saw that both descriptions were true. The infrastructure exists to sell at scale and you dumb things down to sell more. According to Ogilvy “we sell or else.” America always sells or else it is not America anymore. To be able to sell, there has to be a market to sell to. They created that market in many ways. Infrastructure, education, and advertising. You can’t sell when you haven’t built. Prospecting for gold in California led to the great railroads. Mining solid minerals in Congo and Nigeria have only led to wars and terrorism. In Africa, we build, or else… Let us build and then sell. We can’t sell what we haven’t built yet. Building on cloud infrastructure far away and trying to provide services to those who don’t have access isn’t building. The day it dawned on me that payments in Africa wasn’t a startup opportunity but an infrastructure play was the day the scales fell from my eyes. PayPal got licenses in 50 American states and not 50 countries before it started making a lot of money. One African country will not deliver our version of PayPal without our version of EBay which can only happen because we have our version of UPS or FedEx and the logistics that support it. That is further built on universities and a prosperous middle class. We don’t have to follow the same trajectory but one truth is evident. Scale builds upon scale. Let’s build scale carefully. We have wasted so much time and effort on trying to create magic on a continent where illusions lead to hunger and despair.
And for the record, I don't have any issue with investors taking a risk on a young African. The challenge with the SME/PE funding model is that it is not accomodative of risk, they want 100% successful outcomes, which lowers their ability to support non-traditional entrepreneurs leveraging new technologies. The VC model has a degree of failure and risk tolerance that means everyone with a good idea and who has indeed put in the work to be the right person for that job can potentially succeed. This is a more optimistic and equal opportunity model for African economies, which is why we at Wuri Ventures continue to support entrepreneurs taking big swings. The burden is not on the founders to stop dreaming, it is on the investors to fully understand how to identify and support future disruptors.
Anyone who un-invites you after this post isn’t worth your presence! It’s been an honour to judge startups alongside you for what feels like forever - and now I think it’s about time we scheduled a one-one-one! My point - the knee jerk reaction is to embrace you! Don’t listen to nay-sayers! Do you Victor please!
Beautiful!... But You Know What?!... Sometimes Building Means You Swim Against The Tides, No One Ever Had It Easy, We Need To Stop Comparisms And Copying From What Others Have Done And "Succeeded"... AFRICA Is Not Europe And Can Never Be. WHY DON'T WE BUILD OR SCALES BASED ON AFRICAN NEEDS AND WAY OF LIFE?... EVERY TRULY SUCCESSFUL CHANGE NEEDS AN I.D...... AFRICANS NOW DON'T HAVE ANY FORM OF IDENTIFY.... #BuildInOurWayOrElse! Cheers!!
I preached the necessity of owning the infrastructure for so long on Facebook back then. I harped on it so much, some thought that I was beefing "real Founders". I have always understood why African Techies focused on the "low-hanging fruit" aspect of the tech ecosystem and skills - among other things, it's a cheaper and quicker route to fame and easy money. Unless (and until) Africans realize that building on rented lands only gives an illusion of Ownership, this circle will continue forever. Silicon Valley is not going to "save" Africa. "Silicon Valley" is an extractive institution primarily concerned with making money from everything. Yes, in the course of executing its capitalistic missions, it drops a morsel here and a crumb there. However, "Silicon Valley" will back up the truck and run over anything and everything if doing so would contribute to the "bottom line". For Africa to succeed in the Tech space, its Political Leaders, Policy Makers and Wealthy Class have to recognize the need for it to invest in, build, and own the infrastructure on which its Builder Class will build the transformative Solutions it needs to sell to rest of the world Meetings and handshakes haven't done much for us. Because we're still renting
100% TRUTH no BS! When you talk to investors everybody is looking for the next big tech solution. Mind you , the basic infrastructure is non existent. I’ve met a couple who’ve told me they’re creating Uber for this and that but when I tell them that’s not possible yet , they don’t understand. Uber works because you have people with cars who can easily use the technology (both drivers and passengers). When you enter other market segments like trucks where the majority of drivers are illiterate at the moment , it’s a good idea but the timing is not right plus the fact that there aren’t enough assets on the ground to deploy. But hey , what do we know? People will burn so much investor cash before they come back and realize the wisdom of having ground experience and expertise. You’ve said it Victor Asemota there’s a lot to be learnt in Africa. We need a combination of tech people and people with ground experience coming to the table to synergize on projects. Africa needs a different approach because the basics just aren’t there. But good money is going to waste because the truth doesn’t sound appealing to those who have the money. Your write up was refreshing to read. Let’s keep telling the truth , eventually people will learn.
Many truths can be distilled from your honest opinion. Africa cannot and should not rely on what is coming from the West because it may not come, and if it does, at a cost that might be above the continent's collective pay grade. The notion that we are in a global market and all the players in that market should be rewarded is wishful thinking. Market valuations and other financial indices to measure the viability of a company were not invented by Africa or for African enterprises. Our model was to build, look for customers, & sell. Interestingly, when you hear people raising funds, the euphoria is quickly felt & people jam hands together in applause, but have we encouraged, or even recognized that roasted plantain seller who despite the harsh economic climate continues to show up and sell to her loyal customers? She bootstrapped herself from scratch without any form of assistance or a loan. Loan? She won't even qualify for it but she did it to raise University graduates. No encomium for her because there was no valuation, and she has not been offered the Vice President position at a techie or climate change firm. But guess what? She is debt-free and has contributed perhaps more than the guy in a suit and tie.
Beautiful words. I am overjoyed by this writeup. I saw it myself when I had the privilege of working with young Africans, early in the iHub story. I noticed that the US sells 3 things very well. Movies, music and missionaries. If you think the last one is a joke, you don’t have to look to far, see the First couple of Kenya.😁 The thing that ties these 3 together is that they are gambles. There are 3 centers of the “wild west” in the US that are built on gambling. Whether it is the Casinos in Las Vegas, the entire Silicon Valley in San Francisco or Hollywood in Los Angeles, these work because of the hype, the audacity and the marketing. Not to take anything away, it has worked for them but it has not worked anywhere else, not even in a relatively wealthy Europe. Now that 0% rates are a thing of the past and VCs can’t afford to lose the money in their “ponzi” overlords, we need to think carefully about what we want to build. We can’t afford to gamble. The “easy” challenges are gone.
This is a hard truth that does not only need to be told but also internalized by anyone trying to do anything meaningful here in Africa.
I could not agree more Victor Asemota - there are no shortcuts and the reality is that if Nigeria (and Africa more broadly) does not invest heavily in education (especially at the most critical primary and secondary levels), the transformational potential that we have with our extremely young and rapidly growing populations will come to nothing. Many of the most celebrated entrepreneurs and business leaders in the US did NOT go to University, but benefited from world-class primary and secondary education that ignited passion and sparked curiosity. That said, it would be a mistake for us to blindly copy the US or other countries rather than taking a first principles approach where we look at our unique challenges in Nigeria and ask ourselves the question “How do we equip our children with real-world, 21st century-skills so they can see the problems that Nigeria represents as solvable business opportunities?”
CEO and Founder, Resilience Capital Ventures LLC
3moVictor Asemota there is so much here that I do not know where to start. I agree with your premise about forgetting Silicon Valley style myths. But since I have you at a disadvantage being one of the people in at the groundlevel before MTN even got to Nigeria, I simply want to invite a conversation on the role of technological innovation and tech companies in the future of the African continent. If you are up for that lets get Chux Daniels, PhD Linda Bonyo Iyinoluwa Aboyeji to be part of this and focus on outcomes. So that means including UNDP and Open Society Foundations with some others. Of course you might not be interested in any of that but if you are, let's make it real. As they say on British gameshows - MTN is my special subject .