Happy Thursday! I hope you’ve had a great week. As per usual, I’m excited to share The Trajectory Africa’s newest track.
In this episode, I chat with Jake Kendall, Co-founder of the DFS Lab, an early-stage investor and accelerator that supports entrepreneurs to refine, grow, and launch digital commerce ventures in Africa. He is formerly a Deputy Director with the Financial Inclusion team at the Gates Foundation, where he funded and worked closely with M-Pesa and many other successful mobile money innovations that comprised the first and second waves of success across Africa and South Asia. Prior to joining the Foundation, he served as an Economist with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, or CGAP, at the World Bank.
Jake and I chatted about his unlikely path to becoming an Africa-focused investor, why digital commerce is a robust investment opportunity, why digital economy development will look different on the continent, how to size African consumer markets and enable consumption, and why the trajectory of capital inflows into Africa is on track. I hope you enjoy the conversation!
You can check out my take on understanding consumer markets, published earlier this year by Kinyungu Ventures, here on substack, or on Kinyungu’s website.
Finally, I strongly recommend the DFS Lab’s series on frontier markets and consumption, which you can find here, here, and here—very thoughtful and
eye-opening reads.
Until next time,
Tayo