Welcome to The Trajectory: Africa
One thing I’ve always claimed is my ability to ask good questions. However, my favorite question is probably ‘why’. Don’t get me wrong: who, what, where, when and how are all important. But more often than not, if I dig in, it’s probably because I want to know why. That’s actually how my company, Query Insights, got its name. During the tortuous process of selecting one that sounded decent (and was available), I came back to question-asking as an anchor. Of course, the problem with asking questions is that, inevitably, you’ll need answers. That's why I’m launching The Trajectory Africa. Let me explain…
The Trajectory Africa is a “pop-up” podcast, or stand-alone series, exploring the path of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. With the unique landscape—markets, business environment, goals, and culture—as context, The Trajectory Africa aims to pinpoint a destination for African tech entrepreneurship and investing, as well as the signposts that signal direction of travel. It’s inspired by mixtapes, so each episode, or “track”, will feature a conversation with a “guest artist”. I'll drop a track once (maybe twice) a month, and occasionally share some reflective writing about The Trajectory Africa and related projects. More on the writing later…
The notion of mapping the trajectory of African tech and venture is rooted in three main questions:
How does high growth, tech-enabled venturing work in Africa? What types of companies are being funded? What are their core characteristics and needs, and what types of opportunities are they pursuing? How are funds and ecosystems structured to support them? How will money be made and gains extracted?
In other words, there’s much to learn about how the tech venture cultivation system actually works.Can you model the trajectory of African venture and venture capital? If you did, where is it heading, and how would you know if the destination is in sight? Thanks to Briter, Disrupt Africa, and Partech, we’re starting to understand capital flows by deal stage, sector, and country, among other things. But what about the rate of company formation, duration, and death? Or the number of outliers and/or unicorns that can be supported by consumers who earn $4-8/day? Or the degree to which macroeconomic and ecosystem level factors such as demographics, consumption, digital connectivity, infrastructure, and regulation accelerate or hinder startup progress, which the IFC and Briter have explored? Clearly, VC is an industry that is steadily embracing the use of data, but there’s still room to expand the data-informed perspective on African venturing.
What does the African venture ecosystem as a whole look like? Tech-enabled, high growth startups are part of the puzzle. But so are SMEs and large foundational businesses. If the goal, or destination, for African venture is prosperity and social well-being, then all of these businesses have different, but potentially complementary roles to play. For example, a key assumption behind the power of tech-enabled companies is that technology should dramatically reduce the cost of delivering solutions to customers, unlocking huge under-served and unserved markets. Does that mean that SMEs and tech-enabled startups solve different problems? Are there instances in which high growth SMEs become hyper-growth tech startups? In sum, if companies of all shapes and sizes contribute to prosperity, it would be useful to more closely examine how and to what degree.
Quite obviously, a podcast isn’t going to answer all of these questions. Not even close.
But in a maze of complexity, the least one can do is plant a seed of inquiry and begin to (wait for it)—map the trajectory. If all goes well, I’ll articulate what some of the end goals and sign posts look like. If not, I’ll have had several informative and entertaining conversations with really smart people. As the say goes, shoot for the moon, land among the stars.
If you’d like to follow the journey—new episode notifications and reflective writing—please subscribe. You can also follow me at @Tayo_Akinyemi.
Welcome to The Trajectory Africa.