Africa is a continent, not a country

There is no one size fits all solution

I started a mobile Internet company in Cape Town, South Africa about 3 years ago. For the uninformed Cape Town is a little bit Europe at the tip of Africa.

Table Mountain, Cape Town citybowl and the ocean to the left.

There are Ferarri’s in the street, there is Moët in champagne glasses and there is wealth in some places. A lot of it. But there is also poverty. There is more poverty and struggle than there is wealth by a long way. But I don’t live in that Cape Town.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many technology entrepreneurs don’t live in the world of the problems they are trying solving. This is a problem in and of itself.

It’s easy to think that because I live in Africa that I actually live IN Africa. I sold that company and exited the business and was able to gain a bit of perspective. I put myself back into the Forefront of Incompetence and realised that my understanding and skill was somewhat limited compared to what I had originally sold as my area of expertise. This scared me quite a bit and I realised that I had been treating Africa like a country, not the diverse continent that it is. And to make matters worse I was treating Africa like Cape Town.

This is a deadly mistake to make for any startup aiming at the African continent. That statement; The African continent, is probably going to end many businesses before they even start.

Here’s my tiny bit of advice from my tiny bit of traveling over the past 18 months into Africa; Africa is a place where there are many different countries, hundreds of different languages, tribes, colours, creeds, skills and ideas. Do not, at any point in time assume that one size fits all. It doesn’t.