Hello Founders, Investors and Ecosystem Builders, I’m lucky that I get to be part of founder and startup communities where I meet incredible people who are trying to launch their own ventures, and by engaging with me, are helping me do the same. Through all the conversations about ideas and opportunities, there’s a weird sentence

Africa’s startup funding landscape is often mislabelled as venture capital, but the reality is starkly different. It’s time for honest, context-driven investment models that truly fit. A recent Afridigest LinkedIn post citing Anil Atmaramani’s championing of venture capital (VC) firm Antler’s refreshed approach to venture investing in Africa raises important questions. Atmaramani is West Africa

Marie Lora-Mungai joins the African Tech Roundup Podcast to explore how AI is democratising filmmaking in Africa—and why adopting emerging tools is now more practical (and necessary) than pursuing conventional production models. Meet Marie Lora-Mungai, expert advisor in African creative industries and sports business and founder of Restless Global, whose 20-year journey from CNN journalist

AI is disrupting African creative work—and it’s personal. Andile Masuku confronts hard truths about his own voiceover career and what comes next for creatives all over the continent. “I’m sorry, but I think you’re aware your voice talent job is going to disappear.” I won’t lie, when African creative industries expert Marie Lora-Mungai delivered this

South Africa’s largest retail bank, Capitec, shows how aligning with real consumer behaviour—not imported models—can unlock value in Africa’s fragmented, stratified, and misunderstood markets. ZAR 102.95 (~USD 5.45) versus ZAR 360.00 (~USD 19.06). That stark price difference—for essentially the same ZAR 50,000 (~USD 2,647.50) funeral cover product—isn’t merely an aggressive pricing strategy. It represents a

Sona Mahendra challenges the African tech ecosystem’s reliance on startup playbooks and frameworks, arguing instead for first principles approaches to venture building. Hello Founders, Investors and Ecosystem Builders, The more I study startup playbooks, methodology and frameworks, the more I’ve become disillusioned by them. As a keen student of venture building, I endeavour to read

David Ogundeko unpacks Funema’s contrarian venture development philosophy, long-term investment sensibilities, and lessons from nearly a decade of building startups in Nigeria, South Africa, and the US. Episode overview: In this conversation, founder and CEO of Funema, David Ogundeko, shares the journey of an impact-focused alternative investment firm operating for nine years across Nigeria, South

As AI blurs the line between truth and fiction, our collective indifference to reality could prove more dangerous than the technologies reshaping our world. In the wake of last week’s alarming report from Anthropic—the AI safety company founded by former OpenAI researchers and creators of Claude, a leading AI assistant competing with ChatGPT—I find myself

As Japanese investment in Africa quietly doubles from 520 companies in 2010 to 972 by 2022, pertinent questions emerge about which African innovations successfully transcend borders and why others—equally promising—remain stubbornly local. The answers point not to technological superiority or funding rounds, but to something far more fundamental. This perspective resonates strongly with insights from

Episode overview: In this conversation, Verto co-founder and CEO Ola Oyetayo shares the journey of building a cross-border payments platform that tackles the unique challenges African businesses face when making international transactions. Since graduating from Y Combinator (YC) in 2019, Verto has established itself as what Oyetayo describes as a profitable and cashflow positive fintech