Very cool and potentially impactful project! Your team and advisory board seems to be outstanding, and I think that working on building companies to further African industrial capacities is possibly the most important thing to do for the development of the region.
One thing I am wondering though is what differentiates your org that will make it successful at scoping out and building sustainable businesses? I am not doubting that you could succeed, it’s more that I am interested. Is success based on the sheer neglectfulness and capital constraint in field now? I’m guessing multinationals and banks see it as too risky and unnecessary to invest in African industry, and therefore there is a real capital constraint. I can also imagine that there is not that much talent going towards working on this either, and “boring” industrial businesses seem to be out of fashion, even though they are highly needed for the development of the continent.
There is support and capital at the scale-up stage for businesses in these spaces and interest from DFIs etc., but there is very little going on at the early stage.
Also, a big part of our impact will be mobilising talented people to work on this in the first place and help take it from 0 → 1. Investments at this stage are not necessarily commercially viable, particularly if you have to overcome the first-mover costs of proving a new model, this is where we coming in!
Very cool and potentially impactful project! Your team and advisory board seems to be outstanding, and I think that working on building companies to further African industrial capacities is possibly the most important thing to do for the development of the region.
One thing I am wondering though is what differentiates your org that will make it successful at scoping out and building sustainable businesses? I am not doubting that you could succeed, it’s more that I am interested. Is success based on the sheer neglectfulness and capital constraint in field now? I’m guessing multinationals and banks see it as too risky and unnecessary to invest in African industry, and therefore there is a real capital constraint. I can also imagine that there is not that much talent going towards working on this either, and “boring” industrial businesses seem to be out of fashion, even though they are highly needed for the development of the continent.
There is support and capital at the scale-up stage for businesses in these spaces and interest from DFIs etc., but there is very little going on at the early stage.
Also, a big part of our impact will be mobilising talented people to work on this in the first place and help take it from 0 → 1. Investments at this stage are not necessarily commercially viable, particularly if you have to overcome the first-mover costs of proving a new model, this is where we coming in!