Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The Trajectory Africa
| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset Efficiency in B2B E-commerce: Maad’s Journey to Single Market Scale | 24 Apr 2025 | 01:20:48 | |
In this episode of The Trajectory Africa’s series on digital commerce and logistics, Sidy Niang and Jessica Long, Co-founders of Maad, a retail platform connecting FMCG brands and retailers in Senegal, share how they think about asset efficiency as a way to own assets strategically, once demand is assured. Maad embraces the reality (and the challenges) of physical infrastructure, but uses technology to manage assets efficiently. Sidy and Jessica also talk about how to expand the thin margins common in b2b ecommerce, increase revenue opportunities for retailers, and scale by going deep in one market. [00:00] - Introduction Recommendations:
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| Premium "Informal" Retailers: How Sarafu Captures Value in B2B E-commerce | 17 Apr 2025 | 01:04:06 | |
This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Firas Ahmad, CEO of Sarafu, a B2B e-commerce platform, and AzamPay, a payments platform, both in Tanzania. Firas shares his approach to running a digital commerce business—focusing on delivering premium service to customers who are willing to pay, running data-driven operations, and turning cost centers into revenue generators. He also explains why informal markets are more optimized than they appear, why making analog processes digital isn't enough to win, and how you balance value creation with value capture. [00:00] - Introduction
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| Banking Africa's Ambitious: Anatomy of a Partner-Powered Neobank | 11 Jul 2024 | 01:19:50 | |
According to research by global consultancy Simon-Kucher in 2022, fewer than 5% of neobanks were profitable. A recent update suggests that most are still loss-makers, although a path to profitability is emerging. Also in 2022, Tech Cabal’s reporting on Kuda Bank’s NPLs (non-performing loans) sparked a discussion about what levels make sense for companies doing instant loans. And in a brilliant series of episodes about African neobanks, Afrobility posed a fundamental question: how do you profitably sell financial services to customers traditional banks don’t want (because they’re unprofitable)? It’s an important question because many companies start by delivering a core service—p2p transfers, payments, saving, investment, lending. But as they fight to own the customer and increase market share, they migrate into other areas. We explored that dynamic in the last two episodes about cross-border payments and financial operations. After all, part of the high growth playbook is to dominate a beachhead market and expand into adjacent value added services. And what is the practical realization of that logic in fintech? A neobank, of course. In this episode with Kiiru Muhoya, Co-Founder and CEO of Fingo, “the bank for Africa’s ambitious” and Judith Bongoko, Fingo’s Chief Commercial Officer, we talked about two keys to solving this puzzle: 1) cultivating the next generation of financial services consumers; and 2) strategically partnering with banks. We also chatted about which starting point is the most strategic for a neobank and financial literacy as a workhorse ingredient in the secret sauce of customer retention.
[2:05] - Fingo’s mission and key functions of a banking system [7:16] - Fingo’s product journey [15:11] - Early signs of product market fit and best starting points for neobank building [26:42] - Growing the next generation of financial services consumers [33:00] - The yin and yang of partnering with Ecobank [49:14] - Regional dominance as a platform for partnership [57:36] - Fingo’s business model [1:01] - How a bank partnership aligns cost and revenue curves; CAC as a first mover [1:07] - Navigating competition when “winner takes all” [1:13] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations:
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| B2B Payments: Unseating Cash through Value Chain Integration | 27 Jun 2024 | 01:04:47 | |
This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Yele Oyekola, Co-founder and CEO of Duplo, a company on a mission to streamline financial operations for African businesses. We’re diving deep into the world of digitizing financial operations, from payables and expense management to reconciliation and reporting. Africa’s $1.5T B2B payments market represents a massive opportunity in a space that’s ripe for innovation—think medium to large businesses in industries like FMCG, logistics and manufacturing. These companies have a lot of challenges like managing manual operations to navigating payment terms. But it’s not just about payments— it’s really about the unsexy business of digitizing financial operations. Digitizing payments bleeds into tackling financial operations as a whole—payments in the front, financial operations in the back. (Huge thanks to Gwera Kiwana for being first to apply the mullet metaphor to finance, specifically crypto.) And the dimensions of this opportunity, from money movement to workflow automation, are pretty interesting. In Episode 5, Verto’s CEO Ola Oyetayo made the connection between enabling cross-border payments and managing tasks like account receivables. With Yele, we dig into how to dislodge cash within a value chain by automating transactions across it. Tune in to hear about: [2:08] - The basics of b2b payments [15:50] - What Duplo does, how it started, and the size of the bizopps opportunity [22:55] - Acquiring customers’ customers [56:21] - Value chain integration/infiltration as moat [1:02] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations:
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| Thinking Differently: A Case for Venture Building in African VC | 18 Jun 2024 | 01:14:32 | |
On this special episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’re featuring “someone you should know”—David Ogundeko, Founder and Chief Vision Officer for Funema, a last-mile, impact-focused, alternative investment company. David has spent the last 7 years creating a model to engineer and invest in problem solving, impact creating, high growth SMEs. In the process, he’s reimagining a VC model for Africa, and has built the operational muscle to back his claims. In this conversation, we’ll learn how David’s challenging experiences as a founder spurred him to create a model that protects founders and their impact potential while still building big, profitable businesses.
Tune in to hear about: [3:07] - The dangers of faux expertise [8:00] - Funema’s origin story [11:39] - How Funema confronts extractive capitalism [16:55] - Protecting founders’ equity in the context of a VC fund [32:06] - Funema’s impact on its portfolio [39:00] - Balancing mission and three paths to growth [49:56] - Thoughts on talent [1:00:27] - Finetuning how you communicate about your mission [1:09:57] - Counterintuitive 1st principle Recommendations:
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| Cross Border Payments and the Alchemy of Price and Volatility | 23 May 2024 | 00:59:03 | |
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’re talking to Ola Oyetayo, Co-Founder and CEO of Verto, the first "all in one" cross-border payments platform for corporate treasuries in emerging markets. He’ll help us understand the mechanics of cross-border payments, why they're so expensive in Africa, how to improve price transparency and manage volatility, and how supporting cross-border payments evolves into accounts payable workflows. We're picking up a theme that emerged in Episode 2, when Samora Kariuki highlighted intercontinental money movement as an “unlock” for the rest of the (digital) financial system. Similarly, Wiza Jalakasi from Episode 3 argued that money should move the way Africans and their business activities do—across borders. Finally, in the last episode with Sassoum Niang on building payments infrastructure, she emphasized that the tech isn’t the hardest part. It’s the financial operations—reconciliation, accounting system integration, and currency settlement. So, we’re pulling on all those threads in this conversation with Ola. Tune in to hear about: [2:14] - Sharing Verto’s origin story during a product launch [7:08] - The problems in cross-border payments that Verto solves [11:53] - The role of price transparency and what causes volatility [28:49] - How cross border payment facilitation evolves into supporting business operations [49:37] - The business of moving money across borders [56:17] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations:
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| A Wordline Playbook for Africa: from Payments Infrastructure to Solutions | 09 May 2024 | 01:06:34 | |
On the previous episode of The Trajectory Africa, Wiza Jalakasi, Africa Market Development Director at EBANX suggested that infrastructure-building consumer payments businesses create value because of the sheer number of payment methods available, from mobile money to bank transfers and cards. With all these options, businesses taking consumer payments need a neutral third party to provide a single point of aggregation. But what does it *actually* take to build this type of infrastructure? What are the mechanics behind aggregating and routing payments? Is tech the hardest part, or is it business, finance and operations? And how do you transition from aggregator to b2b super app? On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’re talking to Sassoum Niang, Director of Product & Marketing at InTouch about how you build pan-African “air traffic control” that allows businesses to collect payments in whatever form they come in. Tune in to hear about: [1:25] From film and e-commerce to payments at InTouch [5:34] About InTouch and the problems it solves [11:54] InTouch’s core infrastructure [30:36] How partnerships help adapt to market and distribute strategically [46:02] The business of infrastructure building [51:00] Pressing problems remaining to be solved for payments to be functional [1:05] Counterintuitive first principle for building a high growth payments infrastructure business Recommendations:
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| The Hard Thing about (Consumer) Payments in Africa | 24 Apr 2024 | 01:03:47 | |
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’ll hear from Wiza Jalakasi, Director for Africa Market Development at EBanx, a payments processor headquartered in Brazil. He’ll shed some light on why building payment rails in Africa is deceptively hard work—from why some payment methods work better in some places than others to whether infrastructure-building or enabling payments through APIs is the best way to create value. Tune in to hear about: [5:41] Key milestones in payments infrastructure creation [11:53] Why certain payment methods gain traction in different areas [15:39] How consumer payments work and what the infrastructure looks like [26:11] Back end infrastructure builders vs. API players [33:30] VC leapfrogging logic vs. the path toward building a massive payments infrastructure business
[52:50] Pressing problems remaining to be solved for payments to be functional [1:00] Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations:
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| Beyond Fintech? On building financial systems in Africa | 11 Apr 2024 | 00:59:33 | |
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa’s current series, "The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles", we’re laying the foundation for a deeper exploration of fintech by stepping back to understand the system(s) that fintech creates and operates in. For that, we’re chatting with Samora Kariuki, Founder of the Frontier Fintech newsletter and Director at Sote, a company that’s building African supply chain infrastructure, about the goals and characteristics of Africa’s financial system(s). Tune in to hear about: [3:03] Why Samora launched Frontier Fintech newsletter and the benefits of “writing out loud” [7:09] What problems fintech solves [17:58] Characteristics of a functional financial system and the value it should deliver [23:25] Why Africa's financial system needs technology and how it works in cash-driven, informal economies [36:00] How much of Africa’s financial systems remain to be built [47:05] What infrastructure layer will catalyze the rest of the system [51:56] Consolidation vs. integration in fintech [55:53] First principle for understanding what Africa’s digitally enabled financial system will look like Recommendations:
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| Long arm with no mouth: The physical limits of Africa's digital economy | 28 Mar 2024 | 01:09:55 | |
This is the first episode of Part 1 of a new series on The Trajectory Africa —The Engine of African Venture, A Return to First Principles. This series will explore what powers fundamental value creation and investability in sectors that drive the bulk of African VC opportunities. Part 1 is focused on fintech, and this episode with Abraham Augustine, Comms & Programs Lead for Norrsken, tackles the premise that digitalizing African economies is the African investment opportunity. Abraham shares his perspective on how digital Africa’s digital economy can actually be and how this impacts the way venture capital is invested. Tune in to hear about: [3:43] why Augustine authored a series on Africa's digital economy [6:05] how Africa’s digital economy can defined and the venture-backable opportunity in digitalization [18:40] the physical constraints of “digital” opportunities and investing for bytes vs. atoms [30:20] market knowledge as a key to anti-fragility [40:21] African unicorns hiding in the “crevices” of shifting markets [55:00] the systems effects of digitalization in digital economies [1:03] why momentum fails as a first principle for investing in Africa’s digital economy Recommendations:
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| The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles | 20 Mar 2024 | 00:03:10 | |
The Trajectory Africa’s second series, The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles, is a two-part exploration of what powers fundamental value creation and investability in sectors that drive African VC opportunities. The first part is focused on fintech, starting from the premise that digitizing African economies is the African investment opportunity. From this foundation, the series will explore fintech’s subsectors—from market opportunities to business models—to tease out why they are (or aren’t) destinations for venture capital. For a recap of the previous series, check out The Trajectory Africa Rewind: Principles for Understanding African Venture. | |||
| Le ou La: Rightsizing Complexity when (Venture) Building in Francophone Africa | 09 Mar 2023 | 01:02:23 | |
Welcome to Episode 5, the next to last of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar and For this episode, we have two guests: Birame Sock and Madji Sock. Birame Sock is a technology expert with over 20 years of experience as a tech entrepreneur and high-level executive in the digital space. She recently founded Kwely, a B2B wholesale sourcing marketplace that showcases products made in Africa. Birame is also a co-founder of Haskè Ventures, a venture-builder and investment fund focused on high potential Francophone companies. She has served on several boards, including a publicly traded company valued at over a billion dollars, where she helped develop digital strategies for major entertainment brands such as American Idol. Birame is the jury president of the Francophone Africa region for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award; serves on the jury of the Jack Ma Foundation’s Africa Business Heroes competition; and is an ambassador representing Francophone Africa for the UNCTAD eTrade for Women program. Madji Sock is a seasoned entrepreneur and senior manager. She is a co-founder and President of Haskè Ventures, a venture-builder and investment fund focused on high potential Francophone companies. She launched a consulting firm in Senegal, which later expanded to three other West African countries. Madji has also co-founded the Women’s Investment Club Senegal, from which WIC Capital, a fund focused on women-owned businesses in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, emerged. In addition to co-founding an incubator in Dakar, she has launched, and currently manages, a chain of cafés. Madji has designed numerous programs and initiatives to strengthen the private sector, drive policy change, and build partnerships. In this episode, we discuss:
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| The “Banana” Company: How Twiga Made the "Impossible" Repeatable | 09 Apr 2025 | 01:41:25 | |
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, Kikonde Mwatela, former COO of Twiga, talks about how it tackled a fundamental problem in Kenya's banana supply chain—turning days of trapped working capital and high spoilage into ready-to-sell product. He also shares how Twiga balanced standardizing production while growing its retail universe, the critical relationship between revenue assurance and distribution costs, and perhaps most importantly, the right lessons to learn from Twiga's journey. 00:00 - Introduction to Twiga 01:41 - A first principle for building a profitable digital commerce business in Africa 16:00 - A primer on banana (and pineapple) value chains in Kenya 45:10 - Value chain power dynamics 53:54 - Twiga's growth strategy 1:06:38 - Key assumptions revisited 1:19:50 - The impact of commercial investors Recommendations:
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| Popping Cristal: On How to Tap Unmet Need in Francophone Markets | 22 Feb 2023 | 00:55:32 | |
Welcome to Episode 4 of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar and The Trajectory Africa. This episode’s guest is Tijan Watt. Tijan is a Co-Founder and General Partner of Wuri Ventures, a pan-African venture capital fund focused on pre-seed and seed opportunities. Tijan has spent 20 years as an operator, building companies in Senegal and in the US, and as an investor, working in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, and private equity at Travant Capital Partners. Tijan graduated summa cum laude with a BA from Howard University in mathematics and computer science, and holds an MBA from Harvard University. Tijan writes about all things “business in Africa” at www.tijanwatt.com. In this episode, we discuss:
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| On Our Own?: Growing Francophone Startup Champions | 06 Dec 2022 | 00:49:44 | |
Welcome to Episode 2 of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar and The Trajectory Africa. Impact Hub Dakar is a Dakar-based incubator that supports early stage startups in Senegal, with a mission to help investors meet scalable, early stage startups in Francophone Africa. The Trajectory Africa is a “pop-up” podcast exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest is Omar Cissé. Omar is the Founder and CEO of InTouch, a platform that is working to increase financial inclusion in Africa. The platform has 50,000+ TouchPoints across 14 countries, with more than 400 services available, generating more than 2 billion euros in transaction volume per year. In 2010, he launched CTIC Dakar, the first ICT incubator in Senegal, which he managed until 2013. Prior to CTIC, he co-founded 2SI, a company specializing in software engineering, which he led from 2005 to 2010. Omar is also the co-founder of Teranga Capital, an investment fund he launched in collaboration with Investisseurs & Partenaires, an impact investment group dedicated to SMEs based in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean. He is an engineer by training, with a degree from the École Supérieure Polytechnique of Dakar and an MBA from the Institut Supérieur de Management. In this episode, we discuss:
NOTES:
This episode was recorded in July of this year, which makes the comment at 46:08 about Sequoia Capital calling for sustainable growth, a bit ironic in the aftermath of FTX’s collapse. There’s also the question of whether African startups/to what extent African startups held to the profitability mentioned. | |||
| The Trajectory Africa Rewind: Principles for Understanding African Venture | 29 Sep 2022 | 01:08:02 | |
Welcome to The Trajectory Africa: Rewind, the summary episode for the Trajectory Africa, a "pop-up" podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. Over the course of 11 episodes, the series has explored: the key characteristics of African markets; the opportunities presented by digital commerce, SME financing and fintech, and how they power the broader venture opportunity; what drives fund performance in terms of economics and structure; how funds raise money; and how LPs make investment decisions. The Rewind features key insights from the series, distilling them into six “principles” (or principles in training) that help explain the emerging logic behind VC opportunities in Africa. In this episode, we break down these principles:
It also presents some thoughtful observations about the challenges faced by African (women) GPs as they raise funds, and what impact the impending global slowdown will have on African VC opportunities. "Guest Artists" Featured in this Episode:
Featured Resources and Recommended Track:
DJ Saphir’s Spotify Playlist: | |||
| Tracing Roots: The Role of LPs in African Venture Ecosystem(s) | 23 May 2022 | 01:02:07 | |
Welcome to Track 11 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Babacar Seck. Babacar is an investor passionate about projects that drive inclusive development, from education to healthcare and financial services. As a senior investment professional at Proparco, he focuses on designing and deploying a €200M venture capital program to fund and support African entrepreneurs while also managing a global investment portfolio of banks, insurance, and fintech. Prior to Proparco, Babacar led key areas of strategy and development for AXA, a €1 trillion insurance firm, working under the Chairman and CEO. In his spare time, Babacar supports Africa-focused initiatives, as the Chair of the Sciences Po Alumni Africa Division, and as a member of Africultures and the Association of African Actuaries, respectively. In this episode, the final one of the series, we discuss:
Babacar’s Recommendations & Featured Resources:
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| Listening with Empathy: Fundraising beyond Spreadsheets | 27 Apr 2022 | 01:08:43 | |
Welcome to Track 10 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Danai Musandu. Danai is a Senior Investor Relations Associate at HPE Growth, where she leads and supports the public and investor relations function, with a focus on fundraising and strategic communication. Prior to HPE, Danai was an Investment and Investor Relations Associate at Goodwell Investments, an early-stage technology private equity firm focused on emerging markets and impact investing. Danai is an advisory board member of Private Equity International and the Africa Trust Group, and holds a BCom. in politics, philosophy and economics, as well as a postgraduate honors degree in Economics from the University of Cape Town. In this episode, we discuss:
Danai’s Recommendations & Featured Resources:
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| Breaking Boundaries: Building Wealth & Community through African VC | 31 Mar 2022 | 00:51:51 | |
Welcome to Track 9 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Adenike Sheriff. Adenike is the Co-founder of Future Africa, a fund manager that invests early in mission driven founders solving hard problems for large markets. Prior to Future Africa, Adenike focused on content strategy and storytelling for technology companies in Africa and beyond. Her work has appeared in various international publications including the Huffington Post. In this episode, we discuss:
Note: This conversation was recorded in September 2021. Adenike’s Recommendations & Featured Resources:
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| Fun with VC Math: Designing Funds & Exits in Africa | 03 Mar 2022 | 01:00:21 | |
Welcome to Track 8 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Eghosa Omoigui. Eghosa is the founder and Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners, a seed and early-stage technology venture capital firm investing in underrepresented founders and underserved emerging markets. Prior to Echo, Eghosa worked for Intel, and in his last role served as the Director of Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies for Intel Capital. A Kauffman Fellowship mentor, Eghosa is also engaged with organizations that support women founders and angel investors such as Astia, where he’s on the Venture Advisory Board, and Rising Tide Africa, where he’s a Board member. He attended law school at the University of Nigeria and University of Pennsylvania and business school at Babson College. CORRECTION: In the intro to this episode, I erroneously referred to Eghosa as a Kauffman Fellow. He is a mentor for theKauffman Fellowship. Also, EchoVC is always EchoVC, not Echo. NOTE: If you're struggling with the mental math featured in this episode, please see the FAQ with Eghosa at the bottom of the show notes. It should help to clarify the underlying logic.
Eghosa’s Recommended Track & Featured Resources:
DJ Saphir’s Spotify Playlist:
Portfolio construction is the short answer. If you assume you own 10% of a startup at exit, then $500m of enterprise value created returns $50m. So it's not solely a scenario where a company in the portfolio exits at $500m, but what percentage you own at the exit. By the time you assume dilution, it gets harder to own 10% at exit. 2. Why does it take 10 Paystacks to return a $50M fund? With Paystack, assume the exit multiple was 14.4x and assume you invested $1m into it. That is a $14.4m return sans dilution. You'd need to do that 10 times to return ~3x the fund.
3. How do the outcomes change when you introduce failure rates? A ten-year $50m Africa fund with a 2.5% fee and expenses may leave you ~$38m to actually invest but let's use $35m of investable capital to illustrate. Let's say your strategy is to invest $1m checks, and assume you reserve $10m to defend your pro rata in certain deals. FWIW, a 20% reserve ratio is on the low side and it's more common to see 30-50% of the fund set aside for reserves. You make 25 investments (25 * $1m = $25m), and your avg postmoney entry valuation is $10m so you buy 10%. Then you apply your reserves to defend your pro rata at the A (which are usually $15m+ rounds) so your check size is say, $1.5m. That means you can do ~6 follow-ons to protect your initial 10% holding. If all 6 exit after that point so they don't raise again (almost statistically impossible), then you hold 10% of the aggregate exit value. You would have invested $2.5m ($1m initial check plus a $1.5m follow on) into each of the 6. Assuming they are all Paystack type exits at $200m (sure, everyone thinks they will be unicorns but actual exit data belies that) then your gross return from the 6 companies is $120m (10% * $200m per company * 6 companies). But remember we started off by investing in 25 companies. If 50% fail to return 1x or better, (remember that batting .300 (3 in 10) in major league baseball likely gets you in the hall of fame) then we are looking at ~13 companies to drive the fund returns. Of these 13, 6 based on our example will return $120m. Maybe the remaining 7, representing $7m of investments return 3x (unlikely but let's say so just for shits and giggles). Then the aggregate fund return is $120m + $21m = $141m. On first read, that's a smashing success for a $50m fund and delivers the 20% carry (profit share) to the manager. Here are some quick calculations to illustrate the return multiples. $141m: dollars returned. $35m: dollars invested by the GP. $50m: dollars invested by LPs. $141m/$35m = 4.02x $-at-work gross; $141m/$50m = 2.82x trued up gross; $141m - $50m [$91m] * 80% [$72.8m] + $50m [$122.8m] ÷ $50m = 2.45x net to LPs. This example of course assumes no recycling i.e. the GP taking interim returns from early exits and reinvesting so that (s)he can get to invest the full $50m and not the $35m after fees. Doing so improves the odds for the fund as more dollars are working via startups and not just underwriting fees and expenses... | |||
| Perception vs. Reality: How Fintech is Driving Africa's Digital Economy | 28 Jan 2022 | 00:59:10 | |
Barbara Iyayi is an entrepreneur and investor with over 16 years of experience in venture capital, growth equity, and financial services. She has founded, invested in, scaled and advised, fintech and financial services companies globally. Currently, Barbara is the CEO & Founding Partner of Unicorn Growth Capital, an early-stage VC firm investing in the future of fintech. She also sits on the board of the World Wide Web Foundation. Prior to launching Unicorn, she was the Chief Growth Officer and Managing Director for Africa of Element, a pioneer of mobile deep learning, and served as the Board Chair of Appzone, a fintech infrastructure platform enabling the delivery of digital financial services in Africa. Barbara was a member of the founding team of Atlas Mara, Africa’s first SPAC, and conducted $15 billion in global transactions for JPMorgan and UBS. Barbara received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Columbia University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In this episode, we discuss:
DJ Saphir’s Spotify Playlist: | |||
| If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating a Lending Ecosystem for African SMEs | 16 Dec 2021 | 00:42:40 | |
Welcome to Track 6 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Hilda Moraa. Hilda is the Founder & CEO of Pezesha, a holistic digital financial infrastructure powering embedded finance to SMEs and institutions across Africa. She is an award-winning entrepreneur and author, who has more than 10 years of experience in fintech, regulation, and working with supply chain-driven multinationals such as Coca-Cola. Prior to launching Pezesha, she founded WezaTele, a Kenyan fintech startup that was acquired in 2015. Hilda has been named a Top 30 African Innovator by Quartz Africa, and an Obama Foundation Leader. Picking up on the previous conversation with Kuhle Mnisi of Secha Capital about the interplay between tech-enabled SMEs and tech startups, I chat to Hilda about how she’s building a tech company that’s creating an (eco)system of tech products to connect SME borrowers to capital. In this episode, we discuss:
Hilda’s Recommended Track & Featured Resources:
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| No Enterprise Left Behind: The Role of SMEs in Africa's Venture Landscape | 15 Dec 2021 | 01:08:58 | |
Welcome to Track 5 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Kuhle Mnisi. Kuhle is a Principal at Secha Capital, which she joined to marry her finance skill with a deep passion for impact. Prior to joining Secha, Kuhle worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Cape Town, and interned with Act in Africa, a design thinking and entrepreneurship development program, as well as Goldman Sachs in investment banking and PwC in auditing. In this conversation, Kuhle and I explore the SME investment opportunity, how it’s similar to and different from tech, and the ways in which tech-enabled SMEs and tech ventures play complementary roles in the broader venture ecosystem in Africa. In this episode, we discuss:
Kuhle's Recommended Track & Featured Resources:
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| Africa's S Curves: A Case for Realistic Optimism | 03 Apr 2025 | 01:06:24 | |
In this episode of The Trajectory Africa, DFS Lab General Partner Stephen Deng introduces "Africa's S-curves," a framework that explains why technology transitions on the continent take longer, but are also characterized by dramatic adoption and big impacts on informal markets due to improvements in productivity and cost structures. We talk through why the S-Curve logic points to a case for augmenting informal market structures with tech rather than trying to replace them entirely. We also talk about cybernetic commerce and how technology can interface with informal markets around money, by enabling digital transactions, energy, by boosting transparency in supply chains, and labor, by facilitating cross-border trade. [00:00] - Introduction [3:04] - An overview of Africa's S-Curves [38:45] - Opportunities in cybernetic commerce [44:02] - Digital commerce business models [1:02:06] - First principles of S-Curves Recommendations:
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| One Step at a Time: Sizing Consumer Markets & Enabling Consumption in Nigeria | 23 Sep 2021 | 01:16:19 | |
Welcome to Track 4 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Abieyuwa Obaseki, a consultant at Stears Data, a division of Stears Business. Stears’ mission is to make it easy for anyone anywhere in the world to access high quality information and data on Africa. Abieyuwa currently focuses on delivering insights to, for, and about Nigeria’s technology and innovation ecosystems. Prior to Stears, she was a strategy consultant, advising clients in the UK across multiple sectors such as banking, telecoms, and consumer goods. In this episode, we discuss:
Abieyuwa’s Recommended Track & Featured Resources:
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| Hold the C.R.E.A.M.: Decoding Consumer Markets & Digital Commerce in Africa | 25 Aug 2021 | 00:55:55 | |
Welcome to Track 3 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. Jake is a 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 (CGAP) at the World Bank. In this episode, we discuss:
Jake’s Recommended Track & Featured Resources:
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| We Can Solve It Ourselves: The Case for African Startup Success | 28 Jul 2021 | 01:06:46 | |
Welcome to Track 2 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. It’s inspired by the concept of a mixtape, in which each episode, or “track” will feature a conversation with a “guest artist”. There is also a soundtrack for inspiration provided by (DJ) Saphir Esmail via his Spotify playlist (link below). Our guest artist is Dotun Olowoporoku. Most recently, Dotun was an Associate Director at Novastar Ventures, an early stage fund that invests in businesses addressing the biggest problems for the low income mass markets in Africa. Prior to joining Novastar, Dotun was the Managing Partner and co-founder at Growthlab (previously Starta) a startup advisory firm for high growth startups in Africa. Dotun started his career as a research fellow on air quality and climate change in Bristol, England. In 2012, he founded an on-demand food delivery platform, leading the startup to scale across 3 cities in the UK and facilitated a strategic partnership with Just-Eat UK Plc in 2015. Dotun has a PhD in environmental management. He is the host of Building the Future podcast which chronicles African growth narrative through one-on-one conversation entrepreneurs, thought leaders and innovators shaping the African future. In this episode, we discuss:
Dotun’s Recommended Track & Featured Resources:
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| Don't Start a Fund? Kinyungu's New Take on Chasing Outliers | 23 Jun 2021 | 00:55:49 | |
Welcome to Track 1, the inaugural episode of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. With the unique African landscape—market characteristics, business environment, goals, and culture—as a starting point, The Trajectory Africa aims to pinpoint a destination for African tech, and the signposts that signal direction of travel. It’s inspired by the concept of a mixtape, in which each episode, or “track” will feature a conversation with a “guest artist”. There is also a soundtrack for inspiration provided by (DJ) Saphir Esmail via his Spotify playlist (link below).
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| Welcome to The Trajectory: Africa! | 14 May 2021 | 00:05:28 | |
This is a brief introduction to The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. With the unique African landscape—market characteristics, business environment, goals, and culture—as a starting point, The Trajectory Africa aims to pinpoint a destination for African tech, and the signposts that signal direction of travel. It’s inspired by the concept of a mixtape, in which each episode, or “track” will feature a conversation with a “guest artist”. There is also a soundtrack for inspiration provided by (DJ) Saphir Esmail (bio below) via his Spotify playlist (link below). You can find more African tech and VC resources below as well. Enjoy! About Me: About Saphir Esmail: Spotify Playlist: Chasing Outliers: Podcasts
Newsletters/Substacks
Live Sessions with Recordings
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| The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles (Digital Commerce & Logistics) | 26 Mar 2025 | 00:01:51 | |
The Trajectory Africa’s second series, The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles, is a two-part exploration of what powers fundamental value creation and investability in sectors that drive African VC opportunities. The eleven episodes of Part I were focused on fintech, exploring fintech’s subsectors—from market opportunities to business models—to tease out why they are (or aren’t) destinations for venture capital. Part II is focused on digital commerce and logistics and its foundations—infrastructure, business models, and core beliefs about how problems are solved and value is created. | |||
| Finding Fintech's Future: Towards a Thesis on Investing in Africa | 17 Sep 2024 | 01:32:39 | |
The Trajectory Africa’s first principles series was inspired by a desire to understand the drivers and assumptions underlying investable opportunities in key sectors hypothesized to be the engine of African VC, starting with fintech.
But somehow, all those granular questions led to many big, hairy questions. So, to help sense-make on this final, fintech-focused episode, we have Emeka Ajene, Founder and Publisher of Afridigest, a business media brand with an editorial focus on ideas, analysis, & insights for business innovators across Africa and beyond; Afri.capital, an emerging investment firm focusing on early-stage, tech-enabled investments; and Africreate, a strategic thinking partner & trusted advisor to senior executives doing business in Africa. I hope you enjoy the conversation! Tune in to hear about: [2:58] - The infrastructure of trade — the chicken or the egg [5:58] - How to win in neobanking [19:38] - Superapp logic [23:39] - The role of banks in fintech — partners and competitors [37:32] - Financial products as cultural products [43:03] - Creating sources of lending data [56:05] - The remaining investable opportunities in African fintech [1:02:28] - The role and value proposition of fintech’s 1st gen infrastructure builders [1:22:52] - First principles for understanding Africa’s fintech opportunities Recommendations:
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| Building the "Boring" Stuff: Infrastructure for Money Movement & Trade | 23 Aug 2024 | 01:14:39 | |
In Episode 1 of this series, Abraham Augustine, Research Partner of trendsAf and Comms and Programs Lead at Norrsken warned against “long arm, no mouth” syndrome and the risks of digitalizing one part of a system (distributed solar energy, for example) without considering where the barriers and effects might materialize (think missing payment rails). Infrastructure is great, but it can’t be half-baked, and those pipes need something to carry. That something is trade. Previous guests Samora Kariuki and Wiza Jalakasi both emphasized the power of interoperability—cross-continental (and international) money movement to catalyze the development of Africa’s digitally-enabled financial systems. And in the previous episode, ‘Tayo Bamiduro suggested that while physical infrastructure takes time to build, you can rapidly scale digital infrastructure to deliver inclusion, access, and inclusive growth. In this episode, I’m chatting with Gwera Kiwana, VP of Partnerships, Blockchain Payments for Onafriq and Nika Naghavi, Chief Network Officer, also of Onafriq, a “network of networks” that makes borders matter less. We dig into what it looks like to build infrastructure that connects mobile money networks, banks, fintechs and cash pick up points to support African trade. What role can crypto still play in fintech infrastructure? How does a cross-border payment work? And what are the implications of USD dominance in international trade? It’s all here. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Tune in to hear about: [2:25] - Role of crypto as enabling infrastructure for trade flows [9:40] - The role of USD in trade/Implications of USD dominance for international trade [13:16] - The evolution of Onafriq, market and channel expansion and acquisitions [27:55] - Anatomy of payment transactions and cross-border payments [39:01] - Distribution of infrastructure jobs to be done and the problems Onafriq solves [59:20] - Business model, competition vs. cooptition and future growth [1:08:00] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations: Chasing Outliers. Why Context Matters for Early Stage Investing in Africa, a report I co-authored on VC investing in Africa. Connect on social media: | |||
| Captain MAX: Democratizing Access to Electric Vehicles | 12 Aug 2024 | 01:23:42 | |
Back in Episode 7 of Trajectory Africa’s first series, Barbara Iyayi, CEO & Founding Partner of Unicorn Growth Capital made a strong statement about the ubiquity of financial services, arguing that every company should be a fintech company. Because as long as financial inclusion is a huge problem, every company should be able to offer financial services. This is the essence of embedded finance, which McKinsey defines as placing a financial product in a nonfinancial customer experience, journey, or platform.
And in this case the finance is in service of democratizing access to vehicles for mobility entrepreneurs. This flavor of embedded finance is called asset-based lending, or when a borrower's assets serve as collateral for a loan. But MAX isn’t just helping riders and drivers finance productive assets, it’s building the digital infrastructure needed to reimagine the mobility space with environmental sustainability at its core. Asset-based lending as an engine for EV-led mobility? Let’s dig in…
[2:08] - inspiration for MAX’s two-wheeler design [4:16] - the evolution of MAX’s business over time [9:12] - pillars for shepherding EV transition and market size [13:55] - MAX’s product offerings [18:44] - how credit decisions are made, sources of loan capital [23:00] - access to assets vs. ownership of assets and the best path to wealth creation [32:55] - integrating operator and vehicle productivity [55:00] - MAX’s business model, fleet financing, unit economics, and moat [1:13] - Collaboration vs. competition in nascent industries [1:21] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations: Chasing Outliers. Why Context Matters for Early Stage Investing in Africa, a report I co-authored on VC investing in Africa. Connect on social media: | |||
| Save Now, Buy Later: A Culturally-relevant Approach to Consumption? | 01 Aug 2024 | 00:57:04 | |
In the previous episode of The Trajectory Africa, we explored the art and science of community lending to microbusinesses. In this episode, we turn from business lending to consumer savings, but as an antidote to a consumer lending model called buy now, pay later, or BNPL.
According to Afridigest, these solutions also proliferated across the continent, delivered by companies like LipaLater, Klump and Float. But SNBL products, otherwise known as save now buy later, are being offered by innovators who believe that BNPL lacks a viable business model, promotes cyclical indebtedness in its users, and contradicts cultural norms that favor saving over lending. Ng’winula Kingamkono, Founder and CEO of Tunzaa is on a mission to transform the financial habits of everyday Africans (and improve the business operations of merchants while he’s at it). Tune in to hear about: [1:49] - Ng’winula’s “alter ego” [5:45] - Why save now buy later [8:15] - How Tunzaa works [16:28] - Building a two-sided marketplace, API first [25:06] - Savings vs. credit culture [30:50] - Product suite evolution and growth [47:27] Beliefs about consumption and the impact of the macroeconomic environment, consumer behavior [55:00] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations:
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| Banking on Social Intelligence: A Community Model for Microbusiness Lending | 24 Jul 2024 | 01:02:38 | |
In the previous episode of the Trajectory Africa, we heard from Kiiru Muhoya and Judith Bogonko at Fingo about the importance of cultivating Africa’s youth as the next generation of retail consumers of financial services. In this episode, we’ll hear how Femi Iromini, Co-Founder and CEO of Moni, and his team, have created a community lending model for microbusinesses that has the DNA of a not completely neobank, if the "neo" in neobank, means digital only. The rule of thumb in lending is it’s easy to give money out, but difficult to get it back. But Moni’s approach suggests that if you use technology to make existing social structures like community savings groups (otherwise known as ajo or esusu in Nigeria, tontines in Francophone Africa, chamas in Kenya, stokvels in South Africa, sanduks in South Sudan, etc.) work better, you can leverage social intelligence to build trust, efficiently underwrite loans, and eventually create the foundations of a bank by and for the people. Tune in to hear about: [1:49] - Lessons learned from previous startup experience [6:44] - Definition of community banking and characteristics of a bank for Africa [12:00] - How community financing works at Moni [22:00] - How Moni’s community lending model impacts consumer acquisition and retention [25:45] - Loan terms and approach to recovery [35:33] - Moni’s business model and transition from community lending to retail (neo)banking [45:55] - Portability of trust and social intelligence underwriting as moat [51:47] - The importance of offline engagement and early signs of product market fit [59:39] - Counterintuitive first principle Recommendations:
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