Oyin Solebo

Africa’s startup ecosystem has mastered the art of the launch. Accelerators and incubators have achieved exactly what they were designed to: help founders bring ideas to life, find early traction, and secure that first institutional check. But design has limits. When those same companies are ready to scale, the support that carried them begins to thin. This is the messy middle—and it’s where too many promising companies quietly stall or die.

Africa is a 1.2 billion person market on the cusp of dramatic and transformative growth. It is adopting new technology and fostering new entrepreneurial ventures to address challenges to its development. At the same time, it is the continent with the largest rate of population growth with the number estimated to double by 2050.