The 2000s provided the voice telephony era in Africa. The 2010s provided the mobile internet era. The 2020s will engineer the application utility era where the combinatorial and re-combinatorial power of cloud computing, mobile internet and software will redesign market sectors across territories in Africa.
This is the cambrian moment of entrepreneurial capitalism and mobile internet is powering it. New business models will be invented and new ordinance in markets will evolve.
It’s here – begin to build because new empires will emerge as market structures will be transformed. Every sector will see changes in Africa.
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Comment #1: We can’t write our problems away with codes.
I don’t know of a software that can make affordable bread and water. In 2019, Nigerians spent 56.7% of household income on food, this year, there’s a report on Business Day that the number has risen to 101% a month, thanks to underwhelming supply and productivity. Nigerians won’t eat software. We need to read meaning into these numbers.
Startups that are serious about solving Africa’s problems at some point must begin to Resolve Supply, demand is not the problem, you can always aggregate after building supply resolution stacks. Until Innovators begin to Resolve Supply, their Total Addressable Markets will continue to shrink since any increase in price of food (which is only going up and up) will send more and more people below the poverty line eroding the purchasing power of the nation.
We’re not at par with America where Supply is largely Unbounded. Innovators must innovate meaningfully, else it’s all a convoluted head rush.
My Response: xx information improves market inefficiencies. Using software, logistics startups now synchronize when farmers harvest, trucks arrive and move those produce to the processing centers. By doing just that, waste is reduced. Africa does produce decent tonnage of food but the problem is that most are wasted. If you reduce that waste, you have fixed a problem.
If that efficiency improves for wheat, that “affordable bread” will happen. These things are linked. You need to start somewhere. You may not see the connections between a trucking company and the price of bread but those who look at end-to-end logistics do.
In other words, from seeding to harvesting, you can do many things that will reduce the cost of bread even when you are not making bread.
“Startups that are serious about solving Africa’s problems at some point must begin to Resolve Supply, demand is not the problem” – I do not really agree generally. Nigeria has about 30 million who earn income (most minimum wage) and those power the other 180m. No matter how you look at it, that is very small and it is a demand problem because of purchasing power. That is why companies like Shoprite, Mr. Price struggle.
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