Long arm with no mouth: The physical limits of Africa's digital economy
Listen now
Description
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:Read Abraham’s writing on Africa’s digital economy on Tech Cabal: Next Wave: The social questions around Africa’s digital economy The Next Wave: A data centre roadmap for Africa The Next Wave: A digital economy is, above all, physical The Next Wave: How Africa’s digital infrastructure gap manifests The Next Wave: Africa’s power deficit is at odds with its digital economy goalsConnect on social media: Abraham Augustine on LinkedInAbraham Augustine on TwitterThe Trajectory Africa on LinkedInTayo Akinyemi on LinkedInTayo Akinyemi on Twitter
More Episodes
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. Across 11 episodes, we explored the opportunities for, and...
Published 09/17/24
Published 09/17/24
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...
Published 08/23/24