It’s a funny thing — in most pitch meetings, “scale” is the sexiest word in the room. But for African founders, it’s also the most misunderstood. Because when an investor says “How fast can you scale?”, what they often mean is: “How fast can you replicate this across borders like a Western startup would?”
Here’s the truth founders wish they could say out loud: We’re not just scaling a product. We’re fighting to build the systems it needs to survive.
Growth Here Isn’t Just Hard — It’s Inherently Uneven
One week, you’re onboarding 500 new users in Ibadan. The next, you’re stuck at the border because your servers are hosted in a country that just banned your API provider. There is no linear path. There’s barely a road at all.
Scaling in Africa means building while dodging blackouts, bribing customs officers with airtime, adapting your product to five local dialects, and redoing your payment flow because mobile money works in Kenya, but not in Ghana, and absolutely not in Congo.
Founders are playing chess in a storm. And yet investors keep asking, “Why aren’t you in three new markets yet?” Because sometimes, survival is scale.
The Frictions No One Puts in a Slide Deck
The friction points aren’t just operational — they’re existential.
- Infrastructure: As of 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to have the lowest electricity access rate globally, with only 48% of the population having access.
- Payments: Over 57% of adults in Africa remain unbanked, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2024. This statistic is more than just a number — it represents a significant barrier to sales.
- Logistics: Intra-African shipping costs are 60% to 70% higher than global averages due to poor connectivity and regulatory challenges.
- Internet access: This remains below 30% in many regions of the continent. In such an environment, you don’t scale a SaaS tool — you localise, hustle, and pray.
So What Does “Scale” Actually Mean Here?
For African founders, scale doesn’t mean aggressive headcount or regional domination. It means:
- Convincing a local bank to build an API, and then fixing their API when it breaks every Friday.
- Hiring one person in each state to collect cash payments manually, because that’s what your customer trusts.
- Building four different compliance systems — one for each regulatory zone you operate in.
You’re not just expanding. You’re customising reality.
Patient Capital With Range
What most African founders want from their investors isn’t just money — it’s contextual intelligence. Understand that TAM on a pitch slide doesn’t capture how many different Africas we’re dealing with. Nigeria alone is 200 million people and 300 micro-economies. Add cultural nuance, regional fragmentation, and inconsistent regulation, and you start to see why scale here isn’t plug-and-play — it’s patch-and-pray. Founders don’t need pep talks about velocity. They need partners who fund stamina.
Final Word: If You Want Exponential Growth, Fund the Chaos Whisperers
There’s a generation of African founders doing something wildly underappreciated: Building startups in economies that haven’t finished building themselves. They’re shipping despite structural dysfunction. They’re growing despite friction. And they’re staying in the game when it would be easier — and maybe even smarter — to quit.
If you’re an investor looking for quick scale, look elsewhere. But if you want the kind of returns that only come from deep resilience, deep localisation, and deep vision, then find the founders who can not only spot the chaos, but speak its language. Those are the ones turning friction into strategy. And that’s what real scale looks like here.
