Startups4Africa: This is NOT OUR Manifesto By Femi Longe, Co-Founder Co-Creation Hub

It was co-authored by a Portuguese Professor, a Spanish bureaucrat/investor with advice from an African IT officer working at the European Commission. They aim to present the manifesto to leaders at the EU-Africa Summit of Heads of States and Governments that started this morning in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire.

But this is NOT OUR MANIFESTO!!!

Although they claim the manifesto was written as an EU-Africa collaboration, NO African organisation and none of the leaders driving the African startup scene were involved in the concoction.

According to the document:

This Manifesto has emerged from a collaborative effort from Startup Europe Africa Network (SEC2A), with the support of the European Commission, and contributions from a wide range of stakeholders from Europe and Africa.

The African drafted into the process 9 months ago to add colour has not done any significant work in the African startup scene. Yet it is already being presented to the leaders of both our continents as the product of extensive contribution, which hasn’t happened, to grant it legitimacy.

Faking Participation

On Monday the 27th of November, GIZ invited me to participate in a session on Raising Capital and Scaling up African Digital Startups at the EU-Africa Business Summit in Abidjan, a pre-meeting ahead of the Summit of the Heads of State. Also scheduled to participate in the session were 4 of the 14 entrepreneurs who took part in PitchDrive, our summer road trip to connect Africa startups with the the European investor and startup ecosystem.

The intention was to use the perspective of actually living African entrepreneurs who have attempted to fundraise and expand into the EU to inform recommendations for our leaders.

On getting to the allotted room, we discovered that our session had been hijacked by the drafters of the manifesto. Although the agenda still listed the session as being for discussions on fundraising and scaling, it had been re-purposed for impromptu feedback and input into the already drafted manifesto. A manifesto that most people in the room did not know existed until that moment and even less had actually seen.

The whole review was a sham given we had barely 1 hour to review a document that had been crafted in Europe and purportedly represented us.

A sham because there is absolutely no way of ensuring any of the hurriedly gathered feedback would actually be integrated into the manifesto.

A sham because we were ambushed into giving feedback into the manifesto under the guise of discussing it takes to grow our business so that now it would be claimed that a whole lot of African entrepreneurs and ecosystem players endorsed a manifesto that was barely flashed in front of their face barely 48 hours before it is to be presented before our heads of governments.

You may look at the content and say “Well, it is not bad”, but the process for the creation is as important as the product.

Stopping this in it’s track

Ordinarily I would not write a response like this but giving our (Co-Creation Hub’s) privileged position in the African startup ecosystem, my silence would make me complicit if I did not share my views here and now.

As young Africans work towards the liberation and uplifting of their countries and continent through digital innovation and entrepreneurship, despite massive odds, this manifesto represents a poisoned chalice as it purports to know what our ecosystem needs on our behalf.

Given the intent to propose this as our creation, the onus is on us to speak up and reject it in its entirety.

Do we need an African Manifesto?

Does Africa need a manifesto on Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship? Perhaps!

But if it is to be written, it would and should be written by the people slaving everyday to use digital tech to solve problems in the different areas, where things don’t work quite as well as they should, in our society.

It should be written by the people slaving to build our tech and innovation ecosystems pushing for initiatives beyond the benefit of any single company.

It should be written by the people in and outside our government working to ensure the right policy environment exist to enable digital innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive on the continent.

It should be written by the young and old investors ensuring that capital of all sizes is deployed to support Africas entrepreneurs in their quest to create world class companies.

It should be written by Africans!!!

Do we need a Europe-Africa Manifesto?

If there is a need for a Europe-African manifesto, that need should be established by these Africans and their counterparts in Europe.

The content of such a manifesto must be co-created by the collaborative action of equals. The priority areas must be guided by empirical data and validated by players across both continent.

The outcome of such a manifesto must be negotiated and agreed not imposed by one sides perception of what the other needs.

What ever structure is setup to midwife and ensure the implementation of the manifesto must be similarly constituted.

Anything less would be interpreted as an attempt to steal our future from us just as our past was stolen from our ancestors.

We will continue to build the African digital innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem and we would resist any such effort.

So What Do We Do Now??

Here are some suggestions of what you can do if you agree with me that this sham should be stopped forthwith:

1. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
2. Repost and share this article through every channel (blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc) that you have so it gets to the attention of the relevant decision makers
3. Use #NotOurManifesto to highlight your shares and contributions across all platforms.
4. Tag your President’s social media handle, the EU Commission (@eu_commission), the African Union (@_AfricanUnion) and the Summit (#AUEU)
5. Tag the European Investment Bank(@EIB) and the African Development Bank (@AfDB_Group)‏, guardians of the resources dedicated to grow innovation, entrepreneurship and collaboration across the 2 continents. They are the ultimate target of the drafters of this manifesto.
6. Contribute your voice to the conversation on whether a manifesto is needed and if it is, contribute to shaping it.

Final Words

If we do not step up to define our future, others would step up to define it for us and most likely, what they define would be very different from what we want for ourselves.

Africa needs our proactivity. It demands it!!!