Start-ups In Need Of Resilience In Africa

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Start-ups In Need Of Resilience In Africa

24 juin 2021 09:35

A recent row between the Nigerian Head of State, President Muhammadu Buhari and the High-tech giant, Twitter has left many visible cracks in the growth efforts of the digital industry in Africa. A Tweet by the Nigerian leader concerning the danger that those fomenting division in his country could face, made certain opinion leaders in Nigeria to qualify the position of their leader as hate-speech. It led Twitter to remove the Nigerian President`s statement from its website. An immediate backlash was the banning of Twitter in the country by government. As a consequence, hundreds of start-ups and thousands of Twitter users in the country suffered severe losses. Statistics within less than one week from when the problem occurred showed that over 500,000 Naira was lost by Nigerian Start-ups. Some had to go underground to continue using the Application because their livelihoods remained suspended to the digital economy. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) are some of the unavoidable world dominant online firms that continue to dictate the pace in online business. Those who intend to venture into the digital economy in Africa are therefore confronted with the overwhelming presence of GAFAM platforms through which they must submit in order to reach out to the rest of the world. It remains intriguing to see how the various start-ups created by youth on the continent can be sustainable in the face of such strong giants. A single incident in Nigeria has exposed several flaws in the resilience of start-ups in Africa. A website for news on African Start-ups, Disrupt Africa pointed out that the sector raised 13.9 million US dollars in 2020, about 19 times the figures obtained the year before and nearly 116 times the amount raised in 2018. “Spending power is growing, entertainment start-ups are increasingly succeeding where others failed, and investors are looking for opportunities beyond busy spaces like fintech, health, and e-commerce,” Tom Jackson, co-founder of Disrupt Africa said. Such remarks point to the fact that start-ups hold the potential for job creation and of course the improvement of living standards in Africa. Start-up ecosystem in Africa has been evolving with support from foreign companies which provide them with business incubation, acceleration and matchmaking opportunities. As a dynamic sector, start-ups in Africa may have to seriously analyse the options of extensive mobile penetration, mobile money infrastructure, high rate of internet subscription, high literacy rate, government support and private sector investments. These facts could be key in ensuring that sustainable investments are made to guarantee livelihoods on grounds that the sector should not be abandoned midway. Areas like the entertainmen...