Getting into business: Start-up capital in Africa

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The amount of accessible funding for start-ups in Africa is growing fast, but lots of it goes to the more developed economies of South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya. We speak to business owners in Nigeria and Uganda and compare their experiences of getting into business.

Nnamdi Okoh is the co-founder of Terminal Africa, based in Lagos. He explains the process of getting onto an accelerator programme and how the advice and financial support has allowed him and his brother to turn the business from a side hustle to a full time job.

AbdulMalik Fahd investigates why Lagos has become such a hub for new business on the continent and Tom Jackson the co-founder of Disrupt Africa, a hub for start-up news, explains why investment opportunity is growing so quickly and what this means for business.

Kaivan Khalid Satter is the founder of Asaak, an asset financing company for motocyles based in Kampala, Uganda. He explains how tough it was to raise funding at the beginning and tells us how he’s now managed to raise more than 30 million dollars in funding.

Producer/presenter: Hannah Mullane

(Photo: Nnamdi Okoh. Credit: Nnamdi Okoh)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love, Janessa, a brand new true crime podcast from the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts.
0:07.2	It's a story about love, deceit and survival, and it's available now.
0:12.2	Find out more at the end of this podcast.
0:18.8	Welcome to Business Daily with me Hannah Malayne.
0:22.5	Today's episode is all about start-ups in Africa.
0:27.2	What do you need to turn that side hustle into a full-time gig?
0:31.2	You need lots of things really, a great idea, ambition,
0:34.9	but what you really need to make it happen is money.
0:38.0	And right now, startups in Africa are getting lots of that.
0:41.8	For the first time, we're seeing billions and billions of dollars every year flooding into
0:44.9	African tech companies from all over the world.
0:47.7	Suddenly, there's access to capital that there wasn't five or six years ago.
0:51.8	In 2022, African startups raised over three billion US dollars in funding for the first time.
0:58.6	And while startup funding has been slowing down in many parts of the world,
1:02.3	that's not the case for Africa, where it's growing six times faster than the global average.
1:08.0	This is Entrepreneur Central.
1:10.4	Almost everyone you meet is doing something or has an idea to do something.
1:15.7	That's why a lot of investors come here because there's a big, big, big entrepreneurial spirit.
1:22.7	We'll speak to business founders across the continent who have built their companies from
1:26.3	scratch,
1:31.1	capitalising on those investment opportunities and growing fast.
1:33.1	Where do they get that investment from?
	...

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