Building Successful Startups | The role of policies in making and breaking a venture in the African ecosystem

We are having a session today convened by Afrilabs where we will interrogate the shape & form startup ecosystem policy should take cognizant of the unique heterogenous terrain found in Africa.

Here is a summary of my perspective

1-Startup Policy Making must adhere to the principle of design thinking ie focus on supporting felt challenges faced by local startups & support ecosystem rather than copy pasting what is working in a different jurisdiction

2-To understand felt challenges of the startups we must recognize that the problems startup solve are reflection of the challenges the society face at the lowest level. For example in Kenya the lowest denominator is counties . See an example (https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/corporate/enterprise/turkana-start-up-nawi-takes-digital-taxi-hailing-giants-3549030 )

3-Best practice in terms of a good startup ecosystem requires; Talent, Education, Incubation, Funding and coherent interplay of triple helix (Government, Academia & Industry)

4-Startup Policy in Kenya must be founded on the following principles;

a) Foundational policies must be in place eg Enabling business environment, Strong human capital development & prioritization/mainstreaming innovation to vision 2030

b) Policy framework must support startup ecosystem in a devolved set up ensuring that all the stakeholders both on the triple helix as well as startup specific stakeholders are catered for at county level

c) A clear policy evaluation framework must be put in place. This must cover systemic and transparent data collection. This will enable review of sector performance of key national matrices eg GDP Contribution, Employment etc

d) Systemic startup financing spectrum that derisks & incentivizes investors across the startup growth stages to ensure growth mobility for startups with a majority currently posting <1M USD below the sweetspot of major VCs