I came across this article by Uwem U. which argues that the VC model was never built for Africa. $200M+ lost in shutdowns in 2023 alone. The right fund simply isn't coming. It's a compelling read. But I think we may be asking the wrong question. The problem isn't that VC failed Africa. It's that we kept applying it to companies it was never designed for; and then called it an ecosystem problem when things fell apart. The Dangote analogy is the strongest moment for me, because It's not just illustrative, it's precise. He built the largest fortune in Nigeria brick by brick, compounding patience: cement, flour, sugar, each built on distribution moats that took years to entrench. Hand him a venture cheque in the 1980s with a five-year exit expectation, and he probably doesn't survive it. That's not an indictment of VC. That's misapplication. I know this firsthand. We're building PerAnkh — workforce infrastructure that turns real, demonstrated skills into trusted signals for the labor market. It's designed for Africa's workforce: young, informal, skills-rich, credential-poor. The trust layer we're building compounds over 12–18 months. Value accrues to employers, institutions, and governments; not to users clicking through a course. No VC clock survives that architecture. And forcing one onto it wouldn't accelerate us; it would break the very thing that makes it work. That's not a flaw in the business. That's a flaw in the instrument. We glamorised the startup above the SME. Investors, ecosystem builders, journalists — we built a culture where a venture cheque was the only door worth walking through. And then we were surprised when founders optimised for the cheque rather than the business. But here's what I keep coming back to: zero to nine unicorns in twelve years is not a failure story. The exits look different from Silicon Valley, yes. But $50M–$250M outcomes are real, achievable, and fundable. The harder conversation isn't 'is VC broken?' It's two things: Are we brave enough to deploy it only where it actually fits? And are we serious about building the alternatives — revenue-based financing, growth equity, development finance — for companies like mine that need patient capital but currently have nowhere to go? Because 'patient capital' only works if it actually exists.
