Quitting everything to start a company from scratch to build back home : the call of an emerging young African generation

For the past 10 years, we have been hearing more and more about African businesses emerging and becoming successful on the continent. Over time, Africa has graduated from a doomed region to the land of opportunities, to the next frontier. And while, black and African founders still struggle to get access to funding compared to expats, for many entrepreneurs with African origins, the idea of building a business on the continent is not just an opportunity, it is a life calling.

Very often, I get questioned about why I decided to leave lucrative employment in Germany to start a whole new company with my Kenyan cofounder. Why Africa? Why starting from scratch after studying and spending so much on business schools? Why not following the traditional employment pathway of promised success?

Both on my African or my European circles, people are asking me these questions and I think the one who was the most inquisitive of all, was definitely my own father. After leaving Congo-Brazzaville at 19 years old to create his own European dream with my French-German mother and build a more sustainable future for himself and his family, for him, this concept of starting a new company at 26 years old in a region where I knew so little about, was a full absurdity. On his side, he followed all the right steps, went to university, got even 2 master’s degrees in law and finance and climbed the career ladder in large corporates such as Renault, Alstom, Faurecia before even thinking about building a company. Similarly, my mother took her PhD, became a medical doctor and built a 30-year career in her home-town in Normandy. Their objective first was to uplift their standards of living... in Europe… Not lose their focus by looking backwards! But for me, clearly, the path was already forged! Together, they achieved their objective, they definitely provided their children with a more sustainable future and the best foundations… Thanks to them, 30 years later, with all the opportunities they gave me I have all the tools to follow my long-life dream and build the bridge between Europe and Africa to build back home.

But why? Why quitting everything to start a company from scratch to build back home?

Actually, I think I can summarize my ‘Why’ into 3 main reasons for taking the leap of faith and going back into a region where I have not grown up to be an entrepreneur:

• 1. The dream of a home away from home.
• 2. The blessing of working with people driven by the same purpose and mission.
• 3. The chance of acting today to see the change we want tomorrow: If not us African descendants, who else?

1. The dream of a home away from home

I grew up in France, born from a French-German mother, Father with Malian origins and a Congolese nationality from my father, I do not feel that France is my only home. I do not only go to one countryside when I have to see my grand parents, I do not pick up only European phone numbers to celebrate birthdays, I have not even been raised in only one religion. As a child, I used to go to my grand-father’s place in St George des Groseillers in Normandy and watch on national television on France 3 the fights and wars in Congo and DRC with my father telling me ‘this is where Grand-pa and Grand-Ma are staying. And I used to panic thinking “how are they going to survive? Will I be able to meet them one day?” I used to ask my father why we are not visiting our ‘African’ grand-parents as much as our ‘European’ grand-parents and he used to tell me the difficulties they were undergoing and safety concerns for us. It is only when I only became 21 years old that I nagged him enough to take me to Brazzaville and Pointe Noire to meet my grand-parents for the first time, as the safety had improved and wars ended.

From there on, we did our best to come back every year, and it became very clear to me that my objective should always be to find a way to make myself home away from home, here on the African soil, where part of my family stays… where the other half of my identity is attached to. I know I cannot change the past and I may have missed 21 years of my life far from part of my family, far from the African continent, but I can make sure now to spend the rest of my future connecting with my roots. Starting a company and trying to build a financial bridge to Africa to provide resources empowering the entrepreneurs who have solutions to the problems we face there, is my way of contributing to change, my way of building back home.

I know we are many more out there, inside and outside the continent, with this dream and this passion burning inside. Ultimately, investing in Diaspora and African founders is investing in that kind of motivation, that grit, that thirst of change which can move mountains and build unicorns…

2. The blessing of working with people driven by purpose and mission

Have you ever felt that what you do, does not only have meaning for you, but also has strong meaning for everyone working with you? Well, leading Melanin Kapital for me has felt like the most collective experience I ever had! Each of our teammates feels strongly that Melanin Kapital’s mission is actually their mission. They all want to build a better future for themselves, their family, their neighbour, their country, their continent. I cannot be grateful enough for having the opportunity to meet such inspiring and passionate people who joined us in this dream of providing hope and opportunities to entrepreneurs shaping our continent.

Our team is showing me everyday how much we,Africans and Diasporans, are hungry for change and ready to make sacrifices to see our continent empowered and to build a sustainable future for all of us, in Africa. Attracting talents is important and it usually is the first test that any startup like us needs to ace before going forward, but having talents that can be passionate and dedicated to a purpose is a blessing that I cherish every day.

3. The chance of acting today to see the change we want tomorrow: If not us African descendants, who else?

Let’s be honest here, as much as we say that Africa is the land of opportunities, it is also the region where doing business is extra-challenging. Yes, tech startups are growing, but many others are struggling. So, coming to Africa to build your own business is not just a hobby, it comes with a dedication and a sense of purpose that is way stronger than just the smell of opportunities. Even at Melanin Kapital Kenya, based in the capital of African tech, last January for instance, we were doing our normal activities with our SMEs, organizing live masterclasses for them to finalize their profiles and apply for funding. But in the middle of the week, we had a country-wide power cut. There were power outages and internet cuts in Nairobi for weeks, and it was even worse for counties outside the capital. Well, there is not much tech you can do in this case. Besides the unreliability of infrastructures, administration themselves can be a blocker to your business. Sometimes, you can try to set up a company and wait for the approval of the local government for 6 to 8 months. In the meantime, you do not have a registered company, how are you supposed to grow?

The skills, the craftiness and the creative thinking you have to develop in Africa to be unbelievable compared to the ones you can rely on when you are an entrepreneur in Western countries where infrastructure and governmental administrations are reliable.

That being said, for me it came as a sense of responsibility to focus on solving issues that were from my African home countries, where there is less support, than focusing on those in Europe, where there are greater access to opportunities. I strongly believed in capitalizing on the foundations I received to be able to bring my contribution to what I hope can make a difference back home. It was President Barack Obama who said that ‘ultimately I’m a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa’ and I tend to agree with him. Since the movements of independences, the issue of development in Africa has been dominated by international actors, charities, outside of Africa… and as much this is important and can have a significant impact on the region, it has to also come from the Africans themselves that can then build collaborations and partnerships with internationals to build the Africa they want, the Africa they deserve.

My ambition: making finance work for Africans by Africans

After 2 master’s degrees and 6 years of working for different impact funds and organizations, I decided that it was time to take a leap of faith and co-founded Melanin Kapital with Ian Minjire Kibira with the idea of building a new financial paradigm that would be developed by Africans and would build wealth and prosperity for Africans. We started with a virtual accelerator program, called Tuungane — meaning ‘let’s unite’ in Kiswahili — to at least use our core skills in business and finance to have an impact. At that time though, we had not idea about how we could actually be able to make it sustainable and scalable to the ambitions we had for our countries. It took us 2 years to actually build revenues through this program to then develop a technology, our MSME financing platform, that could provide MSME entrepreneurs to get access to finance at fair conditions, starting with credit and later equity from investors around the world, but especially from African and Diasporan investors alike.

With the 2nd edition of Tuungane, the Tuungane 2X Program na Absa ‘Let’s Unite to See Her Empowered Program” we are getting a step closer to our dream by onboarding 600 women MSME entrepreneurs in our platform to provide access to credit from Absa Kenya, backed by the African Guarantee Fund as a guarantor. The road towards our goal of financing 1 million MSMEs on the continent by 2030 is on track and, together, we believe it can be a good start towards building today the Africa We Want tomorrow, one entrepreneur at a time…