Africa Doesn’t Have an Investment Problem. It Has an Infrastructure Problem

I’m sitting at the airport, sulking. I just missed my flight from Dar Es Salaam to London. It’s a Friday, and I should have known it was a prayer day and every road would be packed. I’m sulking because I now have to pay a change fee and a rebooking fee. And it wasn’t cheap. Definitely not how I wanted to start the year, but here we are.

This is one of those realities of travelling in Africa that nobody really tells you about. So many things can be unpredictable. Unlike in developed countries, where most cities have some form of public transport to the airport (side-eye Dublin, well done Johannesburg), you often have no option but to travel by road. And sometimes, you just get unlucky and get stuck.

It’s happened to me in Uganda, Senegal, and now Tanzania. Nairobi recently built an expressway from the city to the airport, making travel to the airport much easier. Shout out to my Kenyan people. Hongera sana! 

And while I’m sitting here, annoyed and replaying the morning in my head, I realise this feeling is very familiar. It’s the same frustration I’ve felt for years watching capital try to move in and out of Africa. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating.

Anyway, if you are reading this newsletter for the first time, you’ve now joined 500 people who read me at least once a month. Please join them.

I’ve been busy so here is a quick update from my end.

Borderless is out there (yay \o/), and I’m genuinely glad we’re building this. My core thesis hasn’t changed: Africa and its diaspora are still missing early-stage investment infrastructure. 

The US has Sydecar and AngelList. Europe has plenty of infrastructure. There are clear rails for how individuals become angels, how syndicates form, how capital moves, and how founders raise. Africans and the diaspora, on the other hand, are still trying to figure out how to plug into systems that were never designed for us. Sorry, I’m throwing shades, but you get the vibe.

Capital exists. Trust exists. Deal flow exists. What’s missing is the plumbing.

What ends up happening is that investment occurs in WhatsApp groups, Google Sheets, and informal side agreements. People are wiring money across borders, relying on trust and goodwill, hoping nothing goes wrong. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it sets us back years, halting progress.

Maybe you’ve heard me sing this song before, but I genuinely believe we need a streamlined way to invest across Africa and the diaspora. I’ve spent the past three or so years building exactly that. It hasn’t been easy, and it’s definitely not where I want it to be yet. Some would say it’s still day one. I agree.

But infrastructure always looks underwhelming in its early days. Too often, we take short-term approaches to solve long-term problems. Infrastructure takes time to build, but once it is built and working, it fades quietly into the background. Nobody thinks about airports when flights run smoothly. Nobody thinks about payment rails when transactions settle instantly. You only notice infrastructure when it fails. 

Now that the building is out of the way, I’m shifting gears this year.

I’m moving from mostly building to enabling. I’ll still work closely with the engineering team to ship new features and fix issues, but I want to spend more time on enablement. The question I’m focused on is simple: how do we enable as many collective managers, investors, and founders as possible to actually use this infrastructure?

Collective Managers

We built Borderless for collective managers. Groups of people are already investing together, often informally, without adequate infrastructure. What’s interesting is that many people don’t even realise they are collective managers. They have strong deal flow, they’re trusted by founders, or both.

They are already doing the work. They just don’t have the tools.

Our goal is to help you organise properly and get investments across the line, legally and transparently. It helps when you are an investor yourself too. More often than not, your tribe will co-invest alongside you when you put money in. We’ve seen this pattern repeat itself over and over again.

Investors

With Borderless, investors now have options. They can discover and join multiple collectives, which means deal flow is no longer the bottleneck. Capital can follow conviction instead of proximity.

Personally, I’ve set up a deal flow group where I share investment opportunities I’ve reviewed with people who might be interested. If you’ve already made an investment via Borderless, I’m happy to add you. If not, you can still join by clicking the link below.

Founders

While fundraising last year, I also had another realisation. The same infrastructure we were building for investing could also make fundraising easier, so we used it.

That insight led to Raise.

If you’re a founder looking to raise from friends, family, or customers, Raise gives you a structured, compliant way to do that. We don’t introduce you to investors as a service, but if we think your company or project could be relevant to investors in our network, we’ll make introductions with your permission.

We are not a magic bullet. We are not promising overnight success. We are building the rails to make your life easier.

With all of this happening, I plan to post a lot more educational content that collective managers, investors, and founders can actually use. Less theory. More practical guidance. It’ll be video-first, so you’ll mostly find me on Instagram and TikTok.

We’re also launching the first cohort of sessions this month, which I think founders in particular will find useful. If you’re building and thinking about fundraising this year, I strongly recommend joining.

Infrastructure takes time. But once it’s in place, everything else starts to move.

Disclaimer: I wrote a couple of articles over the holidays and plan to release them weekly. However, I cannot guarantee that I will publish weekly because, well, life.

If you find any of my articles useful, please share them with your friends, post them, and tag me.

Thank you for reading.