The 54 Collective Founder Safari was the first of three founder-oriented events scheduled for 2024. The investor hopes to take the concept to Cairo in early 2025, with additional events planned over the next 14 months.
The African tech ecosystem is still in its infancy. Venture capital funding across the continent passed over $2 billion last year, an exponential rise from the literal millions of dollars raised in 2013.
Yet, as the statistics continue to prove, Africa remains home to only 2 to 3% of total VC funding worldwide as of 2023, with the majority coming from outside the continent’s borders.
This funding gap is a stark illustration of why community is so vital within the tech ecosystem. With dry powder limited, and competition high, community is the jump-off point for founders seeking knowledge, networks, guidance, and funding. Community is the utilitarian choice that has seen founders, builders, and investors share insights with one another, creating an informational feedback loop that benefits individual founders and the ecosystem at large.
That sense of community (or lack thereof at the opposite end of the scale) extends beyond founders, characterising entire sectors, heightening the need for opportunity identification and forward-facing conversations.
According to one founder, Sebastien Lacour of PayGenius, synergies are needed across the ecosystem, with gaps existing in the continental financial sector. Africa has a highly segmented monetary system and for startups to break through frontier markets, collaboration with other founders is exigent.
“Africa is complicated, particularly in fintech, where each country has its own reserve bank and regulations. The key and the only way to manoeuvre is through partnerships,” said Lacour.
For Lacour, 54 Collective Safari was instrumental in helping him re-energize his resolve as a founder. By encountering optimistic and dedicated people like him, he felt that he was doing something worthwhile and brilliant. He further benefited from the insights shared about the broader fintech ecosystem, and answers to questions about his own business, which has been in existence for over a decade.
“We got the opportunity to talk about our issues and how they make sense; what we are going through, from that perspective it was a good experience,” said Lacour.
A similar perspective was shared by fellow attendee, Frank Rop, founder of Msitu Africa. His startup aims to be Africa’s first climate SaaS API that will enable businesses to reduce their carbon emissions and improve their sustainability score. Part of Msitu Africa’s promise is being a solution that can be plugged into different digital systems, such as websites and company applications across the globe.
Such an ambition requires intensive partnership to succeed. By allowing founders from different markets to share ideas that may be invaluable in exploring new markets, Rop believes that 54 Collective understands the visions of its founders – which are not limited in geographical scope.
“54 Collective is able to broaden your horizon and vision, where you’re now able to tap into other markets across the continent,” said Rop.
The 54 Collective Founder Safari is not an isolated event. The commercial and impact investor, with offices in Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg and soon Cairo, hosts several community events of this nature every year, with each event unique to the founders attending.
For the pan-African company, any opportunity to engage with a founder in person and listen to their challenges and support them feeds into the firm’s venture support model, which provides both catalytic capital of up to $500,000, founder depending, and side-by-side venture support through its Venture Success Platform.
“What we have done here today is something we are going to package and do it in our next market. We want to spend time with founders and learn. The goal in an emerging market is to understand the pain points of founder so that we can help them to build without boundaries,” says Bongani Sithole, 54 Collective CEO.
The 54 Collective Founder Safari was the first of three founder-oriented events scheduled for 2024. The second took place in Lagos in October, with a third founder experience planned for Cape Town in November. The investor hopes to take the concept to Cairo in early 2025, with additional events planned over the next 14 months. To join the next community building engagement apply here, https://lu.ma/hdtzsoad
To learn more about 54 Collective, visit www.54collective.vc
