OPINION: Investors in Africa are so focused on the poor that they are ignoring the middle class

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

African businesses that don’t focus on helping the poorest are being ignored by investors, according to Agosta Liko, a Kenyan entrepreneur and founder of PesaPal, a payments system for online and mobile money.

African tech startups received more than $185 million in funding in 2015, with countries like Kenya seeing their best year in fundraising—asharp contrast to a global slowdown in the sector last year. But critics like Liko think that too much funding is going toward “social enterprises,” a profit-making company whose goal is social impact.

Speaking at the Quartz Africa innovators summit on July 20, Liko said:

When you look at Kenyan tech, sometimes it feels like you need to put up a picture of a poor lady on the side of the road selling mangos to get funding. I think we need to look at other markets. What has happened in our ecosystem is that everyone is so focused of the guy at the bottom that they forget the viability of the middle. When you look at the middle class in Kenya, you’re looking at 3 to 5 million… We believe this is the one to serve. This is the guy who owns a restaurant, a bar in town [and] the moment you make it easier for them and they create jobs.

Five of the seven largest reported rounds of fundraising for startups in Kenya last year were social enterprises.

Source: Quartz (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Impact Assessment
Tags
Base of the Pyramid, impact investing, social enterprise