THE VENTURE MATRIX FOR THE FUTURE OF AFRICA (Series I)

I don’t think my story is special but, I think it has a special plot that unfolds by paying attention to the deuteragonist, most neglected and marginalized in the chain of major events even though they are the jewel of the priced crown like David in the Bible and not the Protagonist (because it’s not actually about me, please don’t get carried away).

I’m a 2018 graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, department of Psychology but, not one like the typical or even atypical type of student, I was the type without a category or a relatable identity within the seemingly diverse student community as observed across Universities in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. I was a breed birth from chaos and disruption, dating back to as recent as my pre-university days where I performed averagely on my secondary school final exams but excelled on external assessments and activities and even once earned recognition as the youngest candidate of a nationwide scholarship with NIIT (participated in the programme in Festac) where I participated in an IT skills-acquisition program coupled with being a sales boy and customer care rep at a shop where I was intended to learn the technical skill of repairing mobile phones and devices as an apprentice(Yes! I used to follow my boss to buy spare parts for mobile devices at Alaba market). I know you’re asking but, I can’t fix phones and I didn’t understand that whole part but I enjoyed the business lessons I was exposed to.

Fast forward to my admission into Obafemi Awolowo University as a student of Computer Science and Engineering, which I chose as a response to 3 desires I thought would secure my position in the global conversation about exploring opportunities, which were:

• A degree in computer science and engineering means I’d be able to work in a dynamic and fast -changing industry so I was always going to be excited about what I was calling work.
• An exposure to acquiring that degree means I could work anywhere in the world and have access to options that would enable me to pursue my ambitions
• OAU, was praised as the best University at the time so, I knew I was going to be in one of the best student academic communities within an already vibrant community of Nigeria’s brightest minds within a geographical space.

I soon lost interest in the version of education I encountered in my 100 level as a computer science and engineering student and my disruptive-chaos-by-design character switched to psychology department by the beginning of my 200 level in the University. This disinterest became a realization when the 3 desires for which I was excited about that reality were beginning to look like a dream that would stay a dream throughout my journey in the University. I became aware that:

• The change happening outside the University was mutating in nature which was reflected in size, scope and speed of change compared to the change happening in the University and that wasn’t sustainable as a system I was to bet my future on
• The educational system in relation to opportunities was a rigged game theory because students don’t get access to opportunities based on the performance of their input or effort but, it was based on the average performance of the general community and performance outside that average marker. i.e we were not being prepared for the opportunities outside the four walls of the university both professionally or even academically across the layers of industries defining the global economy
• There was no enabling environment that gave me access to options that equipped me to explore the opportunities being created by the change being driven by creators, inventors, innovators, disruptors, captains of industries and other related stakeholders in the economic value ecosystem locally and globally.

This quickly unfolded as a conversation I kept exploring through 6 years in the University community where I had two extra course years because I had deferred the first semester of the first extra year while I was exploring the conversation about this dysfunctional reality, I was more interested in exploring. Now enter the conversation of the deuteragonist with the plot twist; The student community and their socio-economic environment for creating and exploring opportunities.

In my 300 level, I had to explore the premise of how I could still explore my 3-pronged desire for exploring opportunities while being the youngest leader of the biggest division in one of the vibrant fellowship communities at the time (Livingword Fellowship) after putting a halt to my business pursuits offering room painting services and retailing art-infused clothing to customers locally and internationally. I picked interest in this conversation as I recognized a pattern when I indulged myself in business case competitions with my friends, representing OAU and Nigeria at competitions like the maiden edition of CFO Charterquest Business Case Challenge and Unilever Idea trophy and Google Online Marketing Challenge where I worked with a team to develop a campaign for Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI). Tracing back into 400 level, I had been driving the conversation that students can create transformative economies within their universities and host communities if they dared to create, design and build solutions with global approaches within their local context. I felt the responsibility to the student community to validate the intention of chaotic and disruptive dreamers like myself to take the risks and bet on themselves to ride the wave of change through their vibrant, exuberant attraction to change and dynamism compared to the rigid and traditional environment they seemed confined to conform to. The conversation was centered around creating an enabling environment for students by students to host an ecosystem within the University for business leadership to thrive by bridging the internal and external communities to create global solutions to their local problems. This led to the development of my first project themed The Business Round Table (2017). This project started a wave in my 400 level (2018) I couldn’t easily anticipate as I was invited to speaking engagements and trainings even as far as Ife Business School because, student leaders and other stakeholders started to recognize the wave as students started exploring their opportunities, building businesses, applying for business and case competitions and other forms of competitions and building communities.

These 3 defining variables of this reality became more evident as I committed to engaging, enlightening and exposing students within the community to concepts of business leadership, entrepreneurship and social enterprise through trainings, a radio show and case competitions such as the Hult prize competition where I was the mentor and eventually a judge since the maiden edition and also the mentor for StartUp Grind Ife since its formative years. This privilege gave me first hand access to realizing that the 3 variables I discussed above were also the restraints on the student community’s potential, which gave some real insight about the student community, its potential and the untapped opportunity of its participation in the conversation about economic prosperity, locally and globally.

However, I failed in driving this conversation long and hard enough to put some more skin in the game before I defaulted to following another route of working directly with startups with interest in the student community such as Utiva, Slatecube and now StudentBuild. I feel I failed at that responsibility because it wasn’t a conversation I could easily communicate to the stakeholders independent of the students in the value chain of the value creation ecosystem or come across in their areas of interest for venture, when we had industry leaders such as Micheal Seibel expressing on a podcast of his fleeting confidence in student founders but, later in 2017 expressed something while reflecting on his time in college and relating with young founders:

“My answer to why you should start a startup is simple: there is a certain type of person who only works at their peak capacity when there is no predictable path to follow, the odds of success are low, and they have to take personal responsibility for failure (the opposite of most jobs at a large company”. http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/why-should-i-start-a-startup

This reflects that the times are changing and the conversation can be re-ignited because the rules are now being bent with some of the biggest startups funded by YCombinator are student community-founders who started working on their ideas while in the University and this is observable across venture markets of the world including the context of OAU which is host to startups as big as Jobberman. Even Facebook was started in the University because there was an enabling environment. So its more about the environment within which these students are exploring the opportunities rather than the students of the student community themselves. The book “The Prosperity Paradox” co-authored by Efosa Ojomo starts to illuminate a new spectrum of light if you apply his ideas to this context of conversation. We need, now more than ever, the flow of private equity (Capital) and support in the student communities across Sub-Saharan Africa first to create an enabling environment and then creating an ecosystem through capital infusion and Mentorship for business leadership and I’d be sharing systems that can support my proposition.

It is time for more enthusiasts invested in the future of Africa to be infected like myself, with the “Moses Syndrome” i.e. we need to drive the conversation with stakeholders to risk engaging in the conversation that would either change or redefine the rules of the game or create a new playing field to create an enabling environment for the student community to drive economic and social change.

This series is a layout of my interest expressed as my underlying premise to this conversation. Join me on this ride and let’s uncover this together in this series of ideas about designing the Venture matrix for the future of Africa. This revolution will not be televised.