Spontaneous catharsis of a Tanzanian Entrepreneur.
This is a rant, followed by a listicle, followed by a rant. It is also a story about an infographic. It is also not well cited and probably something I will disagree with and contradict in the future. Enjoy.
I’m a politics junkie. I consider myself a sideline analyst, an armchair adviser, a pundit without practice. While civic engagement is often touted as a major concern of much of the world — Tanzania certainly doesn’t suffer from this ailment (in my opinion). In fact, we suffer from a slightly different affliction, an unhealthy obsession with political actions, gestures, and symbols. This obsession leads to every aspect of Tanzanian life to be viewed through the lens of politics. Our entertainment diet consists of Football, Diamond and the escapades of civil servants and presumed agitators. Our work life is often lived under the halo of entitlement politics. Our personal lives balanced between the schism of wedge issues.
A recent infographic doing the rounds on the webternets showed the amount of VC investment directed to Africa in 2020 and became a popular topic of discussion. Many of the conversations in my bubble revolved around politics and policy. Granted, many of these were and are valid but, in my view, unhelpful; i.e. The dearth of Double Taxation Treaties of Tanzania, The Grey Engima of setting up Offshore Structures, The Protectionism around Local Staff, etc.
Much of the VC money coming into Africa is from non-African financiers — and as the recently highlighted White co-founder window dressing issue demonstrated — there is an information asymmetry between market reality and investor knowledge. Hence, the default position is to defer to what is familiar and comfortable. Often investors will only absorb the loudest, trendingiest morsels of insight for the markets they review.
While I’m being intentionally facetious here, the VC Africa glossary holds only a handful of repetitive, superlative, and all-encompassing one-liners:
“Kenya’s mobile money market and digital literacy is at critical mass. FinTech opportunities please”
“We like low-asset businesses in LARGE markets — if it’s not Nigeria or Egypt, then meh”
“While it’s not big, Rwanda is a great product validation market. They’re on track to being a tech HUB. Let’s throw in $14m and see what happens”
And when it comes to Tanzania:
“Well…is Tanzania really a big enough market to achieve scale”
“Tanzania is difficult to do business in isn’t it? From what I hear policies are a bit draconian”
“It’s cool and all but would you be willing to setup in Nairobi or Lagos?”
“To be honest I don’t know much about Tanzania besides Jambo, Hakuna Matata, Serengeti, Zanzibar and you eat onions to fight COVID”
Of course, the above examples are intentionally ridiculous and don’t do justice to the rich insight and knowledge so many investors do provide, but hey, I’m trying to make a point. Tanzanians with our default mode of politicking and passive aggressive belittling of our neighbours to the North do little to shift the narrative in a positive way. We go on tweetstorms and WhatsApp tirades asking what’s wrong with us but not what’s right with us.
So….all of that was just a roundabout excuse for me to give you my listicle on why Tanzania is one of the most exciting growth markets despite politics and policy and due to what I see as inevitable growth indicators.
1. 3 of the 15 fastest growing cities in the world are in Tanzania — Not only is Dar-es-salaam expected to be a megacity of over 10m people by 2030, Songea and Mwanza are amongst the other fastest growing cities in world. Tanzania will have 6+ cities with over 1 million residents by 2030. Urbanization is directly correlated with increased middle class spending. Africa’s most populous countries by 2050 are expected to be Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.
2. Tanzania borders 8 countries in Africa — This is not a mere geographical curiosity. With the relatively recent formation of national borders in Africa, frontiers represent points of key strategic importance. They are representative of points of exchange in the form of commerce and trade and essentially become imprinted gateways for scale. Additionally, borders create sphere of influence for products, culture, and media. Tanzania is essentially a ready-made conduit of scale.
3. Arguably. Tanzania has led the continent in ecosystem innovation — I know this one is a bit controversial and can be contested. However, if you look at the what I believe to be 4 of the most influential ecosystem pillars for growth and new economies, Tanzania either leads or was the first to formally launch. Mobile Money’s first iteration in Africa was not Kenya but Tanzania. Sure, regulation made the launch stutter and Tanzanians generally have a slower adoption rate but it started here. So did the first form of digital credit. So did the first iteration of regulator approved digital ID. The glue to products is communication and marketing — Tanzania boasts the largest vlogger, blogger, IG personalities, slay queens and ‘Internet TV’ stations in Africa.
4. Stability — Sure, we sometimes make a mockery of ourselves with blenders and onions on national TV. And yes, we recently had an aggressive and visible clamp down on social liberties. But the reason why these make the news is because of how un-Tanzanian these outward acts are. Tanzania has a history of intellectual discourse for driving change and the elevation of peace and humanity above all else. Let’s play a game, of the 8 neighbors I mentioned we bordered, let’s rank in intensity and recency for acts of violence, civil unrest, terrorism and war. (Answer — Tanzania is at the bottom).
The list can go on and on but so can a similar list on why not to invest in Tanzania. The crux of the matter is blind spots of information are inevitable and choosing to lean in to what you know, what your peers say and what the trite simplifications about a place are is natural and expected. Just because it is expected though, doesn’t mean it’s right. VC’s, Angels, HNWI, etc. my appeal to you is to try harder. Know what you don’t know and be willing to make deviations from the flock.
To my fellow Tanzanians, start-up founders, entrepreneurs, Twitterers, Clubhouserers, Vloggers — we have a disease. We politicise everything and publicise little else. We have more interest in debating the merits of the Minister of Investment than communicating the merits of investment. I have the disease too and I’m trying to build my path to recovery. My appeal to you is try harder. The world isn’t going to wait for us to catch up. Next year and years to come will have the same facts revealed as ‘the infographic’ unless we shift the narrative. It’s important to be engaged in the shaping of the world we live in. One way we can do that is through political discourse another is, just for the moment, throwing out a giant f*** you to the politics that drive us mad and say something else.
