Whether you are in PE or VC in Africa you need to put in the work.

1..Subject matter expertise
2..Operational experience
3.A long rolodex
4.And lots of hustle

Neither asset class has done particularly well in Nigeria. Those that have do 1-4 & then some. https://twitter.com/asemota/status/1305143968380989440

A major issue is the macroeconomics.

No one is really that interested internationally in whether a company did well in Naira terms. They are looking for dollar returns. This is difficult to achieve.

Now what abt "local investors".

1. HNI's are risk averse & compared to America counterparts dont have that much money anyway
2. The typical sources of PE cash like pensions arent allowed to invest/too high risk
3. Market size is small. People are poor, so scale is difficult

4. Africans are not as connected relationship wise and intellectually to Western markets so the strategy of building for them like Isreal doesnt work as well

5. Interest rates in many African countries are high so when you look at the time value of money vs risk. The dynamics aren't in favour of PE

6. Structural/ease of doing business type issues make it slightly harder to streamline/take advantage of synergies

7. Talent

In short, you really need to know what you are doing. From a market forces perspective: accounting/financials, the economics, understanding market size,comms,HR.

In America the PR/VC skillls set doesn't necessarily have to be as wide

Then the evil forces and non market strategy stuff as well.

As you guessed. I have an article on this.

From 2017 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/funding-africa-ola-brown