Despite the fact the article talks about how African start-ups are surviving despite the odds,I think the start-ups should consider taking up the lean start-ups which reduce the chance of failure of blooming businesses. Abasiama’s Wild Fusion, a digital firm is one of those lucky start-ups that managed to get through tough challenges faced by start-ups in Africa. For the first few months he did not earn anything because his company was struggling to survive. Chances are that if he had adapted the lean start-up technique, things would not have been so difficult for his firm. Research has shown that start-up businesses face significantly high costs of getting first customers.This problem would have easily been solved by the lean strategy whereby the founder comes up with a business model plan and have customers comment on factors like pricing of goods or services and product features. The founder is easily able to identify what his target market wants without going through a trial period which will cost a lot.
The other problem that is identified with tech start -ups in Africa is the long technology penetration cycles. The internet is not will established in African countries and this is a huge challenge of up-coming tech firm like Wild Fusion. However, despite this various companies have been mentioned in article to have made through the turmoil of start-ups. For instance the Kenyan mobile money transfer by Safaricom which made revenue of about $145 million at the beginning of this year.
It duly noted that those start-ups that made it through did so because they received funding from huge developed companies an example mentioned in the article would be Ghana’s Rancard who received funding from Intel Capital. Majority are not lucky to get this funding because Africa does not have enough venture capital funds to help out start -ups.
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