Nothing Beats Boots in the Dust
Why local VCs matter for Africa’s next decade of innovation
I finished The House of Morgan last year. Ben Horowitz had recommended it to Kola and me back in 2018 when we visited his office, exploring our first fund. It was an apt recommendation.
One story stayed with me. In the late 19th century, J.P. Morgan would walk the factory floors of the companies he financed. He wasn’t poring over discounted cash flow models; he was looking managers in the eye, testing the quality of steel, smelling the coal dust.
His edge was not an abstract model but proximity. Banking then wasn’t about clever structuring. It was about judgment—and judgment was trained in the field.
Africa today reminds me of that America. We are not yet a continent of efficient markets and smooth disclosures. We have pioneer founders building rails—financial, digital, and physical—much like Morgan’s railroads.
And the capital that succeeds here won’t be the one that hovers above or simply writes the biggest cheques. It will be the capital close enough to walk the dust, live the volatility, and breathe the air.
India shows the modern parallel. Its leapfrog decade wasn’t led by global investors parachuting in with Silicon Valley playbooks. Flipkart, Ola, Razorpay, Meesho first found belief and scaffolding from Indian VCs who understood cash-on-delivery, festival-driven consumption, UPI rails, kirana networks. Local conviction paved the way for global capital. Without it, the billion-dollar stories might never have left the starting line.
This is why local perspective is not a nice-to-have for African venture. It is the work itself. Our markets turn on signals that don’t appear in pitch decks: the trust between an agent and her customers, the subtle shifts in regulatory mood, the logistics manager who can clear a truck at Apapa port without losing three days.
When we backed Moniepoint’s agent banking model, it wasn’t because it looked easier to scale than app-only neobanks. It was because time spent in Dawanau Market in Kano, Oke-Arin in Lagos, and Onitsha taught us that distribution here is human, not digital. That conviction looked unfashionable on a slide, but it mapped to reality on the ground.
That is trained instinct. Not vibes nor spreadsheet. Judgment honed by repeated contact with the market.
For Africa-focused fund managers, this instinct is an investable asset. It helps filter signal from noise, underwrite quality of revenue—not just quantity—and guide founders through FX shocks, regulatory uncertainties and political pivots. Global investors can bring capital, discipline, and reach. But it is local managers who provide the lens through which those resources can be productively deployed.
In the end, this isn’t about romanticizing “local knowledge.” It’s about building compounding trust—in founders, in markets, in outcomes.
Just as Morgan’s factory walks gave him an edge others lacked, African VCs walking the markets today are cultivating the judgment that will decide which companies endure. History is clear: in moments of infrastructural build-out, it is always the embedded financiers who shape the future.