Field notes & instruments.
Primary fieldwork first. AI as the compression layer. Everything public-safe, everything sourced.
Three years inside African tech, distilled.
Two mandates for one of the continent's largest founder-support funds. Key findings: 70% of funding comes from foreign sources; founders burn out operating as one-person ecosystems; imported VC models fail in local context.
The Collateral Ceiling
Why capital design, not capital supply, sets the ceiling. The first public intelligence brief from the archive.
Read the brief → InteractiveSystem Portrait
The ecosystem as a constraint network. Explore the diagnostic yourself.
Open the instrument → Field guideAfrican tech ecosystem
Nine patterns worth remembering, from capital mismatch to trust as an invisible tax.
Open the field guide →Stakeholder interviews: VCs, founders, ESOs, policymakers, donors.
Countries of primary fieldwork across the continent.
Entrepreneur-support organizations scanned for The Academy.
Research-backed founder personas built from the interviews.
Public-safe note: these pages use aggregate stats, paraphrases, and broad themes, no raw internal quotes, sensitive claims, or unverified named quotes.