SIMBA
Infrastructure for African enterprise, built on the assumption that the talent is already here.
Original field photography
The problem
African entrepreneurs are not short of ideas, appetite or grit. They are short of the boring infrastructure that makes enterprise compound: reliable capital at sane terms, contracts that get enforced, market access beyond the border post, and a network that opens doors without requiring a decade of relationship-building first. The result is a continent of businesses that survive brilliantly and scale rarely. [Replace with the specific problem framing you want to lead with.]
The idea
Stop treating African business as a development category. Treat it as business. SIMBA starts from the position that the constraint is structural rather than personal, and that the useful intervention is plumbing, not motivation.
The vision
A generation of African-owned enterprises that grow across borders on their own terms — funded on commercial logic, governed properly, and answerable to customers rather than donors.
The model
Capital
Connecting vetted businesses to patient capital that understands the operating environment rather than fleeing from it.
Networks
Deliberate introductions across markets, drawing on relationships built over [X] years and [X] countries.
Systems
Practical support on the unglamorous things that break growing companies: governance, financial discipline, succession, reporting.
Advocacy
Making the case, publicly and repeatedly, that the binding constraints are policy constraints.
Progress
[Placeholder] Founded in 2025. Currently working with an initial cohort in [markets]. Early focus on [sector]. Add real milestones here — they carry more weight than any amount of positioning copy.
What happens next
[Placeholder] Next twelve months: expand to [markets], formalise the capital partnerships, publish the first set of findings openly so that others can build on them.