Actually Henry Onyango has some pretty good points. The problem stems from the fact that African founders wish to build startups using an imported Silicon Valley model in an ecosystem which doesn’t not support it.

Silicon Valley = Raise capital , then build a product, then build a company.

Africa = Create a product, build a company and then raise capital.

The model in Africa requires that you have an existing revenue-generating company in-order to qualify to raise more capital. This makes it nearly impossible to build product that depend on growth and traction for valuation.

This is the reason why a Whatsapp or Snapchat for Africa for instance has never been successfully built in Africa. Any attempts to build one will result into issues that Thomas Sankara has raised in this post. That’s because it requires raising funding from people who understand the model of building such startups, who in-term trust people they know (Expatriates) more than they do locals…which is completely understandable.

To build growth and traction-based products requires a whole new generation of African entrepreneurs who have made it themselves the hard way creating their own products. Am talking about people like Jason 'Igwe' Njoku from iRokoTV Mark Essien from Hotel.ng Tayo Oviosu of Paga who by the way have started funding similar new growth-driven startups.