🗺 The African Expansion Starter Pack

Hey,

Caleb here 👋 

Every week, I get the same set of questions from companies trying to expand in Africa—about hiring, go-to-market, and even how to set things up.

So my team and I figured, why not pull all the resources for that in one place, and dive into how to really expand across Africa.

In this week’s edition, we’ll be doing just that.

Let’s get into it!

In 2019, SWVL, an Egyptian mobility startup, expanded into Kenya and drove into a brick wall. 

It had built its business letting people book bus rides from their phones, which worked well in Egypt. 

But when they tried to take the same business into Kenya, they hit a wall.

The wall they ran into? Regulation.

In Kenya, SWVL launched with a tour service operator license (which lets you operate tour buses), instead of a public commuter service license, which they needed.

Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority caught up to SWVL and froze its operations overnight.

Hundreds of vehicles were impounded, drivers were fined, and SWVL had to hit the brakes.

By 2020, they finally got the right license approved, and their buses were back on the road.

But what should’ve been a smooth expansion had turned into a debacle. 

And it exposed a brutal truth: 

Expanding across Africa is hard

And only a few companies have done it successfully.

It’s not just about raising money, hiring country managers, and marketing.

It’s about navigating 54 markets, 41 currencies, and wildly different regulations and consumer behaviours.

And even global giants have stumbled.

Case Study 1: Netflix entering Africa in 2016. 

The global streaming giant started in South Africa, where it launched with the same catalogue as the rest of the world.

Then it moved to Nigeria and Kenya.

But here’s the thing: adoption suffered. 

While its subscriber growth in South Africa was good, Nigeria and Kenya were different markets in terms of taste and purchasing power.

So it launched at lower price points and even created mobile-only plans.

It also started investing in local content. 

But even after eight years and millions of dollars, Netflix has only 170,000 paying subscribers in Nigeria and 64,500 in Kenya.

Last year, word broke that it was scaling back its investment in content in Nigeria where it had to raise prices three times in the last two years.

On the other hand, Showmax won the streaming war, focusing on local content, with better distribution and pricing that made sense for viewers.

In other parts of the world, expansion can look like a sprint. 

But in Africa, it’s a relay race.

And you need the right batons to pass from country to country, with care and caution.

In Africa’s tech and business space, we see the same hurdles (and questions) come up for companies expanding across the continent.

• What do we need to know about this new market?

• How do we not get into trouble with the regulator?

• Who should we hire?

• And how do we get the product into the right hands?

So to help answer many of these questions at once, we built a ‘Starter Pack’ for companies ready to expand across Africa.

Introducing…The African Expansion Starter Pack 🌍 

There are six parts to this:

1. Market Intelligence

2. Regulation

3. Payments

4. Compliance

5. Talent

6. Go-to-Market

The first item on the list is the most important. And it’s all about…

Knowing the market: Market Intelligence

Launching in a new country can sometimes feel like starting over again.

And you can’t Google your way to product-market fit.

Every market is different—each one having its own quirks, unspoken rules, key relationships and tarpits.

You need data because assumptions can make or break you. 

Before expanding, you should investigate deeply and make a few visits to the countries you want to expand into. 

But there are some tools you can use too: 

• Tech Safari (yours truly)—covering different African markets, trends and news twice a week.

• Stears—macro data, consumer panels, and even election forecasts.

• Africa Practice—strategic advisory. They help you know what the regulation is like today, and what it might look like in the future.

• In-market VCs + founders—often your best intel comes from the community

Knowing the rules: Regulation

Rule two: don’t mess with the rules.

Innovation may move fast, but regulators always catch up.

So if you’re moving to another country, the first step is to know the rules. 

You need a local entity. You need to pay taxes. You need licenses. And you need your operations to play by the rules.

If you’re a fintech in Nigeria, you need a Payment Service Provider (PSP) license for starters.

You need a Virtual Asset Service Provider license if you’re doing crypto in Kenya.

Skip any of these, and most regulators won’t skip the fines, bans, and court charges.

No matter how big your company is or how clean your operations are, expanding without regulatory prep can be suicide.

Here are some tools to make it simpler:

• Norebase—fast entity registration + IP filing in multiple African markets

• Sidebrief—compliance SaaS for licenses, tax compliance, and even local bank accounts

• Local law firms—for complex licenses (fintech, lending, insurance, health). 

Get Paid or Die Trying: Financial Infrastructure

You don’t have a business if you can’t get paid.

Whether you’re in your home country or abroad.

But here’s the thing. Every country pays differently.

Nigeria loves cards and bank transfers.

Mobile money runs Kenya.

In South Africa, cards are king.

If you’re in multiple countries, it’s tough getting paid quickly and simply.

Sometimes, you need a local account.

Other times, you don’t. 

Figuring out which way to go and how to get started can be stressful.

But these tools make it work.

• Flutterwave, Paystack—pan-African payment service providers for cards, wallets, and payouts

• Pawapay—helps you collect payments with mobile money in different markets

• EBANX—it lets you connect your global payments (say in LATAM) to Africa with one integration

• Verto—helps you move money between borders in any currency

• Local banks — still needed for regulatory comfort in many markets

Once you’re legal, the next thing is to…

Stay out of trouble: Operational Compliance

So you’re licensed now. But you’re faced with the next riddle.

How do you set up a strong back office?

You need to get payroll right. Pensions. Employer of Record. Pay taxes. And register the company.

These things are basic scaffolds for a company to exist.

And you’re breaking the law if you don’t have them. 

In Nigeria, if you default on employee pension contributions, you’ll be forced to pay the missed payments with an extra 2% interest compounded for each month you missed.

It’s operational stuff, but the risk could kill a company.

Normally, you’d need a compliance team to figure this out, and if you can get one, you should. 

But some tools are popping up to make this easier

• DigiTax—helps you figure out taxes in Kenya and Zambia

• SeamlessHR—payroll and talent management for African business

• Vazi Legal—a startup-focused law firm that can guide you through legal landmines

• Startbutton—a startup that helps you set up your back office as you expand 

But before you can even pay talent, you need to find talent.

Get the right people: Talent

Your expansion is only as good as the people running it.

And spoiler alert: importing a country manager from the HQ in New York doesn’t always have the best results.

But the truth is, when expanding, you often don’t know where the best people are.

Sometimes, you don’t even know what role you need to hire for in the local context.

For instance, the Head of Growth in Kenya will look very different from the Head of Growth in Silicon Valley.

It’s different acquisition channels and relationships, so finding the right skill set for the right context is key.

While online ads might work for the US market, offline marketing rules in many parts of Africa.

Luckily, the best talent and recruitment companies have seen this before.

And not only do they find the right people, but they also help you figure out the right roles to hire for. Like:

• Shortlist—running complex executive searches for leadership roles at companies across Africa.

• Talent Safari—connecting Africa’s best mid-level talent with startups and tech companies, through its community model.

• TalentQL—for engineering talent sourcing.
  
  

Scaling: Go-to-Market

So, you understand the market, you’ve set the company up, you’re staying out of trouble, and you’ve got a great team.

Now, it’s time to get your product (or service) in the right hands.

How do you actually launch and go to market?

You need a way to hack sales, marketing, and grow in your new market.

Unfortunately, playbooks tend to be country-specific, so it makes sense to seek out companies that have spent time studying different playbooks, like:

• Tech Safari—GTM partner for companies across Africa 

• Propel—a community-as-a-service company that helps other companies grow in Africa through access to the best tech communities

• GTMAfrica—a research consortium with the best frameworks for growth. They wrote a book on how to scale across Africa.

• PMF Ninja—which helps companies figure out sales and online growth

Expanding Across Africa: Reality vs Expectations

African expansion isn’t about bravado.

It’s about stacking the right tools and moving deliberately.

But tools are only half of the arsenal.

The other half is strategy. 

And just as there are many ways to build, there are many ways to expand and win.

Last month, we ran an experiment called Expanders Club in Nairobi.

We invited a small group of high-level CEOs, partners, and expansion leads at top companies like Shortlist, Paystack, Tala, Tether, and Helios.

We ran mastermind sessions on shared challenges in hiring, fundraising, and go-to-market.

Turns out, there’s a ton of value in learning from peers running expansion at a high level.

People get to hear real war stories, strategies, and see the reality of scaling in Africa. And sometimes, they collaborate and do business too.

So, we’re expanding (pun intended) on this with another event in Nairobi for execs deep in expansion across Africa. 

If you’re interested, let us know here.

We think more spaces like this are needed to hack the African business expansion question. Especially when you look at…

The big picture 🖼️

Africa is still one of the most promising frontiers in global tech.

But it’s not a monolith. It’s a continent with context so diverse, it’s dizzying.

And the companies that win stack up the right advantages—tools, contacts, strategy, and context.

That’s what we hope to help people find with the Expanders Club.

In the meantime, tell me:

• What other tools should be on this list?

• And which companies do you think have the best expansion playbooks right now?

Let me know here.

That’s it for this week. See you on Sunday for a breakdown on This Week in African Tech. 

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

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