Hey 👋

Caleb here, and I’ve got something new.

Tech Safari has rebranded. 

And it's not just the visuals, it's what we’re building. 

Three years in, we’ve learned a lot.

About African tech and business, about building ecosystems, and about how to best support  African ambition and growth.

This is the next chapter of Tech Safari, and why we’re going there.

Plus, our full brand reveal is at the end.

Inside were founders, funders, and policymakers working across agriculture.

From the top businesses in Kenya, Nigeria, and Rwanda, to organisations like the World Bank, United Nations, and GIZ, to fund managers representing billions in capital, to the Kenyan government.

All in one barn at the Ag Safari Summit.

And as I walked in between hay bales and into different discussion rooms, I could see it:

In that moment, I had a realisation:

This is what the ecosystem looks like when it works.

We thought we were solving a storytelling problem.

Three years ago, our master plan had three parts:

And it worked.

We reached millions through our content every month, and brought together over 15,000 people through our events.

We were building alongside a young and growing ecosystem.

The potential was clear.

Real companies were being built, real capital was being deployed.

And a wealth of talent who wanted to work on the biggest challenges and were putting their hats in the ring.

But we told these stories and built spaces for people to come together, something else started to form:

In our first year, we realised something important.

The value of what we were building wasn’t content, going viral, the speakers at our events or the number of people in attendance.

It was the connections forming around it.

We started to see it everywhere.

Our very first event in San Francisco in April 2023, at the Chipper Cash HQ, saw this in action.

We put together our first event for our readers. 

Many people who came became partners to each other and to Tech Safari.

These weren’t planned outcomes, but they kept happening.

And what started as storytelling had grown into something else: community.

When I hear that word, I eye-roll too. It’s one of the most overused words in the last five years.

But the definition of a real community is simple.

It’s when members create real value for each other.

Let me show you through this picture we took at our event in San Francisco:

We weren’t just telling stories or listening to interesting speakers.

We had created a space where people could solve their own problems (and have some fun), together.

And as we kept doing this, we realised we were solving a much bigger problem across Africa.

Africa just needs more ______

What comes to mind? 

Capital? Talent? Infrastructure?

Well, you’re probably wrong.

Africa (mostly) has what it needs.

And the gap isn’t a lack of resources. It’s fragmentation.

Too often, people are solving similar problems in parallel without knowing it.

Or are solving problems for each other, but don't know about each other.

The real challenge is coordination; coordination across markets, across industries.

Across operators, investors, and talent.

We’ve seen companies struggle to hire for key roles, not because talent didn’t exist, but because they didn’t know where to look.

And we’ve seen companies land in new African markets with intent, then leave without traction, because they couldn’t find the right customers or partners.

But we also saw how often these problems were solved by putting the right people in the same room.

And last year, we went a layer deeper and asked a question:

What if you could solve specific coordination problems by building specific communities?

We gave this theory a shot and called it the Tech Safari Summit.

You’d expect this to be our biggest event yet. 

It was one of our smallest.

We brought together 140 people, with the goal of solving the specific problem: pan-African expansion.

And we focused on companies actively trying to do it, at scale.

Netflix, Binance, Coinbase, Yango, Uber, travelled to Nairobi to be in the room.

We learned what their biggest problems were. Regulation, Talent, Localisation, Payments.

Then we brought the experts into the room: Paystack, EBANX, Shortlist, Talent Safari, Africa Practise.

Over two days, the Summit became a space for real problem-solving and partnerships.

Partnerships were formed, and conversations turned into collaborations. 

That work is continuing beyond the room. So we’re bringing them back next year.

And the Tech Safari Summit gave us a great insight:

So we kept building focused spaces.

Instead of one community, Tech Safari is becoming a network of communities and services, each built around a specific coordination challenge.

And with our new insights and shift last year, we started to rethink what Tech Safari is and how we show up.

And we hit up our good friends at Kumquat Co, to rethink how we show up in the world.

Kumquat has been a part of the Tech Safari Community for years. 

And before we talked about colours or logos, Kumquat started with a question:  what role is Tech Safari actually playing now?

We realised that Tech Safari had moved past being a media platform.

We had become a trusted guide, a convener, a builder. 

We curate (in person and online) that help companies understand what matters, connect with the right people, and build practical solutions that move things forward. 

The discovery process that helped us put our shift in direction into language.

And the new logo that Kumquat designed was built around three ideas at once: a compass, a North Star, and a "T" for both Tech Safari and Technology. 

It signals direction, clarity, and our role as the ultimate guide through the African tech ecosystem.

The new Tech Safari reflects what we’ve become and where we’re going next.

And to celebrate this moment, we brought together a small group who’ve been part of this from the beginning in Cape Town and Nairobi.

Our first readers. Early collaborators. People who came to the first events.

Some invested alongside us. Some helped start new ventures with us. Some have just been reading from day one.

We brought them together to reflect on how they found Tech Safari, what it’s meant to them, and what we’re building next.

What stood out wasn’t a single insight.

It was the feeling, similar to the first time in San Francisco. 

We had built a real community, people who had contributed to our growth, and whose growth we had contributed to.

Tech Safari is something we’ve built with the community, and in service of it.

And that’s exactly how we’re approaching this next chapter.

We’ll be building more focused communities, going deeper into the challenges that matter, and creating the infrastructure to support them.

If you’ve been part of the journey so far, thank you. 

And an ask: 

We’d love to celebrate our new brand with you.

So, if Tech Safari has been a part of your journey or work in African tech, let us know here. 

Cheers,

Caleb

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

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

PS. refer five readers and you’ll get access to our private community. 👇🏾

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