Two Articles Lost Us 1,500 Subscribers

Hi Tech Safari readers,

Timi here.

I’m the voice that’s been egging Sheriff, Hannatu, and all our brilliant contributors at Tech Safari and Ag Safari to chase ideas that feel a little uncomfortable, a little counterintuitive, and, hopefully, worth your time.

I’ve been fortunate enough to celebrate with them when their stories hit the mark. 

Coincidentally, it also means I’m responsible when those stories flop, which, thankfully, isn’t very often.

Over the past 45 weeks, we have covered how tech is changing Africa. I

In total, we wrote 150,000 words across 98 different editions. 

We started the year with 19,600 subscribers and are ending it with ~ 60,000 AND a 41% open rate. 

And now, like every one of you working on new year goals, we are reflecting.

We looked at our data, and we found something interesting. 

Two of our articles this year were "failures." They made people angry. They made people leave. In total, those two stories lost us about 1,500 subscribers.

This is the last Tech Safari edition of the year, and instead of pretending every story was universally loved, I want to show you the full report card: the pieces that cost us subscribers, and the ones that quietly built something much bigger.

Let’s start with…

The two stories that cost us 1,500 subscribers

1. Heaven as a Service

This piece did something dangerous. It treated religion like a product and placed it under analysis.

In this edition, we asked:

What if the most successful tech product in history isn’t software?

Not metaphorically, but literally. And it turns out that it is.

We dive into how churches figured out distribution, retention, community, habit formation, and customer lifetime value centuries before software was ever a word.

And in Africa, where belief systems shape behavior more reliably than apps ever will, religion is a massive industry.

The takeaway wasn’t “tech should copy religion.” It was more uncomfortable than that.

It’s that religious institutions in Nigeria are selling “Heaven” as a service.

It’s the piece that lost us the most subscribers this year, but it was also the most riveting one for me to write personally.

Read it here, but first, promise me you won’t hit the unsubscribe button.

2. Expatriate as a Service

(Yes, all the “as a service” articles we wrote sparked a lot of conversations)

This was one of the most uncomfortable reads for most people this year. But it’s also one of the most necessary.

It all stemmed from a photo posted on LinkedIn with some foreign founders around a table, with a caption mentioning how they just raised money to “build Africa”.

People were up in arms about it. Some called it tone-deaf, others called it racist.

The root of it all was the idea that what you look like and where you’re from could impact your success in African tech.

We decided to give our take. It wasn’t anti-foreigner, and it didn’t deny the privileges these people had.

We acknowledge that access and familiarity matter, not because we thought it was fair, but because it’s how the world works.

But we also admitted that many ecosystems evolved this way, and the inequality fades out over time.

Many people didn’t like that very much. And it showed in our numbers.

But all the same, I think it’s one of the most important articles we wrote this year.

So yes, of all the 98 editions we wrote this year, these two articles lost us the most number of subscribers.

The real cost of that isn’t just the numbers, but in loyalty. Some of these in unsubscriptions were loyal readers who had been with us for a while.

But we made a choice a long time ago. 

Our job isn't just to be a cheerleader for African tech; it's to document the reality of it. 

Sometimes that reality is uncomfortable. Sometimes it challenges what we hold dear. 

And honestly? Sometimes we might even get the story wrong at Tech Safari.

But we would rather take the risk of telling a hard truth than stay safe by telling a comfortable untruth.

Our promise to you is that we will always strive to tell balanced, honest stories about where this continent is going, even when it's messy.

So while those two stories were tough and lost us a lot of subscribers….

These eight articles gained us thousands more

The other original articles we wrote did something else entirely. 

They struck a nerve. They were shared in WhatsApp groups, board rooms, and Slack channels across the continent. 

Together, they helped us welcome 40,000 new subscribers to the family, and we’ll share our favourites just in case you missed them.

3. Better Than Netflix

This article explained something obvious that nobody had named yet:

YouTube is Africa’s dominant entertainment platform, not because it’s better produced, but because it’s better adapted for the continent.

It has:

• Little to no subscription fees

• An infinite amount of content

• And creators who look and talk like you

We trace the irony of how, while corporations like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video try to win ground in Africa, YouTube became the de facto TV.

There’s an entire creative economy in Africa that’s built on YouTube. 

And it has a lot to teach us about how Africans use technology and consume media.

4. From Scrolls to Sales

If Better than Netflix was about attention, this one is about conversion.

The story follows the journey of Mercy Awiti, an OG Tech Safari writer, through a market in Nairobi where a cloth seller made sales through TikTok live videos.

Mercy got curious and fell down the rabbit hole of social commerce in Africa and how it’s replacing typical “e-commerce”.

It’s a riveting story about how social media is impacting commerce in Africa, and she tells it through her own eyes.

5. Why Can’t AI See My Curls?

This was one of our first guest pieces for the year, written by Tehila Okagbue.

It’s about a racial bias in many AI systems we use today. 

But in this article, she focused on one of the most obvious racial differentiators: hair.

AI models can’t recognize African hair, skin tone, or accents, because African data wasn’t in the dataset.

In 2025, as AI hype peaked, this story reminded us of a brutal truth: If Africa’s not in the data, we won’t be in the future.

And this resonated with many people.

6. The Towers of Babble Are Falling

The biggest tech businesses in Africa are telcos.

They have massive infrastructure, distribution, and capital.

And they controlled access to everything digital: from call time to internet usage.

But a new crop of companies is springing up offering telco services without even being telcos.

And they’re offering these services at really low prices.

In this article, we break down a concept called “Sachetization” and how it’s increasing access to things in Africa, including digital services.

7. Tech Safari’s Pyramid of Tech

In 1943, an economist named Alfred Maslow created something called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The pyramid predicted what humans need at different levels of comfort.

You need survival before you can even worry about your health. And you need to be healthy before you can worry about other people.

Turns out, tech follows a similar pattern. 

You can’t build e-commerce without payments. And you can’t build food delivery without first solving logistics.

In this article, we work out that some tech products are more primal than others. And we’ve worked this out into something called the Tech Safari Pyramid of Tech.

Read the article, tell us what you think, and try to work out where your favorite products fit on the pyramid.

Speaking of foundational products, our next best edition is about the origins of the product that solved payments in Kenya…M-PESA.

8. Agent 001

The world knows M-PESA as the first product that made it possible to send money via shortcodes.

And M-PESA’s success is basically a part of Africa’s fintech pantheon at this point.

But that story often misses the most important piece: the people.

In this edition, Maryann Kabiru explores the story of Esther Muchemi, the very first M-PESA agent.

Esther was a woman who left a well-paying consulting job to start a Safaricom agent business. Today, she’s remembered Agent 0001, the very first agent in a network that moves over $50 billion each year.

9. Where’s My Job?

In this article, we told a tale of two futures.

One where AI takes over everything and makes life easier. And another, where millions of young Africans are unemployed.

We traced the current state of education, talent, and employment in Africa into the future and ended up with one question: “Where’s my job?”

It’s a nerve-wracking article. It might leave you angry, anxious, and maybe a little paranoid. 

But it’s an important read. Once you’re done, it’s only appropriate that we remind you that…

10. Africa Is Balling

In this edition, we talked about something unusual: basketball. 

We cover the rise of Twende Sports, a startup building a world-class basketball team out of Nairobi, Kenya.

In just two years, they took a small, local team from 30th in its local league to the Basketball Africa League, Africa’s NBA.

But the core story isn’t really about the team, or even basketball. It’s about talent.

Across the world, there’s African talent doing wonders in different fields. But back home, they struggle.

This story was about building the rails to unlock talent in Africa, and the big gains that come from that.

Put these stories together, and a pattern emerges: Africa isn’t short on ideas. 

It’s short on rails. 

When rails appear, whether they are agents, creators, data, or distribution networks, everything accelerates.

The future of African tech won’t look flashy. It will look foundational.

And if 2025 proved anything, it’s this: The most important stories aren’t the loudest ones. 

They’re the ones that explain why things work here, even when the rest of the world is still confused.

Thank you for reading Tech Safari in 2025. 

This is the time people ask readers to give feedback by filling out surveys, but we’ve surveyed you enough this year.

What we’ll ask is that you share which thought-provoking Tech Safari piece you liked with your own network, so more people can discover us.

Or write to me directly and tell me what you liked (or even didn’t like) about Tech Safari this year!

Let me know here.

That’s it for this week. See you in 2026!

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

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

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