Where two or more are gathered in tech’s name

Hey, Sheriff here 👋 

A decade ago, Africa’s tech ecosystem could fit in one room.

From Lagos to Nairobi and Cape Town, these rooms existed.

But a lot of incredible things happened in those rooms that got us here.

This week’s edition is about that.

Now, on to this week’s story….

African tech’s most powerful force isn’t code. It’s community.

You can copy code. You can raise capital.

But you can’t quite manufacture community.

And yet, it’s the one thing that has quietly powered Africa’s tech ecosystem for over a decade—long before the unicorns showed up.

Today, communities have raised thousands of African developers, driven billions of dollars into startups and built world-class talent.

Let’s rewind a bit.

In the early 2010s, Yaba was just another Lagos neighborhood.

But it was close to the University of Lagos and MainOne’s fibre optic cable was passing through the district.

This meant the district was had lots of young talent around and super-fast internet.

That proximity made all the difference.

Tech companies could set up their offices and run out of there.

And young techies from the university could walk into co-working spaces like CcHub—a tech hub founded by Nigeria’s now tech minister, Bosun Tijani—and find other people building.

In some ways, you could compare it to Palo Alto in the 1970s. 

There were no big VC funds. No flashy demo days.

Just real builders, shared Wi-Fi, and fun hangouts.

And in that unassuming district, magic happened.

Ideas got traded. Products got built. And advice flowed freely.

For instance, back in 2014, Printivo was a printing-as-a-service startup run by a guy named Oluyomi Ojo.

It was his first time running a startup and raising funding.

Just down the street was Sim Shagaya, the star founder of Konga—once Nigeria’s second biggest e-commerce startup..

Within minutes of their first meeting, Sim set a meeting with Yomi to help him figure out how to raise.

Together, they worked on his pitch deck, financials, and he even shared contacts of VCs to talk to.

In 2015, Printivo raised a six-figure round.

At the time, this was like raising really rare.

There’s tons of anecdotes of people helping each other build what would go on to become Africa's most valuable tech ecosystem.

Unwittingly, a generation was being born—Jumia, Andela, Hotels.ng, Kuda Bank and more all sprung out of the tiny district of Yaba.

Today, Nigerian tech is much bigger than Yaba.

And across Africa, the story rhymed

In Nairobi, it was iHub and Nairobi Garage—birthing companies like BRCK and Ushahidi.

In Kigali, KLab helped build TorQue and Surara.

In Accra, it was MEST, with spinoffs like ClaimSync, Curacel and Meqasa.

Each city had its own Yaba—small pockets where people met, shared, built, and launched companies that would later define African tech.

All of them started with one thing: a group of people learning and building together.

These weren’t just spaces.

They were force multipliers—for effort, capital, access, and knowledge.

Like Forloop Africa

In 2016, Ridwan Olalere started Forloop Africa.

His plan? To build a community of devs in Nigerian universities to come together and talk about tech.

At the time, Ridwan was an Engineering Manager at Hotels.ng; and he had help from a colleague, Prosper Otemuyiwa.

Their meetups started out as small meetings between nerds in universities.

They taught each other new skills, connected each other to jobs, and encouraged people to build.

Today, it’s one of the largest developer communities on the continent, with over 100,000 young Africans.

Many former Forloop members have gone on to start companies, build products, or lead teams.

Ridwan later started LemFi, a remittance startup that raised $53 million last year.

Prosper was one of the first tutors at Andela,  the billion-dollar factory for developers.

And Emeka Ehinze, who joined Forloop Africa in 2019, is now the founder of Retailloop.

Even Tech Safari is a child of community

In 2022, Caleb Maru was passing through Singapore when he hosted a casual meetup about African tech.

He expected a small chat.

Twenty people showed up, but none really asked about startups. 

Instead, they asked about safaris, corruption, and what religions Africans believed in.

Right there, Caleb saw the gap:

The world knew Africa for its problems and its wildlife. But not for its builders.

So he started writing, telling stories of the startups, founders, and innovations that were quietly transforming the continent.

The stories struck a nerve. And they went viral.

That spark grew into Tech Safari—a global community for anyone who believes in Africa's future through technology.

Since then, the community has only gotten stronger:

• We've helped drive over $600k in startup funding through our Tech Safari Syndicate.
  

• We've introduced founders to markets, investors, and each other—creating the collisions that build companies.
  

• And we've connected 15,000+ people in African tech through events

We’ve made a massive impact, all thanks to our community.

And we believe in it so much for Africa’s tech ecosystem, that we’ve built it for others.

We’re helping Talent Safari connect the best talent to jobs in African tech

We’re helping companies like Infobip and Servercore build their own developer communities. 

And we’re helping companies expand into Africa’s tech scene through events.

Let’s host a pitch competition

Back in February, we partnered with Kitsilano Technologies with a simple goal: build an event that actually helps founders.

Here’s what we knew: Africa doesn’t have a shortage of great ideas.

What’s missing is the structure, honest feedback, and support to go from MVP to the next stage.

So we partnered with Kitsilano to create The Next Stage—a program built to help early builders go from idea to market.

In just two weeks, we received 260+ applications, and we picked 30 of the most-promising early-stage startups across Kenya.

Then we put them all in a room with mentors from Paystack, AWS, ALX and more, for an honest, zero-fluff Accelerator Day.

They got feedback. They asked hard questions. And they heard raw stories on what the early days of building are really like.

We closed it with a live pitch competition. The winner took home $10,000 in equity-free funding.

But every founder left with something even more valuable: insight, support, and real connections to help them keep building.

For Kitsilano, it was a bold step into the ecosystem. 

For us, it was another reminder of what it takes to build real community: intentionality, the right people, and spaces for connection that can actually lead somewhere. 

But across Africa today, that recipe is missing in many tech communities.

From builders to bottle service?

Not all communities are created equal.

In the past, communities were built on collaboration.

People showed up to learn, build, share, and ship—just like The Next Stage.

Today, these small, close-knit communities are slowly being replaced by blitzy shows for those who’ve either made it as startups or are clearly on the way there.

And it’s slowly turning African tech into a spectacle.

We have mega-events like GITEX Africa and Africa Tech Summit, full of panels and speeches—but light on the actual builders.

And in chasing glamor, we’ve got more people building in siloes till they can show their shiny new thing to everyone else.

We need to go back to the garage days.

Communities of people who built things, gave feedback, shared contacts freely, and added real value to each other.

Because those are the kinds of communities that built Paystack and Andela.

And they can build the next decade of African tech.

So what’s the point?

Community isn’t an afterthought.

It’s a superpower.

The compound interest of shared knowledge, support, and belonging is hard to beat.

It’s built ecosystems and entire tech industries (look at Silicon Valley).

But here’s the thing—compound interest takes time.

And you have to be compounding the right things.

For us at Tech Safari, we live and die by community.

It’s why we exist, and we’ll keep building the best communities for tech in Africa.

Because where two or more gather in tech’s name, good things happen.

So, tell us—what communities have you been a part of that have had an impact on you?

Hit reply and let us know.

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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