The GreenTec Capital Africa Foundation (GCAF) in partnership with Wee Tracker Media have published the “The Better Africa: Tracing the Success and Failure of African Start-ups” report. The report presents an analysis of compiled data on start-up growth and failure rates in Africa, was well as a presentation of stories from the people behind some of the most successful start-ups on the African continent.
The ‘Better Africa’ report aims to distil the ‘secret sauce’ of what makes successful start-ups in Africa. The report traces the successes and failures of African start-ups from 2010 to 2018 to derive learnings from what did and did not work. The report draws its conclusions from a thorough analysis of a random sample of 500 start-ups, distilling valuable insights into what helped and hurt founders build businesses in Africa.The report used a specialized web crawler to collate start-up performance data from 32 countries across Africa and spanning 23 industries. The statistics and figures presented in the report are derived from an analysis of a random sample of 500 startups either headquartered or operating in Africa and manually reviewed and analysed by WeeTracker’s Research Team.
Among the report’s findings was that for the analysed sample the failure rate in Africa stands at 54.20 per cent. To put this figure into perspective, the startup failure rate of two comparably large starup ecosystems, specifically the US and India are 67 per cent and 90 per cent respectively. This surprising learning suggests that for the time period analysed for the study, that African founders failed at a significantly lower than their global peers. Within Africa the three countries that witnessed the highest shutdown rates during the study were Rwanda with 75 per cent, Ethiopia with 75 percent, and Ghana with 73.91 per cent with failure rates attributable to country economic performance.
During the compilation of the report, the GCAF and We Tracker teams were able to collect many stories from founders to fill out a better understanding of the range emotions that African entrepreneurs experience. The report captures the positivity in the African startup ecosystem that is hogging the global limelight and compiles these first-hand experiences from startup founders who succeeded to share insights and tips for the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The Better Africa Report represents not just GCAF and We Trackers’ commitments to the African entrepreneurial ecosystem, but also poignantly captures the prospects and potential for African entrepreneurship. This innovative research and report are just one of many GCAF driven contributions to a ‘better Africa.’ Report available on the #GCAF reports page.