Africa’s best year for clean cooking widened the gap.
15 million people gained access in 2025. The IEA called it the fastest year on record, at three times the pace of 2010.
· 2 MINThe best infrastructure in Africa isn’t public anymore.
Sub-Saharan Africa bought 9.26 million off-grid solar kits last year. More than 90% of every unit sold globally.
· 2 MINEthiopia’s industrial parks worked.
Just not very far beyond their gates.
· 2 MINYour AI tool works. That won’t save it.
I’ve seen how health ministries decide whether to keep paying after a pilot ends. The technology almost never decides it.
· 2 MIN$448 billion in impact capital is drifting toward your market.
It won’t wait for you to arrive.
· 3 MINYes, impact funds are “inefficient.”
21 cents to deploy a dollar vs. traditional finance, which does it for 8. The 13-cent gap is the price of the work nobody else will do.
· 2 MINUSAID left an $80B hole in your expansion plans.
86% of its programmes were cut, and the UK, France and Germany cut at the same time. But capital has a habit of moving, not vanishing.
· 2 MINThe WHO says we waste half the world’s vaccines.
That number is already bad. Climate change could make it worse.
· 2 MIN80M people are holding the product you haven’t shipped.
They have the phone, the ID, the registered SIM, everything except an account built for how they actually live, pay, borrow and save.
· 2 MINMillions of East African bikes are going electric.
But who’s going to fix them?
· 2 MINI’m Indian. And this is what frustrates me.
I’ve sat with dozens of Indian founders with real product and real revenue. The moment expansion comes up, the same three lines come back.
· 3 MINRwanda just did something transformational.
It became the first country in Africa to mandate battery-swap interoperability.
· 2 MINI watched one clause almost kill a market entry.
A funder was ready and the national research partner was signed. Then they read Section 33 of Uganda’s National Meteorological Authority Act.
· 2 MINStop evaluating Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire.
Start evaluating Lagos, Nairobi, Accra and Abidjan.
· 3 MINMy bet: AI quietly breaks how the Global South earns dollars.
For thirty years the deal was simple: sell cheap labour, earn hard dollars. Now a model does the work, and the dollars still leave.
· 2 MIN$750,000. Three years. Zero carbon credits.
That’s what one forestry company in Africa spent chasing a single verification before giving up.
· 2 MINWhen a founder asks me, “What’s the regulatory process?”
Sometimes I have to tell them, “I don’t know.”
· 2 MINRwanda might end our business. Good.
We get hired because markets are hard: regulators that don’t answer, deals that stall for months. Rwanda barely has that problem.
· 2 MINOne of these your market? Let’s compare notes.
30 minutes. We pressure-test your target markets and tell you whether GSD is the right fit. If we’re not, we’ll tell you who is.
Book a 30-min discovery call →