Breaking Boundaries: Building Wealth & Community through African VC

In this episode, I chat with Adenike Sheriff about how she plotted an “unlikely” path into VC by co-founding Future Africa, why her “blank slate” thinking resulted in the creation of the Future Africa Collective, what thorny challenges can emerge while you’re trying new things, why market-creating innovations constitute a significant investment opportunity, and what opportunities lie ahead for Future Africa.

Show Notes

Welcome to Track 9 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Adenike Sheriff. Adenike is the Co-founder of Future Africa, a fund manager that invests early in mission driven founders solving hard problems for large markets. Prior to Future Africa, Adenike focused on content strategy and storytelling for technology companies in Africa and beyond. Her work has appeared in various international publications including the Huffington Post.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Adenike plotted an “unlikely” path into VC
• How Future Africa came to be and why Adenike’s “blank slate” thinking inspired the birth of Future Africa Collective
• Why market-creating innovations constitute a significant investment opportunity
• What thorny challenges can emerge while you’re innovating
• What opportunities lie ahead for Future Africa
  
  

Note: This conversation was recorded in September 2021.

Adenike’s Recommendations & Featured Resources:

• Future Africa
  https://future.africa/
  
  
• Future Africa podcast
  https://future.africa/blog/category/podcast/
  
  
• Christiansen, C., Ojomo, E., & Dillon, K. (2018). The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovations Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty.
  https://www.christenseninstitute.org/books/the-prosperity-paradox-how-innovation-can-lift-nations-out-of-poverty/
  
  
• Chimanada Ngozi Ndichie
  https://www.chimamanda.com/
  
  
• Chasing Outliers: Why Context Matters for Early Stage Investing in Africa (report)
  https://kinyungu.com/chasing-outliers/
  
  
  

DJ Saphir’s Spotify Playlist:

• https://spoti.fi/2RS6hTc

What is The Trajectory Africa?

The Trajectory Africa is a “pop-up” podcast exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. With the unique African landscape—market characteristics, business environment, goals, and culture—as a starting point, The Trajectory Africa aims to identify a destination for African tech, as well as the sign posts that signal direction of travel. It’s modeled on the concept of a mixtape, in which each episode, or “track” will feature a conversation with a “guest artist”, and a playlist for inspiration.