Author: Broader

South Africa’s recent decision to expel Israel’s top diplomat, Ariel Seidman, has escalated into a wider diplomatic confrontation drawing sharp rebukes from the United States and fuelling internal political debate in Pretoria. On 30 January 2026, South Africa declared Seidman persona non grata, giving him 72 hours to leave the country over what the government described as “repeated violations of diplomatic norms,” including alleged derogatory comments about President Cyril Ramaphosa and breaches of protocol. Pretoria’s foreign ministry said these actions undermined its sovereignty and were incompatible with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. In response, Israel expelled South Africa’s senior…

Burkina Faso’s gold mining sector delivered a landmark performance in 2025, producing a record 94 tonnes of gold, marking one of the strongest annual outputs in the nation’s history and a sharp increase of more than 30 tonnes compared with 2024. The figures were disclosed by Minister of Energy, Mines and Quarries Yacouba Zabré Gouba during a performance report presented to Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo. The surge in output reflects significant reforms and increased state oversight across Burkina Faso’s extractive industries. The total production figure includes gold from industrial mines, artisanal miners, and recoveries from illicit supply channels.…

In a world flooded with dashboards, graphs and growth charts, not all metrics are created equal. Founders, marketers and investors are often drawn to shiny numbers that look good in pitch decks but tell very little about long-term sustainability. These are called vanity metrics, figures that inflate the ego but not the bottom line. At the centre of any serious conversation about business growth lies a critical question: Are we chasing numbers that impress or those that actually drive value? What are Vanity Metrics? Vanity metrics are performance indicators that may look impressive on the surface but lack substance when…

Uber has officially exited the Tanzanian market, ceasing all ride-hailing operations on 30 January 2026 after nearly ten years of effort to establish a foothold in the East African nation. The company informed Tanzanian riders via its app that services would no longer be available, offering thanks for their support and expressing regret for the disruption caused by the shutdown.This departure marks the end of a protracted regulatory conflict with the Land Transport Regulatory Authority (LATRA), Tanzania’s transport regulator, which has taken an unusually interventionist stance toward ride-hailing platforms.At the heart of the dispute were pricing and commission controls that…

In Africa, the image of a startup with venture capital backing often dominates the imagination. Yet some of the most enduring businesses on the continent began with nothing more than savings, sweat, and strategic creativity. Bootstrapping, a word that conjures scrappy early mornings, careful spreadsheets, and endless ingenuity is not a limitation; it is a discipline that forces founders to focus on value, revenue, and sustainable growth from day one. Bootstrapping starts with mindset. African entrepreneurs who succeed without external funding learn early that every naira, shilling, or cedi counts. Decisions are guided by cash flow, customer retention, and the…

In Silicon Valley, product-market fit is that elusive moment when users “can’t live without your product.” But what happens when your users aren’t early adopters with disposable income, but price-sensitive, offline-first customers with different priorities? In Africa, product-market fit isn’t a celebratory milestone, it’s a survival mechanism. It doesn’t just mean building something people want. It means building something people will use consistently, pay for without reminders, and eventually tell others about What Counts as Traction? In many African markets, revenue isn’t always the best signal of product-market fit. Sometimes, the clearest signs are behavioural. Are your customers finding hacks…

Pricing in Africa is more than maths. It’s more than marketing. It’s a direct conversation with the consumer, one shaped by cash flow, trust, inflation, and how people live day to day. Across the continent, startups are realising that copying Western pricing models often leads to churn or stagnation. The ones who get it right like M-KOPA, SafeBoda, and Wasoko are pricing with context, not guesswork. Why Pricing in Africa Isn’t Just About Margins In mature markets, pricing is mostly about covering costs and protecting profits. But in African markets, price also carries weight in the following ways: A ₦100…

Raising capital is one of the hardest challenges for African startups, especially at the pre-seed stage. Venture capital is still in its early phases across most of the continent, with limited players and a high concentration of cheques going to a small pool of founders. Yet, many startups have launched, gained traction, and even scaled without ever receiving a cent from traditional VCs. This raises a crucial question for aspiring founders: is it really possible to raise pre-seed funding in Africa without a VC? The answer is yes, but it requires a different playbook. One that blends resourcefulness, storytelling, and…

In a world flooded with dashboards, graphs and growth charts, not all metrics are created equal. Founders, marketers and investors are often drawn to shiny numbers that look good in pitch decks but tell very little about long-term sustainability. These are called vanity metrics, figures that inflate the ego but not the bottom line. At the centre of any serious conversation about business growth lies a critical question: Are we chasing numbers that impress or those that actually drive value? What are Vanity Metrics? Vanity metrics are performance indicators that may look impressive on the surface but lack substance when…

For Africa’s younger generations, living standards are no longer just a measure of income or consumption; they are a reflection of aspiration, identity, and the negotiation between hope and reality. Millennials and Gen Z, born in periods of rapid urbanisation, technological expansion, and globalisation, inhabit a paradoxical landscape. They are the most connected, globally aware, and ambitious cohort the continent has ever seen, yet they face economic, infrastructural, and social constraints that often make those aspirations difficult to fully realise. Their everyday lives are shaped not only by what is affordable but also by what signals status, belonging, and self-actualisation…