Trajectories — Portrait No. 9 Africa holds roughly 15% of the world’s people and attracts about 1% of global venture funding. Within that 1%, four anglophone markets — Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa — absorb the overwhelming majority, and female founders take a fraction of what remains. Fatoumata Bâ built a fund around both gaps...

In seven months, three CEMAC sovereigns raised roughly $2.52 billion on international bond markets at coupons between 8.9% and 9.5%. In the whole of 2025, Central African companies attracted $27 million in venture capital — 0.7% of Africa’s total. That gap, not the absence of capital, is the region’s real financing problem. AFSIC – Investing...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 7 A tenure cap moves a person. It does not necessarily move power. On 21 August, Nigeria’s twelve-year limit on non-executive directors ends Tony Elumelu’s chairmanship of UBA — the second time the same central bank has removed him from the same bank. His successor is the former group chief executive...

A Franco-Congolese actress trained in Paris, directed by France’s leading stage and screen names, has worked for a Central African production exactly once — on a self-financed film whose technical shortcomings its own director attributes to the absence of funding. The numbers. Two of eleven Central African states operate a film support fund. Regional seed...