Trajectories — Portrait No. 1 Strive Masiyiwa spent five years and most of his money in court, arguing that Zimbabwe’s telephone monopoly was an assault on free speech. He won, switched on his network, and then left the country for twenty-six years. The infrastructure group he built from exile is now being tested by the...

The money hasn’t left Africa. It has simply become much harder to convince. Institutional investors are no longer asking whether the continent holds promise; they want to know how that promise is being captured, measured and converted into liquidity. Two fund managers — Anza, based in Johannesburg, and Farmties Capital — agreed to describe what...

Africa’s capital markets have become more selective, not smaller — and selectivity puts the pressure on execution rather than on money. Oxford Saïd arrives at AFSIC 2026 as a headline sponsor betting on the input that takes longest to build: people. Foreign direct investment into Africa reached roughly $70bn in 2025, down from an exceptional...

Ask a hundred founders whether they are investor ready and ninety will show you a deck. Fifteen slides, a chart bending up and to the right, a market size with eleven digits. The document is clean. It proves nothing. A deck describes what a company wants to be. Investor readiness describes what it is —...