Reframing entrepreneurship: Are our solutions progress or hidden pollution?

In Kampala, platforms like Watu Uganda offer instant digital loans to boda boda riders, motorcycle taxi operators navigating the city’s informal economy. Praised as tools for financial inclusion, these fintech models have enabled over 300,000 riders to finance motorcycles and support their families. Great, right?

Investors certainly think so. For them, it’s a textbook case of digital innovation solving access-to-capital problems. But a year later, the cracks begin to show. Riders are trapped in cycles of high-interest debt, bikes are repossessed via GPS, and reputations are ruined by missed payments. Kenya offers a cautionary tale. By 2022, regulatory intervention was necessary, as over 40 digital lenders had created more chaos than clarity.

What was framed as a solution had morphed into financial pollution.

Across Africa, this pattern repeats: innovation is celebrated in glossy reports and at pitch competitions, while the structural problems remain untouched. In Lagos, an AI-powered laundry service serves elites, while just streets away, traditional laundresses earn less than $5 daily and remain excluded from the platform economy. Despite the explosion of tech startups, employment has not kept pace. Kenya’s 2023 National Bureau of Statistics report showed the tech sector’s skyrocketing valuation, yet minimal impact on job creation.

The uncomfortable truth? Not every “solution” solves. Some distract. Others exploit. Many replicate global inequalities, albeit in a shinier, digital format.

Entrepreneurship-led development: Building castles on sand?

Governments and development agencies tout entrepreneurship as the panacea for youth unemployment. With Africa’s youth population booming, the appeal is obvious. But dig beneath the surface of “inclusive innovation” and “scalable impact,” and a more troubling picture emerges.

Kenya’s mobile lending boom, driven by apps like Tala and Branch, offered easy credit but no structural improvement in financial literacy or income. Informal workers were left in deeper debt. In Northern Nigeria, quiet agricultural entrepreneurs innovate with organic fertilisers and communal land use—but receive no applause or funding. They have no pitch decks or viral tweets.

Innovation, we are told, must disrupt. But disrupt what, and for whom?

Read also: Africa’s time is now: Building global prosperity through entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial education: Teaching or templating?

Entrepreneurship education is booming in African universities, but often with Euro-American content. Students are taught to scale fast, pitch slick, and chase capital. This one-size-fits-all model sidelines local context and indigenous knowledge.

Imagine a Nigerian student reviving traditional beekeeping in their village, creating employment and boosting biodiversity. Such a venture might never be recognised by their university’s innovation rankings: no venture capital, no tech stack, no “exit.” Yet it creates more local impact than many funded startups.

Across Ghana, Rwanda, and Senegal, young entrepreneurs are encouraged to mimic global models. The result? A glut of crypto wallets, food delivery apps, and ride-hailing clones. But little change to structural inequities or grassroots resilience.

Ecosystem building: Cultivating change or copying silicon valley?

Donor-funded ecosystems are springing up across Africa: hubs, accelerators, and co-working spaces. But these often favour Western-educated founders building products for the middle and upper classes. Meanwhile, a women’s savings group in Côte d’Ivoire digitises their “susu” with WhatsApp and voice notes—boosting communal resilience and speeding up savings circulation. Yet they remain invisible in ecosystem reports. No pitch events. No headlines.

Urban bias, language barriers, and investor-centric thinking marginalise those solving real problems with limited means. In Nigeria, thousands of rural entrepreneurs build thriving agribusinesses, but you won’t find them at Lagos tech events.

Toward a different kind of solutionism

If entrepreneurship is to be the lever for Africa’s economic transformation, we must change the way we ask questions and assess impact:

Can your startup solve a problem without widening inequality?

Does your innovation serve a community or extract from it?

Are entrepreneurs being educated to mimic or to engage meaningfully?

Are ecosystems inclusive of the informal, the indigenous, and the invisible?

We must shift from valuing disruption to nurturing mutuality. Not all innovation needs to be digital. Not all success must be scalable. Not all solutions must be sexy.

This is not a rejection of technology or capital. It is a call for relevance and equity. Let us value beekeeping as much as blockchain, women’s susu groups alongside fintech, and traders using voice notes as much as startups with slick UI. Let our metrics evolve to reflect value, not just valuation.

Only then can African entrepreneurship stop solving the wrong problems and start solving for the futures we truly need.