Post-Event Reflections from the Africa Startup Festival Featuring Yewande Adewusi
At this year’s Africa Startup Festival, Our Chief Operating Officer, Yewande Adewusi, sat on the panel “The Trust Deficit: Fixing the Relationship Between Capital and Continent,” alongside global and regional investment leader, Nobuhiko Ichimiya, and Janice Dibia, CFA, who masterfully moderated the conversation. During the panel session, Yewande offered a thoughtful global perspective on capital flow into emerging markets to affirm that Africa’s investment challenge is not just about capital, but also about trust.
With over 17 years of Alitheia Capital’s experience investing in businesses that are deeply woven into the social and economic fabric of local communities. These experiences have taught us profoundly that trust must be earned locally, built to last, and there are no clear shortcuts to boycott this
For too long, the flow of investment into Africa has been guided more by narrative and not by the lived realities on the ground. Investors come looking for airtight guarantees and local entrepreneurs spend energy proving what should have been obvious. And somewhere along the line, everyone becomes conditioned to wait for “perfect information” that could never capture the continent’s real complexity. Founders, investors, and operators alike are shifting from perception to partnership—from searching for certainty to building shared understanding.
And making that shift demands five commitments. These are Yewande’s five anchors for rebuilding trust in African investing:
- Trust Should be built in Proximity, Not in Presentations : Investors must be close enough to understand the community reality, and not just the market data. Africa rewards those who listen deeply, observe carefully, and build patiently.
- Patient Capital Is Intentional Capital: Yewande reframed “patient capital” not as slow capital, but purposeful partnership, including the act of walking with founders, especially through volatility.
- Success Must Be Co-Created and Contextual: Africa requires scorecards that reflect the continent’s lived realities, and these includes jobs for women, strengthened local supply chains, community resilience, and true value creation.
- Transparency Requires Radical Contextual Honesty: She challenged both investors and founders to move from guarded communication to open, cooperative problem-solving, where constraints, challenges, and needs are shared early.
- The Guiding Principle: Shared Destiny
If the community does not win, capital cannot win. Shared destiny is not a sentiment but an operating model for sustainable investment in Africa.
What This Means for Africa Going Forward
The Africa Startup Festival made it clear that Africa is ready for a more honest investment conversation.
We are ready for more collaborative solutions, and more African-led capital that understands complexity and commits to navigating it, not avoiding it.
This is the future we are building at Alitheia Capital. A future where trust is not assumed but intentionally earned. Where capital is not extractive, but catalytic.
Where communities are not peripheral, but central. Where success is measured not only by returns, but by resilience.