 My guest is Amam Chukwoka for Senior Consultant Tech, Baal. In Africa, the tech ecosystem has experienced impressive growth and is evolving rapidly. There is a high level of optimism about the potential that the continent has to offer by harnessing the strength of its largely young, rapidly growing and technology-savvy population. Now, Nigeria is one of the continent's more established start-up ecosystem with firms like InterSwitch, dating as far back as 2002. Orbeach, the growing tech sector in Nigeria's economy and significant private funding secured by African tech start-ups over the years, the tech sector is grossly underrepresented in the Nigerian capital market. Would African capital market follow the same path to advancement through tech ecosystem development? Like I said, I have Amam Chukwoka for Senior Consultant at Tech, Baal, joining me right now to discuss with them. Many thanks for being a part of the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's our pleasure. Let's talk about tech in Africa as a tech ecosystem so far in 2023. How far have we come? Let's just fill the pause. I would say that African tech ecosystem has not been entirely moved from the funding winter or funding play-to, as they call it. 13% decline in Q&Q globally meant that for us in year-to-date, we've seen more than 50% decline in VC funding. We've also seen fair share of layoffs in year-to-date. Two examples are laser pay, 54 genes. Aside from layoffs, we've seen not layoffs. I mean, I meant shutdown. Laser pay, 54 genes. These are classic cases of shutdown. For layoffs, we've seen a lot of them. Sadly, we've seen... I think 54 genes also laid out before they shut down. For us, unfortunately, we also had to lay off some of our employees. We've seen this layoff, of course, but the big tech players... What's actually the reason for all of these layoffs and shutdowns? As I said, restitution and funding. Startups are trying to prune down on their expenses and their overhead costs. I mean, having done a lot of things internally to manage the credit squeeze, sometimes it's almost inevitable to let people go. For us, it was a sad situation, but we saw firsthand what these other tech companies have had to endure letting some of their critical employees go. I mean, globally, as I said, Africa will not be immune from the rest of the world. Africa is just a tiny piece in the global VC funding. The squeeze is not out of nowhere. Essentially, if we look at the lag effect of the Russian-speaking world and the energy crisis that followed, it would also add to that the SDB, Silicon Valley collapse that also sent a severe shock throughout the startup ecosystem. In Africa, again, it's been the year of the first half of the year that's been had queues here and there. And also part of African economy like Nigeria also had elections. So the combination of these factors would make venture capitalists look at Africa with some level of caution. Let's leave that for one moment and talk about tech in Africa specifically. One would have talked about the growing population of Nigeria specifically with two young people being involved and being very tech savvy and Nigeria would have actually taken its place of pride as it were in technology. But it's still Africa is still left behind when we talk about technology. What's going on? That's an interesting question I will say. I would go a little bit technical on that. When you look at the entire tech ecosystem or technology or innovation in general, you'd understand that the dynamics is one of, should I say, imitation. It's something called imitation dynamics. Africa gets to copy from the West. We did not create AI for instance. So we've had to learn this technology and then apply it. In that sense it's safe to say that technology here is a, we have had to depend essentially on our absorpting capacity to absorb these technologies. So that means that we have to wait for this technology to come and then we learn and then we adapt or we adopt. For the, looking at the social dynamics, for instance as you mentioned, young people, it's been a learning curve for these young people who initially have studied something else and now they're having to essentially move towards learning technology or studying technology. I think it's going to, it's not going to be immediate before we begin to see, before we begin to resemble the rest of the world. I think I would not say, I would not dismiss the effort that Africans or African economies have made. It's been, it's been tremendous over the last couple of years. I think the future of tech in Africa is really promising. So it's promising. That's a very good one. Let's talk about venture funding for the tech ecosystem. So for what I saw, for the figures I saw in the race for West function, I just printed ahead in the second quarter of this year, leaving other Africa's big four countries, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt on the troll. Is that really still the case right now? I think I would correct that stat a little bit. I mean, it's not our numbers. In Q1, I think Q1, Q2, 2023, Nigeria has always maintained the third position. I think the drastic change was Kenya that pushed up from I think $40 million to $420 million. But Nigeria would be somewhere like in third place. Well, I think the change for Nigeria is when you look at yet with the change, when you add together Q1, Q2, that pushes up to second place after South Africa. Okay, I don't know, but it just based on the statistics that I have really because it does do startups operating in the energy, fintech and logistics sectors. It met at the frontrunners in Q2. What is the position as we speak? I mean, I would say since 2019 or so we've had fintech. Fintech is always the downing of Vizing. But that changed last quarter Q2 where we saw energy startups getting most of it. I think about 400 and something. What did they do differently? I would say for instance, you can look at, I think critical for it would be the Russian-Ukrainian war and the energy crisis that ensued. So I think it made, I mean Africa is energy rich. So I think it made VCs begin to take interest in energy companies in Africa and it's not globally we are moving towards renewable energy and clean tech and all of that. So I think it's essentially time for, I mean this time favors energy startups. I mean they've not always been somewhere down below but, you know, fintech has always had the most funding. But now we're seeing, we're beginning to see, there's no promise that energy tech or energy startups would always, you know, would continue to get the most part of VC fund. That might change. It might go back to VC. We are about to look at the numbers for Q3 and we would have more information on that. Okay. In our state of tech reports in Africa. Okay. Let's still talk about the Africa's tech market, the three P's as it were and how they've been able to influence the ecosystem. Specifically, let's talk about the pricing, the people and power. So far those three factors combined, how have they influenced the Africa's tech market ecosystem? The pricing, power and people. I'll start with pricing. Okay. Africa, we are price sensitive. Essentially because, you know, the general income level and, you know, inflation and all of that, you know, macro dynamics coming into play. Technology is not always cheap or doesn't come cheap at least at the beginning. So you'd see Africans or consumers responding to, you know, the price dynamics or the price implication, you know. Take for instance, 5G technology. We have 5G already in Nigeria in some of the African markets in Tanzania. In Uganda it was launched, ETEL launched 5G a couple of months ago. MTN also, MTN and ETEL actually got 5G license. So it's all operational there already. But you don't see much of, you don't see much of, this switch is not, even from Nigeria, you know, it's not, you don't see many people already acquiring 5G devices, you know, 5G Wi-Fi or 5G enabled phones. These are very expensive. I think last year also Elon Musk launched the, I mean, how far we've not seen much of that in Africa. Only very, only handful of people have, you know, adopted that technology. I think in terms of politics or power, I think African governments cannot entirely remove themselves from, you know, these waves. We, it is important that, you know, the consumer market, African consumer market gets some type of enablement, you know, to not miss out on this technological drift. Okay, fine. I know sometime this one time, take a bow is convening the most audacious players, founders, and of course business leaders on that ecosystem. So tell us more about it and what we are supposed to expect from that. Yes, it's the moonshot conference. Moonshot conference, or moonshot conference, take a bow is trying to do the most. We are trying to shake up the tech ecosystem. Take a bow we are doing the impossible. We are pulling together all industry players across, you know, the tech value chain. We are doing this over two days, 12 to 13. It can't be, you can't match it right now. But then again, I want to really understand exactly what it is going to bring to bear with all the big players or what are the changes that we are supposed to see in the ecosystem and how it will impact on Africa. We are bringing 50 speakers from across the board. The conversations would be moderated by experts. The topics are spread across five content tracks. We're looking at the future of commerce in Africa, for instance. We're looking at emerging technology, Web3, AI. We are looking at creative economy and happy startup, first of all. Aside from that, we are having work for TC, Battlefield, where we would, where technologies across Africa would come out and showcase, sort of like compete for the most and then the winners would get 2.5 million. So it's going to be really, really massive. So for startups, what are they likely to gain from that? The opportunity to network, to meet VCs, to see what other startups are doing as well. Get the opportunity to look internally and learn from the conversation and see what you're doing wrong and what you can improve upon and all of that. So I think it's going to be really, really impressive for startup founders who are also going to be there in their numbers and also government. We have the Minister of Information also coming. So it's really, really important that startups are not left behind in this. Ali, this is happening here in Lagos? It's happening here in Lagos. Okay, so 12 to 13 Lagos and the Munchen Conference is happening and it's actually a big one for the tech ecosystem, not just in Nigeria but for Africa. But is it open to every Nigerian, everyone to just come in to learn something? It is open to everybody actually. We have a student ticket here. It's open to everybody. We are not letting, I mean it's unrestricted but there is a ticket price that you have to pay for it. Alright, so once again as we round off right now in as much as Nigerians should be looking out for the Munchen Conference, what's the future of the technology and the tech ecosystem with fintech and all of that hold and sway? What's the future for Nigeria, let's say in the next five years? Because we are actually set by 1060, 30 independents. One would think that would be completely independent when it comes to technology. I don't necessarily think that technological independence or should be the goal or is the goal. I think it makes sense to keep learning and I think it makes sense to keep learning. It makes sense to have research institutions in Nigeria. I think we should have that link from universities or from research to applied. I would say in general that the future of tech globally is automation. We are going to see that also play out in Africa. As I mentioned, it's been an imitation dynamic. We are going to see automation in for instance logistics. The logistics sector is also another sector to watch out for. Especially looking at the FCFT. Thank you very much for your time and for the useful insight that you have shared on the show for today. Thank you for having me. That's as much as we can take on the show for this morning. My name is Justin. I'll give you business insights. We'll return to your screen same time tomorrow. Bye for now.