The Inside View On Why African Startups Raise Billions But Can’t Raise Leaders

Africa’s tech ecosystem had its best funding year since 2022 as startup investments rebounded last year, ending the slump of the previous two years, thanks to record debt financing and a steady recovery in equity markets. Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt together accounted for much of the capital raised.

The money is back, but something else is quietly choking the continent’s startup ambitions. A common view among stakeholders suggests that it’s not a lack of ideas or market, but rather leadership.

When Moniepoint CEO Tosin Eniolorunda told a Lagos audience that his company had struggled to fill 500 vacancies because Nigerian candidates were “not up to global standards,” the internet exploded. Some called it an insult, others said he was telling an uncomfortable truth. But Marcia Ashong‑Sam, founder and CEO of the executive search and leadership advisory firm, TheBoardroom Africa, has a different take.

“The question was never whether African professionals are capable,” she tells WT. “It was whether the organisations they work within are built to draw that capability out.”

Ashong‑Sam sees a painful irony every other day. “Founders will tell you in one breath that talent is their biggest challenge, and in the next, allocate the smallest slice of their budget to developing it.” Why? “Because leadership development gets treated as a cost centre, not a strategic growth lever. When you are racing to hit targets or close a round, teaching your VP of Product how to make better decisions feels abstract. Product and customer acquisition feel real. So the money flows to what feels urgent.”

But there is a deeper structural bias. The capital that flooded Africa over the last decade was priced for speed and market capture. “Investors focused more on growth metrics than leadership capacity or organisational maturity,” Ashong‑Sam says. “So founders optimised for what they were measured on.”

Many also assumed talent could simply be hired rather than developed. “That assumption is where the model breaks down,” she warns. “You cannot hire your way out of every talent challenge. At some point, you have to build capability internally.”

So what separates the companies that actually do this from the ones that collapse under their own weight? High‑performing organisations, she explains, “do not just recruit talent. They systematically compound it.” Ashong-Sam holds the view that the organisations that fare better treat leadership development as an operational discipline, not something delegated entirely to HR.

“They build clear succession plans, conduct regular talent reviews, and give people early exposure to cross‑functional responsibilities. And they think several layers ahead. Building tomorrow’s leadership bench with the same intentionality they bring to building their product,” she explains

There’s another dimension that gets missed entirely. “Organisations frequently hire people because they are excellent at one specific thing,” Ashong‑Sam notes. “The assumption is that technical excellence will advance a career. It rarely does on its own.”

What actually determines who grows into leadership is the ability to lead people, translate strategy into action, and navigate uncertainty, she asserts. “Those are human skills, and they have to be developed with genuine commitment. A well‑rounded career requires a well‑rounded professional.”

So how do you know if your company is hitting a leadership ceiling instead of a product or market problem? Ashong‑Sam says the most reliable early warning is decision velocity.

“When a company that was once agile becomes slow, when simple decisions require multiple sign‑offs and teams are waiting weeks for clarity, that is a leadership architecture problem.”

Another signal is what happens to high‑potential people. “High turnover among strong performers,” she tells WT, “particularly when they are leaving not for better compensation but because they do not feel they are growing or being heard, is a leadership culture signal that precedes deeper difficulty.”

In her view, boards often miss this because they are watching revenue, churn and burn rate, but those only tell you what has already happened.

“What boards should be tracking is succession depth, voluntary attrition, and the gap between what the organisation says its strategy is and how it actually behaves day to day.” She recommends a simple test: “Who runs this if you step away for six months? If the honest answer is that it falls apart, the board is sitting on a leadership risk.”

The debate that erupted over Moniepoint’s CEO’s comments stopped at exactly the wrong place, Ashong‑Sam argues. “A person can have full competency on paper and still be set up to fail if the organisation has not invested in building their capacity to lead.”

The leadership guru also criticises the tendency of many organisations to expect world‑class performance without world‑class development structures. “When outcomes disappoint, the individual gets the blame rather than the environment. That misdiagnosis is costly,” she says, “both for the person whose reputation suffers unfairly and for the organisation that learns nothing and repeats the same conditions with the next hire.”

Africa’s workforce is young, growing and ambitious. Sub‑Saharan Africa is expected to add 620 million people to the global workforce by 2050. That is either a dividend or a disaster, depending on who is building the systems to lead them.

Ashong‑Sam’s final lesson for the tech ecosystem is urgent. “Pipeline building does not have to wait for maturity or scale. The intent has to be present early, built into the culture before the organisation is large enough to feel the absence of it.” The capital is back. The question is whether the leadership will follow.