STRATEGIC COLLABORATION IS THE GROWTH INFRASTRUCTURE AFRICA NEEDS NOW

A Tale of Two Startups 

About a decade ago, FlutterWave launched in Lagos with a bold vision to make sending and receiving money across borders easier for businesses. The goal was to connect commerce around Africa in ways that had never been possible before. That same period, another start-up emerged in Cape Town with an equally ambitious goal. WhereIsMyTransport wanted to map and digitise public transport networks in Africa’s emerging cities to bring predictability to millions of commuters.

Today, their status couldn't be more different. FlutterWave is now a multi-market payments infrastructure leader powering businesses across Africa and beyond. On the other hand, despite the vision of the founders, international partnerships, and raising up to $28 million in funding, WhereIsMyTransport ultimately struggled to monetize in local markets and closed down in 2023. We are no strangers to this story — as of 2020, less than half of African startups make it past the first few years; in Nigeria, only 20-30% continue to operate after 3 years.

I remember how the questions started to form in my mind. I was deep in the fintech space, helping companies scale and build operational excellence. I was surrounded by an energetic drive for innovation and met brilliant founders with dreams that could usher Africa into the future. But the story kept going the same way: companies burned bright with possibility and ambition and then disappeared before they really took off. So I started to ask, why aren’t there more businesses in Africa growing sustainably and into legacy status? And beyond this, what made the difference for the few that are beating the curve? 

Trust is Currency in Africa

Between research, conversations with founders, business leaders and investors, and the stories that kept repeating across markets in the continent, a clear principle of necessity began to emerge. Africa has a high-potential market that is unpredictable and requires relational roots built on trust. It was clear that the free trade rules of competition alone would not bring us into the prosperity of the future. The same principles of trust, collaboration and shared growth that have held our societies together for centuries were the very things that were missing from our business ecosystems.

It made sense then that FlutterWave adopted the strategy of cultivating valuable partnerships rooted in the African market. Talk about banks, regulators, small merchants, and even other startups that grew stronger alongside it, so much so that its success became inseparable from theirs. Every partnership they entered deepened their network and every collaboration reinforced their value. 

Let’s be honest, the narrative that Africans are wary of collaboration, that we protect our hustle and rarely open doors for one another, stands right beside this reality. However, over the years, across different cities, I have stood witness as one call, one introduction, or one handshake changed the entire course of a business’s story. 

Collaboration is ingrained in our cultures. There’s a version of this truth embedded in the philosophy and values of societies across this continent – in Southern Africa, we recognise it as Ubuntu; in Senegal, it’s teranga; afɔ nɛ in Ghana; and in eastern Nigeria, we say, igwe bu ike. Even as a continent with a rich and diverse heritage, we share a common acknowledgement of the power of collaboration and community. 

This understanding grounded how the idea of Hackapath started. We needed a pathway that would make it possible and easy for businesses to find each other, find alignment and build prosperity and legacies that are sustainable. 

Building Pathways for Collaboration 

Africa is not lacking in innovation or innovators. As an avid traveller, the more I visited places around the continent, the more a pattern unfolded. I would meet an entrepreneur in Kigali designing financial tools for small traders. In Accra, another was building digital infrastructure that could power that exact vision, but they didn’t know each other existed. Each regional ecosystem showed its own unique value, but there were too few bridges between them, too little trust and hardly any systems that made collaboration possible and safe. 

This became our mission at Hackapath – to build pathways for ambitious businesses in Africa to achieve sustainable growth by connecting them to value-for-value partnerships, cross-border expansion opportunities and contextual market intelligence that drive long-term impact. Our promise to founders and businesses is to create and nurture value-driven collaborations across markets so they can gain access to high-trust opportunities and navigate dynamic markets without fear.  

We set up three aspects that mattered most to achieving this: curated B2B matchmaking vetted for value, hands-on partnership management so relationships could scale beyond a first contract, and African market expansion support to help businesses break into new markets. 

Africa’s Future Will Not Be Built in Isolation

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which began implementation in 2021, is expected to create a unified market of 1.3 billion people across Africa. By 2035, it’s projected to boost cross-border trade by over 50%. This free trade zone, which is the largest in the world, could generate a cumulative GDP of $3.4 trillion by connecting people, capital, goods, and services across 54 nations. Africa’s growth is already accelerating—it remains the world’s second-fastest-growing region, with 12 of the 20 fast-growing economies globally in 2025 projected to be on the continent.

Africa’s potential is immense and inevitable, and to harness it, we must move beyond isolated ambitions to value-driven collaboration across borders and industries. Strategic collaboration is an important growth infrastructure that we must build to transform potential into shared prosperity so that African enterprises can thrive, scale, and develop the continent’s economic future together. 

Value-for-Value Collaboration Works—And We Have Proof

Since I began this journey, I’ve seen the power of value-for-value collaboration unfold in real time. From Kigali to Lagos, from Dakar to Accra, Hackapath has matchmade prospects that turned first meetings into strategic partnerships. 

Take PAL Africa, for instance. When I met Dady Maël and his team, they were constrained by slow, costly cross-border payments that stalled growth. In his own words, “The main challenge that we were having was ensuring that cross-border transactions between markets in the region are really stable and cost-effective.”

Through a thorough analysis of their context, it became clear that what they needed was a more refined and efficient payment infrastructure and a clearer strategy for cross-border integration. We mapped their payment flows and after vetting potential partners made some introductions with partnership prospects in Nigeria. Within two months, PAL Africa was processing over ₦100 million in transactions, and today, they’ve crossed ₦1 billion in SME transactions across Africa. 

For AlgoCommerce, a platform optimising retail efficiency with cutting-edge solutions, the story followed a similar path. Their vision was clear and solution-driven, but they needed the right partnership strategy and fit to make it take off. We got to work building a watertight go-to-market plan and vetting partners that could deliver the exact value required to scale sustainably. “Working with Hackapath saved us time and earned us credibility with strategic partners who remain valuable collaborators to this day,” said Rose Odudu, Marketing Manager at AlgoCommerce. 

Another example is CrissCross, a fintech building tailored solutions to simplify cross-border and forex transactions for businesses in Africa. When the company made the bold move to expand into Tanzania, we activated our local trust network and provided on-ground support that guided their regional rollout. These are not isolated wins; they’re proof that when trust meets collaboration, African businesses grow and thrive. 

Hackapath is Connecting Africa’s Next-Generation Legacy Businesses 

It's a new era for Africa’s business ecosystem, and for us at Hackapath. Over the past months, we have been reflecting, listening, and engaging deeply, within and beyond. We’ve asked ourselves how Africa should respond economically in this period of global upheaval and uncertainty. We’ve spoken with clients, partners, experts, and ecosystem builders to uncover what truly matters now. One truth stood out: businesses in Africa must depend on each other now more than ever to grow stronger and more sustainably into the future.

We are doubling down on our belief that the next generation of legacy businesses in Africa will not be built in isolation, and they will not be built by depending solely on the vision of external players driven by their own interests. Africa’s next generation of legacy businesses will emerge from a culture of trust, collaboration, and shared growth; they will emerge from a continental marketplace where businesses can both compete and collaborate.

So, dear African changemaker, founder, investor and business leader, the Africa you believe in, the Africa you build for, is possible. It is within our grasp, but only if we lean into the power of collaboration as our greatest advantage.

African entrepreneurs and innovators have never lacked initiative and aspiration. What we’ve often lacked are bridges strong enough to carry the weight of our collective ambition. This is why we must work together. As a proverb from Ethiopia reminds us, when spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion. Isolated, we will remain fragile, but together, we can build prosperity for Africa, one value-for-value partnership at a time.

About

Nenye Patrick is a B2B matchmaker on a mission to help African-owned enterprises reach legacy status. She hosts The Bouquet Experience, a high-level matchmaking initiative for founders and businesses in Africa.