When I began my research journey into African fintech, I thought I knew the question I was trying to answer.
Like many scholars and practitioners, I was interested in performance—why some ventures scale, raise capital, and survive, while others stall or disappear. The dominant language in both academia and industry pointed in one direction: investor readiness.
If founders could become more investor-ready—more structured, more data-driven, more aligned with global expectations—then growth would follow. This logic is reflected in both practitioner frameworks and policy interventions aimed at improving access to finance (e.g., World Bank, 2020).
But as I spent more time with entrepreneurs, cases, and data across the continent, something did not sit right.
The Question That Didn’t Fit
In classroom discussions, consulting engagements, and case analyses, I kept encountering a pattern that the investor-readiness lens could not fully explain.
Some ventures that looked “ready” on paper—polished decks, strong metrics, compelling narratives—still struggled to survive. Others, often less polished and operating in highly constrained environments, found ways to endure and even grow.
This observation echoes a broader critique within entrepreneurship research: that firm success cannot be explained solely by internal capabilities or access to capital, but must also account for institutional context (e.g., Institutional Theory; Douglass North, 1990).
This raised a deeper question:
What if the problem is not whether African ventures are ready for investors, but whether they are ready for change?
From Investor Readiness to Change Readiness
This question became the foundation for what I now describe as Change Readiness—a values-based mechanism for entrepreneurial survival in complex and uncertain environments.
Rather than focusing on external validation, Change Readiness shifts attention inward, toward how firms respond to their environments, stakeholders, and constraints.
Through my research, this construct evolved around three core dimensions:
- Customer Clarity – the ability to deeply understand and respond to real customer needs, particularly in fragmented and informal markets
- Collectivism – the capacity to build trust-based relationships with teams, partners, and communities
- Conscientious Growth – a disciplined and ethical approach to scaling, where growth is aligned with long-term impact rather than short-term gains
These dimensions reflect not just strategies, but organizational postures. In this sense, Change Readiness complements existing perspectives such as the Resource-Based View (Barney, 1991) by emphasizing not only what firms have, but how they behave under constraint.
Writing the Book: Bridging Two Worlds
Writing Institutional Entrepreneurship in African Fintech was an attempt to bridge two worlds that often speak past each other.
On one hand, academic literature offers rich theoretical insights into institutions, legitimacy, and entrepreneurship (e.g., DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). On the other hand, practitioners navigate realities that are far messier than most models assume.
The challenge was not simply to apply theory to practice, but to allow practice to reshape theory.
This meant drawing not only from established frameworks, but also from lived experiences, African proverbs, and case studies across West, East, Southern, and North Africa.
In doing so, I found myself constantly negotiating between rigor and relevance:
- How do you remain theoretically grounded while speaking to real founders?
- How do you write for global scholarship without losing local nuance?
This tension became a creative force rather than a constraint.
What Surprised Me Most
Perhaps the most surprising insight from this journey was the central role of values.
In environments characterized by institutional voids—where formal systems are weak or inconsistent—values are not abstract ideals. They become operational tools.
Trust, fairness, commitment, and responsibility are not “soft” concepts; they are mechanisms through which entrepreneurs build legitimacy and sustain relationships.
This aligns with emerging work in values-based strategy and moral agency in entrepreneurship, which suggests that ethical orientation can shape firm outcomes in meaningful ways.
In this sense, growth is not merely a function of capital or capability, but of character.
Why This Matters
This work is not only about African fintech. It speaks to a broader shift in how we understand entrepreneurship in complex environments.
As global markets become more uncertain, the conditions often associated with emerging economies—volatility, informality, institutional gaps—are becoming more widespread.
In such contexts, the question of readiness becomes more nuanced.
It is no longer sufficient to ask whether firms are ready for investment. We must also ask whether they are equipped—internally and relationally—to navigate change.
Looking Ahead
This book represents one step in an ongoing research agenda. Future work will focus on empirically testing the Change Readiness construct and exploring its implications across sectors and geographies.
At the same time, I remain committed to engaging practitioners—through teaching, consulting, and writing—to ensure that these ideas continue to evolve in dialogue with real-world challenges.
For founders, investors, and policymakers interested in applying these ideas, one practical starting point is to assess where a venture currently stands across the three dimensions of Change Readiness. Even a simple diagnostic can surface hidden constraints and guide more grounded growth strategies.
Ultimately, my hope is that this work contributes to a more context-sensitive understanding of entrepreneurship—one that recognizes that growth is not only built, but becomes.