“Market size is small, and tons of events exist across Africa to spread the word and test markets once a first base has been successful at home”.
Although the Kenyan market size in of itself is relatively small, I would argue quite easily that Kenya still remains the best place for startups to launch themselves. As the regional center for a wide range of industries, not to mention its financial center, Kenya is also well-positioned geographically, with its access to the Indian ocean and its proximity to Middle Eastern and European hubs.
Startups are thus well-placed to establish themselves first in Kenya and expand from there. One example is that of Mpesa, the mobile money platform started by Safaricom. Started and grown in Nairobi, Mpesa is now undertaking the historically unprecedented step of expanding into Romania, unprecedented as the first export of technology from Africa to Europe, rather than the other way around. As established in our earlier point above, the term ‘similar features’ need not necessarily mean cultural features, but rather economic potentials for growth.
While not a perfect example, given that Mpesa had the backing of the large multinational firm, Vodafone, the point remains. Kenya has the potential to act as a testbed which would highly benefit startups and companies with more long term growth strategies. With a more forward looking vision, Kenyan entrepreneurship can become a global phenomenon.