Africa3 Year in Review - 2022
Disclaimer: This is not intended to be a fully exhaustive or complete recollection but instead a perspective on the overall journey from an individual point of view.
Hi Africa3 community,
Thank you for following along as Africa3 has evolved over the past year! While things may have seemed quiet at times, we've been thinking a lot about strategies to ensure Africa3 can move quickly in the new year. As with any DAO, one of our biggest ongoing challenges is community: how do we design a system that incentivizes continued collaboration and synergy across a large diverse group of stakeholders? We will lean into this question in the new year, as we look to test out community-engagement models and membership incentives (more on this soon)!
2022 year-in-review
Q1: Defining who we are
We set out on a journey to create something truly transformative for the African continent. As we considered various names and symbols that captured the essence of our end-goal, we were inspired by themes such as Sankofa, Abundance, and Ubuntu - all of which spoke to our mission of fostering the growth and advancement of the African community through frontier technology. We envisioned an Africa where technology drives progress, prosperity, and innovation. And so, we proudly present Africa3 - a venture capital fund that seeks to ignite the power of frontier technology in Africa and catalyze the creation of a new future for the continent. Our team at Africa3 is diverse, with some members having deep ties to Africa and others seeking to reconnect with their roots. Despite our varied backgrounds, we are united in our shared goal of supporting the growth of technology in Africa.
Q2: Building in Abundance
As we built our network and developed relationships within the technology and venture capital communities in Africa, we were continually impressed by the passion and dedication of the people we met. We quickly realized that we were not alone in our mission to accelerate the growth of frontier technology in Africa. In fact, we found ourselves surrounded by a network of like-minded organizations, founders, and communities who were equally committed to driving progress and innovation on the continent.
Some of the amazing people and organizations we had the pleasure of working with include DreamVC, Afropolitan, UbuntuPunks, Launch House, Akili Ventures, TalkSay, Carry1st, and FundTheGapAlliance. Each of these groups brought a unique perspective and valuable insights to the table, and we were grateful for the opportunity to learn from them and engage in open dialogue with the public through events like Twitter spaces and Founder Fridays.
Q3: Education and Exploration
We embarked on a learning journey, engaging in a variety of activities aimed improving our understanding and enabling us to inform the community:
Interviewing experts like Peter Ngunyi on investing strategy and perspectives around finding the continent's next unicorns.
Conducting research on investment DAOs, exploring various structures and frameworks and sharing our findings with the community.
Studying trends and compiling articles that offered us useful insights into the tech ecosystem in Africa.
Participating in the DreamVC investor accelerator program to develop our skills as investors, and sharing our learnings with others along the way.
We sought to deepen our understanding of the technology landscape in Africa, as this would be necessary in positioning ourselves as key players in its future development. The journey has and will continue to be filled with learning.
Q4: Putting it into practice
We are also looking forward to taking our learnings and evolution over the course of the year to the next level through our partnership with Origami, collaborations with Venture Partners and Scouts from Republic and Ganas VC, and more. We believe that by continuing to work closely with our community and partners, we can drive even greater progress and impact in the tech ecosystem of Africa. Thank you for your support and we can't wait to see what the future holds for Africa3 and the continent as a whole.
Thanks for reading Africa3! Tell us what your 2022 takeaways were by leaving a comment. Let us know what you’re excited about in 2023 here!