e.g. zipline doing on demand blood deliveries to hospital in Rwanda. I bet their recent US drone authorization was in no small part due to their ability to point to a live operation doing at scale life/death critical deliveries with success.
They hired an amazing PR and Lobbying team from Racepoint and BTP Advisers to rehabilitate their image since 2010.
Neighboring Uganda was also a wreak in the 1990s like Rwanda due to it's civil war from 1979-1986, but it has (re)built a relatively robust ICT and Financial Industry, while Rwanda's projects are mostly show or PR driven.
Uganda has a massive financial sector (for a country as poor as it is) with Citigroup, Barclay's, Standard Chartered, and just about every major Indian bank operating there, along with a surprisingly professional stock exchange for a market it's size, and IMO has the same potential that Kenya had in the 2000s, which itself feels like India in the 1990s when Bangalore and Gurgaon were getting on their feet.
Rwanda doesn't have similar champions.
Is that actually a good thing?
Access to capital is often one of the largest blockers to business creation, and Uganda's robust financial system can ease foreigner investors qualms about investing in Uganda directly.
There's a reason why foreign companies used to make a HK Shell to enter the Chinese market - it was because business and financial jurispruence was historically stronger in HK over mainland China.
By having a robust local financial sector, FDI can just go directly to a business in Uganda instead of having to create a subsidiary of a subsidiary domiciled in Marutius, UAE, London, Singapore, etc which has benefits for Uganda from a tax collection perspective along with from a foreign investors relations standpoint.
Add to that the fact that neighboring Kenya has an equally robust financial sector as well and that means there is a lot of capital that can flow all over East Africa.
>There's a reason why foreign companies used to make a HK Shell to enter the Chinese market - it was because business and financial jurispruence was historically stronger in HK over mainland China.
That and they were legally mandated to open one somewhere in China.
I meant the Rwandan economic miracle.
I always see Rwanda used as the poster child of "Digital Africa", when in reality countries like Kenya, Uganda, Madagascar, Ghana, etc have much more sophisticated economies and have a stronger ICT and Financial Industry base.
None of the leaders of those countries do the level of PR buys that Kagame and his cronies do, despite all being in the same basket in the 90s.
I can't think of a single economic champion from Rwanda that can compete pan-Africa, compared to East African peers like Uganda.
Indeed, there are some Africa-centric startups that started in Africa and ended up expanding outside (Flutterwave is one, started in Nigeria; then there's the massive flop named Swvl which started in Egypt, before expanding to other countries in the Middle East).
Then we learn that some spwcial purpose vehicle purchased it and stsrted layoffs nearly immediately? Purchase at last day of march and layoffs in may?
How was the due dilligence made? Were those people not needed?
99% loss of value too
The founder rode on the coattails of Careem and its founders. He was even feted by the sheikh of Dubai on Twitter. Careem (itself a former unicorn sold to Uber at $3.1B, now recently sold to a telecom for $400m) exited their position just before the Swvl SPAC.