Africans have continued to fly the flag of micro-entrepreneurship. In countries such as Uganda and Kenya, it’s common to find employed people with side businesses. Entrepreneurship is a must-do for many Africans. The challenge is that most of this entrepreneurship is on a micro-level.

Think of micro-entrepreneurship in the form of Kiosks, the weekend farmer that sells eggs and farm produce from her car boot. Or even the hair saloon, that washing bay. Most of these African businesses face the same fate: that of closing before their first birthday, and if well tried, before the fifth year of businesses.

Yet the few that defy these odds still face a major hurdle- inability to scale, inability to handle expansions. The moment a successful African business opens the first branch is the moment one starts to count the long run to collapse. Scaling is extremely hard for African businesses. An African entrepreneur can run one bar successfully, but they can’t replicate that success with a second bar or third bar.

Yet, the secret of great entrepreneurship is in the ability to handle scale. The Next Generation of African Entrepreneurs must start to seriously think about scaling and the requirements of scaling. How do businesses in Africa maintain the consistency as they scale? How do they close the managerial deficits that are highlighted during expansion? This conversation must start somewhere…