Host: On Limitless Africa, we look at how Americans and Africans can work together. Africa will always be my home, wherever I might be living, and I love it deeply. Most of our guests on the podcast are African—and actively working to make the continent a better place.
When it comes to America, I have a complicated, love-hate relationship. The present time is no different. But regardless of political shifts—and we africans could learn from that; it’s democracy in action —there are enduring American principles I hold dear. Whatever you think of America, it has produced some of the greatest entrepreneurs the world has ever seen… from Henry Ford to Oprah Winfrey.
So what is it about the American mindset? That’s one of the questions I’ve tried to answer with all of my guests – and what Africans can learn it? These principles are powerful tools for success, whether you’re African or American.
Derrick Roper: I really believe in the entrepreneurship of the U.S. economy and the opportunities that that creates. It’s really an entrepreneurial environment that one probably needs more of in Africa.
Host: That’s Derrick Roper, he’s CEO of a South Africa investment fund. They’re putting $150m into an American mining start-up – yes, that’s right African money funding American innovation.
Derrick: Obviously, the U.S. thinks big, they’ve built global leaders in in many many different areas. And then, yeah, I think in the end of the day, I think the U.S. is also attracted some of the best talent globally. You know, I think any any, you know, bright young student around the world, you know, probably one of the first places they think think of going to study or to work would be the U.S.
Host: Let’s hear from one of those students who’s now doing big things… Mika Hajjar was brought up in Mauritania but always dreamt of studying in America.
Mika Hajjar: It’s been always a dream to get into Stanford. I wasn’t lucky enough to get into engineering and so I had to go back and apply again for business school, to be honest.
In general, I think Silicon Valley has, I think there’s a, you know, there was this American dream that I was very excited to experience. This culture of immigration where, you know, most of the successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are transplants from all over the world.
Host: Mika now runs P1 Ventures, the Africa-focused investment firm, that has just raised $50m for its first fund, and many of his partners are American – and based in Silicon Valley in California.
Mika: I think till today, I think there is this fun fact that I think Silicon Valley has like the most concentration of people that want to make a difference in the world and improve, have a global impact.
And I think that is really what attracted me in the first place. And little did I know that when I experienced this, I felt like it was important to bring some of that back home and bridge both worlds indeed”
Host: Owusu Akoto is an entrepreneur who studied in the US but wants to do big things in Ghana and beyond, with his start-up Freezelink. He tried to put into words that American spirit…
Owusu: Sure, I think it comes down to two things, right? One is the can do attitude. um You know, I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve lived, I’ve called home three separate continents, Europe, ah the US, North America and Africa.
The can do attitude, ah which really, for me, encapsulates the American mindset is is is is quite unique.
The idea that, you know, every, every, every, every Clark Kent can become Superman, every Diana Price can become Wonder Woman, just so ingrained in, is one of those take it for granted assumptions that Americans carry around with them and and certainly has rubbed off on me.
And perhaps the second one is around how, for me, America is the the biggest advert in history for how success compounds.
And, you know, as an entrepreneur, this really manifests in entrepreneurial ecosystems. And so, you know, when you look at places like ah Boston and ah Boston, Austin, obviously Silicon Valley, there’s not only a dance between entrepreneurs and providers of capital.
The government government ah historically has played a huge part in being a catalyst for creating prosperity through entrepreneurship.
Yeah, you talk about success, but one thing I’ve noticed here working as an entrepreneur in America is also you don’t get stigmatized for failure, right?
A lot of investors value founders who have failed in the past and who learned from those failures. And that ah previous failure and it might lead to future successes, how they evaluate investment opportunities and the character and the grit that it takes for a founder to deal with all the challenges that come with launching and scaling a company.
So that’s something that I would say is is very good about the American mindset when it comes to entrepreneurship.
Host: Mika says something similar.
Mika: And, social mobility is exemplified. American exceptionalism is something that I’ve always been curious to discover. And I feel like there is a specific type of risk-taking that is always rewarded. And you learn from failures. This is what attracted me, I think, early on… Tthe diversity, the tolerance for risk, the willing to grow and improve and make a difference in the world.
Host: And if you are going to take risks and successfully navigate failure, what do you need? Resilience. Let’s hear from Jean Claude Homawoo, the CEO of logistics firm Lori Systems. He went to Harvard Business School in the United States, and worked at the American company Google. They transport goods across Africa – and have experienced success and failure
Claude: What is it about the American mindset that you have learned and that is helping you in your work as CEO of LORI Systems at the moment?
Jean-Claude Homawoo: Well, ah honestly, it’s and and it’s funny if if my wife or some of my close friends were in the room, they would answer their answer for me because I talk about it all the time. And it’s resilience.
Claude: Because it’s a good question and I like that.
Jean-Claude: It’s resilience. It’s the sort of well-known American resilience. It’s the stuff of every Hollywood movie. It’s the stuff that is sold to you um in NBA and NFL and NHL sports games.
It is something that is truly pretty quintessentially American. It is everywhere, of course.
And it is also very African.
Resilience is very African. I mean, you want to see resilience, go to Nigeria. like through all sorts of ah seismic shocks, Nigerians just, just with a smile on their face, just could keep pushing along.
Host: I’m going to interrupt Jean Claude here – it reminds me of something Olugbenga Ogunbowale said. He’s a serial entrepreneur from Nigeria.
Olugbenga: In many parts of Africa, we are trained to money scarcity. The American mindset asks, if resources were not an issue, how big could this get? Right. That’s the American mindset. So and I know that, yes, Africa is rising. Africa is rising. But if there is something that Africa, you know, can learn from America, it’s that mindset, that abundance mindset. Now, if there is something that America can learn from Africa, it’s absolutely resilient.
It is resilient. An average African better. very, very resilient. It’s it’s the reason Africans succeed wherever they go in the world. right It’s because we’re resilient.
Host: Back to Jean Claude now
Jean Claude: And, and, and, and quite honestly resilience is, is what all of entrepreneurship is made of.
And it is, it is, it is needed in large doses in African non entrepreneurship, because there is no doubt that it’s harder.
But with resilience then comes you know the ability to, I think, attract investors that know what they’re doing. So the investors that know Africa, that know how hard it is, they’re they’re still investing And they’re looking for resilient founders.
Vintani Nafassi presents Tumpete
Host: American investors are looking to Africa, and often we Africans find their way of doing things appealing – and that’s not just in the English-speaking countries. Lina Kacyem, who’s originally from Cameroon and now works in NY at an American investment firm focusing on Francophone Africa, well she said this…
Lina: the American mindset of being transparent, of being pragmatic, that is also something that more and more is being embraced in Francophone Africa. It’s like, oh, it’s not just the better way of doing it. It makes it easier, right? um The other piece of the American mindset that will be appealing is this sense of lesser hierarchy, lesser being validated with necessarily the school or whatever you you did, right? um Because Americans are used to social mobility.
It might be less today, but the idea of social mobility is part of the American mindset, which is not necessarily part of the Francophone mindset, right? There’s hierarchy, there’s aristocrat and all of that. So I think it’s much more appealing to work with people who go, yeah, you can go from this to this.
And I don’t care how old you are. I don’t, it doesn’t have to be 10 years of experience before you get to do this. It’s a matter. Are you smart? Are you pragmatic? Are you bringing me back the result? So that mindset is also, um, incredibly ah appealing to, to, uh, uh, Francophone Africans who have been taught that they needed to be.
Simone Spencer: I think that when you talk about mentality, you can talk about various facets. And American society has various types of mentality, various rules and points of view.
Host: But it’s about more than just business…; Simone Spencer is an artist from Cabo Verde. She recently attended the US government exchange programme Yali the young african leadership initiative. She also notices similarities between the African and American way of doing things.
Simone: One point that helped me a lot and which I talked about a lot with my mentor was mutual aid, which has many parallels with the African Ubuntu mindset. We talked a lot about Ubuntu, which is I am because you are.
It’s parallel to the mindset I went to study in the United States, which is leadership and community engagement. Community engagement is only possible with the help of many hands and will only succeed if those hands are organized.”
Host: Temi Badru is a top voice on the social media platform LinkedIn She runs a international communication agency from nigeria
Temi: So I wouldn’t exactly put it as like the, you know, the American mindset. I think it is the similar values that we have, the values of leadership, values of confidence. I think those are some really strong similarities that we have when I listen to, and I’m not going to mention any names now, but when I listen to great speakers, for example, in America, and I listen to great speakers in Nigeria, I see a lot of similarities, the confidence, the leadership, I think that those things are similar. So it wasn’t about a continent or a country, it was about the values that we all share.
Host: The world becomes a better place only when we work together—for mutual benefit – it’s all about give and take. And one thing I’ve noticed is that the American mindset of hustle, resilience and collaboration is just as present in African cultures. And when we work together, our collective potential becomes limitless.
