Follow Who Know Road

I’ve spent more than fifteen years on the ground — from Abidjan to Kinshasa — watching smart, well-funded companies burn hundreds of thousands of dollars because they trusted a document over a person.

They read a market report in London or Paris, and they think they know the road. But as we say on the street in Nigeria: “Follow who know road.” You follow the one who actually knows the way.

Here are the hard realities the report never tells you.

The Apple lesson

Everyone wants to “help farmers.” Beautiful. But aside from South Africa, large-scale apple production is nearly non-existent across the rest of the continent. I know this because I’ve done business along the Niger–Côte d’Ivoire corridor for years, and the answer is always the same: « pas d’pomme pour le moment » — nothing coming from South Africa right now.

The trade puzzle

Regional blocs look magnificent on a strategy deck — ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, COMESA, and AfCFTA on top of them all. In theory, goods and money move freely.

On the ground, moving a container and its payment across two borders is a different story entirely. The framework says one thing; the customs officer, the transit agent, and the bank say another. I’m not against the blocs — I’m telling you the theory and the terrain are two different documents.

Africa is not a country

People still say “Africa” the way they’d say “France.” I’ve had someone tell me, proudly, that their uncle sent them a laptop from the US — 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive — as if the continent were the setting of The gods must be crazy.

There’s a Yoruba proverb: “Ibi gbogbo la ñ ko adìẹ àle” — every household’s realities rhyme. Abidjan is not Dakar. Neither behaves like Kinshasa. If your plan treats them as one market, the ground will correct you — expensively.

The experience gap

People look at a consultant’s fee — “how can I pay this for a week’s work?” — the same way they envy a developer who charges good money and finishes your site in days.

You’re not paying for the week. You’re paying for the years that stop you from making an 18-month mistake. Everything is on YouTube and Coursera now — everything except experience.

The AI trap

I tell my clients plainly: Google and AI are like a child. If you ask the wrong question, or ask the right one the wrong way, you will not get the answer you need. These tools ransack the internet and hand you a confident summary of the visible layer — and in this market, the visible layer is the small one.

The bottom line

You can hold the most expensive market report in the world. But without someone to walk you through the unceremonious realities of the ground, your pride and your ego will cost you your investment.

As the Ivorian proverb goes: « On ne connaît pas, on demande » — if you don’t know, you ask.