If you want to understand why so many foreign ventures in Africa stall, bleed out, or quietly disappear, you have to let go of a deeply ingrained Western assumption: that winning the deal means you are nearly there.
In much of Africa, winning the deal means almost nothing.
The licence, the RFP, the contract, the court ruling, the ministerial endorsement are not outcomes. They are invitations. They allow you to enter the process, not complete it. The real work begins only once everything looks “done”, which is precisely the point most people misunderstand.
The challenge in Africa is not agreement; it is execution. Execution is not a linear journey from A to B, but a long, grinding war of attrition fought almost entirely through time.
The phrase I have heard more than any other in my career is “just one more step”. It always sounds reasonable and is often meant sincerely. The real problem, however, is never the next step. It is the one you were never told about, followed by the one after that, and then another that appears only once you have cleared the previous hurdle.
Deals rarely fail because they cannot be done. They fail because the full power structure was never mapped at the outset, or because that structure shifted while the foreign party was already committed, or because someone previously invisible suddenly decided that they mattered. Nothing is killed outright. That would be inefficient. Instead, obstacles are revealed sequentially, requirements are reinterpreted, new stakeholders emerge, and processes pause, restart, and drift. Emails go unanswered, meetings slide, and silence stretches. No one needs to say no, because delay does the work just as effectively.
This is not dysfunction; it is how power is exercised.
Time is wildly asymmetric. For the foreign investor or operator, time costs money, credibility, careers, and patience. Capital sits idle, boards lose interest, funding windows close, and executives rotate out. For those on the ground with real leverage, time costs almost nothing. In many cases, waiting is the strategy. If you stay long enough, most foreigners eventually leave, and history suggests that they almost always do.
Corruption is part of this story, although not in the simplistic, cinematic sense. It is rarely just about cash. Each step requires something, whether that is money, influence, promotion, status, access, an introduction, or future optionality. The question is constant and unspoken: what is in it for me?
The people asking are often not the people who decide. They sit between the foreign party and real power. Their role is not to approve or reject, but to monetise access. They insulate those above them and extract what they can because they can see there is still something to extract. Refusal rarely stops the process. It merely slows it, allowing the same question to surface again at a different desk. Extraction is incremental rather than terminal. No single demand kills a project, but taken together they drain it.
History matters here. Africa was exploited for generations by external powers. Resources were taken, institutions were shaped to serve outsiders, and wealth flowed out. That legacy has not disappeared; it has been internalised. Extracting value from foreign capital often feels justified, even fair. The tragedy is that the same logic is now frequently applied inward. Power concentrates, reward flows upward, and ordinary citizens see little benefit. What began as resistance to exploitation has, in many places, become a system that perpetuates it.
It is also important to be honest about how attractive power can be in these environments. Even relatively senior officials or executives often enjoy standards of living that would be unattainable at equivalent rank in mature economies. Large houses, staff, drivers, security, elite healthcare, international travel, visible status, and deference are common features of life at the top. This is not just about money; it is about being someone important. In mature markets, hierarchy is flattened and scrutiny is relentless. In much of Africa, power is personalised and openly rewarded. Preserving the system that delivers this outcome is rational, while execution threatens equilibrium and delay preserves it.
Foreigners, for their part, are not simply victims. Working in Africa often comes with hardship pay, allowances, tax equalisation, and hard currency income. Purchasing power expands rapidly, and life can be extremely comfortable. That reality dulls urgency. At the same time, foreigners rarely hold real power. They are often allowed to believe that they do, until the moment they push execution too hard and discover exactly where the line is.
Large companies understand much of this, even if they struggle to admit it. African postings are difficult to fill, frequently perceived as risky, hostile, or career limiting. Those who go are often left alone, while boards and senior executives rarely visit. There is little business tourism. New York and Paris are easy sells; Lagos, Accra, or Kinshasa are not. Decisions are made far from reality, and delay becomes abstract.
Eventually, boards reach rational exhaustion. Too much management time has been consumed, too much capital tied up, and too much governance exposure accumulated. Africa becomes the explanation: governance, compliance, controls. These reasons are not wrong, but they often translate to something simpler. The execution cost exceeded tolerance. The local ecosystem understands this perfectly, because waiting a foreign company out is easier than confronting it.
Yet working in Africa is worth it. The opportunity is real, the people are exceptional, and the potential is enormous. The price of admission is accepting Africa as it is, rather than as outsiders wish it to be.
Success in Africa is not about winning; it is about finishing. It requires patience measured in years rather than quarters, and a ruthless honesty about power, incentives, and time. It requires accepting that delay is rarely accidental, and that “just one more step” is almost never the last.
This is Africa – TIA.
Let us know what you think ….