Why this fintech founder thinks 'patient capital' is killing African investment

LAST month, news broke about Kenya's KCB Group being on track to become the first foreign bank to secure entry into Ethiopia's newly liberalised financial sector.

- ANDILE MASUKU

This represents a historic shift ending five decades of state control dating back to the 1974 Derg nationalisation.

It's the kind of development that Bernard Laurendeau spent years laying critical groundwork for during his time embedded within Ethiopia's government machinery, though not all his efforts bore fruit.

Government whispering

After 15 years advising Fortune 50 clients (from Google and Cisco to UAE's Ministry of Finance), Laurendeau returned to Ethiopia in 2019 to serve as senior advisor to the jobs creation commission under the Prime Minister's office. The work wasn't always successful.

For instance, a startup act he helped draft "never saw the light of day," he admits, though he declines to elaborate on why it stalled.

What did emerge was his theory of "Gov-preneurship": the idea that Diaspora professionals should embed with African governments to transfer knowledge and build institutional capacity.

"A lot of the leaders in Africa turned out to be very authentic, very genuine about what they're trying to do for their country, but they're lonely," he explained during a recent African Tech Roundup Podcast conversation.

The timing proved fortuitous, if not entirely by design. Laurendeau had spent years watching Japanese companies struggle to decode African markets, relying on outdated World Bank data and Geneva-sourced reports. When Safaricom secured its Ethiopian telecoms licence in 2021, he found himself simultaneously building a fintech company and helping incumbent banks navigate potential mobile money disruption. This dual role raised eyebrows.

"People think there was some conflict," he reflects, "but financial services sovereignty was always the goal. We needed to ensure technology transfer, knowledge transfer, and that we're really building institutions."