Humble pie: How a Chinese fintech founder learnt to build for Kenya’s reality, not its potential

"THREE weeks in Beijing and Shanghai,” I tell April Long before the mics come on for our podcast chat. "When?" she asks. "2011," I reply. "Oh," she laughs, "different country.

- ANDILE MASUKU

No kidding. I wasn't a car person then, and I'm still not now, but I couldn't help but be floored by Xiaomi's recently unveiled YU7 SUV.

Long gets it, though. She's spent 12 years watching East Africa transform, but her journey from a “no-name Chinese town” (her words, not mine) to co-founding an Africa-focused fintech called Pyxis tells quite a story about transformation.

Listening to her share gave me a fresh appreciation for what it must be like building in Africa while Chinese, and what locals might tend to overlook in our own backyard.

Presidents and pictures

Long's Africa story began rather fortuitously. She was 23, fresh from a master's in Guangzhou - the pulsing Chinese tech hub of 19 million people, nearly three million more than Zimbabwe's population. An International Student Exchange Center (ISEC) exchange program plonked her in Tanzania for what was supposed to be a brief stint.

Two weeks in, she's somehow playing tour guide for President Xi Jinping's state visit, her face sneaking into a corner of a photo seen by millions back home.

"Zero chance that happens in China," she tells me, and her parents’ utter shock was probably audible from Dar es Salaam. In Guangzhou, she was nobody special. In Tanzania, she was receiving presidents.

But Long says she stayed because at 20, reading Eric Simanis's 2012 Harvard Business Review article "Reality Check at the Bottom of the Pyramid" during a previous Taiwan student exchange, she'd decided she wanted to "make money and make a difference." Most people say that. Long actually meant it enough to turn down some prestigious appointments at Ogilvy China, twice (albeit gigs with relatively uninspiring remuneration attached).

Humbling times