Envisioning a Continent Unbound at the 32nd Wharton Africa Business Forum

Addressing attendees of the 2025 Wharton Africa Business Forum, venture capitalist Jemimah Orevaoghene had a strong message: you may feel hesitant about investing in Africa, but people with no ancestral ties to the continent are already actively profiting in what is essentially our own backyard. A director within Morgan Stanley’s inclusive and sustainable ventures team, Jemimah discussed emerging trends in valuations, fund structures, and investor behavior across frontier markets, particularly in Africa. Above all, she encouraged her listeners to be unapologetic about investing in the continent.

As a first-year MBA student at Yale SOM, with interests at the intersection of investment, entrepreneurship, and African economic development, these are the conversations where I feel most alive. I want to be in rooms that challenge me to imagine beyond what currently exists, while also showing me the concrete vehicles others have leveraged to turn ambition into action. I attended the Wharton Africa Business Forum to deepen my understanding of how capital, technology, and policy are converging to shape Africa’s next phase of growth, and to learn directly from operators and investors actively rewriting the continent’s narrative.

On that same panel, which was titled “Reimagining Private Equity and Venture Capital for African Sovereignty,” Lina Kaceym of Millennia Angels shared how she built Launch Africa Ventures, an investment vehicle of 133 startups across 22 African countries, to bridge the seed-stage funding gap founders on the continent face. Despite persistent investor fears rooted in outdated narratives, especially in Francophone Africa, Lina has built a model that challenges the story of risk and instability with which many investors justify overlooking opportunities that could reshape Africa’s future.

The conversation deepened during a fireside chat on artificial intelligence in Africa, featuring Emmanuel Lubanzadio, OpenAI’s Africa lead. His talk offered perspectives on the policy frameworks, partnerships, and infrastructure required to build a thriving innovation ecosystem on the continent. What stood out to me about his path is that after a single conversation with a professor at the University of Lagos about AI’s potential, Emmanuel and his team launched the first OpenAI Academy in Nigeria. It struck me as a clear demonstration of how quickly innovation can transform a country, especially one so eager to embrace it.

For a region historically excluded from past industrial revolutions, missing the AI wave would have been another generational loss; but this time, the story is different. African countries, especially Nigeria, are no longer on the sidelines. They are now major players, architecting and shaping the future of this technological revolution.

Still, I must name a hard truth: there is real hesitancy around investing in Africa. For generations, the continent was seen as a place to farm, mine, and extract, not to build. Wealth was taken, not invested. Those mindsets are older than the colonial bones still buried in our soil, and it will take far more than a few large language models to undo them.

Yet my weekend at the forum reminded me just how far Africa has already moved beyond that past. “Africa Unbound” wasn’t just a theme for the conference; it was a declaration. As I watched Rama Afullo win the pitch competition for Satlyt, a venture building decentralized space communication infrastructure, and gain access to the Harambeans Alliance, a community of African innovators challenging archaic narratives about Africa, I saw that declaration come alive. As I walked past tables of entrepreneurs selling African-made products spanning haircare, textiles, and fashion accessories, I witnessed global companies standing not as benefactors, but as sponsors. Everywhere I looked, I saw builders, problem-solvers, and visionaries creating with ingenuity. I was reminded of the resilience that lives in our bones.

Even in the small moments—like unexpectedly running into my former London School of Economics schoolmate Temi Ibirogba, who represented the Africa Center on the “From Aid to Agency” panel and spoke about her work with the Nigerian publication the Republic—I saw this truth reinforced again.

It is us, my SOM classmates and I, who bear the responsibility to move Africa forward.

As I left the conference, I found myself even more energized to bring the connections, ideas, and momentum from that weekend back to Yale SOM, starting with Yale Africa Startup Review and its accompanying conference in April. Drawing on the investor perspectives and innovation showcased at WABF, I hope to shape programming that connects African founders with capital, operators, and technical expertise, while grounding those conversations in the realities of building and scaling on the continent. More broadly, the forum reinforced my post-SOM goal to pursue entrepreneurship through acquisition, either via a search fund or accelerator. I hope to apply the ownership-driven approach discussed throughout the conference to acquire and steward businesses that create lasting economic and social value.