Weak Link Among Mentors, Investors, Entrepreneurs Slowing Africa’s Wealth Creation – Mintage Founders

Entrepreneurs, investors and mentorship advocates have raised concerns about what they describe as a structural gap in Africa’s wealth-creation ecosystem, arguing that the continent lacks a reliable mechanism for connecting people with capital to those with viable business ideas, and a consistent source of research to guide either side.

The concerns were raised at the launch of a new platform, Mintage Africa, in Abuja on Tuesday, where issues discussed extended beyond the platform itself, touching on questions about mentorship, access to information, investment culture and the limits of Africa’s consumer markets.

Co-founders of Mintage Africa, Anna Odukoya, Dipo Fisho and Mimshak Obioha, speaking at various points during the launch, said the core problem is that people with capital and people with potential often exist in parallel worlds that never intersect.

Odukoya said she had repeatedly encountered young entrepreneurs with strong ideas who lacked what she called the “wherewithal” — information, relationships and access — to advance, while also knowing wealthy individuals with no connection to such talent.

“If you’re someone who exists or coexists in both worlds, it becomes a burden when it keeps recurring,” Odukoya said, describing the recurring pattern of missed connections between entrepreneurs and people willing to support them.

On his part, Fisho, an engineer, pointed to a specific dynamic he said undermines mentorship relationships in Africa: mentees who expect their mentors to become financial sponsors.

He said this expectation places unfair pressure on mentors and distorts what mentorship is meant to achieve.

“A mentor is to guide you through the world and not to sponsor you in the world,” he said, while acknowledging that legitimate sponsorship and investment opportunities do exist alongside mentorship.

He also challenged the broader narrative around Africa’s economic conversations, arguing that an overemphasis on poverty at conferences and gatherings obscures wealth-creation opportunities already available on the continent. “Every gathering, every conference in Africa is around poverty. But I don’t believe that should be. That’s an incorrect narrative,” he said.

The platform’s third co-founder, Mimshak Obioha, said the disconnect runs in both directions. Drawing on his own transition from seeking investment as a young entrepreneur to later evaluating startups as an investor, he said the difficulty of finding capital when you need it is matched by the difficulty of finding viable opportunities once you have capital to deploy.

“Anybody that has capital knows that the worst thing you can do with your money is leave it in the bank,” he said, arguing that many investors are actively looking for viable ventures but lack a reliable way to identify them.

He recalled asking young entrepreneurs for basic business plans and receiving no response, even when he had capital ready to deploy. “They didn’t get back to me because I never got them that money,” he said, describing it as evidence of a communication and trust gap between the two sides rather than a lack of available capital.

He said venture capital firms, high-net-worth individuals and development finance institutions in Africa have historically worked in silos, each pursuing entrepreneurs or opportunities through separate, uncoordinated channels, with no shared platform for identifying and vetting linkages.

The co-founders said the absence of consistent, accessible research is a major obstacle to informed decision-making, for both entrepreneurs and investors.

Obioha said there is currently no reliable way to track basic data, such as the month-to-month cost of food commodities across Nigerian states, information he said would help entrepreneurs and investors identify overlooked opportunities.

Beyond access to capital and mentorship, Obioha argued that a more fundamental constraint on how large African businesses can grow is the limited spending power of consumers on the continent.

He said this, rather than a shortage of good ideas, was often the real ceiling on business growth in Nigeria and other African countries.

“The potential for a company to grow is capped by the purchasing power of the ecosystem or country,” he said, contrasting the economic output of Silicon Valley, a single city, that boasts of GDP that of several African countries combined.

He said a business in Nigeria are often forced to open multiple locations to earn what a single small business abroad could generate from one location, due to the disparity in consumer spending power.

He argued that expanding people’s earning and spending capacity across the continent, rather than only expanding access to capital, is essential to allowing African businesses to scale.

Obioha said the Mintage Africa platform is designed to connect entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, and policymakers across the continent.

According to him, it aims to close persistent gaps in access to information, mentorship, and capital by mapping who is already offering funding, guidance, or opportunities, and linking people to the resources that match where they are in their business or career journey — from students weighing career paths to established investors seeking viable ventures.

Its founders describe the business model as a mix of free and fee-based services: broad access to information and job listings is free, while more targeted services, such as investor introductions, school partnerships, and investment-readiness coaching for startups, come at a cost. The founders say the goal is not charity but a sustainable structure for building long-term, generational wealth across Africa.