Investors in African start-ups have often taken a short-term look to investments on the continent, due to the uncertainty surrounding their longevity. There are also myths that, due to the fact that the African market is big, investors hope to cash out before the customary three-year life for African startups expire.

In this interview with Barbara Iyayi on the sidelines of the African 2018 Forum held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt in December 2018, Ventures Africa gains an insight into many issues surrounding the African startup ecosystem- venture capitals, Silicon Valley investors, government policies on tech entrepreneurship in Africa, Africa’s readiness for Artificial Intelligence.

Barbara Iyayi is the Chief Growth Officer and Managing Director, Africa for Element, Inc. She also serves in an advisory capacity within the venture capital and tech ecosystem in Nigeria.

What does Africa For Element, Inc. do?

Barbara: The Element, Inc. is an artificial intelligence company. We deploy mobile biometrics, essentially capturing biometrics on the mobile device using artificial intelligence.

What does your role at the company entail?

Barbara: I’m the Chief Growth Officer so my job is to expand the business globally. I am also a Managing Director for Africa so I’m focused on also building Element, Inc. in Africa. But everything from investing in our growth through our partners, fundraising and just product development; building our products for our partners, we work with every type of company that has a digital platform so anything from healthcare, banking, national databases. We basically want to help our customers grow their digital revenue.

From an investment perspective, I’ve always felt that startups have not been able to show scalability as much in Africa and for us to build unicorns in Africa, we need scalable companies. The biggest distribution network is the mobile device and if you are able to capture customers and identify customers on your mobile device, you can scale very well and that’s what I’m trying to do.

In Lagos, Nigeria, have you been successful with acquiring customers?

Barbara: We are working with partners in Lagos right now.

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