The African continent provides a massive opportunity for insightful entrepreneurs. It has also produced notable business men and women who tapped into various business opportunities in the continent and made it big.
As a continent with so many countries that are still developing, opportunities abound in various sectors of the national economies. All an entrepreneur needs to do is to take a look at the African nations and discover the major need of that country, and then deploy imagination and creative thinking to create a product or service that will provide a solution.
Entrepreneurship is all about providing solutions. An entrepreneur that knows his onions can even go into a business field that seems to be saturated and use innovation and creativity to build a popular brand in a record time. Examples abound. Here are some of the areas an entrepreneur can tap into in Africa and build popular brands that will make so much profit:
Mobile Applications
As a continent with so many developing nations, most things in Africa are still done the analogue way. That means that most things are still done the hard way. There are so many societal problems that mobile apps can take care of.
There are so many bookings and services that do not require physical presence as still being practiced in many African nations that a common app can handle. What an entrepreneur needs to is just to study the things still done in a brick and mortar way in Africa which wastes so much time, causes people pain and difficulty, then design an app that solves the problem. You should know that as an entrepreneur you don’t need to be computer nerd or programming expert to launch such business. What you should do is to spot an opportunity, lay down the framework and get the people that will take care of the technical aspect.

Online Shopping And Retailing
There is still huge need for Africa’s equivalent of the retailing giant-Walmart. Africa’s retail industry is now a multi-billion dollar business opportunity. Retail is now gradually moving from its formal open market into a more organized form in a single shopping mall and online stores. There are success stories in the African E-commerce space but there is still gap for the big brand. An entrepreneur can still enter the retail market either online or offline and build a popular and attractive brand. The supremacy battle in the retail business in Africa is yet to be decided. A savvy entrepreneur can end the supremacy race once and for all. E-commerce in Africa is only in its very early stages; however, there are a lot of opportunities to seize. A good positioning and a well-rounded branding and customer service will help any well-funded startup in this segment to make fortunes.

Africans are now feeling more comfortable with buying their needed products and services online. So, online retail stores in Africa are now enjoying more patronage. And chances are you will make lots of profit by starting an online retail business. Even if you are on a low budget, you can start with just one product category and expand from there.


Power Generation
According to Africa Development Bank, about 630 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity. The continent’s consumption is 423 terawatt hours per annum, which is less than Brazil which consumes 426 terrawatt. This is quite amazing. 35% of electricity in Africa is generated by South Africa. Africa electric generation is less than Washington DC. This offers about $700 billion investment opportunity. Most African nations are experiencing abysmal level of epileptic power supply. This is an opportunity for independent private producers to step in and cover the shortfall.
There are so many countries in Africa suffering from erratic power supply. This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to provide a solution and make money from it. So many companies have started tackling this problem by providing alternative means of generating power.

There are companies now providing solar panels, wind vane and other alternative sources of power for homes and industries so they can generate power when electricity fails and Africans have started buying into the idea.

In fact, power generation is highly untapped because the primary source of power in Africa is Hydro and it is still under-utilized while solar, wind, nuclear, etc are still untapped.