Moja the Camel versus Moja the Unicorn

Farm-Fresh Organic Produce, Climate Smart Agriculture

Moja’s pivot to the agriculture sector and direct-to-farmer Climate-Smart Agriculture training through Moja Academy may seem to the casual observer like a sudden and sharp deviation in strategy from onboarding MSMEs in Moja Market, but it’s rather the cumulative effect of a long process of trial and error of operating the Moja app in Africa and represents the maturation of relationships of trust and influence that have been years in the making. Eight years in the making, in fact, and the result is a proof-of-concept for the direction that Moja is headed.

In 2016, the year of Moja’s founding, very few people in the US were aware of the leapfrogging technological advances of African nations, especially Kenya with M-PESA and mobile money or the emerging fintech sector in South Africa and Nigeria, they were still stuck in the rut of years of media reinforced mental images of hungry and orphaned African children, poor educational systems, high youth unemployment, the devastation of civil wars, ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and elsewhere, military dictatorships and coups, nonexistent or poor infrastructure, rampant infectious diseases, runaway debt and inflation, environmental degradation, and stagnant economies. Moja certainly couldn’t solve (or even address) all of those problems, but it could foster digital innovation and enable African MSMEs to enter the expanding universe of global e-commerce and e-learning with an invitation-only, front row seat. Why couldn’t Africans sell to Africans at whatever price they agree to and gain skills and competencies only ever imagined through the mobile phone, and in the process build up wealth and human capacity that would strengthen their local communities through job creation and upskilling. In this process of enabling good, Moja would also do well, expand rapidly (we hoped), increase our valuation based on revenue generated and lead to wide adoption of the platform, which would, in turn, provide significant ROI to our faith-filled, courageous seed investors. This was the high-risk, high-reward investment proposition that required patient, trusting capital.

This strategy is still Moja’s mode of operation and the profile of a Moja investor, but there are now some new critical and significant “school fees” (lessons learned) that we have paid. We have realized, in part, thanks to VC insider critic Alex Lazarow (who wrote Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs—From Delhi to Detroit—Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley), in part, thanks to the cycle of trying, failing, learning, and in part, thanks to the prescient contextual instincts of our African partners and stakeholders, that as a startup Moja is more like a camel than a unicorn. Moja being more like a camel than a unicorn translates into this key strategic takeaway: Moja’s first step toward mass adoption AND African investment must be to show how we create value for Africa, how our technology contributes to solving problems that African governments, businesses, and households care about. Becoming a unicorn within a few years of starting up by “blitzscaling” (i.e., rapidly building up our operations and prioritizing speed, transactions, and adoption over increasing human capacity and meeting needs effectively in pursuit of massive scale), according to Lazarow, requires optimal (read: fictional) market conditions.

When you work on the “Frontier,” as Lazarow describes and Moja knows, you are susceptible to severe and unpredictable shocks, unanticipated costs, and delays. Most importantly, launching and operating a digital business such as Moja requires the startup to create both the infrastructure and the mindset (or better: new habits) of the user that will ultimately be both the beneficiary and the paying customer of the platform that has been built to solve the problem/s they have. Instead of the unicorn, the camel is the more fitting mascot. Camels can survive for long periods without sustenance, withstand the scorching desert heat, and adapt to extreme variations in climate. They survive and thrive in some of the planet’s harshest conditions. Moja’s trust in God to sustain us, and the patient resilience, faithfulness, and fortitude of our seed investors, has thus far enabled Moja to survive like camels in the deserts we’ve encountered, even if we started out somewhat naively with unicorn-like expectations. Startups that think like camels pursue three strategies: they execute balanced growth, they take a long-term outlook, and they weave diversification into their business model.

These three strategies are key, and our pivot into seeing the Moja digital infrastructure as enabling and accelerating agricultural productivity, commercialization, and industrialization in South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi to start in that order underscores how we are weaving diversification into our business model and strategy. Moja’s premise in Malawi and Zambia has shifted to articulating what our value proposition is for the Ministries of Agriculture and the small shareholding farmer. Notice, too, how the focus has shifted to Moja Academy, to training, to upskilling, to providing in demand know-how to do agriculture differently and more effectively during a prolonged drought. Because every southern African government is acutely focused on addressing food insecurity, agricultural productivity, commercialization, industrialization, harmful use of biomass cooking fuels, water scarcity and regulation, and micronutrient deficiencies in the people’s diets, Moja has their attention, their resolve, and their determination to help us mobilize resources and relevant partnerships to get the job done. This is a first-ever situation for Moja; banks are calling us, Ambassadors and influencers are offering to pitch institutional investors, development agencies, and wealthy private philanthropists on behalf of Moja because of our value proposition to their country. This is why I am so encouraged about Moja’s funding prospects in the next 4 to 6 months as these leads, and others emerging on the horizon right now, mature into usable capital.