For the past ten years, I’ve been building businesses across the African continent—creating platforms, services, and programs that I knew had value. And yet, one question kept echoing through every boardroom, brainstorm, and budget meeting:
“Why aren’t we making enough money?”
“Why aren’t we sustainable?”
“Why isn’t this working?”
Was it poor leadership? A weak business model? A marketing problem? I kept searching for answers.
So, I did what many entrepreneurs do when answers aren’t clear—I went back to school. I pursued a Master of Science in Entrepreneurship, hoping the frameworks and theory would unlock something I’d missed.
And it did. In part.
The First Layer: Researching the System Itself
My MSc thesis explored the Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Malawi’s Digital Transformation, where we studied the potential of public information management systems (IMS) as tools for socio-economic development. Using the extended TOE (Technology, Organizational, Environmental, and Individual) framework, we modeled how digital infrastructure could drive government efficiency, transparency, and ultimately innovation.
It was a valuable experience. I learned the systems. I understood what the barriers were. But still, something in me felt unresolved.
I hadn’t yet answered the most critical question:
If my businesses are sound, and my decisions are smart, then why don’t they work where I come from?
Enter the MBA: Looking West for Answers
That question led me to an MBA.
But not just to learn “how to do business better”—I came to understand how capitalism, profitability, and pricing actually function in healthy economies. What I didn’t expect was the stark revelation that followed:
I was never a bad entrepreneur. I was just playing in an economy where nothing works.
Pricing Simulation: Universal Rental Car
In my pricing and profitability course, our professor assigned a simulation. We were given a product to manage and asked to make pricing, marketing, and operational decisions in a competitive landscape.
The catch? He didn’t explain the objective.
Most of the class assumed the goal was to grow market share. But very quickly, I noticed something deeper: this wasn’t about market share—it was about profit maximization.
Once I cracked that, everything shifted. I optimized my decisions not for visibility, but for margin. And I won the simulation—not once, but twice. I ranked first and second across the board for profitability.
This exercise taught me something deeply personal: I know how to make good business decisions. I know how to compete, strategize, and win.
But here’s the irony:
Place me and my MBA peers back in our home countries, and I might be the one who struggles the most.
Why? Because the market matters. And ours is broken.
The African Reality: Free Becomes the Default
A few days ago, my colleague Abigail was facilitating a workshop for Digital Skills for Africa (DSA), one of our training programs. As she explained the curriculum, the first question from students was:
“Are the courses free?”
Not “How do I sign up?”
Not “What will I learn?”
But “Who is giving this to us for free?”
That moment should have shocked me, but I have been in this business long enough to have anticipated that.
It reminded me that we’re operating in a context shaped by generations of donor dependency—a continent conditioned by colonialism to believe that help comes from outside, that everything of value should be given, not earned.
Even in trying to empower young people through education, we encounter a psychological barrier: a deeply internalized belief that value should cost nothing.
Pricing in a Psychologically Distorted Market
Here in the U.S., I’ve learned about price elasticity in its true form—when a product is priced too high, demand drops; price too low, and profits shrink. There’s a clear logic to it.
In Africa, the logic doesn’t hold.
In the simulation, I priced a product at $52. That was my price ceiling—above that, I began to lose customers.
In African markets, your ceiling is almost zero. Move from $0 to just $1, and you’ve already lost the market.
That’s how extreme the elasticity is—because the economy is not just economically fragile, it’s psychologically fragile.
So, when I think about pricing products back home, I’m not asking, “What’s the market value?”
I’m asking: “How can I price this as close to zero as possible and still survive?”
It Was Never Just About Business Models
What I’ve come to understand is this:
The businesses I built didn’t fail because they were flawed.
They struggle because they were planted in dry soil.
You can have the best seed, the sharpest tools, the most committed team—but if the market lacks nutrients, if it has no water, no light, you will not grow.
And this is the reality for many African entrepreneurs.
We’re not lacking brilliance.
We’re not lacking hustle.
We’re playing in a system that was never designed to reward us.
What Business School Has Taught Me
What B-School has done—especially this semester—is affirm my instincts and sharpen my thinking. It’s helped me realize:
- I was never the problem.
- The market is a player in every business decision.
- Pricing and profitability cannot be divorced from historical, structural, and cultural context.
In the West, pricing is an art and a science.
In Africa, it’s often a prayer.
So yes, I won the simulation.
Yes, I’m excelling in class.
But now I carry a new kind of wisdom:
Business decisions don’t live in a vacuum.
They live in systems. And some of us have been trying to make billion-dollar moves in economies that barely function.
So… What’s Next? What Do We Do from Here?
As I continue learning and building, my mission remains the same:
To create systems that work for us.
To price for value, not pity.
To lead innovation on our terms.
To transform mindsets and markets—so the next generation of African entrepreneurs doesn’t have to work twice as hard for half as much.
And maybe most importantly:
To remind those of us who have been blamed for “bad business” that sometimes, it’s not the business—it’s the brokenness we’re forced to build within.
From Business School, with Love,
Ntha
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