Episode Notes:
In this episode, we travel to Gorée Island in Dakar to speak with Tijan Watt, an entrepreneur and impact investor building a bold future for African innovation. Rooted in a transatlantic heritage that includes Tuskegee and Senegal, Tijan shares how both his African and Black American family history, HBCU education, and deep cultural pride shaped his path. Through his work with Wuri Ventures, Tijan champions local entrepreneurship, risk-taking, and creativity grounded in African realities. He reflects on moving to Senegal to invest in talent, nurture community, and reimagine development from within. For Tijan, meaningful innovation starts with love, local knowledge, and the freedom to imagine—and build—on your own terms.
Episode Transcript:
Darren Isom:
Welcome to Dreaming in Color, a space for social change leaders of color to reflect on how their unique life experiences, personal and professional, have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. I'm your host, Darren Isom. This season, we're traveling to the continent to highlight African leaders and the continent's role as a key driver of global innovation and leadership.
So join us as we travel across the continent from South Africa to Tunisia, with stops in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Senegal along the way, celebrating the diaspora and all of its complexity and beautiful possibility. This is Dreaming in Color: Africa.
Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tijan Watt, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor with over 20 years of experience building and backing dynamic ventures across Africa and the US.
He began his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and private equity at Nigeria's Travant Capital, and went on to launch and operate several startups in Senegal and beyond. Tijan is the co-founder and managing partner of Wuri Ventures, a firm dedicated to supporting African entrepreneurship.
Under his leadership, Wuri has invested in 23 startups across diverse sectors, alongside global players like a16z, Google, Samsung Ventures, Avenir Growth, CRE, and SBI. A proud graduate of Howard University, HU, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and math and computer science, Tijan also holds an MBA from Harvard and shares his insights regularly at tijanwatt.com. Tijan, welcome to Dreaming in Color. So glad to have you here. Tijan.
Tijan Watt:
Darren.
Darren Isom:
Thanks for having us. It's wonderful to be here in Senegal.
Tijan Watt:
Welcome to Senegal.
Darren Isom:
Thank you. Thank you. As you know, we start with an invocation. So I pass the floor to you.
Tijan Watt:
Okay.
Darren Isom:
How do you want to bring us in?
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. So I think there's a word that struck me as I was starting to come to Senegal. And they wanted me to be able to greet my grandmother. So that word, actually, a phrase is jam tan. Jam is J-A-M. Tan is T-A-N. And it means “peace only.” And so basically, in Africa, especially in Senegal, we don't just say “hello” and then “goodbye.” It's like, "Hello. And then how's your family? And then how's your health? And how's your tiredness?" is one of the phrases. And then the response is always ...
Darren Isom:
Jam tan.
Tijan Watt:
Yes. So let's give it a little go.
Darren Isom:
Okay.
Tijan Watt:
The first is [Speaks Pulaar]
Darren Isom:
Jam tan.
Tijan Watt:
[Speaks Pulaar]
Darren Isom:
Jam tan.
Tijan Watt:
[Speaks Pulaar]
Darren Isom:
Jam tan.
Tijan Watt:
And jam tan means “peace only.” And in this day and age, you realize that it's not a guarantee. Even in Senegal, we had some pre-election disturbances. And then you realize why this phrase has lingered. And it comes from our ancestors because they understood the importance of peace. So that's a word. And my father really liked that word. He created a website called jamtan.com.
Darren Isom:
Oh, wow.
Tijan Watt:
Which is talking about the Fulani culture in Senegal.
Darren Isom:
Wow.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah.
Darren Isom:
Well, jam tan it is. And thank you for grounding the conversation in peace as we start. So with that transition, I would love to start with your background, your growing up. So growing up, you grew up in an intersection of so many powerful Black identities, Senegalese roots from your father, Southern Black heritage from your mother, and a childhood in D.C., often called the Chocolate City.
What was it like to grow up in a home where such rich cultures and histories were present? And how did that shape your understanding of what it meant to be Black in the world and navigate so many beautiful and functioning Black cultures and identities?
Tijan Watt:
Amazing. I think the first thing is to acknowledge that you don't choose your parents. So you don't choose where you were born and where you grew up. And so I think it's important for people to keep that in perspective. Obviously, we do, but there are people that don't have those chances. I don't know, man. It's just been blessings.
First of all, I actually had a interesting meetup with one of my cousins. So she is also amazing. She clerked on the Supreme Court, blah, blah, blah. And her mother is from Tuskegee, like my mother, and her father's from Jamaica. She was like, "Oh, yeah. We all met up in Paris." So my father was doing a doctorate at Grenoble in France. My mother was from Morgan State University, historically Black college, was doing a master's in French literature in France.
And so there was this gathering of this Black elite who were fleeing something somewhere in America, probably fleeing racism in Africa. They're fleeing colonialism or going toward more opportunity. And so that's how they all came together apparently. And apparently someone had caught the right bus and there was some magic. And that's how-
Darren Isom:
So serendipity.
Tijan Watt:
Serendipity. And so I've appreciated that my parents instilled an understanding of that in us, in me and my brother. And just in terms of how we define ourselves as Black people, we don't have to be like everybody. I'll start on my mother's side. So Tuskegee. Actually, I even learned some things. There's something I learned recently. I'll take a tiny segue.
Darren Isom:
I love segues. Go for it.
Tijan Watt:
Sorry, bro. So mother's older brother. And her mother had passed away about 20 years ago. So I had to go back to Tuskegee for the ceremony. And it was actually great to see the cousins, the Gaillard family. And we went back to Tuskegee Institute, which is the university. Booker T. Washington had invited my maternal great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather to head up the agricultural department. These are highfalutin Black folks.
Darren Isom:
Yeah. That's the fancies of the fancy.
Tijan Watt:
Fancy, man. And there was an inauguration of a plaque in honor of my namesake's mother. His name is Michael Gaillard. And his mother is Aunt Norma. I've known her as Aunt Norma. And they're doing plaques for Aunt Norma.
Darren Isom:
Oh, wow.
Tijan Watt:
So what did Aunt Norma do? She was a researcher on the polio vaccine. And you talk about ... I don't know if you know about the story about Henrietta Lacks-
Darren Isom:
Yes.
Tijan Watt:
... and the HeLa cell line. So actually, she had made a contribution to the research on polio vaccinations using these HeLa cells as a Black woman. And they sent it to Tuskegee because they relied on the skills that they found only in that university.
And so we talk about Hidden Figures. She's definitely a hidden figure. And that's just emblematic of the level of excellence that you find from that place. And that it just seeps in. We can't help but to seek excellence as a young man growing up in that kind of environment.
Darren Isom:
And I think it also speaks to the fact that, so for many of us, this idea of Black excellence was so normalized. It was our lives to the point that we don't even think about it as being something.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. So my grandfather, so he went to Wharton in the '50s, right? My grandmother went to Columbia. So guess what? I was going to grad school. It wasn't even an issue. The issue was how to get me to go to the HBCU.
Darren Isom:
Exactly.
Tijan Watt:
And college. And so my mother is like ... This is the first time I seen that from my mother, is like, "Oh, yeah. You will be going to an HBCU."
Darren Isom:
Yep.
Tijan Watt:
I had never heard that side of her before.
Darren Isom:
We're going to talk about HBCUs a little bit later because they're really important. But I think there is something powerful about noting the legacy. And I think there's so many stories as someone who's fifth generation HBCU.
Tijan Watt:
Right.
Darren Isom:
Right? These things have been happening for many generations, but we don't talk about them because those narratives aren't really talked about.
Tijan Watt:
And by the way, they went up from Alabama to Wharton or to Columbia in the back of the train. So they were still treated in that way, right?
Darren Isom:
On the way to Wharton?
Tijan Watt:
Right. On the way to Wharton. And so that pride in self was instilled from my grandparents all the way through to my mother, et cetera. Can I talk about my dad's side?
Darren Isom:
Well, I have a question about your dad.
Tijan Watt:
Okay.
Darren Isom:
So you've written about your father, Senegalese immigrant and entrepreneur, as someone who deeply influenced you. And I would love for you to definitely talk about him, but share with us the values, principles he passed down to you that continue to guide you, your work and vision for the continent and for yourself as well.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. So just my dad, it's amazing. He's probably ... I give him 82, but then he's like, "I'm not 82. I'm 81." But he actually lives in Washington, D.C. He's been there for longer than I've been alive, obviously. And so he and my mother met. He was doing a PhD in Grenoble in water resources, which is in hydrodynamics, which is a mathematics. So you start to kind of be like squinting your eyes a little bit like, "How did this Senegalese guy end up at essentially the MIT of France, which is in Grenoble, doing a very technical doctorate?"
And it's not rare in Africa. A lot of my generation, their parents were academics. But still, how did it happen? And I guess taking a step back, his father actually was in World War I. So he was conscripted by the French. He was born in 1892. My grandfather, born 1892. The math is a little bit hard for me.
Darren Isom:
Math is math.
Tijan Watt:
Math is math. So he went to World War II, conscripted by the French, and World War ... Sorry. World War I. And World War II. Had a German bullet in his chest and did not die because in Africa, we think it's because of the gris-gris that ...
Darren Isom:
The good juju.
Tijan Watt:
Good juju. Yeah.
Darren Isom:
Yeah.
Tijan Watt:
Fortunately for us because otherwise, we'd disappear like Back to the Future. But I think his exposure to the Western world said that, okay, he needed to send his children to the Western schools. My father went to a lead high school in Saint-Louis called Lycée Faidherbe, which is where a lot of the independence presidents in Africa and across the continent of Africa went to high school.
And it's not actually a surprise. And this is a source of my own intellectual birthright that my father would be able to do well in school because our side of the family have been historically religious scholars. And so my dad's cousins are all imam of something. And there's this idea that we don't have much written language in Africa, but in fact, they were using Arabic characters to write in Pulaar language to each other.
My grandfather, when he returned to Senegal, he became somewhat of a political leader. He represented this Northern Senegal region to the newly forming independence government of Senegal. And he advocated for the nomination of Senghor, who was our first president in Senegal.
Darren Isom:
Wow.
Tijan Watt:
On his deathbed, apparently. So listen, I've been gifted on both sides. Give a shout-out to my nephew, Zion. He's my brother's son. And he was like, "Oh." I think it was in seventh grade. He was like, "I'm kind of struggling in math." And I was like, "No, no."
Darren Isom:
Pull it together.
Tijan Watt:
So sorry. You just can't. So you have to ... And that's a pressure, but it's also like, listen, this is who we are.
Darren Isom:
Yeah. In many ways, our ancestries are the folks that come before us. They're both a gift and a bit of a challenge, right? We have to step into it, but we can't forget that it's a very important gift.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. And so my dad, he's a very dynamic guy. He teaches Tai Chi right now. He teaches also ... What's that dance called? It's not salsa. Tango.
Darren Isom:
Tango. Your pop's doing-
Tijan Watt:
Better than-
Darren Isom:
Oh, yeah, actually, so-
Tijan Watt:
We'll see. He stays interested and active.
Darren Isom:
Got it.
Tijan Watt:
So appreciate that.
Darren Isom:
Well, I want to jump back to you now. So after time in the US and Nigeria, you made a choice to come back to Senegal and pour your energy into entrepreneurship and investing. What pulled you back? And what did you feel was missing from the conversation after building an Africa that you wanted to change?
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. So in high school, we knew about Senegal. We knew about our grandmother. Our grandmother was like the emblem of Senegal for us. We called her Tano, which means grandmother in Pular. And we knew about it, but we didn't know anything about Senegal in particular. So I think I had taken a trip when I was 13. It made a huge impression on me, just the visual difference of Senegal, these baobab trees and the recognition of you as an African-American as African. They're like, "Yeah, you [foreign language 00:11:59]." You kind of feel it.
I think every African-American that comes to Africa for the first time, there's something like, "Wait a minute. The taxi man is Black. The president's Black. Everybody's Black." So you're freed up a little bit. But I really loved it. Dakar is dope. It's a coastal city. The food is amazing, all that stuff.
Darren Isom:
Dakar is dope. Can we just say that one more time? Dakar is dope.
Tijan Watt:
Dakar is ... That's why we're still here.
Darren Isom:
Dakar is dope.
Tijan Watt:
Might be some mission involved, but I'm still here because I enjoy living here. And this is 23 years later. But came back when I was 18. And I was like, "Okay. This is dope." But a lot of people around me were saying, "We want to immigrate. We want to leave this place."
And I think that's common. Even to this day, people are getting into these small boats and trying to get out on the open seas. And they don't always make it. But I would say this place is great. And so at that time, it was 1998-ish. And I was graduate of college. The internet had just started ship. You know what I mean? Ownership was a saving grace.
Darren Isom:
The internet had just started. A moment of silence for us being old.
Tijan Watt:
My bad.
Darren Isom:
So keep going. Keep going.
Tijan Watt:
Yes. This is called yahoo.com, was the hot new thing. Yeah. So there was a guy named Wayne Huizenga, who started Blockbuster Video, another kind of old ... But he actually made his first billion with Waste Management, which is basically a waste collection company in the United States.
And I said, "Listen, if you can make a billion dollars by collecting trash, guess what? We can collect some trash here in Senegal." And so that clicked into my mind. I had been studying neuroscience. I did three labs at NIH. I was probably asleep. One of my labs was a sleep study, literally studying people-
Darren Isom:
But you weren't supposed to be a patient. You weren't supposed to be ... Yeah.
Tijan Watt:
I was supposed to be the ... Yeah. But I was victim of the sleep study. So anyway, the entrepreneurship thing clicked for me. And as a way of taking initiative in a place that I enjoyed and making it what we want it to be. And so my first job out of college was supposed to be here. I wanted to come straight here. I was like, "Listen, I ain't got no money. I don't have no skills. I don't know about business." I was a math major.
And so I went to Wall Street. My mother was ... She had just passed away. And she probably would have not let me go there. She was totally against that. But for me, it was a way to get exposed to what business is about. I took my little bonus and I came here as soon as I did my third year in London. I came here and I invested that in setting up my first business.
Darren Isom:
Wow. Wow. And we'll talk about another point maybe over cocktails, the Wall Street. We all spent some time on Wall Street and what we got out of that. But you've also touched on the disorderly beauty of Senegal and a sense of wabi-sabi in Senegalese art and culture. I would love for you just to share how this is perspective of embracing imperfection and the unique aesthetic of Senegal and from your broader views on creativity and development in Africa, how they're aligned.
Tijan Watt:
I think there's a cultural vibe in Senegal which is different from what I was familiar with, which is little bit in between the lines. Whereas in Senegal, there's a little bit more of freedom of autonomy of personal development, meaning people see their ... Some of my cousins, they have six or seven children, right? Or my aunts have six or seven children. And one of them, their personality emerged this way. And the other one, their personality emerged. And it's like, "Let's allow these people to become who they are."
And I think that kind of freeness is something that I've observed and I appreciated very early. I remember jumping on a car rapide. I don't know if you've taken a car rapide. I don't take car rapides anymore. Car rapide is one of these old buses. It looks like-
Darren Isom:
They're very beautiful to look at. I don't know about riding one.
Tijan Watt:
Beautiful to look at. And you're going to inhale some fumes because there's no window. But these are from the '60s. They're like old Renault trucks from the '60s. But there's always a guy hanging on the back. And he's looking for people. And it's like I jumped on the bus and then I didn't put a quarter in. I didn't put a thing in the machine. It was a different way of behaving.
And so I think that Senegal is endowed. It's a coastal city. It's a beautiful coastline. It's got this Sahelian semi-desert with these baobab trees, with sand everywhere. It feel like you're at the beach all the time. The food is great. But we don't have the feeling of being locked into any one particular way.
I think what that results in is that nothing is perfect. Things are going to be perfect. There's the beauty, but then it comes with the fact that maybe a crumbling brick here or there. And that's could be ... Think of it as part of the beauty, but it's also like the freeness of it, in my opinion. I think in Senegal, there's a lot of discipline, religious discipline and stuff like that. But in terms of how you behave, I think people allow you to be who you are.
Darren Isom:
Interesting. I think there's beauty in perfection, but also beauty in that freedom of choice, right? I want to come back to Howard now. So we both went to Howard. And so graduated same year, actually. How did being at an HBCU, HU-
Tijan Watt:
There we go.
Darren Isom:
How did being at an HBCU like Howard shape the way you see yourself and the African diaspora particularly and the role you wanted to play in uplifting it?
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. So confession. My first year was at Morehouse. It was at Morehouse.
Darren Isom:
I didn't even know that. My dad went to Morehouse.
Tijan Watt:
Oh, did he? Okay.
Darren Isom:
Well, so yeah, but we've got to let that one go.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. The irony is I went to Howard to find more diversity, which is ironic because we're all Black, so to speak. You have a school of fine arts. People that go to school for fine arts, it's so different from someone that's going just for math or whatever. A lot of my friends were from the school of engineering. And they're probably all Jamaican, so there was a ton of diversity that I really appreciated. Then you also have the excellence. Howard is just so much tradition of Black excellence. It's the mecca because it attracts people.
So one day, I was like, "Oh, that's Muhammad Ali over there." And we were all going up to Muhammad Ali. I think that's what you get at Howard, that vibe. And I went back for the election, tried to support Kamala Harris, and it was so vibey. I was like, "That's why I went ... I'm so glad I went to Howard U. That's the soul." And then the kids were treating me with a lot of politeness. And I was like, "Okay. Maybe I'm-"
Darren Isom:
It's the grays and the beard.
Tijan Watt:
Maybe I'm an elder at this point. But yeah.
Darren Isom:
For me, I think it goes back to also the point she made earlier around having a family where so many people had done so many different things. You had so many different options of what Blackness could look like.
The thing that I remember the most from my time at Howard, well, I remember a lot, but what I appreciated was I joke all the time. There was this one moment where I was going to a friend's. It was in a dorm over by the McDonald's, the Towers. And one window was blasting the Fugees. One window was blasting The Cranberries.
Tijan Watt:
Oh.
Darren Isom:
And I was like, "I never thought about The Cran ..." And what Howard made perfectly clear that anything is a Black thing if a Black person is doing it.
Tijan Watt:
Doing it.
Darren Isom:
You don't have to ... I was on the swim team. I didn't even know that Black people didn’t swim, right?
Tijan Watt:
I think swimming was a required class, if I recall correctly, in the core curriculum.
Darren Isom:
Yeah. Totally.
Tijan Watt:
Because Black people need to know how to swim.
Darren Isom:
Exactly. And so I think that that normalization, that so many options, I think it just gives you a sense of freedom. And so it's really powerful because I see how it shows up in all of our lives to some degree as well.
I want to move to African innovation because that's where you spent so much of your time and energy. Wuri Ventures is clearly grounded in a belief in Africa, Africa's long-term potential, not just as a market, but as a wellspring of innovation. What was the driving force behind establishing Wuri Ventures? And what key opportunities are you most excited about within the African entrepreneurship landscape right now?
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. Like I said, this is a continuation of what I've wanted to do ever since I came in 1998. But essentially, I think it's really about initiative. I think a lot of times in Africa, we have the sense that we have to wait for the government or we have to wait for the World Bank, we have to wait for the IFC, one of these things. And that creates a sense of paralysis.
And so when I first came, I started my business when I was 26. The goal was to create jobs. That was number one. We created a little light manufacturing company. And we had a brand. You don't want to know what the brand was called. Okay. I'll tell you. It was called Cristal. It wasn't champagne. It was vanilla flavored sugar that they put into the tea ceremony that they do.
Darren Isom:
Got it.
Tijan Watt:
I got a kick out of it. Because-
Darren Isom:
I get a kick out of it too. It was very of the moment.
Tijan Watt:
The moment, the Biggie Smalls and all that kind of stuff. But that brand is actually still going on today. And basically, the idea was that, okay, Ataya, it's a tea ceremony that people do every day. And it's usually prepared by young men. I said, "This is something that belongs to us as young Senegalese people. This is something that we should be able to innovate within and create something around this."
And so it's not like something that is outside of us that we're bringing in. We just use our own creativity to develop a brand around this business. So that lasted for over 10 years. The brand is still out there. We ended up with just about, I think, between 85 and 100 employees. So we did succeed in that objective. But really, it was about, okay, whatever you have your mind on, let's just go ahead and do it. And especially as young people.
And that morphed into Wuri Ventures, which is basically the notion of entrepreneurial capital. We talked about Wall Street. There's a lot of different types of finance out there. But the finance that is appropriate and that is able to work with entrepreneurial companies is different from the finance that you see on Wall Street or in a bank. And it requires an understanding of those businesses and what it takes to finance them.
In particular, it's a staged and syndicated investment approach. So syndicated mean we're sharing the investment risk with a lot of different people. So it's rare that there's only one investor in this type of situation. And then it's staged. And it's staged based on hitting the milestones and proving the assumptions that underlie the business itself.
Darren Isom:
And can I jump in there? Because I think it implies or requires a different understanding of risk. And we often hear about risk when it comes to investing in Africa. But you position the continent as a place of talent, creativity, and return. And you've position ... You have a very different understanding of what risk means and how risk plays out. How do you flip the narrative? And what do investors still get wrong about the African market, particularly with the sense of risk involved?
Tijan Watt:
The notion that we're going to eliminate all risk in Africa is not possible. You have to have a tolerance for risk. And I think that's the real challenge, is that a lot of the sources of capital do not tolerate any risk at all. Meaning that they want the political risk to be gone. They want the macroeconomic risk to be gone. They want the technology risk. You can't. And so this approach to entrepreneurial capital, the venture capital approach actually enables us to take risk on things that are unproven.
We're dealing with uncertainty, right? The future, it's something we have to add inshallah because we don't know what's going to happen in the future. But we need to be able to make investments on a young person. That in of itself is a risky endeavor, but we spread it out in such a way that, okay, one of those is going to pop off and become a big success.
The example is ... I'll give a shout-out to Wave, which is one of our portfolio companies, is a mobile money company. And the Wave is a unicorn. That the success of one of those investments offsets the risk that we've taken on the other investments. Just on that point, actually, I was in the Bay Area a couple years back. And there was an impact investor there. Impact investing is a new form of investing. And on the chart, they had ... The loss rate on the portfolio was like 0.1%. I said, "That just means you're not taking enough risk."
So it's not that we want to eliminate risk. It's that we should embrace the risk and go for it and know that some things will succeed and some things ... And that will help to offset the things that don't.
Darren Isom:
It speaks to the fact that risk is part of the investment portfolio and a way of doing the work.
Tijan Watt:
It's got to. And that's how I don't ... You can use the word venture capital. It permits entrepreneurial capital, which does embrace risk. And I think as young people, taking a risk, it's great. Take the risk when you're young, get married and then settle down and do whatever you need to do.
Darren Isom:
I also love, and this is a side note as well, that we can feel free to edit from the conversation. But I love how inshallah is used here with some degree of hopefulness as opposed to ... I feel like as someone who speaks Arabic and the rest of the Arabic-speaking world, inshallah means “no.” So if you ask your dad, "Hey, Pops. Can we do such and such?" And he says, "Inshallah," it means it's not happening.
Tijan Watt:
Inshallah means “god willing.”
Darren Isom:
Exactly. But I do want to come back to this idea, really investing piece. You've written about the need to invest in talented entrepreneurs at the start of their journey. What are some of the key attributes funders should be looking for when deciding on who to bet on?
Tijan Watt:
One thing is we have to realize Africa ... We've been downplaying Africa in the United States for way too long. Even the map is shrunk, right? The cator projection is like a shrunken version of the continent of Africa. Africa is a behemoth. 1.3 billion people. So that's four times the size in the United States. And guess what? People eat. They consume. Right? And so most businesses are selling people either goods or services that people will be consuming. So when you have that many people, that creates a enormous market.
Another way to frame it, we have 54 different countries. We can try in one country, doesn't work. Try another country. 54, you can't finish it. I think the viewpoint amongst even people living in different African countries is, okay, you have Senegal and then we have Paris. When I was living in Nigeria, they're like, "We have Nigeria and we have London." They don't even talk about UK. They say London. They're like, "No, the-"
Darren Isom:
The centering of European countries. Yes.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. Let's forget about them. And let's just focus on the continent, the people that are our neighbors. Senegal is part of a monetary union similar to the euro. The euro is however many countries that have a common currency. That took them an enormous lot of work to get that done.
Guess what? Senegal is part of one of those common currency zones. Eight countries that have the common currency, common legal framework, common exterior tariff. And I think that's something that is where the opportunity comes from. The opportunity comes from the scale. Just like China, just like India, the scale of Africa is on that level. So let's not-
Darren Isom:
So picking back up, you've written quite a bit about the need to invest in talented entrepreneurs at the start of their journeys. What are some of the key attributes funders should be looking for when deciding who to take on, who to take a bet on?
Tijan Watt:
I think the first answer to the question is a macro answer. And it's really just about Africa. Just because in the United States, we've been diminishing the importance of Africa for a long time. Even the map has been shrunk.
Darren Isom:
Literally.
Tijan Watt:
Google Maps is not an accurate representation of the size and the scale of much of the world, including Africa. So first of all, we have 1.3 billion people, so that's similar to India, which is, say, 1.4 billion. China, 1.6 billion. So we're in that realm. And that's three times the United States, right? And what's interesting is that it's actually the fastest growing active population, which means the young working age population, the fastest growing is in the continent of Africa because of the number of young people.
So that demographic pressure will float all boats. We have 800 million job seekers. Obviously, once you get a job, then you can start spending that money. That floats all boats. And that, you don't find anywhere else in the world. And that's why people are waking up to the importance of Africa as an investment destination.
So that's the first thing. We need to realize the scale. 54 different countries. There are these regional blocs. Senegal is part of a West African regional bloc. If you throw in Nigeria, it's about 350 million people. If we just include the common currency zone, there's an eight country ... It's actually a 14 country common currency, which is not obvious to pull off. And hats off to them for pulling it off.
I actually did write a blog about the importance of this currency, which has a peg to the euro. We don't want to necessarily have each country have their own currency. It's actually a topic of discussion right now in Senegal where they want to create their own currency. I said, "How does that work out for other countries around us which have high levels of inflation just because the currency has been politicized?"
In this region, the currency is managed by an independent central bank. And no one president can initiate the printing of money, which causes inflation. It's funny what we see in the United States, okay, the inflation in the past, whatever, it's because of the printing of money and the lack of independence of Central Bank. We've learned so many lessons of what happens in Africa that we can apply directly to what the presidents, who will remain unnamed in America, are doing because we've seen it before.
Anyway, so the importance of Africa, not to be underestimated. There's a lot of different flavors of investing in Africa. We have impact investing, which is important. Keeping in mind the impact on populations. And you have cold hard investment in mining and stuff like that. You have venture capital, which is emerging asset class. We reached 5 billion in invested dollars in 2022 and 2021. And so that didn't exist when I was running my business, VC and support for entrepreneurs.
But there's a concept which I'm actually thinking about right now, which I haven't written about, and it's called, it will be called Corporations and Nation States. And this intuition comes from a podcast that I listened to called Empire, which is about empires around the world. And so they were talking about India and how it came to be colonized by the British.
And what I learned is that the British did not colonize India. A company colonized India called the British East India Company, which was a corporation that did an IPO in London where you have people like tailors and butchers investing in the IPO, aggregating all that money. And what they do with that money? They went and they hired pirates. Pirates of the Caribbean. They hired them to go over to dominate and take over India.
And that just speaks to this tool of being able to aggregate money together and then use it to create competitiveness. The same thing happened in the British Africa Corporation, which is what led the conquest of parts of West Africa. You think about Ghana. You think about other places like that. And guess what their main business was?
Darren Isom:
Well, we know.
Tijan Watt:
We already know. We're on Gorée Island. Their main business and their source of wealth was in slavery. But it really is about this notion of a corporation. The other thing that can aggregate capital is our nation states, which have the power of taxing people. That's how they're aggregating their capital.
So I think we have to recognize the power that is in this kind of ... People call it capitalism, or whatever, but it's really about pooling capital and then putting it to good use together. And so that's what I believe. The role of VCs, so to speak, is to aggregate that capital and then to point it in the direction of a very useful ... Productive use activity.
Darren Isom:
And let's jump in there because I think that you've also spoken and written quite a bit about how frameworks imported from elsewhere don't always serve us, right? And so while we can all agree this idea of pooling resources is important, but to do what becomes the question. That's where things go wrong, right? And so I would love for you just to share a little bit more about what does it look like to build systems support that are rooted in African realities, African values, African possibilities, and not foreign expectations?
Tijan Watt:
Yeah. Well, I think this is key to our thesis as an investor for Wuri Ventures, is that, first of all, we noticed an imbalance in who's benefiting from the investment. There was a study by Village Capital that said that 90% of the capital went to non-African founders, in East Africa in particular. And people recognize that. And basically, what we understood is that the sources of capital are not in Africa. A lot of times the investors are either in United States or they're in Europe or they're in China or they're in India or they're in Japan.
And therefore, the founders who are in Africa don't have access to those sources of capital, which is why we wanted to create a fund that's locally based. And having access to those types of investors now enables these talented young founders, or even old founders ... Really, I don't want to be ageist at this point because sometimes people that have some gray hairs, they learned a thing or two and maybe earned one or two of those gray hairs.
But yeah, so I think the proliferation of locally based venture capital firms is what enables African founders to launch their thing with capital behind them. A lot of people just bootstrap it. Bootstrapping is honorable. I wrote a paper saying that these bootstrappers are excellent entrepreneurs, but they have to make do with what they have. But when you put capital behind it, it just takes off.
And I think investors ... I think the challenge is not only on the entrepreneurs. It's also the investors. A lot of times you have investors that don't have a clear understanding of the market. For me, a proxy for having an understanding of the market is do you speak one of these hundreds of African languages? Have you invested enough time to learn one of the African languages? Maybe that's an unfair demand, but for me, it shows that you have invested in the region personally such that you know what you're doing.
A lot of times the investing goes to the wrong people because the investors don't understand how to discern what's good and what's bad. And the last point is, and I wrote an article about this, which is the notion of frog leaping. So we have this notion. This a new concept. I'll try to slow down a little bit. The notion of leapfrogging is something that has resonated with people. So people in Senegal are making payments using their phone, right? So they never had a credit card. They just leaped over it, right?
People never had a personal computer, but they're using this supercomputer, artificial intelligence on there. That's a leapfrog. But I realized that in some cases, the innovation can happen in this developing world, and it can come back in the other direction. Company in the US, ride hailing company called Lyft, which was initially called Zimride because he went over to Zimbabwe and he saw how people were pooling people together in taxis. And he wanted to apply that in the United States.
And so I coined that term frog leaping because I do think that innovation can come from creativity, which comes from anywhere. And in particular, it's an observance of people that understand the realities and they figure out how to make it a little bit better.
Darren Isom:
And I want to just ... There are two points there that I would love just to have you speak to. One, we have a funder, Liz Thompson in the States, who's actually been on the podcast. She talks all the time about how as a funder, she works with Black and Brown organizations and leaders, how her work is different because she actually has love for the communities that she's funding.
Tijan Watt:
Yeah…
Darren Isom:
And how very often people don't recognize that. A lot of people are working with funding communities they actually don't love. They respect them as potential consumers, but there's no real appreciation of the community. And how that really changes how she does that work. And both it's a different work, but also it's a different outcome.
The other piece is thinking about ... And I've heard you articulate this to some degree. You hear it all the time in impact investing conversations in the States, particularly amongst Black folks and then you hear it in the crowds. There's a difference between investing in communities and leaders when you see them as potential consumers as opposed to potential creators, and how that's a different perspective and appreciation. Do either of those thoughts resonate for you as you think about your work?
Tijan Watt:
The first thing about the love, I've heard it phrased in a lot of different ways. One of my friends said that values-based investing. I like that. I like to think of it as soul power. If you do something with soul and with a sense of mission and with intentionality, that comes across and people support that. So I appreciate that. Investing through love.
In terms of the interplay with the market participants, so deriving ideas, that's what you have to do when you're an entrepreneur. So I talk about investing, but we have also launched a new company under the umbrella of Wuri Ventures, which it's an electric mobility company, so it's called Solarbox. We have adapted shipping containers, kind of like a DeLorean. The sides go up. And the whole top is solar panels.
Darren Isom:
Oh, wow.
Tijan Watt:
And that design was created with local universities here. So we have things ... there's so many people that ... Fresh graduates from college in Africa with engineering degrees, with business degrees. And we need to leverage that as startups here. So we worked with this university. And they developed this thing that we have never seen elsewhere in the world, in my opinion. And that solar power station will now charge electric motorcycles, which are also built here.
And so that's something that actually occupies a lot of my time these days. Outside money from it, we've raised over a million dollars. And we're going to continue to raise. And most of that is really indigenous creativity and know-how. And so the engineers are helping us to come up with that. And just the last piece on Solarbox is that you can launch something. And guess what? People don't want it. It doesn't fit their need. So you have to have the humility to ask them what they want.
Darren Isom:
Mm-hmm. So we're going to spend the final part of our conversation looking ahead as we sit here on Gorée Island with the horns blowing, the birds chirping, and all the action out on the streets. You've written a lot about the slogan le Senegal qui gagne, or the Senegal that wins. What does this idea of a winning Senegal or even a winning Africa more broadly look like?
Tijan Watt:
I think it's been happening. Think the vibe has ... I remember several years ago, there's a African ... The Senegalese Biennale, which is an art festival. And this is the first time we've seen so many non-francophone, let's say, people. I think there's been a little bit of a fear of coming to Senegal because I don't speak French, but in reality, it's open to everyone.
Darren Isom:
They don't either. The language on the street is Wolof.
Tijan Watt:
So there's so much to be discovered in the continent of Africa. I've had the good fortune of traveling around, like yourself. Ethiopia, I love it. Rwanda, fantastic. South Africa, shout-out. Haven't been to Zambia yet. But Africa is amazing. 54 different flavors that you can hit. But in terms of le Senegal qui gagne, that actually was personal for me because I arrived in Senegal in 2002, so end of 2001. And that was when we beat France in the World Cup. Senegal beat France.
Darren Isom:
That was a moment.
Tijan Watt:
That was a huge moment. I listened to a radio show and they correctly observed that the players could not walk the streets without getting mobbed. It was super vibey. And then we had 20 years of nothing, of no soccer success. And then it happened again. I think it was 2022. So 20 years marked my presence in Senegal. 20 years.
And so in this case, we did win the African Cup of Nations. We got that feeling again. And it's an homage also to one of our presidents. Senegal's on our fifth president, which is one of the strongest democracies in the continent of Africa.
Darren Isom:
The world at this point because ...
Tijan Watt:
You know. Yeah. And so one of the presidents had this slogan, le Senegal qui gagne. And when we have this attitude in Senegal, it's like Christmas. People are more cooperative, friendly with one another. And it's a vibe that I like. And it's just about self-belief. It's about, "Let's make positive change. Take initiative to do it ourselves." Don't have to wait.
Darren Isom:
No. And the mics won't pick it up, but there are children screaming outside, which is part of the things that excites me about Africa to some degree, such a young continent. Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of innovation, entrepreneurship in Africa? And what kind of world do you hope to see built through the work that you're leading?
Tijan Watt:
We're building a house we call the Sally Tech House. It's outside of Dakar. So Dakar is lovely. Senegal is beautiful. Senegal is amazing. So it's about an hour outside of Dakar. It's on the lagoon of Somone, which is in a town called Guereo. So we've bought a piece of land. And we're building a house which is meant to be an entrepreneurial residence, so people can come and imagine what they want to do next.
And I do believe in this idea that the ideas should come from where you are. We're not importing ideas. We're not copying and pasting. And I think that we've all caught the bug across the different countries in Africa. Nigeria has definitely caught the entrepreneurial bug. South Africa has been had the bug. Even countries like Senegal are now starting to have people graduate and dream to be entrepreneurs. And so we want to create those spaces for them and continue to set the good example.
In some cases, we're innovating ourselves, like Solarbox. In some cases, we're supporting other entrepreneurs. But the more people see the good examples, the more that they'll feel empowered to do it. And it doesn't always have to be on the scale of a unicorn or something like that. A lot of times it's ... Especially in the creative economies, so strong. There's such a reservoir of cultural assets in Africa that these creative economy entrepreneurs are drawing from.
We talked about DyLabs, which is a friend of mine who founded it. Just there's so much. And that's at a level that surpasses the rest of the world. And that's what we've seen. A friend of mine, Kojo Annan, says that this is Africa's soft power. And we've started to export it through the music, through the design, through the fashion. And so I think as long as it's a place where people enjoy living, that's the first thing, right? You have to be able to thrive where you are.
The world is more connected now. We got people ... A new friend of mine in Senegal, they picked up and left Richmond, Virginia, because they wanted their kids to go to high school in Senegal. 100% American, Black Americans. They opened a little coffee shop. And they're doing well. But they can still do their business because we live in the internet, in the connected world. So this is a welcome to the global diaspora. Come set up shop here. Go surfing at the beach every day. And then log into your computer and do whatever you need to do.
Darren Isom:
Well, I will take that welcome. And it's worth noting that Africa, the continent more broadly, particularly Senegal, has always played a role as a tastemaker. And so it's great to see you take advantage of that role as a tastemaker and actually live into that role and actually be an economy-maker as well.
Tijan Watt:
And I would like to say New Orleans, obviously, has been a global tastemaker.
Darren Isom:
My home. Yes, please.
Tijan Watt:
It's a home of jazz and the blues. And guess where the blues come from? Comes from Africa. You can hear it. And you go to Mali, you can hear the direct link, these artisanal guitars that they're playing and they're singing over top of it. 100% blues.
Another thing I learned recently, and I'm not sure if you have given much thought of this, but there is a linkage between the island that we're currently sitting on and Saint-Louis, which is in the North of Senegal, and Louisiana because it all has this French, the mix of French and African experiences. And there was direct linkages between New Orleans and Saint-Louis, in particular, that's been documented.
Darren Isom:
Oh, wow.
Tijan Watt:
So I don't think you're that far away from home.
Darren Isom:
No. Well, that would explain why I've always felt some degree of home whenever I'm in Senegal.
Tijan Watt:
So there we go.
Darren Isom:
Well, thank you again for having us. Thanks for a wonderful conversation. And thanks for all the work that you're doing both here in Dakar and more broadly. And so we're going to end the conversation as we started, grounded in peace. I look forward to hearing more about all your work.
Tijan Watt:
Amen.
Darren Isom:
Thank you.
Tijan Watt:
Thank you.
Darren Isom:
There's a video I came across while hope scrolling Instagram some months ago. A Chinese soldier is stationed somewhere unknown, having dinner with his squad. He's chatting casually when he bites into a bowl of food that tastes so familiar, it brings him close to tears. "This food is from our region. It tastes like my mom's," the subtitle reads as he wipes his eyes, trying to hold it together among his fellow soldiers.
Then from behind a door, his mother appears. The meal, it really was her cooking. As he jumps up from the table to hug her, what becomes clear is how deeply memory can trigger connection, not just to people, but to place, to self, to what we carry with us. While it did bring me to tears, I felt that same recognition, the same heart memory the first time I visited Dakar nearly 20 years ago.
By then, I traveled to North Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, several times with friends during my graduate school years in Paris. But my first trip to West Africa came in 2005, visiting my friend Salah, a Black American from Chicago I had met at Sciences Po some years before. She was working for a foundation and living in Dakar's Baobab neighborhood. Her home became the home base for a well-planned two-month exploration across Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, and Cape Verde.
What I hadn't planned for was falling in love with Dakar. Easily one of my favorite cities on the continent and top three in the world, Dakar is cosmopolitan, culturally rich, socially vibrant, and spiritually grounded. And the Dakarois? Regal, stylish, and warm. We're in sophistication with ease and without pretense. The culture that nurtures Senghor, Diop, Sembène, Bâ, and Daigne did so with great pride and purpose.
The same spirit still hums through the city in its art, its intellect, its elegance, its voice. There was something familiar about it all, the food, the energy, the people. And with each return, that feeling only deepened. As I sat with Tijan, a brother from another mother, on Ile de Gorée, a former slave port just off the coast, I felt that connection again, to the land, to the stories, to the people.
And on this trip, that connection wasn't just in Senegal. That sense of resonance, of recognition and return found me again and again this season. In every country, with every guest, I encountered something that felt both personal and collective, something alive. Africa is one of the youngest continents in the world. Its median age is just 19, but there is something deeply beautiful about a place so young carrying its heritage with pride and choosing to build forward with that inheritance.
In South Africa, I felt the power of a community as a political act rooted in legacy, fueled by care and love, and shaped by an unshakable belief in the future. In Kenya, I felt the strength of community healing, how tradition, youth, and tenderness holds space for bold, generational repair. In Ethiopia, I felt the quiet power of people and rhythm with the sacred, where land, spirit, and memory converge, and beauty is celebrated as a cherished inheritance.
In Nigeria, I felt the pulse of cultural memory, an engine of creativity, innovation, and unstoppable momentum. In Senegal, I felt a sophistication with people rooted in legacy. Moving forward with grace, clarity, and creative force. In Tunisia, I felt the rhythm of remembrance, where layered histories continue to shape what freedom and future can look like.
Even in the weight of memory, I saw the energy of something new rising. Each place was distinct, yet each echoed something shared, a deep belief in self, a reverence for the past, and the readiness to shape what comes next. This season reminded me that memory is not a burden. It is a foundation. And from that foundation, something bold is taking shape. A new kind of future born not from erasure, but of deep remembering. One shaped not only by institutions and policies, but by rhythm, ritual, and care.
Africa is not following a blueprint. It is creating one. A continent so young, yet so old and rooted, serving as the world's source code for how to create, repair, build, belong, and blossom. And for those of us in the diaspora, that blueprint is not unfamiliar. What I've come to understand is that our connection to Africa has not been severed. It is still intact. Present in our rhythms, our rituals, our stories, and our ways of knowing and loving.
The question is not whether the connection exists. The question is how we choose to honor it. This season affirm that truth at every turn. We saw people using history not only to honor what came before, but to design what comes next. Memory became method. Culture moved like infrastructure. Identity stood as architecture. There was no chasing relevance. It was already there, rooted, alive, evolving.
What we found was more than nostalgia. It was the act of honoring the past as instruction, not a return to what was, but a reorientation to what has always been and what still could be. We carry that history, we're shaped by it, and we're responsible for what we shape next. As members of a global diaspora, as stewards in the social sector, as storytellers and system builders, we're not separate from the story. We're the architects of what is possible.
Or as Cheikh Anta Diop, the Senegalese historian, physicist, and Pan-Africanist, who spent his life proving that Africa was not only the cradle of civilization, but a driver of its future, once reminded us, “Il nous faut oser inventer l’avenir. We must dare to invent the future." Let us do that with clarity, with courage, and with care. And let Africa serve as a living inspiration of what is possible.
And that's a wrap for this season of Dreaming in Color. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to our incredible guests and my wonderful co-hosts for sharing their powerful stories and insights. Each conversation has been a testament to the resilience, creativity, leadership, and love that flows through our communities in this season across continents.
To our listeners, thank you for joining us on this journey. From Dakar to Nairobi and Johannesburg and beyond, we explore what it means to build forward, while staying rooted. We hope these stories not only informed and inspired you, but also reminded you that history is not behind us. It is alive in what we create next. Until next season, stay inspired, stay grounded, and keep dreaming in color.
Once again, we put some music with the magic, collecting the theme songs from our season's guests and collaborators to create a Spotify playlist for our listeners to enjoy. Find it on Spotify under Dreaming in Color: The Continent. Thanks for listening to Dreaming in Color. A special shout-out to all the folks who make the magic happen. From Africa InSight Communications, our wonderful producers, Mudzithe Phiri and Tom Kirkwood. Production coordinator, Goddec Orimba. Audiovisual editor, Omamo Gikho. Graphic designer, Ernest Chikuni. And the amazing production crews on the ground in each country.
A huge shout-out to my Bridgespan production colleagues, Cora Daniels, my ever-brilliant partner in good trouble, and Elisabeth Makumbi, my Joburg-based season co-host. And of course, our fabulous creative director, Ami Diané. What a squad, y'all. Be sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next time.
