Programs promise operator wisdom and hire junior facilitators, because the people who could teach cost more than the grant allows. The staffing economics, and four designs that square them.
Who Teaches Founders: The Accelerator Staffing Problem Nobody Budgets For Read More »
Do accelerators build better firms or just pick them? The evidence on selection effects versus treatment effects, why the answer changes program design, and the honest claims a program can make.
Selection vs Treatment: What Accelerators Actually Add Read More »
Demo day is theater optimized for a capital market East Africa mostly lacks. What the ritual actually produces, what the evidence says, and the four instruments that outperform it.
After the Demo Day: What Replaces the Pitch Ritual Read More »
Accelerators sell curriculum and demo days, but their compounding asset is the alumni network. Why the graduated founders are the product, and how to run alumni as an operating system.
Alumni Networks Are the Product; Cohorts Are the Funnel Read More »
When a government signs an IMF program, the conditions cascade into taxes, subsidies, rates, and arrears that hit small firms first. How to read a program document as a business forecast.
Tax holidays and duty exemptions for zones and investors are spending by another name. Why tax expenditure reporting matters, what audits keep finding, and the receipts test for incentives.
Special Economic Zone Tax Expenditure Audits: What the Holidays Actually Bought Read More »
National industrial strategy is written in capitals, but licenses, land, markets, and roads are administered by districts. The case for local economic development done as craft, not ceremony.
Africa pays the world’s highest remittance fees on flows larger than FDI. Where the margin actually sits, corridor by corridor, and what senders, founders, and policy can still squeeze.
The Real Cost of Remittances and Who Keeps the Margin Read More »
The EU’s carbon border adjustment prices embedded emissions on imports. For East African industrial ambitions the mechanism is mostly indirect, partly opportunity, and worth reading before the panic.
The CSDDD makes large EU buyers legally answerable for their supply chains. That duty travels down the invoice to East African exporters. What the directive demands, and the Audit-Ready File that wins.
EU Supply-Chain Due Diligence Reaches the East African Exporter Read More »