A few days ago, on our latest podcast set, we confronted a tension that has quietly shaped African entrepreneurship for decades: survival versus creation. The conversation was not theoretical. It was rooted in lived experience across fashion, beauty and creative capital, and it exposed a pattern that extends far beyond any single industry.
Lucy Rao of Rialto Fashions, who has spent more than 25 years building within Kenya’s fashion ecosystem, described the common advice given to young designers — “just design and sell” — as the equivalent of sending innovators into the desert and expecting forests.
