The Finance Story We All Know

As the World Bank Enterprise Surveys highlight, finance is consistently ranked as the top obstacle for African SMEs. It is an appealing story because money is visible and easy to quantify. You can announce commitments, disburse funds, and track lending volumes. But in our experience, this isn’t the full story. It doesn’t explain why so much production capacity sits idle across Sub-Saharan Africa.

When we were running factories ourselves, raising capital was hard in the early days — not mysterious, just reality. Our systems were incomplete, our governance immature, our execution not quite there yet. Banks and investors saw that and kept their distance. Later, once we had tightened operations, mastered cashflow discipline, and proven reliability, the dynamic flipped. Investors started calling us. Over the years, we raised about USD 60m from a dozen investors — not because money suddenly appeared, but because we had shown we could execute.

Today, as consultants at P3rsist, we see the same pattern repeat. Entrepreneurs say they can’t grow because there is “no finance.” Investors tell us they are hungry for investable businesses. The paradox is striking: capital is abundant, but confidence is scarce. FMO’s 2030 strategy underscores it clearly: the lack of bankable projects, not the lack of capital, is one of their biggest challenges. The real bottleneck is not finance. It is execution.

Execution First, Finance Second

The truth is straightforward: finance follows execution.

Like technology, finance is an amplifier. In the hands of a team that can execute, it accelerates growth. In the hands of a team that cannot, it accelerates collapse. Dave Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, said it well: “More companies die of indigestion than starvation.” Most agribusinesses do not fail for lack of opportunity, but because they overstretch without the systems to sustain growth.

That is why we caution clients when they rush into expansion rounds. Growth is vital, but dangerous without the execution capacity to manage at the new level. Expansion without discipline risks indigestion.

Execution capacity is not one thing. It is a combination of disciplines that reinforce each other:

• Cashflow control: knowing what comes in and goes out, day by day.
• Inventory management: avoiding tied-up capital or costly shortages.
• Clear strategy: making hard choices about markets, products, and priorities.
• Teams and accountability: reducing key-man risk and empowering managers.
• Governance and reporting: transparency that builds investor trust.
• Resilience: buffers and systems that allow a company to withstand shocks.

The level of execution capacity required also depends on scale. We have run businesses with 70 employees and others with almost 2,500. These require different systems. What worked at one level would collapse at another.

The good news: developing execution capacity rarely demands heavy financial investment. It costs time, discipline, and consistency more than money. The bad news: structured support for building execution is scarce. Execution doesn’t fit neatly into frames, and most fund managers come from finance or project management backgrounds rather than operations.

This is why we stress: execution first, finance second. Companies that run a tight operation find financing partners. Those that cannot manage books, supply chains, or teams struggle to secure even modest loans. And when they do secure money without fixing execution first, the money often accelerates failure rather than growth.

The Pattern We See Everywhere

The specifics differ — cashew, coconuts, grains, West or East Africa — but the underlying lesson is the same: execution capacity determines whether finance fuels growth or collapse.

The Cashew Factory Startup

An entrepreneur, together with personal friends, had invested in a new processing facility. But traction was limited. Capacity sat underutilised, quality certification lagged, and recruitment was difficult. Once we worked together to strengthen internal systems — accountability, KPIs, communication rhythms — things changed quickly. Certification was secured, new clients arrived, volumes rose and now there’s a waiting list for new staff. With recognition came attention from investors, who began calling the company to ask about financing opportunities. Execution came first. Finance followed.

The Factory That Lost Its Shine

Another business had scaled successfully over several years and enjoyed strong access to finance. But when key managers left at the end of their contracts and replacements were not found quickly, execution capacity declined. Other critical staff began to resign, and lenders cut facilities. Leadership continuity had been underestimated — and investors adjusted accordingly.

The Coconut Entrepreneur Who (Seemingly) Had It All

A thriving coconut processor attracted investors and built a new, larger facility with unfamiliar product lines. Complexity exploded: larger workforce, new machinery, longer supply chains. The systems weren’t ready. Idle lines, dried-up cashflow, and exhausted staff followed. This wasn’t a finance problem, but an execution gap.

The Large-Scale Manufacturer With Idle Capacity

A state-of-the-art plant, strong financing, healthy order book — yet utilisation was low. The issue was people: high turnover, weak culture, jobs seen as a CV stepping-stone rather than a career. Once management tools to gather and act on people data were installed, the problem was solved within months. Execution blind spots had cost millions.

The Successful Grains Processor

A grains processor secured financing that required quarterly board meetings. Profitable but stretched, founders postponed meetings and sent late board information packs. On paper, considered details. In practice, they undermined investor trust. Governance is not for when things go well — it is for when they do not.

What these cases show is not failure, but lessons. Execution capacity — or the lack of it — determines outcomes.

Strategy and Discipline

Execution must start with strategy — knowing what to execute. Any strategy that cannot be summarised in two pages is not worth the paper it is written on. If you cannot explain it clearly to staff, you undermine execution from the start.

Strategy means making hard choices. What to do now, what to ignore for now. Running a business is a constant balancing act: clients, shareholders, employees, suppliers, financiers, partners — and balancing means saying no. You cannot please everyone. Many entrepreneurs chase every lead for fear of missing out. The result is scattershot effort and diluted execution. Without focus, nothing works well.

For us, strategy also provides peace of mind. Three to five quarterly priorities, aligned with long-term goals, allow new opportunities to be judged quickly: does it move the needle or not? If not, we ask whether anything has changed that justifies a reset. If not, we can walk away and sleep well at night, knowing we defended our real priorities. That same clarity empowers staff to make decisions aligned with company goals. Effective delegation becomes possible.

Without clear strategic focus, it is impossible to say no. And if everything is important, nothing is important.

The Hidden Work of Execution Capability

Strategy execution capability is often invisible. It is shaped by factors such as the ability to recruit and retain A-players, clear accountability charts, disciplined meeting rhythms, communication flows, problem-solving routines, and governance practices. These don’t show up in a factory tour, a financial model, a business plan, or a project proposal.

By contrast, almost all of the structural support available to businesses takes the form of things you can see and measure: new machines, certifications — and dare I say, “smallholder farmers trained.” These are important, yes, but they are not what ultimately determine whether a business scales.

Execution capability is not only about systems and tools. It is also about business culture. Many entrepreneurs let culture “happen” to them instead of consciously shaping it to support long-term goals. The competitive advantage of culture is hugely underestimated. In our own journey, we were always comfortable knowing that others could copy our factory layout or our manuals, even poach a few key staff. It would still take them years to reach our level of performance because our culture gave us the ability to learn and problem-solve faster than anyone else in our sector and environment.

For entrepreneurs in Africa, this work is especially hard because the environment itself is relentlessly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. We know this from experience, having had to steer businesses through not one, but two coup d’états. The fires are real: logistics disruptions, power outages, sudden changes in laws or government policies. In such contexts, firefighting isn’t a weakness — it’s a survival skill. Many entrepreneurs spend a large part of their energy as “heroic CEOs,” solving one crisis after another. And they deserve credit for it. But if all energy goes into firefighting, the deeper, invisible work of building execution capability is postponed indefinitely.

Culture adds another layer of difficulty. We’ve found that many of our younger co-workers in Africa are socialised to “avoid pain.” In school, that might mean staying quiet; in society, not speaking up against authority. That instinct can carry into the workplace. Yet in a continuous-improvement culture, the opposite is needed: staff must raise problems, not hide them. Respect for elders is deeply ingrained, which makes it harder for younger managers to challenge or hold older staff accountable. In my case, having grey hair at a young age made life easier; credibility came faster. Not everyone has that advantage.

Then there is the gap between formal and informal structures. Formally, a business may run on policies, KPIs, and board meetings. Informally, there are ceremonies, tribal loyalties, and unspoken obligations. Even witchcraft plays a role (we’ve written a separate blog about it here). These are not trivial — to ignore them is to invite resentment, even vengeance. Yet if you let them dominate, they consume enormous amounts of management time. The real art of execution in Africa is to navigate both worlds: respecting the informal without being ruled by it, and protecting the time and focus needed to run the formal business.

To illustrate these competing pressures, let’s borrow a simple 2 x 2 framework — the urgency vs. importance matrix made famous by Stephen Covey and adapt it to the realities of African Agribusiness.

The P3rsist Urgency-Importance Matrix

Quadrant I – Firefighting (Urgent & Important)

• Definition: Crises and emergencies that must be solved now to keep the business alive.
• Examples in Africa: Paying farmers at the gate with no cash, last-minute shipping deadlines, broken machinery, logistics disruptions, power outages, sudden government policy shifts.
• Cultural context: Heroic CEOs are celebrated for solving these fires. And rightly so — in a challenging environment, firefighting is a crucial skill. But a business that lives only in Quadrant I never gets to scale.

Quadrant II – Capability Building (Not Urgent but Important)

• Definition: The invisible work of building execution capability.
• Examples: Daily cashflow discipline, strategic planning, building culture, developing middle management, supplier relationships, governance routines, preventive maintenance.
• Cultural context: This work is undervalued because it is invisible. In many African business settings, “urgent” is seen as leadership, while Quadrant II feels like “not working.” Yet this is where resilience, investor confidence, and long-term competitiveness are forged.
• P3rsist position: This is the quadrant we put a spotlight on and where most of our work lies.

Quadrant III – Noise (Urgent but Not Important)

• Definition: Activities that feel pressing but don’t move the business forward.
• Examples: Endless calls and interruptions, requests from officials, side projects outside the core business.
• Cultural context: Respect and relationship obligations run deep. Saying “no” can feel disrespectful, so leaders spend enormous time here. Strategy provides the filter that allows entrepreneurs to protect Quadrant II without undermining relationships.

Quadrant IV – Waste (Not Urgent & Not Important)

• Definition: Low-value activities that consume time and add little or nothing.
• Examples: Duplicated donor reports, ceremonies, tribal obligations, excessive paperwork, gossip and office politics.
• Cultural context: These cannot be dismissed outright. If ignored, they may trigger resentment or even vengeance. The art is to acknowledge and respect them, while preventing them from draining core execution energy.

Most African entrepreneurs are trapped between Quadrant I (Firefighting) and Quadrant III (Noise). Heroic firefighting is necessary — we have managed through many crises ourselves. But it is not sufficient.

Execution capability lives in Quadrant II. It is the least visible quadrant, the least rewarded, and the least supported — yet it is the one that determines whether finance fuels growth or collapse.

At P3rsist, our role is to help CEOs reduce the time they spend in Quadrants I, III, and IV so they can invest it in Quadrant II. We build the systems, rhythms, and culture that make that shift possible.

And here’s the paradox: most structural support available to African agribusiness today adds activities in every quadrant except Quadrant II. More machines, more certifications, more projects — but very little to build the invisible execution disciplines.

Resilience Beats Pure Efficiency

If execution is the engine of growth, resilience keeps the engine running when the road gets rough. And in African agribusiness, the road is rarely smooth. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are not abstract concepts here. They are lived realities. The skill of heroic firefighting — rallying a team, improvising workarounds, keeping a business alive one week at a time — is essential. It is part of the DNA of many African entrepreneurs, and it deserves respect.

But firefighting, as crucial as it is, does not build a scalable business. You cannot grow if all your management capacity is consumed by today’s emergency. In fact, the more capital you raise without strengthening execution, the more fragile the business becomes. Finance, as we’ve learned, is not fuel for growth by itself. It’s an accelerant — and if your systems and culture are weak, it can accelerate collapse just as quickly as it accelerates expansion.

Resilience is built through unglamorous but vital disciplines:

• Cash buffers – to pay farmers and staff when buyers delay.
• Inventory discipline – stock levels balanced between capital tie-up and shortages.
• Supplier diversification – multiple channels to avoid single points of failure.
• Preventive maintenance – fixing machines before they fail.
• Cross-training teams – ensuring critical skills don’t disappear when a key person leaves.

Resilience is also about how a company thinks and behaves under pressure. It is about developing a culture where people anticipate problems, adapt quickly, and see themselves as active contributors to the business’s survival.

Resilience is the precondition for scale. It keeps a processor alive long enough to build out Quadrant II — Capability Building: strategy, governance, systems, culture. Without resilience, businesses are pulled back into Quadrant I firefighting or drained by Quadrant III noise. With it, they protect the time and mental bandwidth required to make the hard, strategic choices that unlock growth.

The Investor Dimension

For investors, the real shortage in African agribusiness is credible execution. Due diligence already asks for cashflow forecasts, HR charts, governance structures, and risk registers. Many companies dutifully produce the documents. The problem is that much of it stops at paper. Policies are drafted for investors, board calendars agreed, registers filed away — and then daily reality takes over — back to firefighting.

The true challenge is assessing functionality. Does the cashflow forecast guide daily decisions? Do weekly huddles actually happen, or are KPIs updated just before the board-pack? Are SOPs reflected in daily practice, or do they sit in binders?

This is why execution risk remains the hardest risk to price. On paper, many companies pass. In practice, their systems are fragile. When a shock hits that can no longer be handled by the organization, paper structures collapse.

What makes execution “investable” is not documentation but discipline:

• Cashflow tools actively used by management.
• Clear accountabilities and KPIs.
• Meeting rhythms that run without prompting.
• Governance that produces timely, reliable insight.
• Teams that can absorb shocks without losing continuity.

 

When these practices function consistently, investor confidence changes. Monitoring becomes easier, risk premiums shrink, and capital flows faster. The difference between paper compliance and functional discipline is the difference between financing that accelerates collapse and financing that scales.

Execution that works in practice — not just on paper — is what unlocks growth.

Conclusion

Finance is not the bottleneck of African agribusiness. Execution capability is. Factories stall not because markets are absent or capital is scarce, but because execution disciplines are missing. Where execution capacity is strong, finance follows. Where it is weak, finance accelerates collapse.

The good news is that execution capacity can be built. It does not require large sums of money — it requires focus, discipline, and the right frameworks. That is the work we dedicate ourselves to at P3rsist.

In the months ahead, we will share more about how execution capacity can be strengthened in practice — lessons that are repeatable, transferable, and grounded in African agribusiness reality. For now, the message is simple: markets and money open doors. Execution is what decides whether you walk through them.