Asher's Blog

Country expansion is like founding another company.

The product may already exist, the brand may be recognised and the organisation may possess years of operating experience, but entering another country returns the business to a position of uncertainty. The company must learn whom to trust, how customers buy, how regulation works, how money moves and what local behaviour means.

This is particularly important when expanding across Africa. The countries may share a continent and, in some cases, similar challenges, but they are not one market. Each country has its own culture, institutions, economic history, currency, regulation and patterns of distribution.

A company that treats expansion as simply making the existing product available in another location may discover that availability is the smallest part of the work.

Culture is the first market infrastructure

One of the biggest differences between countries is culture, and culture rests on values. It shapes how people interpret trust, authority, time, obligation, risk and commercial relationships. These differences affect how a product is adopted and how a company must operate.

In one market, customers may be comfortable completing an important transaction without speaking to anyone. In another, a trusted relationship or physical presence may be required before people will move money through a new platform. A sales process that works through email in one country may depend on introductions, demonstrations and repeated personal contact elsewhere.

Culture also affects the workplace. Employees may interpret feedback, hierarchy, initiative and disagreement differently. A management style that produces speed in one market may create silence in another. The company therefore needs to understand not only how customers behave, but how local teams work, what they expect from leaders and how responsibility is normally expressed.

The objective is not to generalise about an entire population. No country contains only one kind of person or business. The objective is to identify recurring patterns that materially affect how trust is built and how work gets done.

Culture is not an interesting detail to study after the financial model is complete. It is part of the model.

Study the economic and governmental pattern

Before entering a country, founders should examine the pattern of the economy and government systems over time. The present condition matters, but the direction and history may reveal more.

Has policy been relatively predictable, or do regulations change suddenly? How does the government treat foreign and local businesses? How long does it take to obtain licences, enforce contracts or resolve tax disputes? Which parts of the economy have grown consistently, and which ones remain vulnerable to political decisions or external shocks?

The answers influence the type of commitment the company should make. A market may offer significant demand but require a local partner with deep regulatory knowledge. Another may be easy to enter technically but difficult to monetise because purchasing power is weak. A country may appear attractive today while its currency and policy history show risks that will affect the value of revenue over time.

Founders should not study these issues to find a perfect country. Every market contains constraints. The purpose is to know which problems the company is accepting and whether it has the ability and appetite to manage them.

Learn from companies that already succeeded there

One of the most useful forms of expansion research is to study businesses that have already become successful in the target country, particularly those operating in the same or an adjacent industry.

How long did it take them to build meaningful scale? How did they distribute their product? Which customer segment adopted first? How was the brand positioned, and what promise created trust? Did they grow independently, through partnerships or by acquiring an existing company?

Their capital history also matters. Who funded them, at what stage and through which relationships? Did local investors understand the opportunity earlier than international investors? Was growth financed mainly through equity, debt or operating cash flow?

Founders should also examine regulation. Which approvals were required? How did successful companies organise compliance? Were there regulatory changes that created the opportunity, or did those companies succeed despite uncertainty?

This research does not provide a formula to copy. It provides evidence about how the market behaves. The company can compare several successful and unsuccessful examples, identify recurring patterns and determine which assumptions deserve to be tested before committing heavily.

A good expansion plan is not built only from market-size reports. It is informed by the lived history of companies that have already attempted the journey.

Trust, distribution and compliance must be rebuilt

A company may possess a trusted brand in its home country and still be unknown elsewhere. Trust does not always cross a border with the logo.

The new market wants to know who stands behind the business, whether the company understands local obligations and what will happen when something goes wrong. This is especially important in financial services, payroll and compliance, where the product handles responsibilities customers cannot afford to get wrong.

Distribution must also be rediscovered. The channel that produced efficient customer acquisition in one country may not carry the same credibility or reach in another. Partnerships, professional networks, banks, agents, employers and local platforms may each play different roles.

Compliance cannot be translated casually. Tax, employment, data protection, payment and reporting obligations may resemble those in the home market while differing in the details that create liability. The company needs local operational knowledge, not merely a summary of the law.

These three elements reinforce one another. Compliance strengthens trust. Trusted local partners improve distribution. Customer interactions reveal operational details the company did not understand from research alone.

Expansion is therefore a process of building a local system, not shipping an existing product into a new postcode.

Currency can make growth less valuable than it appears

One factor I no longer treat casually is the strength and stability of the currency. A country may produce attractive customer numbers while contributing very little to the company’s economic value after revenue is converted, inflation is considered and local operating costs are paid.

Purchasing power affects the price customers can bear, the size of the addressable revenue and the amount a company can spend to acquire and serve each customer. Currency depreciation can also reduce the value of local revenue relative to costs or obligations denominated elsewhere.

This does not mean a company should operate only in countries with strong currencies. A large, growing market can still become strategically important, and local costs may partly offset the lower revenue. The company may also have a long-term reason to establish a position before purchasing power rises.

But the founder should understand the economic trade-off explicitly. Customer count is not the same as revenue quality, and market share is not automatically material to the group.

Imagine a company generating one billion dollars in total revenue. It may serve 70 per cent of a country’s relevant market while that country contributes only 0.1 per cent of company revenue. The local operation can be impressive within the country and immaterial to the company as a whole.

That does not automatically make the presence worthless. It may provide strategic learning, regional distribution, regulatory capability or an option on future growth. But management should know which of these reasons justifies the cost. A market should not remain in the portfolio merely because the company enjoys saying it operates there.

Country presence must earn its place

On 2 September 2026, Uber ended operations in Nigeria after twelve years. The company said the decision followed a review of the business but did not disclose a detailed reason. The market had become increasingly competitive, while fuel costs, inflation and currency volatility placed pressure on drivers and platforms.

The lesson is not that Nigeria is unattractive or that Uber should never have entered. The lesson is that longevity, brand recognition and a large population do not remove the need for a country operation to make strategic and economic sense.

A company can serve many users and still struggle to create sufficient value after local pricing, competition, operating costs and currency effects are considered. It can possess global technology while local competitors adapt more quickly to the economics and behaviour of the market.

Founders should therefore define what success means before expansion begins. How much revenue or strategic value must the country create? Within what period? How much capital is the company willing to commit before the thesis must be reconsidered? Which leading indicators would show that distribution and retention are working?

Without these thresholds, expansion can continue as an expensive symbol of ambition even after the economics have stopped being persuasive.

Begin with a country thesis

An expansion decision should begin with a clear country thesis rather than a general belief that the company should be pan-African or global.

The thesis should explain why this country, why now and why this company is likely to win. It should address culture, customer need, purchasing power, competition, regulation, distribution and currency. It should identify the local capabilities the company lacks and how they will be acquired.

The first stage should be designed to learn. The company can begin with a narrow customer segment, limited product or trusted partner rather than reproducing its entire home operation immediately. This allows the business to test its assumptions before committing the full cost of a country team and infrastructure.

The people leading the expansion should possess enough authority to adapt locally, but the company should remain clear about which principles, controls and brand promises cannot change. Localisation should improve relevance without creating an entirely disconnected business that the group cannot govern.

In many ways, this resembles founding again. The team starts with assumptions, speaks to customers, tests distribution, builds trust and searches for evidence that the local model can become repeatable.

Expand with respect for difference

Country expansion is like founding another company because borders change more than location. They change the cultural meaning of the product, the institutions surrounding it, the economics through which it creates value and the channels through which it reaches customers.

Founders should study how people behave, how the government and economy have behaved over time and how successful local businesses became successful. They should rebuild trust, distribution, compliance and operational knowledge rather than assuming these assets transfer automatically.

They should also examine currency, purchasing power and the honest contribution the market can make to the company’s bottom line. A country can be strategically interesting without being economically significant, but leadership must know the difference.

Expansion should not be a collection of flags on a website. Each country must become a coherent business thesis with a path to durable value.

When a company respects that reality, it stops treating Africa as one market and begins building businesses capable of succeeding in the countries that actually compose it.