This article is based on a conversation from Voices & Visions, a podcast produced through a partnership between Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, which explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy.
On some days, George Odo thinks about old people in restaurants struggling with phone flashlights to read menus. It is a small, almost funny observation. But for him, it says something larger about markets, behaviour, and how quickly systems evolve while people lag behind them.
Odo, a senior partner at pan-African private equity firm AfricInvest, has spent close to two decades reading markets before they fully reveal themselves. Today, he works on capital, policy, and entrepreneurship in Africa and, increasingly, in classrooms like those at Columbia Business School.
But the tension in his thinking is not between Africa and global capital. It is between what African universities teach and what African markets actually demand.
“I guess so,” he says when asked if he considers himself a dealmaker in a recorded conversation on Voices & Visions, a podcast backed by Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal. “I’ve been in deal making for some time, doing deals in private equity mainly, but working with colleagues who are involved in deal making in private credit and in venture capital.”
