Tutto Passa Agency, a startups and funds-focused communications firm, and TechCabal, a pan-African tech publication, are launching a podcast that will explore the ideas, decisions, and tensions behind building and funding companies on the continent, unpacking how founders, investors, and policymakers make sense of risk and opportunity.
Voices & Visions: Profiling Africa’s Business Pulse, a 14-episode series hosted by Ivana Heijnen, the founder of Tutto Passa Agency, will focus its first season on Nairobi, examining the mechanics of one of the continent’s most active startup and investment ecosystems. The show launches later this year and will be released biweekly through September.
The partnership reflects a growing recognition among investors and operators that Africa’s persistent “narrative gap” is not just a branding problem, but a structural one. Misunderstood markets often struggle to attract patient capital, while fragmented storytelling can reinforce outdated perceptions of risk.
“Capital doesn’t move where complexity is misread,” Heijnen said. “What’s missing is infrastructure for credible, nuanced narratives that reflect how ecosystems actually function.”
Africa’s startup sector has expanded rapidly over the past decade, with companies scaling across payments, logistics, energy, and financial services. Yet global perceptions often lag behind reality. Policymakers and international investors still tend to view the continent as a monolith, despite wide differences in regulatory regimes, capital markets, and consumer behaviour.
That disconnect has consequences. Founders and fund managers frequently report spending as much as two months explaining their markets and fundraising, rather than building their products—a friction that can delay deals or skew investment decisions.
The podcast aims to address this by documenting how capital, governance, and trust interact within a single ecosystem. Nairobi, often described as East Africa’s commercial and innovation hub, provides a dense case study: a city where early-stage venture capital coexists with more mature financial institutions, and where startups increasingly intersect with sectors such as energy and climate.
Episodes will feature a cross-section of voices, including founders, investors, small-business owners, regulators, and media professionals. Rather than focusing on headline valuations or fundraising milestones, the series promises to examine less visible dynamics: how institutions are built, how cross-border capital is structured, and how local realities shape scaling strategies.
For TechCabal, the collaboration extends its editorial push into deeper ecosystem analysis aimed at policymakers, financiers, and global audiences. Alongside the podcast, the publication will release complementary insights unpacking themes from each episode.
“We have always believed that rigorous storytelling about African markets is not a soft exercise,” said Ganiu Oloruntade, TechCabal’s Newsroom Editor. “It shapes how capital moves, how policy gets made, and how founders are perceived when they walk into rooms. This partnership lets us go deeper than a news cycle allows.”
The framing of the project as “public-good communication infrastructure” signals ambition to influence not just perception, but decision-making. If successful, the series could help bridge the information asymmetry that continues to define Africa’s engagement with global capital.
Still, the premise invites scrutiny. Narrative alone cannot resolve structural barriers such as currency volatility, regulatory fragmentation, or limited exit opportunities, factors that investors routinely cite as constraints. Whether improved storytelling can materially shift capital allocation remains an open question.
What is clearer is that Africa’s founders and fund managers are increasingly seeking to control how their markets are understood.
Voices & Visions will be available on major streaming and social media platforms at launch, including Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
