There is one company I want to introduce to you today. It is named Stance. It makes socks. Yes, socks, the wear you use for your shoes. The startup is hot, raising $110 million from legendary venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, August Capital, and Shasta Ventures. Yes, Silicon Valley wants to disrupt the socks sector, a highly low-scale and dreamy sector. But as it seems, that is where the money could be found.

Venture capitalists like the company, too. Pedigreed investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, August Capital, Shasta Ventures and others from Silicon Valley, have put $110 million in the sock business. “No one had thought about this category,” says Tod Francis, co-founder of Shasta Ventures. Trudeau, who attracted attention in May for a different pair of Star Wars socks made by Stance, is a fan but not an investor.

Sales should exceed $100 million this year, and it’s looking to turn a profit next year, according to two people with knowledge of the finances, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Stance says it has spent more than half of the money it raised from investors. The company may need to tap more capital as it expands beyond men’s socks and underwear. Women’s lingerie debuts this month, and subscriptions for regular shipments of its products are also in the works.

Find the Ideas

It is crazy out there with all the talks of digital disruptions they are throwing on Africa’s offline industries. The web entrepreneurs will magically grow from one customer and take 30% of the total market. Yes, you can use your app to onboard 16 million bank customers in three years when it took you 123 years to get 14 million customers.

Sure, there are millions of people in Africa. You can get a digital business to take your percentage. Give him 10% of the 1.2 billion people and he will smile to the Forbes billionaire party. But what if I tell you that the person with that projection is wrong? Except blogging, which is a digital native business (even that could need offline sales efforts), I will recommend you get build an OFFLINE Growth team even if you run a digital/web business in our continent.

That is how it will be till 2022, at least. The money is still offline and I want us to respect that.  You also need to understand that the people are still offline. Every data from Konga to Uber to PrepClass and more will tell you just that. These are hard numbers from people pushing the envelopes. I explain in this video.

My prediction of 2022 is explained in this piece.

In today’s videocast, I make a case that Africa will enter the era of affordable broadband internet in 2022. That will be the year we will begin a new dawn of immersive connectivity where you can eat and surf all you can. Industry players will take off the Internet meter and then focus on service, experience and quality. From satellite broadband vendors to the MNCs with balloons and drones, the sector will become very competitive and service will drive growth. This has happened in the past – every decade, Africa experiences a major industrial transformation. We saw that in banking and voice telephony. 2020s, starting at 2022, will be the decade of immersive connectivity.

The “world class” multi-billion Naira hospital built and commissioned by former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, has been closed. Everyone knows that the hospital was never a world class since when the former governor had a minor accident, he decided to fly abroad instead of being treated in his “world class” hospital. Simply, he had executed another fraud which politicians unleash on Nigerian citizens daily.

The Ibom Specialist Hospital in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, has been shut down, just two years after it was built and commissioned by the administration of former governor, Godswill Akpabio. Almost all the health workers in the hospital were foreigners, mostly from India.

Mr. Akpabio had boasted that the hospital, which he described as ‘world class’, was better equipped and higher in status than university teaching hospitals in Nigeria, and that it was going to promote medical tourism in the country.

The multi-million dollar hospital was shut down in September after its private managers terminated their contract with the state government and withdrew from the facility.

When visiting the hospital on Monday evening, the facility was locked down; apart from the security officials, not a single person was inside its massive buildings.

Visitors were not allowed entry

You read it right. A governor built a public hospital, imported foreigners and put that hospital in the hands of private managers to run. Why did he do that? It is simply the lack of vision to develop indigenous capabilities. Nigerian leaders always think that every corner can be cut: just get someone abroad and the problem will be fixed. But that is a mirage and a total illusion. Hiring and maintaining foreign labor is expensive and it rarely works unless you are in the oil & gas sector. For a state hospital which is largely a social enterprise, a simple financial model would have shown the former governor that his idea was not sustainable.

Unless you are a doctor working in a government hospital and running a private clinic by the side, it is very challenging to make profit running clinics and hospitals in Nigeria. Why those doctors that run clinics by the side make money is that they always share government facilities and tools without reimbursing governments. I had the experience many years ago as I was entering secondary school. I went to the local government general hospital for my Doctor’s Report which was required in the school. The medical director told me that I should come to his house to collect the report. Of course, as a kid, I did and he gave me the report. I did pay him and not the government. Every kid in my school had the same experience. We went to the government clinic but were diverted to the home of the medical director. That experience is common today.

But when it is a state government and you think you will make money to cover dollar-denominated expenses, you are not serious. The hospital could not even last up to five years, thereby proving how off the government was in its financial planning.

The building, in coming months, will be covered by weeds and criminals would go in and steal the electrical systems. Within the next two years, the building will be a cave. Another money – N41 billion – wasted in Nigeria!

Nigeria needs to learn that homegrown capability is the only way to build sustainable public enterprises. Imagine if the governor had developed a ten year plan that would extend beyond his tenure and subsequent administrations commit to it. He could decide to train 200 Akwa Ibom doctors within the first six years and in the 7th year commission this hospital. Some foreigners could be hired to support the growth of the local doctors, but over time, they will be phased out. That would be a sustainable model than flying doctors when you do not have a clear roadmap to cover the costs.

Facebook is doing great. But in the next fifteen years, if Facebook does not evolve into a real-identity social media, it will struggle. As banking, insurance and more services move social, we will need social commerce. That social commerce will be anchored on real identities. Facebook does not have that today. Anyone can create a Facebook account without the real authenticity as maintained by government.

This assertion goes beyond government efforts to track its citizens. As China modifies its laws to demand that users of social media sites use their real names before they can be on registered, with posting/commentary privileges, on websites, phone apps and digital forums, other countries will pick that and adopt the philosophy. In Africa, Cameroon may prefer that over shutting down Internet. Eritrea and Sudan may join easily, telling citizens to use their real-identities on social media.

Starting Sunday, backstage real-name registration is a must for all Chinese Internet users before they can post comments on platforms in China.

Without registering their real identities in the background, previously registered users cannot post anything, including replies to posts, on Chinese platforms, said the circular released by the Cyberspace Administration of China on September 7.

Users, however, do not have to reveal their real identities on the frontstage of the platforms.

‘‘Such rules will apply to all websites, phone applications, interactive public platforms and any other communication platform that features public opinion on news or with the nature to mobilize the society,” stipulates the circular.

Screen bullets, or known as danmu in Chinese, together with other forms of posts that include such things as emojis and pictures also fall into the regulation scope, as explicitly stipulated in the circular.

The new law is simple: you can be on social media with a fake identity but you cannot have a voice unless you are real. By demanding this, fake news will be managed and decency online will be enforced. Of course, government will be watching. But they are already watching.

Outside China

Initially, this will be a very hard business model to execute outside China. But what I do believe is that some Chinese companies will perfect this and when they do, they will export the ideas to the world. These firms will work to find value in everyone using real identities online. If China makes it easier for people to get services online seamlessly, some will forget the privacy issues and go real in other countries. Over time, more people will register with their real identities. I do believe that as social media matures, there will be a convergence between online persona and the real persona of users. China could be providing a solid case with the new law to test how this will work at scale. Using real-identities online will unlock more opportunities and seed a new business model across many industrial sectors. No one knows but China will offer a case study in coming years.

All Together

I do not think this real-identity social media will work in Africa at the moment. So, there is no need wasting resources pursuing it. My recommendation will be to monitor how the new law in China is utilized not just by the government but by companies. If a social media account can be used seamlessly to provide insurance, it means that “Twitter” handle can become a trusted identity since that is tied to government records. The use of real identities online has a promise but no one knows the full implications.

Is there a collective power that once you take a loan, you may be worried that if you do not pay, your social networks will know because your social media account is tied to that loan? Can companies create products that will appeal to you based on that social connection? It is too early to ascertain all the possibilities but if we run the meatspace (i.e. offline) with real identities, I do think in the near future, internet and social media will need to be managed with real identities. Doing that may not necessarily be bad, if the government element is taken out. Businesses will find more opportunities to provide services right in the places where customers are spending time.

There is no problem in electricity, road construction, transportation or agriculture that someone has not thought about in Africa. From our universities to our research institutes, we have inventions (yes, ideas) for most of the challenges. But despite these inventions, we do not have the products as we continue to experience poor electricity supply, poor roads, poor transportation networks, etc. If you visit food and drinking joints across most African cities, you will be amazed on ideas emanating from people on how to fix our challenges. Indeed, our continent is rich in invention. We are creative.

However, Africa struggles on innovation. That transition from invention to innovation remains our weakest link. We have the idea on how to pipe water from the ground in the Savannah for people to drink. Yet, we do not do it as people continue to struggle with clean water. We have the idea on how to provide the electricity. Yet, it has not been done. So ideas everywhere, but we struggle on product scarcity.

There is a fundamental reason why we have ideas everywhere but people cannot find products to buy. We are inventive but we are not innovative. In this video, I explain how we can change that by looking at more than 500 years of data on the acceleration of human capability to transition from inventive societies into innovative societies in the Western World. I also provide a key enabler that made that transition possible.

I am revisiting this topic as I continue to struggle on our readiness on building the core pillars to accelerate innovation as I did note in my new book – Africa’s Sankofa Innovation.

There are things which you cannot leapfrog, but you can create new basis of engagement. That you are sending drugs with drones to villagers does not mean that we do not need roads for farmers. That you are using mobile apps to bank does not mean that banks should not have rural branches to support farmers and traders on their financial strategies. By trivializing our deficiencies through the ephemeral modern technologies, we lose the capabilities to architect an enduring future for innovation.