At the Global Tech Advocates Summit in Istanbul last week, Tech London Advocates & Global Tech Advocates founder Russ Shaw CBE asked me what I mean when I talk about moving ‘from ecosystem to economy’.
It is the theme of our next Tech in Ghana conference, but it was not created simply as an event theme. It reflects what we have been seeing and discussing across the market.
When I launched Tech in Ghana in 2017, Ghana was often missing from the wider conversation about African technology. Founders wanted access to capital. Investors wanted a clearer view of the companies being built. The government and private sector were not always part of the same conversations.
The immediate aim of Tech in Ghana was to create more visibility and connection: making the market easier to see, bringing its different parts into the same room and giving Ghanaian innovation a stronger platform at home and internationally.
Nine years on, as we prepare for our 18th edition, the question is no longer whether we have an active ecosystem. It is whether the structures around that activity are strong enough to carry it further.
That includes capital. We spend a lot of time talking about making founders ready for investment. We also need to think about what makes Ghana legible to capital in the first place: credible market intelligence, regulatory confidence, greater participation from local investors and clearer routes into regional and international markets.
It includes the relationship between industry and regulation. One of the most important changes I have seen is the closer engagement between innovators, industry and regulators. That relationship is still developing, but conversations are happening earlier, with a greater understanding that new markets need to be built together.
It also includes how we use international networks. Their value is not simply in their size or reach. It is in whether those relationships become practical routes between markets.
For Ghana, that should mean founders and businesses can reach knowledge, capital, customers and partners elsewhere through people who understand the context. It should also mean international companies and investors entering Ghana do so with better information and credible local relationships.
The relationships must work both ways. Ghana has experience, market intelligence and more to export, not simply opportunities to receive.
This is the thinking behind the next phase of our work. Tech in Ghana remains an important place for the market to meet, but two conferences a year cannot carry the whole job. The Tech in Ghana Exchange extends learning and professional development beyond the event. Tech Ghana Advocates strengthens our international and diaspora routes. Our research and intelligence work with partners such as GSMA Intelligence is designed to make the market easier to understand and navigate.
None of this is being shaped by me in isolation. It is being informed by the founders, investors, regulators, policymakers, corporates, hubs and partners we work with throughout the year. The agenda taking shape for November is already showing how closely connected these areas are.
For founders, the next phase has to offer more than another opportunity to pitch. For investors, more than deal flow without sufficient context. For policymakers and regulators, more than responding after the market has moved. For corporates, more than sponsorship from the edge of the ecosystem.
From ecosystem to economy is, in practical terms, the work around innovation: how it is financed, governed, understood, connected to markets and allowed to endure.
It does not replace the ecosystem work that brought us here. It describes the work now in front of us.
We will be taking that conversation further at Tech in Ghana in Accra on 24 & 25 November.