Institutions do not start big

Feb 02, 2026

One of the most common questions I hear is,
“How big is this going to be?”

It’s the wrong question.

The better question is: Is it aligned enough to grow at all?

Most institutions don’t fail because they lacked ambition. They fail because the early assumptions were never tested - values left implicit, roles blurred, incentives misread, governance postponed “until later.”

Later rarely comes.

In the early stages of building The African Federation, we resisted the urge to sound expansive. There was pressure to lead with scale - countries, numbers, timelines. But scale without alignment is not growth. It’s fragmentation waiting to happen. So we slowed down.

We asked uncomfortable questions early:

• Who decides, and on what basis?

• What happens when we disagree?

• What are we willing not to do?

• Where does authority actually sit?

These aren’t glamorous conversations. They don’t fit neatly into launch decks. But they determine whether an institution becomes coherent - or collapses under its own rhetoric.

Alignment is not sameness. It’s shared understanding. It’s knowing why you’re here, what problem you’re solving, and which lines you won’t cross even when it would be easier to do so. It’s clarity on whether you’re building a platform, a movement, an organisation, or a federation - and not pretending you can be all four at once.

I’ve seen too many African initiatives expand outward before they’ve stabilised inward. Chapters without anchors. Programs without custodians. Language without operating systems.

Big institutions don’t begin with growth strategies.
They begin with discipline.

This year, much of my work is deliberately unexciting. Drafting frameworks. Clarifying roles. Fixing weak joints in structures that otherwise look impressive from a distance. That’s not hesitation. It’s respect for what we’re building. Because when alignment is done properly at the beginning, scale stops being a risk - and becomes a responsibility you’re actually prepared to carry.