About
The continent is not short of talent. It is short of proof.
Every founder here has been told the same thing: that what they are trying has not been done, and cannot be. AfriCAN Do! exists because it has been done, repeatedly, by people whose names deserve to be known — and because a founder is far more likely to attempt something after watching someone recognisably like them do it first.
The show is a long-form conversation with an African entrepreneur about the business they actually built — what it cost, what nearly ended it, and what they would tell someone starting now.
35 founders have sat in that chair so far, across agribusiness, manufacturing, finance, media, property, health, technology and public service. Their businesses are listed in the Marketplace so that watching an episode can turn into custom, a supplier, or a hire — attention that ends when the video does is not much use to anyone.
It is a programme of Branded Restaurants & Retail Africa Ltd, whose own work is building and operating brands across the continent. The show came out of that: the same questions kept coming up in private, and the answers were too useful to leave in the room.
How we make it
Three commitments, and the show lives or dies by them.
Authentic
The founder speaks for themselves. We do not smooth an origin story into something tidier than it was, and we do not cut the part where it nearly did not work.
Contextual
Built here, under the conditions that actually exist here. Capital that is expensive, infrastructure that is uneven, regulation that moves. Advice imported from elsewhere tends to skip the hardest part.
Often uncomfortable
The questions a founder would rather not be asked are usually the ones another founder most needs answered. We ask them, and we leave the answer in.
The host
Leonard Mudachi
Leonard Mudachi is the host & curator of AfriCAN Do! and leads BRRAL, an operator rather than a commentator — which is why the questions land where they do.
The Inner Circle grew out of the same instinct: guests kept wanting to meet each other, and a podcast is a poor venue for that. It is now a room where the people who have been through it meet the people currently in it.