Building for the next billion

New markets,
without the leap

I take companies into markets they do not yet understand, and prove whether the opportunity is real before anyone commits serious capital. Small, fast, structured steps rather than one expensive bet. Twenty-five years of building and running businesses in exactly these markets, applied to yours.

Start with the assessment Book a free introduction call The Waypoint Method
Shaun Morgan in Nairobi
Shaun Morgan Founder & CEO, Konnekt Digital Networks Former ExCo member, KOKO Networks 20+ African markets Based in Kenya
0
African markets
worked in and deployed to
15
Years living and
operating in Africa
6
Sectors built
and launched in
5
Businesses and business lines
built from zero
2
Working languages
English and French

Introduction

Two minutes on how I work

Why models built elsewhere fail here, and what it takes to build something that does not.

Video poster

Start here

What do you need?

Pick the closest fit and I will show you how I would approach it.

Entry strategy, then execution on the ground

Most entry plans fail on the second question, not the first. I start with what the market will actually pay, how it pays, and who already owns distribution, then design an operating and compliance structure that survives it. I can run the pilot myself rather than hand you a plan.

Country prioritisationRegulatory and licensingPilot designAnchor: in-market representation
Expansion without replicating the cost basePayments at group scale
Talk about this

The opportunity

The growth markets of the next thirty years are African

Hover or tap any figure for the detail. The growth markets of the next thirty years are African. Not as a moral argument, as a demographic and commercial one. The consumers, the workers and the transaction volume are moving, and most companies have no working knowledge of where they are moving to.

Sources · UN World Population Prospects · ISS African Futures · UN DESA World Urbanization Prospects · World Bank · GSMA Mobile Economy Africa · GSMA State of the Industry, mobile money · UNCTAD World Investment Report · World Bank on the AfCFTA · African Union

Tap any country for its numbers.
English · 20French · 18Portuguese · 6Arabic · 8Other · 2

Fifty-four countries, five regions, four working languages

Most plans for “Africa” are written as though it were one place. It is fifty-four sovereign countries, each with its own regulator, currency, tax regime, customs authority and consumer reality, spread across five regions that trade more with the rest of the world than with each other.

Language alone reshapes an entry plan. Twenty countries work in English, eighteen in French, six in Portuguese and eight in Arabic. A go-to-market built in Nairobi does not travel to Abidjan without being rewritten, and the partner who can open doors in Lagos is rarely the one who can open them in Dakar.

This is the argument for going country by country rather than continent-wide, and the reason a shortlist of two or three markets beats a strategy for all of them.

Population and median age: UN World Population Prospects. GDP, GDP per capita and growth: IMF and World Bank estimates. Rounded, latest available year. Growth is omitted where conflict makes an estimate unreliable. 2030 figures are compounded from current rates, not a forecast.

Fifty-four answers, not one

Companies rarely decline these markets on the numbers. They decline them because nobody in the building has been there, the information is thin and contradictory, and the only options on the table look like a full country entry or nothing. Most developed economies trade less with the whole continent than they do with a single mid-sized neighbour, and it is unfamiliarity rather than economics that keeps it that way.

And because the continent is 54 different regulatory regimes, currencies, languages and consumer realities, generic research answers almost nothing worth acting on.

Which is a solvable problem

Exploration does not have to be expensive. It has to be structured, sequenced and run by someone who already knows the ground, so each step costs little, answers a real question, and earns the right to the next one. Move faster, learn quicker, risk less.

Field notes

Ground level

Those nine numbers tell you the market is large. They stop exactly where the work starts. These markets are not thinly researched by accident: the data does not reach the street, the household or the shop. Understanding them, then designing and building for them cost-efficiently enough to be commercially viable, is a different discipline. These were taken while doing it.

Fibre build, Kenya
Fibre build, KenyaA different kind of broadband network, built for the five million unserved households in Kenya’s low-income urban mass market, who are currently shut out of the digital world. Designed from the ground up around a very different customer, and built metre by metre ourselves to control quality and unit economics. Customers and communities won on trust rather than marketing. Together that makes a commercially viable and sustainable model, one that can scale and replicate across emerging markets.
Acquisition at the last mile
Acquisition at the last mileCustomers here are won in person, by someone from the same street. Community-led acquisition is not a nice idea about inclusion; it is the only channel with a cost per customer the model can carry.
A shopper holding a contactless card at a community shop
Merchant payments, integratedThe card in her hand pays for the basket. FMCG retail and contactless merchant payments built as one system rather than two, so the shop takes the payment and the supplier sees the sale in the same transaction.
FMCG retail, KOKO Club
FMCG retail for the mass marketA retail business I built inside KOKO, reaching mass-market consumers through the small community shops that already serve them. It opened a new route to market for manufacturers and delivered meaningful savings at household level, where a few shillings on a weekly basket actually matters. Researched, designed, built, tested and scaled end to end.
Biometric enrolment in northern Kenya
Registered for the first timeBiometric enrolment in northern Kenya. These are people who appear in no database, no credit file and no market study. The data does not run out at the border. It runs out here.
Paying by phone at an MTN Mobile Money terminal in Abidjan
Francophone West AfricaA phone tapped against an operator-branded terminal in Abidjan, settling in CFA. The rails already exist and people already trust them. They are simply not the rails your product was built for.

None of this was in the data. That is the argument for going and looking before you commit: not that the research is wrong, but that it runs out at the point where the decisions begin. How the thing gets designed, what it costs to build, what the customer will actually pay, and whether the numbers still work at the fourth street rather than the first.

The Waypoint Method

Four waypoints, each one small enough to stop at

A waypoint is a fixed point you confirm your position at before committing to the next leg, and a point you can turn back from. Every one ends in a decision, not a deliverable you file. You can walk away at any point having spent a fraction of a full entry and learned a great deal. Timings are indicative and depend on the market, the sector and how much regulatory ground has to be covered.

Orient: is there anything here at all?

Desk work plus my own market knowledge, aimed at killing weak options cheaply. We narrow a region to two or three candidate markets and write down what would have to be true for this to work.

  • Market and country prioritisation against your criteria
  • Demand hypothesis and who the customer actually is
  • Regulatory, licensing and entity requirements at a first-pass level
  • Channel and competitor map: who already owns distribution
  • The three assumptions that decide it

What you get

A short options paper your board can read in ten minutes, with a recommended shortlist and the questions that only fieldwork can answer.

Decision: which one or two markets are worth putting a person on a plane for.

Runs alongside any waypoint

Anchor: in-market representation

You do not need an entity, an office or a country manager to be present in a market. For companies testing the water, or already selling but with nobody on the ground, I can act as your representation in market.

It is the cheapest way to be real to a partner, a regulator or a customer who wants to know there is somebody they can meet.

What that covers

  • Attending meetings, trade events and conferences on your behalf
  • Being the local point of contact for partners, distributors and regulators
  • Managing and progressing a pipeline between your visits
  • Chasing and closing what stalls when everyone is in another time zone
  • Overseeing local suppliers, agencies and contractors
  • Reporting back on what is actually happening, weekly rather than quarterly
Meeting at the Central Bank of Sierra LeoneCentral Bank of Sierra Leone · Regulator engagement

In your market, not mine

Bridge: in-person with your team, at home

Not everything gets solved on the ground in Nairobi or Lagos. Some of it has to be solved in your building, with the people who will actually run this, the ones who control the budget, and the executives who need to believe it before they fund it.

I travel to you. Australia, Europe, Southeast Asia or North America, for a week or a series of visits, closing the gap between what your team knows and what the market will require of them.

It runs both ways. When your team, board or investors come out, I host them here: market immersion, partner and regulator meetings, and the due diligence visits where a model either survives contact with a street kiosk or it does not.

What that looks like

  • Working sessions with commercial, product and operations teams
  • Board and investment committee briefings, in the room
  • Market immersion for people who have never operated there
  • Playbooks and documentation, so the context stays after I leave
  • Interview and hiring support for in-market roles
  • Pre-travel preparation before your team goes out for the first time
  • Hosting your team, board or investors on in-market and due diligence visits
Working session with a commercial teamWorking session with a commercial team
An investor team testing mobile money at a street kiosk in AccraInvestor due diligence, in market

Work products

What you actually receive

Typical deliverables across the arc, from a first look at a market to a business running in it.

Explore and decide

  • Market scan and prioritisationCandidate markets ranked against your own criteria, with the reasoning shown.
  • Opportunity sizingAddressable demand built from the ground up, not top-down percentages.
  • Regulatory and licensing briefWhat you need, who grants it, how long it takes and what it costs.
  • Channel and competitor mapWho already owns distribution and what it would take to work with or around them.
  • Entry options paperOrganic, partner, licence, joint venture or acquisition, with trade-offs priced.
  • Board and investment committee packThe case, the risks and the ask, in the format your board already reads.

Validate and test

  • In-market research programmeCustomer, channel and field research designed and run in country.
  • Pricing and willingness to payTested against how customers genuinely earn and spend.
  • Unit economics modelRebuilt from first principles with payback and sensitivity analysis.
  • Partner shortlist and introductionsNamed candidates, assessed, with warm introductions where I have them.
  • Commercial due diligence reportTraction, distribution and management claims validated on the ground.
  • Pilot designScope, success and kill criteria, budget and instrumentation.

Build and scale

  • Entity, licensing and compliance setupStructured and executed, not just advised on.
  • Go-to-market plan and launchPositioning, channel, pricing and collections, taken live.
  • Rollout sequencing planTerritory by territory, capital following proof.
  • Partnership structuring and negotiationTerm sheets through to signature.
  • Capital raising supportEquity, grant and DFI engagement, materials and process.
  • 90-day execution plan and handoverOperating rhythm, hiring plan and a clean transfer to your team.
  • Anchor: ongoing representationYour named presence on the ground between visits, reporting weekly.
  • Bridge: team workshops and briefingsIn-person sessions in your market for the team, the board and new hires.
  • Market playbook and handover documentationSo the context lives in your organisation rather than in my head.

Capture and communicate

  • Field film and photographyResearch captured on camera in market, not summarised second hand.
  • Market and opportunity filmsShort films that put a board or investment committee inside the market.
  • Customer and partner storiesFilmed evidence of demand, use and objections, in people's own words.
  • Case studies and publicationsWritten and designed material for sales, tender and stakeholder use.
  • Launch and sales collateralPositioning, messaging and assets built for the market, not translated into it.
  • Conference and keynote materialSpeaking assets and content for industry events and investor days.

Who I work with

Five situations I am usually called into

Different starting points, same underlying problem: a market that matters and nobody in the building who knows it first hand.

The mid-market company with a product that travels

Typically $20m to $500m revenue · Australia, Europe or North America · Industrial, agtech, medtech, software, consumer goods · No African presence

You have a product that works, margins that hold, and a domestic market that is running out of room. Africa keeps coming up in board papers and nobody can say anything useful about it. The last three attempts to look into it produced consultant decks that all said the opportunity was large and none of which told you what to do on Monday.

Where we would start: Stage one. Two to four weeks, two or three candidate markets, and a decision about whether anyone gets on a plane.

What it usually sounds like

“We think there is something there, but we do not know enough to know.”

Sound familiar? Get in touch

Where I am not the right fit

  • You want a research report to file rather than a decision to make
  • You need a guaranteed market entry on a fixed date
  • Nobody on your side will travel or take a call outside your time zone
  • The decision is already made and you want it validated
  • You are looking for the cheapest possible desk research
  • The market is one I have no history in and cannot honestly claim to know

Ground Truth · Free assessment

Ground Truth: how ready are you, really?

Ground truth is the term for what you only learn by going and checking. Eight pillars and fifty checks, drawn from the assessment I run with clients, plus three questions about where you actually are. Twelve minutes, scored as you go. You will see where you stand on screen, and can take away the full written assessment along with two documents written for internal circulation. Finishing it also opens the booking link for a free introduction call.

Free introduction calls follow the assessment. I keep a limited number of engagements, so calls are for people who have done the twelve minutes of thinking first. Finish this and the booking link opens at the end.

Before you start

Fifty checks across eight pillars

First, three questions about your situation so the result points at the right service. Then score each statement from 1 to 5 for how true it is of your business in the market you are considering. Be honest rather than generous: a low score is a finding, not a failure. Nothing is stored or sent unless you choose to request the written report at the end.

Around twelve minutes

Selected work

Built, not advised on

Four mandates that show the method. Open any one for the detail.

Context
Roughly 5 million unconnected households in Kenya, needing a network that is both genuinely affordable and high quality.
Approach
Business model innovation: demand-led rollout, prepaid and micro-transaction pricing built to daily and weekly income patterns, community-led acquisition.
Outcome
Best-in-class unit economics with sub-12-month payback per build, and capital raised to accelerate scale on economics already proven.
Context
A climate technology business underwritten by carbon credits, seeking international growth.
Approach
Brought in to lead international expansion and design a multi-market licensing and franchise model alongside the Founder and CEO.
Outcome
A route into new markets for a capital-intensive, infrastructure-led business without rebuilding its full cost base each time.
Context
Deployed fuel ATM hardware and a mature last-mile distribution network already in the ground.
Approach
Founded and led Digital Innovation within KOKO Labs, building adjacent businesses on assets the group already owned.
Outcome
An advertising network across 3,000 in-store screens, and KOKO Club, an FMCG retail business reaching mass-market consumers through the small community shops that already serve them, connecting suppliers and manufacturers directly to consumers.
Context
Selling mobile payments and digital financial services into operators, banks and PSPs.
Approach
Group-level partnerships with major multi-country telecom operators, including MTN, Airtel and Orange, paired with local market OpCo implementation and go-to-market in each territory.
Outcome
Large-scale deployments live across African markets and into Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia.

How I work

Eight principles

The rules I apply whether the mandate is a two-month look at a market or a two-year build.

De-risk before you commit

Research, pilots and product testing come before capital, not after it. Find out what is wrong while it is still cheap to be wrong.

Every stage earns the next

Small, sequenced steps, each ending in a decision. Stopping after stage one having learned the market is not for you is a good outcome, not a failed project.

There is no African market

Fifty-four countries, each with its own regulator, currency, channel and customer. Answers are built country by country from the ground up, never extrapolated across a continent.

Design for actual cash flow

Not the customer a spreadsheet assumes. Pricing, packaging and collections built around how people genuinely earn and spend.

Payback is the strategy

Capital in these markets is scarce and expensive, so unit economics decide how far each dollar goes. Payback shapes rollout sequencing, pricing and product.

Go and see, then show them

Nothing replaces being in the market. I bring the evidence back in a form your board can see for itself, rather than a summary they have to take on trust.

A small number of clients at a time

I take on a limited number of engagements so that each one gets real attention rather than a share of it. If I am full, I will tell you, and tell you when I am not.

A team behind me when scale is needed

For work that outgrows one person, I bring in a network of researchers, field teams, film crews, legal and technical specialists I have worked with for years across these markets. You deal with me throughout.

Capability areas

Where I am deployed

Market entry & expansion

Country prioritisation, entry strategy, operating and compliance structure, in-market execution.

Licensing & franchise models

Multi-market licensing and franchise architecture for asset-heavy platforms seeking capital-light expansion.

Structured deals & partnerships

Group-level partnerships paired with local market OpCo implementation and go-to-market.

Capital raising & deployment

Equity and grant funding, investor engagement, round structuring, territory-based allocation.

DFI & institutional engagement

Ongoing engagement with development finance institutions and strategic corporate funders.

Shareholder transactions

Management buyouts, shareholder exits and cap table restructuring, led from the principal side.

Diagnostics & turnaround

Unit economics rebuild, margin and burn analysis, capital efficiency, rollout sequencing.

Business model innovation

Adjacent revenue lines built on existing infrastructure, distribution and customer bases.

End-to-end delivery

Research, design, strategy, technology development and operationalisation.

Validation & de-risking

First-principles research, pilot design and product testing grounded in Human-Centred Design.

Team building & multi-country leadership

Commercial, innovation and distributed teams across markets, embedded alongside founders.

Commercial due diligence

On-the-ground validation of traction, unit economics, distribution and management claims.

Anchor: in-market representation

Your named presence in market: partners, regulators, pipeline and suppliers, held between your visits.

Audio-visual research & storytelling

Field research captured on film and in photography, turned into material that moves a board or a regulator.

Bridge: in-person with your team

Workshops, board briefings and market immersion in your own market, with playbooks so the knowledge stays.

Sector coverage

Telecommunications & connectivity
Climate technology
Fintech & payments
FMCG retail & eCommerce
Media & content
Digital advertising
Secure identity
Mass population solutions

Geographic coverage

Twenty-plus African markets, and Southeast Asia

Sector
NairobiAbidjanJohannesburgCape TownParisAustraliaIndonesia
Markets worked in and deployed toPrior experience
Hover or tap a market to see where and what.
East AfricaKenya · Rwanda · UgandaWest AfricaBenin · Burkina Faso · Côte d'Ivoire · Ghana · Mali · Mauritania · Nigeria · Senegal · Sierra LeoneCentral AfricaCameroon · DR CongoSouthern AfricaMozambique · Namibia · South Africa · Zambia · ZimbabweNorth AfricaMorocco · TunisiaSoutheast AsiaIndonesia

Writing

Posts and articles

Notes from operating in these markets rather than commentary about them. Filter by topic.

Measurement

The next billion internet users will break today's measures of success

The metrics the industry runs on were built for markets that are already connected. What happens to them when the next billion users arrive on entirely different terms.

Read the piece
Capital

Why capital alone will not win the new frontier of mass-market home connectivity

Funding is not the constraint people assume it is. Winning the mass market takes a model that works at the price the market can actually pay.

Read the piece
Mass market

The digital water crisis: why rationed data is failing millions

Buying connectivity in small, rationed increments shapes behaviour in ways the industry rarely accounts for, and it holds people back from the thing they went online for.

Read the piece
Mass market

Digital calories: the hidden hunger in our connected world

Access is not the same as nourishment. What people can actually do with the connectivity they have, and why the gap matters commercially as well as socially.

Read the piece
Adoption

Trust: the great barrier to digital adoption in fast-growing economies

Adoption in these markets turns on trust more than price or product. Where that trust is earned, and how quickly it can be lost.

Read the piece
Kenya

Why Kenya's digital future needs new models, not just more of the same

Kenya is held up as a digital success story. The households still outside it will not be reached by extending what already exists.

Read the piece
Kenya

Kenya's internet black market: when connectivity goes underground

Where licensed provision does not reach or does not fit, something else fills the gap. What the informal market tells you about demand and about regulation.

Read the piece
Leadership

The power of yes: how leaders can unlock the potential of people and culture

What changes in a team when the default answer shifts, and why that matters most in businesses trying to build something that has not existed before.

Read the piece
More on LinkedIn

About

An operator, not an observer

An operator with 15 years of building and scaling telecommunications, connectivity and digital services businesses across 20+ African markets and Southeast Asia.

Most people advising on emerging markets have analysed them. I have carried the P&L, building a fully licensed, regulated infrastructure business from zero in Kenya, where debt is expensive, the currency moves against you and customers pay in daily increments.

Currently Founder & CEO of Konnekt Digital Networks, a fully licensed fibre network operator, ISP and digital services company serving low-income urban households in Kenya. Previously an Executive Committee member at KOKO Networks, a climate technology business, brought in to lead international expansion and build the group's multi-market licensing and franchise model alongside the Founder & CEO, then founded and led Digital Innovation within KOKO Labs. Earlier, EVP Global Sales at Youtap, leading mobile payments deployments across Africa and Southeast Asia.

Emerging markets rarely fail on demand. They fail on misapplied models. These economies scale when connectivity, payments, content and commerce are designed as one ecosystem, and when expansion is de-risked before it is scaled.

Shaun Morgan in front of a map of Africa, 2011
2011
Where it started

Fifteen years ago, in front of a paper map, about to work on national identity programmes across West and North Africa. Everything since has been the same argument in different sectors: the model has to be built for the market, not adapted to it.

Konnekt Digital NetworksFounder & CEO
Building a fully licensed fibre network operator, ISP and digital services company from zero in Kenya. Where the payback discipline, the pricing built to daily income, and the regulatory scar tissue come from.Telecoms & connectivity · Fintech & payments · Media & content
KOKO NetworksExCo member · Head of Digital Innovation, KOKO Labs · VP Corporate Development
Brought in to lead international expansion and design a multi-market licensing and franchise model. Then founded and led Digital Innovation, building adjacent businesses on assets the group already owned.Climate technology · Telecoms · Fintech & payments · FMCG retail & eCommerce · Digital advertising
YoutapEVP Global Sales · EVP Sales & Marketing Africa
Group-level partnerships with major multi-country telecom operators, including MTN, Airtel and Orange, paired with local OpCo implementation across African markets and into Indonesia. Where the multi-country commercial playbook comes from.Fintech & payments · Telecoms · Digital banking
Safran MorphoConsultant, Africa & Middle East
Multi-country tender responses and in-country field research across East, West and North Africa, documented as films and publications. Where the audio-visual method comes from.Secure identity · Mass population solutions · Government technology
Paint The SkyFounder & Managing Partner
A strategic communications and content consultancy run across Sydney, Paris and Nairobi. Where the storytelling and production capability comes from.Media & content · Digital advertising · Corporate & social impact
Fairfax Media & Nine NetworkManager, Fairfax 360 · Commercial and strategy roles
Founded and led a new integrated media unit inside a listed group, delivering 135% average annual revenue growth with a 15-plus person team. Where building a business inside a business comes from.Media & content · Digital advertising · Publishing & broadcast

Education

MBA, International Management & Strategy. Macquarie University Graduate School of Business, Sydney and ESSEC Business School, Paris. Master's thesis on doing business in China, including field-based research in-country.

Certification

IDEO U: Advanced Design Thinking, Insights for Innovation, Storytelling for Influence, Unlocking Creativity.

Industry leadership

Regular speaker at leading industry conferences including ITW Africa and Africa Tech Festival, on digital infrastructure, connectivity and market expansion in emerging economies.

Shaun Morgan speaking at ITW AfricaITW Africa

Languages

English (native). French (professional working).

Contact

Start a conversation

Free introduction calls follow the assessment

I take on a limited number of engagements, so the free call is reserved for people who have spent twelve minutes working out where they actually stand. It also makes the conversation far more useful: I arrive knowing your situation rather than asking you to describe it.

Take the assessment first Eight pillars · Fifty checks · Around twelve minutes
Your written report is yours to keep either way

Book a free introduction call

Thirty minutes. Tell me what you are trying to do and where, and I will give you a straight view on whether I am the right person and what a first piece of work could look like. If I am not the right fit, I will say so and tell you what to look for instead.

Book a free introduction call Thirty minutes · Free · No obligation · I work around your time zone

Or send a message instead

Tell me what you are trying to do and where. I will reply with a view on whether I am the right person, and what a first piece of work could look like.

shaun@shaun-morgan.com
www.shaun-morgan.com
linkedin.com/in/shaunrmorgan
+254 724 623 547 · Kenya
+61 406 898 510 · Australia
Shaun Morgan surfing with a young surfer

Outside the work: proud father to two children, community volunteer establishing Kenya's first surf lifesaving club, and currently coaching my son with the goal of him representing Kenya in surfing at the 2032 Olympics.