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“Do you know Christine Namara?” Godfrey Mutabazi, the founder of Karaa, an e-mobility startup in Uganda, asked me around 2022. “No, I don’t. Why do you ask?” I replied. “She wrote the investment memo of my startup as part of Dream VC!” Mutabazi explained.
But this was the first time I had heard about Namara. I had been in venture capital for about two years and had built a strong database in my brain of people in venture capital, especially those in East Africa. But Namara was entirely unknown to me.
I was intrigued. For starters, Namara was a Ugandan and a woman. There weren’t many profiles like her in venture capital. I quickly searched for her on LinkedIn and perused her profile to see her work history. “Africa’s Talking, Sendy, and then Baobab Network (which I was also getting to know for the first time). “This is impressive, I thought to myself!”
Fast-forward a few years, Namara joined Flat6Labs as a partner for its $85m Africa Seed Fund. I knew how big Flat6Labs was in the MENA region, and I learned about its plan to launch an assault on the rest of Africa to replicate its success in MENA. And guess who was going to lead that assault? Christine Namara. Without a doubt, she was a true titan of the industry.
It was a brilliant conversation, and her sense of humour stood out. She came off as someone proud to walk into the door, get things done and challenge herself to tick off the next insurmountable mountain. But the lofty heights that Namara has hit in her career so far are a far cry from her beginnings where circumstances outside her control meant she was born hundreds of kilometres away from home, in a foreign capital.
Childhood and Education: Not Ugandan Enough, Not Kenyan Enough.
Uganda was an unpleasant place for well-educated citizens in the 1970s and 80s. The ruling class at the time was intolerant to those on the other side of the political divide, and thus exiles were common. This is how Namara’s dad ended up in Kenya where her mom was already working as a French teacher.
“I was born in Nairobi and had a good family growing up and I am still close to my siblings and parents. We were four children in total” Namara tells Nambi. Namara’s father was a lecturer at several universities in Kenya while her mother was a French teacher in a private school, St. Austin’s Academy, which turned out to be a blessing for Namara and her siblings.
“My mother being a teacher meant we attended the elite St. Austin’s Academy where she taught yet we wouldn’t ideally afford it in a million years. Even today, I can’t afford it. All of my siblings attended the same school. During the school term, we were in an elite school and then back to our reality in the holidays”.
Namara explains how this experience gave her an exposure she wouldn’t have got. “When you are in a wealthy school, you get to mingle with people outside your reality. During the holidays, kids would go to Spain or the UK for the break while I took 24-hour bus rides to my village in Ntungamo in Western Uganda. But this experience showed me a whole different world. I started dreaming bigger. Life’s goals weren’t about simply owning a bicycle. There were bigger possibilities out there.”
After high school, Namara decided to do an economics course at university. She settled for Economics and Management at Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono. It was the first time she was going to be living in Uganda full-time and her mother had also moved back to Uganda at that time.
“Coming back home, I thought I would just fit right back in. But I realised in Uganda, I was not Ugandan enough, yet in Kenya I was also not Kenyan enough.”
Namara graduated within three years (2009-2012) with a second-class upper degree. She enjoyed her first full share of being a Ugandan.
But she found some of the university experiences ridiculous. “We had a lecturer who declared on day one that if he gets to class before you, then you should not bother entering. The lectures used to start at 9:00 AM, so we would try to be in class by 8:30 AM as normal human beings would. But this particular lecturer would come to class at 7:00 AM, two hours before time! I wondered if he just hated us!”. Namara reflects with a smile.
Early Career: There Are No Prizes for Who Has Suffered the Most.
Before her last exams in university, Namara had started talking to her brother-in-law who knew a lady who had a company called Institute of Customer Service Kenya, that ran accelerator-like programs for businesses on various topics including customer service in Nairobi. Having lived in both Kenya and Uganda, she had grown to notice patterns in the difference between customer service in the two countries.
“In Kenya, businesses were big on customer service while in Uganda it was the opposite. You could order red wine at a restaurant in Uganda, and they would bring white wine. When you complain, a waitress would tell you to drink because it is just wine!”
For Namara, it was refreshing to see a lady whose sole focus was teaching businesses about customer service and providing certifications. “For some reason, I was passionate about customer service. My dissertation was about the impact of customer service on businesses. So after my last exam, I started working with the lady.”
Namara was the sole employee and thus did everything. “I was doing the reports, the accounting and at some point, I even built the website. I was also running board meetings, and writing minutes. It was wild”.
But this helped her to meet many entrepreneurs in Nairobi who undertook the customer service course. She also did some of the training for these entrepreneurs and this is where her love for founders was birthed. Doing so many things at the same time also helped her to understand what she liked, and what she didn’t like which helped in her career going forward.
Namara’s next stop was her first tech startup. It was an HR and Payroll software startup. “Through networking and meeting people, I was able to meet the CEO of the company. The company was simple, it was an Excel sheet with a fancy user interface. We worked with about 80% of the NGOs in Kenya at the time.”
Namara started as an account manager and got her first taste of what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated space. “The tech space at the time had very few women. When I used to go for meetings, I was always asked for my boss Mr Namara because surely, she couldn’t be a woman.” She moved from being an account manager to becoming the head of people at the company. After this experience, she joined Africa’s Talking in March 2016.
To join Africa’s Talking, Namara followed what had served her so well in her journey, networking. She had a few conversations with Africa’s Talking CEO who explained some of the challenges they were facing and Namara offered some solutions. She ended up with a job offer.
“I didn’t know the role or the salary, but I just arrived at the office on a Monday. This is where my attitude around earning and giving free services comes from. I am very happy to volunteer my time even now as long as I am building a relationship. It isn’t about what I can earn today, but more of what I can earn in the long term.”
The first role Namara remembers was a Commercial Operations Lead and the role meant everything especially because Africa’s Talking was a small startup at that point, far from what it is now. During her time at Africa’s Talking, Namara points out two things that she learnt.
“I am very good at being in places where there is no structure, and putting that structure in place. A structure that is good enough for one to execute and build scale. I was also deeply involved in product which was a very new concept in tech at that time. Africa’s Talking allowed me to understand what I am good at, and also helped me to break into the startup ecosystem which has become my bread and butter”.
After three years working in product at Africa’s Talking, she left for a role at the now-defunct logistics startup, Sendy in June 2019. It was the first time she had the honour of having a narrow role in a company where she could pour all her efforts. “My role was simply product. I had to make sure the app was running, customers were making their orders and receiving their deliveries on time. It was an interesting experience because typically I was used to working with early-stage startups where roles weren’t really important, and everyone had to try their hand at everything.”
But her time at Sendy was also the time she worked the hardest. “I had a team of developers, with whom we were always building products. We were trying so many things to push the company forward, and then COVID-19 hit. These were not the best times for building a startup. At some point, I was sleeping less than three hours a day. You learn a lot within a very short time.”
But like anyone who has ever worked in startups can confess, it is a very stressful environment. “I was always stressed. I was under pressure, and rushing to meet deadlines. People glorify perseverance and suffering, but there are no prizes for who has suffered the most. When you grow up in our generation, the message is to always put your foot down and hang in there even at the expense of your mental health. But sometimes, it is okay to accept that things are not working. Maybe I should have quit some jobs sooner and that was my mistake, but there is no path to a good life without mistakes.”
Baobab Network: If I Didn’t Have the Audacity Then, I Do Have It Now.
Namara joined the Baobab Network in January 2021 after Toby Hanington, the co-founder, reached out to her. “He reached out to me on LinkedIn. I opened the message, looked at the JD then went on with my life because it didn’t make sense to me why anyone would want me to do that job. Then he reached out again, and it struck me that if he thought I could do the job, then I could probably do it. So I went ahead and did the interviews.”
At the end of the interviews, she realised that it was very much a job she could do. It was a combination of her experience working in customer service, product and building early-stage startups. She got the role and came to like the team at Baobab Network so much.
“Baobab Network was a group of very young and ambitious people. They were funny and stand-up and had bold visions for Africa. But they also offered me a chance to work in a lighter environment without the pressure of working on three hours of sleep. I don’t know if I was able to achieve that, but at least it was fun.”
When Namara joined Baobab Network, it was a very small team and was doing less than five investments a year, so she had a small portfolio of startups to work with. Baobab Network had small one-on-one training sessions of about two weeks, then they would invest in the startups. But they ramped up their work to take on larger cohorts. By the time she left, they were doing multiple cohorts and skimming through a thousand applications a month.
“We reached our goal of a thousand applications a month which posed new challenges. We had to ensure it was not just about the numbers, but also the quality of the applications. Then it would be our turn to build internal systems that would ensure we chose the best startups for our cohorts. And in our accelerator, we had to make sure we provided the right training for the startups. And this all happened in my second year at Baobab Network. During three years at Baobab Network, I think we made about 35 investments which I am very proud of.”
Namara reflects on her time at Baobab Network as the place where she built audacity. “When you work with highly ambitious people, it starts to rub off you. If I didn’t have the audacity before, I knew I had it now. I became very confident about what I knew even though I was continuously learning. I had a really good time and a lot of fun.”
Flat6Labs: A Win is a Win.
To leave a situation as good as Baobab Network, Namara had to think long and hard about her legacy in the African startup ecosystem.
“When I think about my role on the African continent, it is very much to democratise access to funding for founders. This is my ambition. I want to leave a better world for my son, and one of the ways to do that is to have pathways to stable employment. If we build an ecosystem where founders can raise capital and thrive, the multiplier effect of creating stable employment can be realised. This drives the work that I do.”
This is Namara’s mission on the continent. She got that clarity after attending Dream VC, a five-month accelerator program for Africa’s next generation of investors and fund managers. Christine was part of the June 2022 cohort.
After this, she wanted to try her luck with a truly Pan-African fund that could put her in the best position to execute her mission and she spoke to various funds without success. But then a recruiter from Flat6Labs reached out.
Once again, Namara felt that the JD was above her, but she had the audacity now to push forward. “The recruiter warned me that Flat6Labs had been looking for someone for a while, and they were very picky about getting a perfect fit. I went ahead because I thought the worst-case scenario was I would learn a thing or two about the gaps in my skills. I didn’t see a downside to trying.”
Namara convinced herself that she had to walk into the room with audacity. She flew to Cairo for in-person interviews and was convinced she wanted to be part of the Flat6Labs mission after meeting the top brass.
“I was worried about cultural differences. I am covered in tattoos and here I was interviewing for a company in the MENA region. It turned out not to be an issue. They were great people and were happy to answer my questions. It wasn’t easy, but at least it was without any internal friction on my part. I told myself that if I didn’t get the job, at least, I would see the pyramids which I did. A win is a win!”.
Namara ended up getting the job. One of the things that struck her was how rich the 13-year history of Flat6Labs was and the kind of work they had done in Egypt at first, and then in the wider MENA region. She saw herself helping them expand this impact to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Namara’s role involves fundraising which includes meeting and talking to LPs. She is heavily involved in building pipelines by meeting founders by doing boot camps in various cities across Africa.
After spending 10 months on the job, Namara reflects on the journey ahead. “The Africa Seed Fund is an $85m fund, investing in early-stage startups in East and West Africa. Ticket sizes range from $150k to $400k for the first ticket and up to $500k for follow-on funding. It is a multi-sector fund, but we have a bias for high-impact sectors like financial services, ed techs, health tech, logistics and climate tech. We also have a mandate to invest in 30% female founders, and 15% in climate tech startups. We hope to begin capital deployment in Q4 2024.”
As we conclude our conversation, Namara tells me. “I am very much behind the mission of Flat6Labs. I am grateful to be part of what they hope to achieve going forward, but I am also vigilant because it is a huge responsibility. But my whole life has been about stepping into big responsibilities and then succeeding at it. So I look forward to deploying that capital to founders and creating the multiplier effect.”.
This article is published in partnership with Nambi, a community of the most ambitious and accomplished Ugandans. Christine Namara is a member of Nambi.