Africa's Business Revolution

CHAPTER 3

MAP YOUR AFRICA STRATEGY

If, like us, your work keeps you traveling across Africa, you end up spending a lot of time on planes. A direct flight from Cairo to Johannesburg takes eight hours—longer than the trip from New York to Paris. Getting from Nairobi in East Africa to Accra in West Africa will take you six hours, the equivalent of a flight between the East and West coasts of the United States. If you go the overland route, you should plan on a bit longer: when a colleague of ours decided to motorcycle from Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa to Egypt in the north, he ended up taking six months.

If any of these distances surprise you, you’re not alone. Many people underestimate just how big Africa is. In part, that’s the fault ...