Greatness Against Hype: Apprenticeship and Depth in African Enterprise
The writer reflects on the gap between online self-presentation and actual competence in African business, arguing that true mastery requires patient, sustained apprenticeship rather than rapid reinvention or pursuit of visibility. Drawing on personal experience across tech and finance, he contends that depth of knowledge—earned through close study of exemplary practitioners—remains undervalued in an age of manufactured credentials and hype.
Managing people is harder now because people oversell themselves and their abilities online.
We had someone who worked with us and struggled but was a superstar on Linkedin with a large following. It was easy for this person to get another job but they also quickly saw flaws.
I work a lot with young people and many are willing to learn. The problem is that they are always in a hurry. I always use the analogy that you can't create a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
This flies over the heads of many. I know why because I was once them.Many things we see online makes us believe that it is easy to be great at anything. Nothing could be further from the truth.
True greatness and hype are very different things.
Restlessness and impatience won't let many become truly great. Apprenticeship is underrated.
I wish I had learned more from my uncle and will give anything up to still work with him. Learning from both his successes and mistakes is underrated. The best way to become great is to study great people closely and work with them. This requires a great deal of humility.
I was restless. We started a tech business after working in one for only a year. It took us two decades to learn how to properly do it after several mistakes. This is why I always encourage people to work first.
My uncle’s son is working now and gaining very valuable experience.The interesting part is that he is now learning more from me about his Dad than doing so direct because I was with the man for 14 years as he built up a fortune. He is very smart and knows where to learn from.
Funny thing is that he has no online presence. He abhors it. This guy in his early 30s knows more than many who are in their 50s in Africa because he studies people and learns things. Online personas and media hype are distractions.
He told me most of his Dad’s friends are hyped.He got closer and found out that they had no substance and were just lucky. He found more substance in his father but the man was a mirage. We have a small fund my uncle and a few people started with some startling investments. He wanted to learn more about how they did it.
The crazy thing is that I also learn a lot from this young man. I always did. He sent me my first Google mail invite when he was 14! He wanted to go deep into tech but ended up in finance. My job now is to make him remain there. There is more depth where he is than African tech.
From @Sivers:
“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work.”
To Japa is easy, to deliver on hype is hard. Many people are grumbling already. We will be all here for the fallout.
African tech has a hype and lack of depth problem. It just gets worse daily.
- Osaretin Victor Asemota.
(Text culled from a Twitter thread made by @Asemota on June 29th, 2022.)
This piece speaks to a moment of rapid digital professionalization in Africa, when LinkedIn and social media made self-branding accessible to millions, often outpacing genuine skill development. The tension between the velocity of online growth narratives and the slower, messier reality of building competence was sharpening acutely, particularly in tech and startup ecosystems where hype and funding cycles compressed timelines.
It cuts against the grain of contemporary motivational culture by insisting that impatience and self-promotion are liabilities, not assets. The writer's long view—informed by watching others stumble through his own restlessness, and now mentoring a disciplined younger generation—gives the argument weight. It remains bracing now because the problem has only intensified: the pressure to perform expertise publicly while actual mastery still requires the unglamorous work of proximity, failure, and time.