The recent, quiet demise of Okra, a Nigerian fintech once heralded as the “Plaid for Africa,” has sent a familiar chill through the continent’s tech scene. But as founders and investors search for a simple cause — market correction, a flawed pivot, bad timing — a more complex and uncomfortable diagnosis is emerging. This wasn’t just another startup failure; it was a surrender to what some are calling “ecosystem debt” — the unseen, unfunded, and exhausting work of building a market from scratch.

Okra’s shutdown struck a nerve. Founded in 2019 by Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside, the company promised to build the API infrastructure for open banking in Africa. It attracted over $15 million in funding from respected names like TLcom Capital and Susa Ventures. Under Jituboh’s technical leadership, honed at giants like JP Morgan and Canva, Okra built integrations with Nigeria’s major banks and served an impressive client list including Branch and Bamboo.

The trouble was, building API infrastructure in a regulatory and commercial vacuum is a slow, thankless task. As Nigeria’s economy soured, Okra made a desperate pivot, launching Nebula, a local cloud service to compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS). It was a bold move born of necessity — a response to soaring dollar-denominated cloud costs — but ultimately, a fatal one. Just as Okra’s Nebula was getting started, AWS conveniently began offering naira-denominated billing, effectively kneecapping local competition.

In May 2025, the company quietly wound down. Jituboh, who confirmed the closure, has since moved to a UK-based startup. There was no grand eulogy. For a company that promised to unlock the continent’s financial data, its own ending was ironically opaque.

The Unseen Tax on Founders

“Okra didn’t close down because it was weak, but too strong. Carrying too much. Too early. Too alone,” notes Laila Macharia, a serial entrepreneur and investor with experience in both the US and Africa. She argues that African founders are saddled with a crippling “ecosystem debt.”

Macharia contrasts her experience investing in US affordable housing with attempting the same in East Africa. In the US, a mature market meant data was readily available on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). “You could instantly know what similar units sold for, what value uplift a new bathroom would add, what financing was affordable,” she explains. “You didn’t need to build the market; you just had to play in it.”

Moving to East Africa, she hit a wall. “No data. No genuine finance. No associations. No real benchmarks,” Macharia recalls. To build her business, her team first had to build the entire sector. “We started the Kenya Property Developers Association, engaged policy circles, and eventually chaired the Land Sector Board at Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA), all just to lay the groundwork.”

This, she argues, is the story of African innovation. Founders like Jituboh aren’t just building companies; they are simultaneously acting as lobbyists, educators, policy advisors, and market evangelists. “They had to educate banks, lobby regulators, build trust in digital data use,” Macharia says of the Okra team. “All outside their core financial model.”

This unpaid, second job is a systemic drag that foreign investment playbooks consistently fail to account for.

A Cross-Sector Epidemic

This phenomenon isn’t confined to fintech. The continent’s crypto sector provides a veritable case study in the perils of market-building. Even surviving players admit the workload is immense. Gillian Darko, Chief of Staff at crypto exchange Yellow Card, recently noted her company’s extensive involvement in shaping policy. “In Kenya… we were personally asked to draft new digital asset laws as part of the Kenyan Blockchain Association,” she said. “In Uganda, we are part of the Bank of Uganda’s Fintech Sandbox… The key point is that wherever we can have a positive impact on regulatory frameworks, we make sure we do so.”

This is the work required to simply exist. For others, the weight is too much to bear, often leading to spectacular implosions.

The dramatic tale of Mara offers a powerful lesson on the perils of backing industry pioneers. In May 2022, the company attracted $23 million from investors like Coinbase Ventures, embodying the hope that early funding would de-risk Africa’s crypto economy and crown a market leader. However, this belief was quickly undermined by a strategy that prioritized marketing over substance. While the capital fueled high-profile educational events and grand promises of a “maraverse,” it failed to build a sustainable business. The result was a catastrophic cash burn — nearly $16 million in 2022 — alongside mounting debts, a reportedly fraudulent user base, and no revenue. With Mara’s inevitable collapse, the potential for misplaced trust was fully realized when CEO Chinyere Nnadi promptly launched a new venture, Jara. The episode demonstrates how the noble intention of funding an industry trailblazer can be exploited, ultimately leaving investors to foot the bill for a vision that never materialized.

VIBRA offers another exemplary tale. The pan-African crypto platform raised $6 million in 2021 from credible VCs, only to shut down within two years. While management referred to it as a “strategic pivot,” disillusioned former employees suggested the pivot was less about innovation and more about stagnation. VIBRA’s mission — “to promote the widespread adoption of digital assets” — involved paying tutors and students to learn about blockchain. As one ex-employee wryly pointed out, this costly strategy attracted users with “huge expectations,” many of which were rooted in performative displays of success. “You need to be able to fly ten people out to Dubai to impress them,” they quipped.

In a more mature and established ecosystem, startups like VIBRA would likely have found a clearer path to sustainability. However, in an emerging market, they were able to justify burning through investors’ money at a record pace — all under the guise of education and user training. It’s a reminder of how, in Africa’s still-developing tech landscape, the line between innovation and spectacle can often be alarmingly thin.

Are Investors Funding the Wrong Thing?

The stories of Okra, VIBRA, and Mara converge on a single, troubling point. They were not just product failures; they were ecosystem failures. They highlight a profound disconnect between the venture capital model, which funds scalable products, and the on-the-ground reality in Africa, which demands deep, unglamorous, and expensive market-building.

When a founder has to build the roads, install the plumbing, and write the laws before they can even open their shop, the standard metrics of growth and burn rate become dangerously misleading.

“If you’re investing in Africa using a playbook from elsewhere, without factoring in the local ecosystem drag, you’ll misread both the risks and the potential,” warns Macharia.

The quiet death of Okra is a sobering reminder that brilliant ideas, experienced founders, and marquee investors are not immune to the gravitational pull of this ecosystem debt. The question for the African tech scene is not just about mourning another “startup failure.” It is, as Macharia puts it, “What kind of ecosystem are we asking founders to build inside of? And are we willing to support the infrastructure work, not just the product?”