Africa’s innovators are discovering that building a new product or service often also means building a new relationship with the government.

Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola told me this past weekend that the leading fintech player learned that lesson “the hard way” after regulatory challenges in Kenya back in 2022. “We have to engage in advocacy. We have to influence policies,” Agboola said at the Columbia Africa Conference, explaining that Flutterwave began treating the regulator as a “stakeholder in our business.”

That is a useful lens for African innovation. Often these types of companies are described as technology businesses, but many of the problems they are trying to solve are institutional. Of course, businesses the world over lobby governments to shift regulations in their favor. But in developing economies, innovators must go further — building payment rails, logistics networks, or healthcare systems that companies in richer countries take for granted. In parts of Africa, working with the government, and sometimes helping reshape it, becomes part of the innovation itself.

Food4Education founder Wawira Njiru told us at Semafor’s Next 3 Billion last week that she started feeding 25 children in Kenya in 2012 and now feeds more than 700,000. To do that, her organization built kitchens and supply networks, but also worked with county governments to fund school meals, even where those responsibilities did not fit existing mandates.

“I always say, meet them where they are, not where you wish them to be,” Njiru said of regulators. That meant understanding government incentives, finding champions, and figuring out what agencies could actually fund.

Scaling across Africa means navigating regulatory regimes, financial systems, and government institutions. Companies that understand those institutions are learning — but also shaping — how the economies where they operate actually work.

African companies will need to do more than build apps, raise money, or deploy AI. They will need to make new ideas work inside the economies around them — and bring government along.