By Sharon Cheramboss, Senior Growth Director, APO Group
In 2014, I watched a global technology company lose a government digital infrastructure tender in Kenya. The project was valued at about USD 170 million and attracted strong international and regional competitors. On paper, the global company looked like the obvious winner. It had delivered similar initiatives across multiple continents, had deep technical expertise, substantial implementation capacity, and an international reputation.
The contract went to a regional technology company with a fraction of the global company’s footprint.
My first assumption was that the technical evaluation or commercial proposal must have favoured the regional bidder. But nothing that emerged afterwards supported that. There was no indication the proposal had been weaker, no suggestion the pricing was uncompetitive, and no flaw in the procurement process to point to.
In the weeks that followed, I spoke with people involved in East Africa’s tech ecosystem and looked more closely at the two organisations’ presence in the market. A pattern emerged. The regional company had spent years becoming part of the market it wanted to serve. Its executives regularly shared perspectives on issues decision-makers faced, from digital identity and data governance to the practical realities of implementing public sector technology in East Africa. They spoke at regional forums alongside regulators, development finance institutions, and government agencies. They wrote for The EastAfrican and Business Daily, which policymakers and senior executives read.
By the time procurement began, it was no longer simply another bidder. It had become recognised as an organisation that understood how the sector worked.
What the Questions Reveal
Over more than 14 years working with technology, telecommunications, and innovation organisations across East Africa, I’ve seen the same pattern emerge repeatedly. Companies often assume opportunities are won or lost on pricing, product features, or proposal quality. Those factors matter, but they rarely explain why one organisation consistently wins while another, equally capable, falls short.
Over time, I noticed an early indicator.
Long before organisations submit a proposal or begin serious commercial discussions, they reveal how prepared they are by the way they talk about growth. So, I listen for how they speak. The questions they ask in those early conversations reveal more than leaders realise. Some want to know how quickly they can generate leads, who the largest customers are, or how soon they can begin selling.
Others ask different questions.
Who influences this sector? Which ministries, regulators, or industry associations shape decisions? Which publications do policymakers and business leaders read? Which conferences matter? Which conversations should we be contributing to before we have something to sell?
Those questions tell me an organisation is preparing to participate in a market, not transact in it.
It becomes clearer still when they describe their strategy.
If they simply say they are expanding into “Africa” or even “Sub-Saharan Africa”, it usually tells me their presence is organisational rather than commercial. They may have established a regional office, but they haven’t yet developed a market position.
The conversation changes when leaders begin naming countries, sectors, institutions, publications, and stakeholders. They understand that credibility is built market by market. What builds trust in Nairobi isn’t necessarily what builds confidence in Dakar. That’s exactly what the regional company had spent years doing before the tender was ever announced. I’ve also seen the reverse play out.
A private education company with a technology-enabled model for reaching underserved communities entered several African markets, believing its global reputation would open doors. It had a proven model, technology built for the market, and funding behind it. What it never built was local visibility. Its coverage, interviews, and public statements were aimed at donors and international financiers. The story it told was about global scale and capital, not local relevance. Its own impact report, the document that should have built confidence in the market, was never published in local media. It existed for an international audience and never made it home.
Before organisations commit millions of dollars or award strategically important contracts, they rarely rely on proposals and presentations alone. They look for evidence that a company understands the market, has invested consistently in the sector, and has earned credibility with the people and institutions that shape it.
This isn’t about private networks or knowing the right people. It’s about building a public track record of expertise over time. Publishing informed perspectives. Speaking at respected industry events. Contributing to policy discussions. Demonstrating an understanding of local priorities before asking anyone to buy.
Any organisation can do this. But very few do, because this kind of investment is slow. It costs for two or three years before it produces anything a finance team can point to. It cannot be attributed to any specific contract, because by design it happens before the contract exists. And it usually must be approved by a head office that sets budgets against near-term pipeline.
The people who understand this best are often the ones least able to fund it. The country director who knows exactly which forums matter and which relationships take years to build is asking a global CFO to spend against a return that will show up in someone else’s reporting period.
That’s the real barrier. Not conviction. Structure.
When Growth is Fragmented
Budget isn’t the only obstacle. The work of building credibility is also spread across different parts of the organisation.
Market understanding sits with one team. Stakeholder engagement with another. Communications is responsible for visibility. Business development is expected to convert opportunities into revenue. Each has different budgets, different leaders, and different performance measures. Individually, they’re doing exactly what they’ve been asked to do.
Clients don’t experience them separately. They experience a single organisation and form a single judgement: does this company understand the market it wants to serve?
When these activities aren’t connected, credibility is built in fragments rather than over time. The organisations that consistently succeed treat these as one discipline, not four. They’re different expressions of the same growth strategy.
Communications is usually the thread that holds them together, though it’s rarely described that way. One company won because it published, spoke, and contributed to the debates its buyers cared about. The other lost because the document that could have earned it local confidence never reached a local newsroom. We see this almost daily at APO Group. Organisations looking to grow into new markets must understand the market, identify the stakeholders who matter, and build credibility with them over time.
Growth isn’t built at the point of sale. It’s built in the years beforehand. The question worth asking is not whether your next proposal will be strong enough. It’s whether the market will already know who you are when it lands.
