There is a type of entrepreneurs who start a company because they have seen a gap in the market. Then there is the kind who start one because they are trying to make sense of the world around them. When I met Eric Asuma, founder of The Kenyan Wall Street, he struck me as belonging to the second group.
He grew up watching his parents run small businesses, where every shilling mattered, and every decision carried far-reaching consequences. Long before he became a founder, he had a front-row seat to the realities of building a company from scratch. He credits his parents with instilling the discipline and resilience that would later shape his own entrepreneurial journey.
In 2014, while working at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), he started The Kenyan Wall Street as a side project. At first, it was little more than a hobby—a platform to explain markets and provide investors with information that was often difficult to find or understand. More than a decade later, that hobby has evolved into Wall Street Africa, a financial intelligence business spanning media, data, and events, serving a growing community of investors across the continent.
Over a video call, we talked about growing up around entrepreneurs, the early days of building a financial media company when few believed there was a market for it, the evolution from content to intelligence, and why he believes Africa’s investment ecosystem still suffers from an information problem. We also discussed legacy. Asuma says he wants to be remembered not simply as the founder of a company, but as someone who built critical infrastructure that helped investors better understand markets.
The future, he says, looks promising. But like many founders, he seems less interested in the destination than in the work of building.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What experiences from your childhood shaped the way you think about money, opportunity, and economic mobility today?
It mostly comes down to upbringing. I grew up in a household where entrepreneurship wasn’t an abstract idea; it was daily life. My parents ran small businesses, and I watched closely how those businesses were started, sustained, and sometimes rebuilt after setbacks. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was formative.
That environment shapes your thinking. You learn early that resources are limited, but imagination is not. You also learn that effort compounds slowly, often invisibly, before it produces any meaningful outcome. My parents didn’t frame this as a philosophy; it was simply how they lived. You start something small, you keep going, you adjust, you try again.
What stayed with me most was the discipline behind entrepreneurship. Nothing was wasted—not time, not opportunity, not effort. That mindset creates a respect for work itself, regardless of scale.
We came from a very humble background, so economic mobility was never assumed. It was something you had to actively work toward. But my parents instilled a belief: if you put in the work and stay persistent, opportunities eventually show up. Not always in predictable ways, but they do arrive. That belief has influenced how I think about building businesses and approaching setbacks. Even today, I return to that early conditioning: start small, stay consistent, and trust that compounding will eventually do its work.
Before the Kenyan Wall Street existed, what did you believe was missing from Africa’s financial and business information ecosystem?
It was less a grand idea and more an observation that accumulated over time. I was working at the stock exchange, with a front-row seat to how information moved—or didn’t move—through the system. What struck me was how fragmented and manual it all was.
Africa’s markets had returns, activity, and real economic significance, but the information infrastructure lagged far behind more developed markets. Data wasn’t always accessible in real time. Sometimes it wasn’t structured at all. Even basic market functions—bond pricing, yields, calculations—were often handled through separate spreadsheets maintained by different institutions. There was no unified system of truth.
Yet fixed income dominates African capital markets, accounting for more than 70% of activity in some markets. While global attention often gravitates toward equities, the real engine of the system was happening in a relatively opaque corner of finance. Institutions were making multi-million-dollar decisions with limited automation and inconsistent data pipelines. It was not a lack of intelligence; it was a lack of infrastructure.
This shaped the direction of what we eventually built at the intersection of capital markets intelligence, financial media, and institutional tools. The thinking evolved from a media-first approach into something broader: you cannot build effective markets without first building the information layer that supports them.
What problem were you trying to solve when you launched The Kenyan Wall Street, and how has that vision evolved into Wall Street Africa?
When I started what later became The Kenyan Wall Street around 2014, it wasn’t originally a business idea, more a side project. I was working at the stock exchange, and friends constantly asked how they could access market information. That question kept coming up, and it exposed a gap I had taken for granted while inside the system.
Inside the exchange, I also noticed something unusual: information flow was not automated. In more developed markets, announcements move through tightly integrated systems; everyone receives them simultaneously. In our case, information could physically arrive at the exchange and sit at reception for hours or even days before reaching the broader market. That delay, in finance, is not just inefficient; it is material.
I started casually sharing snippets of information online. At first, it was curiosity-driven. I didn’t think of it as a product. But something interesting happened: the audience expanded quickly. I began receiving messages from investors—some in Dubai, others in Europe—asking for deeper insights into specific companies. These were not casual readers; they were institutional actors making real allocation decisions.
I resisted the idea that this could become a formal business. I wasn’t trained as an analyst. But demand kept growing, and the feedback became consistent: build a platform where this information can live properly. That was the early seed. Over time, the media layer gave rise to data infrastructure and tools. The broader ambition became building the information infrastructure for African markets at scale.
Was there a defining moment when you realised you weren’t simply building a media platform, but a broader financial information company?
Yes, several moments made that clear. One of the earliest signals was the type of users engaging with the platform: decision-makers. Institutional investors began relying on the information to guide allocation decisions. In some cases, an investor would read a piece and reach out asking for deeper analysis or direct engagement with company leadership—sometimes requesting interviews with CEOs specifically because they needed more context before deploying capital.
That shifted how I understood the platform’s role. It was no longer just about publishing information; it was about shaping decisions in real time. At that point, trust became central. In financial markets, information is only valuable if it is credible. If trust breaks, the entire system loses value. We realised we were not just building a media product; we were building a trust infrastructure. Accuracy, consistency, and integrity became the real product.
What were some of the toughest moments, and what kept you going?
The hardest moments are not always dramatic; they are often continuous. One of the most persistent challenges was resource constraints, especially in the early stages. We made a deliberate decision not to rely heavily on external funding. That meant building slowly, with limited resources, and focusing on sustainability from day one. It wasn’t easy, but it forced discipline.
There were moments when larger media organisations entered the same space, creating competitive pressure. Instead of deterring us, it reinforced the importance of staying consistent. The guiding principle was simple: if we continued providing reliable intelligence, over time, the market would recognise the value. Even during difficult periods, we kept building. That consistency became the differentiator.
How did you fund the early years, and what personal sacrifices did you make?
The early years were largely self-funded. We relied on revenue from early customers and kept operations extremely lean. There was no external capital buffer, so every decision had to be made carefully. The focus was always on ensuring obligations to the team and core partners were met first. That meant making trade-offs elsewhere. Survival discipline matters more than scale ambition in the beginning. There were personal sacrifices, as in most early-stage ventures, but the underlying belief was that if the foundation is strong, the structure can be built later.
What part of building an African media and information company do people never see?
Consistency. That is the part that is often invisible. People see outcomes—published reports, events, announcements—but rarely the years of repetition that precede them. What has mattered most is showing up every day and staying focused on a specific domain: financial markets, capital flows, and information systems. Over time, that consistency compounds into credibility. And credibility, in this space, is everything. It determines whether institutions trust your data, whether investors rely on your analysis, and whether you are invited into decision-making rooms. Most of that is built long before anyone notices it.
Wall Street Africa now spans media, intelligence, data, events, and technology. How do all these pieces fit together?
They all sit within a single logic chain. Media is the entry point; it creates visibility and trust. From there, intelligence builds depth by structuring and interpreting data. Tools then operationalise that intelligence for decision-making. Events add a human layer, bringing together capital allocators, founders, and institutions. Technology then becomes the distribution and scaling layer. The idea is not fragmentation but integration. Each layer reinforces the other.
You have described a vision of building Africa’s equivalent of Bloomberg. What does that look like in practice?
The comparison is more directional than literal. Companies like Bloomberg have built deeply embedded systems for global markets, but Africa has historically been peripheral to that infrastructure. What is missing is not just data but context-specific infrastructure. African markets are fragmented, unevenly liquid, and often under-instrumented. Global systems do not always capture the nuance required for effective decision-making.
The opportunity is not to replicate Bloomberg but to build something adapted to African realities—tools that serve mid-sized funds, local asset managers, and emerging institutional investors who cannot justify global terminal costs, as well as deeper sovereign and corporate datasets that are often missing. The ambition is to make African markets more intelligible and investable for local and global participants.
What have African capital markets taught you about the relationship between information, transparency, and economic development?
The relationship is direct. Capital flows toward confidence. Confidence is built on transparency. Transparency depends on information. When information is incomplete or fragmented, uncertainty increases. When uncertainty increases, capital becomes more expensive or withdraws entirely. Conversely, when information improves, markets become more efficient. Price discovery improves. Participation increases. That is the structural gap we are trying to address.
What is the biggest misconception global investors have about Africa’s financial markets?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that Africa is a single market. In reality, it is a collection of highly differentiated systems. Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia—they all operate differently. Bond markets dominate in some countries, equities in others. Policy environments vary significantly.
Another misconception relates to returns. There is a persistent belief that African markets do not generate competitive returns. But that is not accurate. In recent years, several African markets have delivered returns exceeding global benchmarks. The challenge is not performance; it is perception and access. Global investors often lack the granular information needed to understand these markets properly.
What personal decision had the greatest impact on Wall Street Africa’s growth?
One of the most important decisions was choosing not to sell the media business when the opportunity arose. There were offers on the table, and it would have been a simpler exit path. But we decided to hold on and expand the scope instead. Another key decision was bringing in the right people to help build the organisation—shifting from founder-led execution to team-driven scaling. Ultimately, the focus was on building something broader than media: a trust system, data infrastructure, and long-term institutional platform. That required patience over short-term gain.
If Wall Street Africa succeeds over the next decade, what role do you hope it will play in Africa’s economic transformation?
The goal is simple: to help build the infrastructure that makes African markets more transparent, more efficient, and more accessible. If we contribute to better capital allocation, improved investor understanding, and stronger market connectivity, we will have achieved what we set out to do.
What would you like Wall Street Africa’s legacy to be?
That we helped make financial information more accessible. For a long time, high-quality market intelligence was concentrated in a small number of institutions. Expanding that access—to entrepreneurs, students, investors, and policymakers—is central to the mission.
What advice would you give to a young African founder who wants to build an enduring institution rather than a successful startup?
Think long term. Most founders underestimate how long meaningful institution-building takes. It is not a short-cycle game. Focus on foundations rather than funding cycles. Build something that can survive periods of constraint. Markets change. Technologies evolve. But trust, once built consistently, compounds over time. The most durable companies are those that solve real problems and remain disciplined enough to stay relevant across cycles. That is the real work.
