Thinking of Starting A Business in West Africa? Read This First

Building a successful business in West Africa is not about hype, speed, or shortcuts. It’s about understanding people, context, and timing and also knowing when an environment can no longer sustain your growth. 

These are some of the clearest lessons shared by Vickie Remoe, founder of VR&C Marketing, in a recent interview with Joe Hotagua, Founder of Authentic African Life LLC. Having built and led a marketing agency across both Sierra Leone and Ghana, Remoe’s journey offers a grounded blueprint for entrepreneurs, creatives, and diaspora professionals thinking of building on the continent. 

Born in Freetown and raised between Ethiopia and the United States, Remoe describes herself as a product of both worlds. That dual perspective shaped not only her identity, but her approach to business and understanding audiences. 

“My life has always straddled between different places,” she explains and that revealed uncomfortable truths early on. 

While working at the New York State Department of Health, she witnessed an abundance of resources being debated over millions of dollars. At the same time, Sierra Leone was facing some of the worst mortality outcomes globally. That cognitive dissonance pushed her to ask a deeper question: How could she do her part to rebuild Sierra Leone? 

Remoe returned to Sierra Leone in 2007, expecting to stay for one year. She stayed for four. During that time, she co-founded a fashion business, Ashobi Designs, with her best friend Adama, worked with AccessPoint Africa, a tech startup, and pioneered television storytelling with The Vickie Remoe Show that took audiences out of studios and into real communities across Sierra Leone and beyond. But innovation alone was not enough and it was hard. The production skills weren’t available, the market for it wasn’t here, and there was a big struggle with accessing electricity those days. 

“It doesn’t matter how great you are, if your environment can’t sustain growth, your business will die.”

This insight became pivotal. Despite being ahead of her time in Sierra Leone’s media space, the lack of infrastructure, technical capacity, and commercial viability made long-term sustainability difficult. But she knew this was what she wanted to do. This led her to pursue building her journalism skills. On one random day, she entered the gates of Columbia University and made the decision to pursue her master’s degree at their Journalism School.

Joe Hotagua (left) and Vickie Remoe (right) during the interview

After completing her degree in Columbia University in 2012, she made another big decision: she moved to Accra, Ghana. 

Ghana offered something Sierra Leone could not give at the time: a community of doers. A place where creatives, entrepreneurs, and businesses were already collaborating, experimenting, and scaling. Importantly, she would no longer be “one of one.”

This move later laid the foundation for VR&C Marketing, a marketing firm built on deep cultural insight, strategic storytelling, and the belief that African brands should define themselves, rather than be shaped for external approval.

Long before “Africa is the future” became a global slogan, Remoe was already practicing it. From naming a fashion brand rooted in shared West African (Nigerian and Sierra Leonean) identity, to challenging narratives that flatten African excellence, her work consistently rejects the idea that African stories need validation from outside audiences. 

“We do not need to impress anyone,” she says. “We are great whether people come or not.”

For anyone considering relocating, starting a business, or expanding into Sierra Leone or Ghana, her message is clear: Know yourself. Know the environment. And build where growth is possible. 

This article only scratches the surface. In the full interview, Vickie Remoe goes deeper into identity, eco-system building, financial freedom, and what it really means to build a business that lasts in West Africa. 

Watch the full conversation on YouTube. 

Interview by Joe Hotagua, Founder of Authentic African Life LLC.