When one of my business partners and I entered that classroom in February 2019 in Accra, Ghana, we were skeptical about how the week ahead would turn out. We were there representing our firm in the Standford Seed Programme – a one-year Stanford University Graduate School of Business (GSB) programme aimed at helping small and medium companies to scale.

There was nothing on the surface of it that invited skepticism. With almost 90% of the 60 firms participating in the course coming from West Africa, and only eight from Botswana and SA, the mood was lit, if not a little intimidating...