It was a humid afternoon in Zanzibar when I sat in a corner of the Innovation Hub, waiting for my turn to pitch. Around me, a new Africa was rehearsing its future , young engineers, founders, and dreamers, each clutching a deck that promised to change the world. The room smelled of ambition and warm laptops. Someone whispered that the judges were from IIT Madras. I thought to myself, good , perhaps this time the conversation will be about science, not just apps and buzzwords.
When my time came, I looked around and saw what Africa could become, if only it learns to tell its story.
Deep Tech Is Not a Startup Trend, It’s a Scientific Mission
According to Top Voice, DeepTech refers to technologies built from serious science, quantum computing, AI, robotics, space tech, biotech. These are not shortcuts to quick wealth. They are decade-long commitments, often born in quiet labs and stubborn minds. They demand patience, research, and a faith that sometimes borders on madness.
DeepTech is not for the impatient. A founder in this space is not just building a company, they are pursuing a mission. It might take ten years before the world even understands what they are doing. And that, right there, is where Africa often loses the plot, we celebrate the product before understanding the process.
PR: The Bridge Between Science and Society
Public Relations in DeepTech is not about press releases or shiny launch events. It is about translating complexity into meaning. It’s about helping ordinary people and even policymakers, grasp what lies behind the math, the code, the formulas.
Because without narrative, science stays trapped in the lab. Without public understanding, even the most brilliant innovation becomes invisible.
A well-told DeepTech story can build trust in a skeptical world. It can attract investors who are not only chasing returns but also purpose. PR, in this sense, becomes part of the innovation process, not a department, but a discipline.
The Day I Met GalaxyEye
On October 4th, 2025, during the first-ever Zanzibar Innovation Day, I saw this truth unfold before my eyes. We were a mix of African and Indian startups, same continent of dreams, different degrees of infrastructure. Among the participants was a team from India called GalaxyEye, born at IIT Madras in 2021. Their goal? To build the world’s first satellite that fuses radar and optical data on a single platform.
As they spoke, I realized something deeper. Their story wasn’t just about space. It was about belief. They had learned how to turn science into narrative — to explain the invisible. That’s what made investors listen. Not just the code, but the conviction.
And I thought, how many African innovators are doing extraordinary things right now, unseen, unspoken, and unsupported, simply because no one helped them tell their story right?
Africa’s Silent Laboratories
Across the continent, brilliant minds are quietly building, from robotics labs in Nairobi to biotech startups in Kigali. But many remain in the shadows because they lack what the West mastered long ago: strategic communication around innovation.
We have ideas, but we lack language. We have inventions, but no narrative.
Africa’s DeepTech journey needs more than funding and policy, it needs communication ecosystems that can connect science to society, and research to relevance.
The Time Factor and the Patience Problem
DeepTech takes time, sometimes a decade or more. But Africa is a continent that still loves speed: hackathons, bootcamps, demo days, and short-term wins. We glorify the quick launch, not the long experiment.
Yet the truth is, deep technology grows like a tree, not a tweet. It requires patient capital, research culture, and an environment where failure is part of learning, not a mark of shame.
And this is where Public Relations returns to the stage, not as decoration, but as defense. A strategic PR approach can shield innovators from misunderstanding, help policymakers see beyond the hype, and prepare the public for what’s coming, the slow revolution of science.
In the End, PR Is Not Just Public Relations, It’s Public Relevance
Without PR, DeepTech becomes a secret. Without storytelling, science becomes lonely.
Public Relations gives science a voice, one that builds credibility in a skeptical world, attracts visionary investors, and places Africa in the global conversation of progress.
Because in the end, it’s not the loudest invention that changes the world, it’s the one the world can understand, trust, and believe in.
Africa’s future in DeepTech depends not only on who invents, but on who can make the invention mean something.
