Nairobi, Sept. 9 -- A candle loses nothing by lighting another. Everyone has watched it happen at a vigil or a celebration: one flame leaning into a second wick, and the room growing brighter while the first candle burns undiminished. The physics is settled. Only the mindset is in dispute. Because in business, we behave as if light were finite.

And this is a dark season to be holding a candle. Bills owed by the biggest buyer in the economy sit unpaid. Tax regimes shift under our feet. Lending has tightened until working capital feels like a rumour. In rooms like these, the instinct is to cup the flame and let the neighbour find his own matches.

In a recent circle of founders challenging each other honestly, one admission kept surfacing....