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Q&A With the AFRICAN OF THE YEAR: Nana Akufo-Addo

Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s President, has repositioned the country in the global marketplace as one reliant on its own resources and strengths. He is redefining economic development and it’s resonating across Africa. In an exclusive interview with FORBES AFRICA, he dwells on the new focus of the West African nation that has in recent years consistently been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. 



IN 2019, WHEN GHANA’S PRESIDENT NANA AKUFO-ADDO shared his vision for the national transformation agenda through the Ghana Beyond Aid (GBA) charter, the mandate for his New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was simple – move away from the traditional view of a Ghana dependent on aid to grow the economy and focus on its core competitive advantages.



Much before that, at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 in Ghana’s capital Accra where a local journalist asked whether France was going to extend its support to other countries in Africa that were nonFrench colonies, the Ghanaian president, serving his first term, had interjected with: “We can no longer continue to make policy for ourselves in our continent on the basis of whatever support that the western world can give us. It will not work, it has not worked and it will not work.” A visibly uncomfortable Macron could all but muster a somewhat embarrassed smile at the audience.



But the video of this speech went viral and the remark won AkufoAddo praise on social media. The president followed by tasking his government to implement the GBA strategy document and charter for a more prosperous Ghana.



<figure class="wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Congratulations to President of Ghana H.E. Nana Akufo-Addo (<a href="https://twitter.com/NAkufoAddo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NAkufoAddo</a>) for the well-deserved and earned <a href="https://twitter.com/forbesafrica?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@forbesafrica</a> African of the Year 2021. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AfricanOfTheYear?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AfricanOfTheYear</a> <a href="https://t.co/H3EHwqhG9D">pic.twitter.com/H3EHwqhG9D</a>&mdash; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (@MaEllenSirleaf) <a href="https://twitter.com/MaEllenSirleaf/status/1467812557067067398?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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After years of negative growth and economic challenges, AkufoAddo had a new vision for Ghana when he assumed office in 2017, and that was for the country to look within, to its own capabilities. Central to his thinking of growing Ghana’s economy was offering free senior high school education to children who would otherwise not receive it.



Since its implementation, a total of 1.6 million students have reportedly benefited from the program. 



“We do want, and we shall work, to take Ghana to where she deserves to be, a prosperous and dynamic member of the world community which is neither a victim nor a pawn of the world order,” Akufo-Addo said in a speech at the 75th anniversary celebrations of North Rhine-Westphalia, a top industrial region in Germany. During the visit, the president expressed his determination for Ghana to wholeheartedly participate in the global marketplace not only as a supplier of raw materials but as a leading exporter of manufactured goods.



The messages were clear and consistent. Endowed with natural resources and human capital, Ghana wanted to take accountability for its own growth and economic development without relying solely on aid from former colonial masters.



The country had not been without its share of crises and difficulties. On the economic front, its over-reliance on gold and cocoa exports meant that there was little in the way of diversification with inflation peaking at 17.46%.



After the president won the 2016 elections and came to power in 2017, new oil fields were found with production starting in 2017 and jumping to 60 million barrels which resulted in a boost in oil export revenues, pushing the country’s economic growth above 6% for each of the three years to 2019, according to Reuters.



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<h1 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading" id="h-nana-akufo-addo-has-been-adjudged-the-2021-african-of-the-year-previous-winners-of-the-coveted-award-include-rwandan-president-paul-kagame-2018-president-of-the-african-development-bank-akinwumi-adesina-2019-and-world-trade-organization-director-general-ngozi-okonjo-iweala-2020">Nana Akufo-Addo has been adjudged the ‘2021 African of the Year’. Previous winners of the coveted award include Rwandan President Paul Kagame (2018), President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina (2019) and World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (2020).</h1>



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During that period, inflation receded to less than 10% for the first time in six years in 2018, according to figures from Ghana’s ministry of finance. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected a GDP growth rate of 8.8% in 2019 for Ghana as the fastest-growing economy in subSaharan Africa (SSA). A March 2018 article in The New York Times said:“Now, as oil prices rise again and the country’s oil production rapidly expands, Ghana is on track to make a remarkable claim for a country mired in poverty not long ago: It is likely to have one of the world’s fastest-growing economies this year, according to the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Brookings Institution.”



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="748" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina-1024x748.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44771 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina-1024x748.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina-300x219.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina-600x438.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina-768x561.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina-1536x1122.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PRST-Adesina.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I would like to warmly congratulate H.E. Nana Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana, on being named Forbes Africa&#8217;s &#8216;African of the Year.&#8217; This is an excellent and very well-deserved honour and recognition. As a leader, you continue to push the boundaries of what is possible for Ghana and the people of Africa. You are an embodiment of a remarkable &#8216;can-do&#8217; African spirit&#8230; a spirit of focused determination that seeks to make a difference in the lives of your people and unleash Africa&#8217;s true potential. Once again, congratulations and warm felicitations.&#8221;<cite>Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina, President, African Development Bank Group </cite></blockquote>




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A May 2019 article in the World Economic Forum concurred: “Just three decades ago, Ghana was in crisis; impoverished and suffering famine, it was on the verge of economic collapse. Fast-forward to the present day, the West African nation has staged a remarkable comeback and is predicted to be the world’s fastest-growing economy in 2019.”



The economic growth was not just buoyed by the discovery of oil but also what many economic pundits considered to be sound fiscal policies wrapped in a peaceful democracy. The world noticed. Companies such as Google, which in its bid to position itself as an ‘AI first’ company with already established centers in strategic cities such as Tokyo, Zurich and Paris, made the decision to open its first Artificial Intelligence center in Africa in Accra in 2019.



Exxon Mobil in 2018 moved to sign a deep-water oil exploration deal with Ghana after the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea drew a new ocean boundary favoring Ghana over the Ivory Coast in 2017, according to a Reuters report.



In 2020, automobile major Volkswagen expanded its footprint in SSA with the opening of a vehicle assembly facility in Accra, making Ghana its fifth vehicle assembly location in SSA (after South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda). And in April 2021, social media giant Twitter sent shock waves across the bigger economic hubs in Africa when it chose Ghana as its regional headquarters.



What has also been loudly clear has been Akufo-Addo’s deliberate strategy to involve the diaspora in the country’s economic growth. In September 2018, the president launched a year-long initiative to commemorate “the 400th anniversary of the firstrecorded forced arrival of enslaved African people to the United States” and dubbed it the Year of the Return, Ghana 2019.



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Congratulations President <a href="https://twitter.com/NAkufoAddo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NAkufoAddo</a> of Ghana on being named the African of the Year 2021 by the Forbes Africa Magazine. Thank you for your great leadership and all you do in positively projecting Africa. We are very proud of you, Your Excellency. 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 <a href="https://twitter.com/forbesafrica?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@forbesafrica</a> <a href="https://t.co/TfAp8lX1Ao">https://t.co/TfAp8lX1Ao</a>&mdash; Akinwumi A. Adesina (@akin_adesina) <a href="https://twitter.com/akin_adesina/status/1467119088245870595?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The President called for not just Ghanaians but people of African descent, including African-Americans, to return to Africa, or more specifically Ghana, in what was to be a reconnection with their roots. New visitors arriving to the shores of Ghana were welcomed to a shiny, newly-refurbished airport which was adjudged winner of best airport by passenger volume on the continent according to Airports Council International. In what is perhaps the president’s biggest PR campaign and by far the country’s loudest communication drive, it was estimated that the Year of the Return campaign resulted in an additional 237,000 visitors to Ghana accounting for a 45% increase compared to the previous year and thereby injecting $1.9 billion into the Ghanaian economy, according to figures from the Ghana Tourism Authority.



The country also made strides in the international bond market, raising $3 billion on the international debt market using a four-year zero-coupon bond tranche.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/GettyImages-1133592927.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-53595" width="647" height="472" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/GettyImages-1133592927.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/GettyImages-1133592927-300x219.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/GettyImages-1133592927-768x561.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 647px) 100vw, 647px" /><figcaption>President of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo delivers the Keynote Address for the 2019 10th Annual Africa Development Conference at Harvard University (Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



“This historic bond issuance is a strong signal that investors have confidence in our plan for debt sustainability, economic recovery and growth,” said Ghana’s finance minister Ken OforiAtta, as reported in Reuters.



And where investors have confidence, foreign direct investments (FDI) follow. According to the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), despite the pandemic, total investment inflows reached $2,796.49 million in 2020, with a total FDI value of $2,650.97 million accounting for a 139.06% increase over 2019.



This means some 279 projects were registered within the year amounting to an estimate of 27,110 jobs being generated from those projects. Another plus? The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement which came into effect from January 2021. Ghana was selected amongst its peers as the trading bloc’s Secretariat. 



The AfCFTA is estimated to create a single continental market for goods and services covering a market of 1.2 billion people and accounting for a combined GDP of $3 trillion.



“As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. Furthermore, Ghana’s recent appointment to host the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area aligns with our overarching goal to establish a presence in the region that speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. Furthermore, Ghana’s recent appointment to host the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area aligns with our overarching goal to establish a presence in the region that will support our efforts to improve and tailor our service across Africa,” says Uche Adegbite, Director, Product Management at Twitter on the company’s ‘Twitter’s presence in Africa’ blog post.



These milestones, in a historic pandemic period, could have played a part in the re-election of the 77-year-old statesman for a second term as Ghana’s president, from January 2021.



With a long lineage of political luminaries as ancestors, it was perhaps in Akufo-Addo’s destiny to lead the country.



Prior to assuming office as president, he practised as a human rights lawyer in France and England. His father, Edward Akufo-Addo, who was a lawyer, was the nation’s president in the late 1960s and one of the founding fathers of Ghana.



“Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, an indefatigable visionary, has not only inspired his country but the continent of Africa to rise up and shine. He has, through his aspirations and efforts, transformed Ghana into a modern economy. His influence has reached beyond Ghana to the continent, pleading the case of a Ghana Beyond Aid thereby infusing a great dose of confidence to transform the continent. This is positively changing the narrative and bringing real hope of a brighter future to Africa’s youth. Primus inter pares [first among equals],” says Yofi Grant, CEO of GIPC, to FORBES AFRICA.



When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the country revised its 7% growth projections to about 1%, but it did not slip into recession.



The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) recorded an impressive 36.13% in dollar terms for investors in the first half of 2021, with a market capitalization of GHC61.3 billion ($10 billion).



“Ghana has been consistently one of the fastest-growing economies in the world for each of the last four years, notwithstanding the decline of GDP growth to 0.9% in 2020 as a result of Covid-19,” says Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, Vice President of Ghana, to FORBES AFRICA.



Bawumia lists key indicators such as the reduction of lending rates from 32% in 2016 to 21% in 2020, increasing gross international reserves from $6.1 billion in 2016 to $8.6 billion in 2020, the upgrade of Ghana’s first credit rating in 10 years from B- in 2016 to B with a stable outlook, and the implementation of the ‘one district, one warehouse’ as well as the ‘one district, one factory’ initiatives.



Another area of focus is Ghana’s growing youth population.



There is a push to create an enabling environment for technology startups and for small and medium entrepreneurs to thrive.



According to a World Bank report, Ghana Digital Economy Diagnostic, the Ghanaian government is spearheading the adoption of digital financial services (DFS) through the National Financial Inclusion and Development Strategy 2017-2023, which makes the government accountable to measures to achieving universal access to DFS as well as creating an Africa-wide payments infrastructure by 2030.



For full Q &amp; A with Nana Akufo-Addo, <a href="https://shop.forbesafrica.com/product/single-digital-issue-african-of-the-year-dec-jan-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">click here to download your Digital Copy </a>



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AFRICAN OF THE YEAR: NANA AKUFO-ADDO

Designing websites came naturally to Onyeka Akumah even as a college student, but his greatest epiphany was in a moving bus in Lagos. Today, his bus-hailing solution is going places.



Pullquotes:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I felt like I was on a rocket ship and we were building something amazing.”</blockquote>



What do you get when you have a mother who wants you to make all the money in the world and a father who wants you to read all the books in the world? You get Onyeka Akumah. At 36, the serial entrepreneur with a focus on agriculture, real estate and transportation has embodied the advice of his parents. However, the biggest takeaway that helped him hone his entrepreneurial prowess was from his mother.



“My mum told me when I was 15 that if I wanted to be wealthy, I needed four streams of income,” says Akumah now.



He took that advice to heart and at 15, set up his first business with one employee.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMG_1848-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52695" width="607" height="341" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMG_1848-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMG_1848-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMG_1848-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMG_1848-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IMG_1848-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 607px) 100vw, 607px" /></figure></div>



“It was a business center and I had my first employee there where I was paying N5000 ($12) per month and I used that business center to buy my first computer and got into school early and studied software engineering,” says Akumah.



This is where his father’s emphasis on education and top grades came in handy. At the Sikkim Manipal University, Akumah had a natural affinity for applied information and technology which also birthed a love for web design. He learned how to build websites in his first six months at school and the whole world opened up to him.



“I just enjoyed creating websites so I created websites for so many reasons. For example, I am told to do a presentation in class and I would rather do a website to do my presentation. I want to talk to a girl that I like and instead of approaching her in person, I design a website in her name and I send her the URL. It always worked,” says Akumah.



A chance encounter with a friend who was building websites for money changed Akumah’s perspective.



“I went to him and tried to understand how he was able to pitch and convince companies to pay a lot of money for the websites. I did the first job and it wasn’t so great but the second job I did for a business, I made a lot of money that allowed me to pay for my university school fees in my final year so I was really excited about what I was doing.”



He built over 300 websites in pursuit of the four streams of income his mother encouraged him about. The precious advice from his father also paid off and Akumah graduated from university wit first class honors.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“These sectors for me were agriculture, because people eat every day, real estate because people need to sleep in a place every day and transportation because people have to move on a daily basis.&#8221;</blockquote>



Fresh out of school in 2006, Akumah’s web development skills landed him a job with a software engineering company where he was responsible for designing websites and building their brand presence. With a knack for brand-building and software programming, Akumah decided on an initial career as a chief marketing officer and had brief stints with organizations such as British Council, Wakanow and Konga before launching his startup Quick Gist.



“I had raised some seed funding from an investor of about $50,000 and I launched it and in six weeks we had about 200,000 people that had downloaded the app. I felt I was on a rocket ship and we were building something amazing. It was pretty much like Google News but it allowed people to pick different sources of stories they wanted and get a customized newspaper every morning from their favorite channels,” avers Akumah.



That dream did not last long. Within six months, he hit a roadblock.



“I was trying to compete with the best with my money, which was very expensive, and within three months of going solo, I started realizing we were running out of cash. I made some mistakes, one of them was I started to change the model and started thinking we shouldn’t just aggregate content but should create our own content. That was very expensive and we ran out of money.”



Akumah managed to sell what was left of the business to recoup his investors’ money. After a brief while, Akumah had his Eureka moment, one that would change the course of his entrepreneurial life forever.



“I made the decision that there were three sectors I wanted to pay attention to because I felt like if you could do stuff here you could pretty much make an impact in millions of lives. These sectors for me were agriculture, because people eat every day, real estate because people need to sleep in a place every day and transportation because people have to move on a daily basis,” says Akumah.



This led to the birth of Farmcrowdy, the fintech solution empowering farmers with technology. Today, it boasts over 500,000 farmers on the platform with over $17 million raised using the crowdfunding platform. After conquering the world of agritech, Akumah set his sights on the mobility sector and with that came Plentywaka.



“I had this strange encounter in January 2019, I had to get to a meeting and leave my car and take two bikes and I got on a bus and I had a panic attack. I could see all the metals sticking out of the chairs in the bus. I held on to the rails in the bus and the driver was sweating so profusely it was crazy. I hadn’t entered a bus in 15 years and I couldn’t imagine that people had to go to work on a daily basis with this form of transportation in this state. They are overworked and with about 70,000 buses in Lagos, it just didn’t make sense that people moved that way,” says Akumah.



After some initial market research, Akumah, along with his co-founders Johnny Ena, John Shaibu and Afolabi Oluseyi, launched the uber-for-buses model connecting commuters with buses via an app. The company launched in September 2019 with 18 buses and only six passengers.



It was not an easy ride.



“People didn’t understand what we were doing. Within six months, we got to a point where we had moved about 100,000 people and we were very excited about it and then Covid hit and everyone had to go home and we were just staring at our buses and had no revenue coming in,” recalls Akumah.



The company had not raised any external funding at this time so they came up with the idea to remove all the seats from their buses and use them as food delivery buses because they were the only items allowed to move about during the hard Covid-19 lockdown in Nigeria.



“As soon as the lockdown was eased, we got back on to the road where we could also move at about 60% capacity so we went out to then raise funding. We raised $300,000 to sustain us to get us to grow and towards the end of the year, we went through a series of due diligence processes and by the first quarter of 2021, we were selected to join the Techstars [accelerator] in Toronto where we raised another $1.2 million,” says Akumah.



Plentywaka recently acquired one of Ghana’s leading mobility startups, Stabus, expanding its operations to Ghana. The journey has begun well.

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A Ride On A Bus That Changed This Entrepreneur’s Journey

The shortage, stockpiling and slow deployment of Covid-19 vaccines means the pandemic is far from over for the continent. Where do the poorer countries stand?



Computer engineer David Osei recalls how he passionately argued with his friends when they debated whether getting the Covid-19 vaccines was a smart idea or not six months ago. Osei believed it was not. His argument at that time was that there was a wider conspiracy going on where wealthy nations would trial non-tested doses on people in developing countries.



“I said it was too quick to create a vaccine for a disease that was still developing and no one knew how it would turn out. In fact, I still had my doubts about whether Covid was real or not,” recalls Osei.



But then Covid-19 took the lives of two of his closest friends and his fiancé within the space of a month. Now, he has joined the rush to get vaccinated in Ghana. The problem is, there are not enough vaccines for him and millions of Africans on the continent.



“I believe it is important to protect ourselves as nobody knows how things will turn out tomorrow. I am afraid of how bad things can get for everyone,” says Osei.



According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the continent has now received more than 103 million Covid-19 vaccine doses with about 70% of these vaccines already distributed. However, this accounts for just 1.7% of the African population. For that number to reach 10%, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the continent needs another 183 million more doses by the end of 2021.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“More than half of the vaccines that have been received so far in Africa is through bilateral donations from other wealthy countries like the United States or the United Kingdom. So yet again, Africa is now relegated to depending on donations and the charity of developed economies to save lives.”</blockquote>



Dr Ngozi Okonko-Iweala, the newly-appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a recent FORBES AFRICA interview highlighted the importance of African nations receiving vaccinations on time so as not to get left behind as in pandemics of the past such as H1N1.



To ensure this doesn’t happen again to Africa, Okonjo-Iweala and her team have developed the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator with the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to look at vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for impoverished countries.



Within this framework, the organization has also developed the Covax facility, which is the vaccines pillar of the ACT accelerator to make vaccines available to poor countries.



But this has not gone exactly according to plan. For one, wealthier countries had already signed multi-million dollar deals with manufacturers for vaccines as early as July 2020 while they were still in development and undergoing trials.



“Big pharma will always prioritize those who have money to pay and unfortunately that means that the Covax scheme will never get the required doses they need until those who have deeper pockets are



serviced. Africa was always going to be playing catch-up to these vaccines,” says Dr Jason Lamptey, a pulmonologist operating in Ghana.



These deep-pocketed countries have vaccinated over 40% of their population, while Africa, with an estimated population of over 1.3 billion people, has only managed to vaccinate about 2% of the population, according to the WHO.



The WHO is now reviewing its vaccination targets for Africa estimating that nine out of 10 African countries will not manage to inoculate 10% of their populations by September, according to a report published by the BBC.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Why are some states stock-piling the few vaccines we have until they expire and we have to destroy them when there are people who urgently need it?”</blockquote>



Under the Covax program, which started in February, the goal was to deliver some 520 million doses to Africa by the end of 2021. These vaccines were initially acquired from the Serum Institute of India but that plan went sideways when India stopped vaccination export due to the devastating effects of the pandemic in the country. The effect of this has led to a reported shortage of 225 million vaccine doses.



“More than half of the vaccines that have been received so far in Africa is through bilateral donations from other wealthy countries like the United States or the United Kingdom. So yet again, Africa is now relegated to depending on donations and the charity of developed economies to save lives,” says Lamptey.



The African Union has a target to supply 400 million vaccine doses to Africa and by so doing reaching a third of the population.



According to Phionah Atuhebwe, the New Vaccines Introduction Medical Officer at WHO’s regional office in the Congo, 12 million doses of vaccines were supplied through Covax in July.



“We are continuing to push to get more delivered within the next couple of months. Vaccines came to a halt after the issues with India but we are building new partnerships that will see more positive inflow of the vaccines,” says Atuhebwe.



Africa has some 7.2 million confirmed Covid-19 cases as of August, according to figures from the Africa CDC.



While hundreds of millions of vulnerable Africans wait for their first shot, rich countries now have the luxury to moot booster doses.



“We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press briefing reported by Reuters.



This has led the WHO to call for a moratorium on all booster shots until the end of September to enable poorer countries in Africa to reach their minimum goal of a 10% vaccination rate.



One year into the Covid-19 pandemic, the threat of the Delta Variant is real in addition to the vaccine shortage coupled with fear sparked by fake studies and conspiracy theories.



According to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), just over 718,412 Nigerians and foreigners alike have received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.



“Even with the changing variants of Covid-19, I believe the biggest problem we have is the slow reaction from health protocols as well as the even slower distribution of these vaccines. Why are some states stock-piling the few vaccines we have until they expire and we have to destroy them when there are people who urgently need it?” says Dr Joshua Hayman, a medical practitioner based in Victoria Island, Lagos.



Professor Oyewale Tomori, a virologist and Chairman of the Expert Review Committee on Covid-19, concurs with that assessment.



“I have said it several times that Nigeria is a place where the impossible happens and that is not exactly a good thing when it comes to Covid-19. We have mass hoarding of vaccines by officials and people who are supposed to be receiving priority not getting the doses in time. We have no clear monitoring system to determine who gets the vaccine in time and when. The whole system is flawed and needs an overhaul to ensure we save lives.”



The country’s minister of state for health, Olorunnimbe Mamora, in a virtual conference on ‘Nigeria and the next pandemic: preparedness, response and vaccines’ asserted that Nigeria will be focusing on vaccine development to cater for the shortage of vaccines in the country through a joint venture between the government and a private firm called Bio-Vaccine Nigeria Limited. Hopefully, more lives will be saved then.

Pop-up Vaccination Bus as South Africa Weathers Third Covid Wave

A Long Shot Getting Africa Fully Vaccinated

Olagoke Balogun replicated the local farmers market which ended up as a business selling slick salads and smoothies for the Nigerian on the move.



WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PANDEMIC shuts down offices and heaving traffic of daily commuters? People no longer want meals-on-the-go.



So Olagoke Balogun had to look at his business afresh.



In under 13 years, Balogun has grown his premium brand, So Fresh, from a small startup to become a leader in the fresh juice and salad category, boasting 12 stores across Africa’s most populous country.



In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t allow further expansion. But consumers in Nigeria still wanted fresh, nutrient-rich and healthy juices and meals.



And So Fresh, says its founder, is on course to turn over a billion naira ($2.5 million) in sales this year with plans of expanding to a further 20 stores in the coming years.



Balogun didn’t always aspire to become a businessman. He initially thought he was going to have a career in medicine, but that never materialized. After graduating with a biochemistry degree from the University of IIorin in Nigeria, he spent the early years finding his feet in different sectors; this included a brief stint as a manager at a restaurant, followed by nine years in the oil and gas industry.



“There was a five-month break when I was looking for a job and I traveled from IIorin to Lagos. I then started thinking about business and [started] selling fruits and vegetables because I grew up eating fresh foods and Ilorin is an agrarian state so I thought it might be good to do that,” he says.



That idea never took off though until epiphany struck on a trip to South Africa where he discovered that fruits and vegetables were packaged and sold in supermarkets like Shoprite and this was not the case in Nigeria, back in 2010.



“So, when I came back, I started thinking about that business and I shared the idea with my wife and she liked it and that was it. We decided to give it a try and see what we could do with it. The original vision was to have a farmers’ market where we sold fruits and vegetables in an organized format and that is how we started.”



The first store was in Ogba, Lagos. The idea was to replicate the local Nigerian market but in a more serene and clean environment. There were just a few potholes or problems to overcome first.



“When we started, we realized the type of customers we were attracting was the busy working class who wanted prepared meals like salads and fruit already cut. So, in 2010, we started experimenting and it was a time when eating salads and smoothies was not a thing in Nigeria. We started making juices and smoothies and customers liked them so we gave fruit packs a try and salads a try and the business evolved from there.”



The second hurdle was the location.



“We struggled for a long time because the location wasn’t too great. We actually considered closing down the business a couple of years in because we had put in a lot of money and effort and it wasn’t yielding [results] and we were supporting the business with my salary and my wife’s money from her private law practice,” recalls Balogun.



In 2013, the tardy growth of the business led to a risky decision to relocate it from the mainland to the wealthy, affluent suburbs of Ikoyi in Victoria Island, Lagos.



It was a gutsy move for the entrepreneur as it required the startup to double the investment already made into the business.



“We believed that there was potential and we found out that the type of people we were attracting were more on the Island and after the move, in less than six months, the business [had] a turnaround and revenues started growing astronomically and it was so good at that point that we couldn’t manage the two stores and we closed the Ogba store and focused on Ikoyi,” says Balogun.



In 2018, the company reached a major milestone raising over €360,000 ($424,000) of external finance that helped it scale from one to 12 stores. Balogun’s success is based on the premise of first to market. More firsts await.

GOKE5

From Farm to Fortune: The Nigerian Entrepreneur Who is On A Course To Turn Over a Billion Naira in Sales

Through their retail tech platform, Natasha Buchler and Annie Rudnick are also shining a light on Africa’s unsung, talented artists.



IF YOU WANT TO change the world, start with Africa. While that seems to be the prevailing mantra for the new world, it was what Natasha Buchler wanted too – to impact lives on the continent whilst also promoting homegrown talent.



In 2016, she was working as a senior director at K2 Intelligence, when she planned the launch of her new charity, Bella Teaching Foundation, an initiative to provide free skills training to unemployed youth in Ghana.



At the time, the dream to start a movement that would empower 43 designers and impact the lives of over 8,000 people across the African continent was unfathomable. Fast forward a few years and that is exactly what she has achieved with her co-founder Annie Rudnick, with the launch of Akojo Market, a platform in the United Kingdom selling handmade accessories, homeware, gifts, and fashion.



“Akojo means ‘collective’ or ‘a collection’ in Yoruba. For us, it really encompasses what we want to create, which is a community and a collection of beautiful handmade and artisanal products across Africa. Ninety percent of our designers are in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Buchler to FORBES AFRICA.



When they launched in April 2019, they only had 10 designers and since then, the platform has garnered interest, growing to 43 designers, with between five and 15 products per brand. Buchler met Rudnick, originally from Zimbabwe, when they were both in school, and years later, their complementary experiences are what has made Akojo Market what it is today.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-19-at-14.48.54.png" alt="" class="wp-image-52214" width="432" height="254" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-19-at-14.48.54.png 486w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-19-at-14.48.54-300x177.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px" /></figure></div>



Rudnick, with a background in the history of art and communications for major international art galleries, brings the curation and representation-of-artists element to the brand with an overview of product selection as well as the website’s aesthetics, while Buchler, having had a brief stint in business intelligence where she was responsible for working on behalf of financial institutions, international partners and high networth individuals, handles the due diligence, ethics and compliance components of the business. At the core of the company is its vision to be a leading platform for talented artisans and designers to sell their products internationally.



“We really wanted to work with brands that were doing amazing things in terms of people and planet and working with the supply chain to make sure that the artists and artisans are more than paid and they don’t have to leave villages to take up degrading work in urban areas,” says Buchler.



Over the years, traditional craft, which is the lifeline for most rural communities across Africa, has been gradually dying out and is not as lucrative as it once was. So Buchler and Rudnick came up with a plan to become a third-party tech enabler to help indigenous artisans 



continue supporting their families and communities through the Akojo platform.



“We have identified that there are some serious problems in the retail supply chain not only across the world but in sub-Saharan Africa and there is exploitation, cultural appropriation and mistreatment of workers and that is from both a people and environmental perspective.”



When these vices are left unchecked, Buchler believes talented designers find it difficult to generate income. What subsequently happens is that these artists are forced into a system of exploitation.



To combat this, the duo has made sustainability and compliance an imperative component of the platform.



“We do not dilute this because our customers really trust the brands we are selling and believe in our ethics and sustainability credentials and also shine a light on talented artists in Africa. We are super passionate about that because there is so much work to be done and brilliant creativity to bring to the fore,” says Buchler.



Part of this ethical and sustainability focus means that Akojo ensures artisans are paid a minimum wage or above and there is a focus on long- term work for the brands they represent. The platform also operates a dropshipping model so provides a continuous flow of orders for the brands they represent.



“We look at things like human rights being upheld in the supply chain and a lot of communication about safety in their workshops and freedom of speech and general respect for people and what they need or may not need; the sustainability aspect like ‘are they using recycled materials or packaging, are they minimizing the use of chemical dyes, are they considerate about transporting products from A to B, and how can we help them do that?’ We as a company offset our carbon footprint and do that by working with a company called Nula Carbon, which has Kenyan origins, and we calculate our carbon footprint and carbon dioxide emissions.”



Akojo’s revenue model is also transparent, they add. The company charges a commission of 25% as well as a minimal joining fee to cover getting their brands’ products on the platform. They provide brand consultancy work as well as marketing and PR in addition to what the platform offers as a basic service. The major challenge is finding a cost- effective way of delivering products globally.



“Our main challenge is logistics. It is very expensive to ship products to and from Africa. We work with DHL and they have been very helpful and have a huge drive to support e-commerce in sub-Saharan Africa but it’s still expensive. The second challenge is to help businesses scale but still retain the ethical and sustainable component of their supply chain; making sure that they produce more products and they can still source the fabrics and they don’t have to import it from China,” says Buchler.



With the current brands, Akojo is working with 800 to 1,000 artisans across their supply chains, bringing long-term incomes to their families. After two years of trading, the company is committed to go against the grain of the wholesale model where fashion retailers pick up products inexpensively in Africa and mark it up significantly for the international market.

Screenshot 2021-08-19 at 17.27.23

Designs On Africa: How to Impact Lives While Promoting Homegrown Talent

Forbes2021-86

Nigeria’s Fintech Frenzy: Onwards And Upwards

Former NFL wide receiver Matthew A. Cherry made it in the mecca of gigs and glamour with an Oscarwinning film marking diversity in the world of animation. We ask him how he did it.



WHEN MATTHEW A. CHERRY decided to make the transition from being a wide receiver for the National Football League (NFL) to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, he had no idea he would become “one of only 39 people of colour to ever win the most prestigious award in Hollywood”. 



Last year, he won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for Hair Love, a story he had written and directed about an African-American father attempting to do his daughter’s hair for the first time. Born in Chicago in the United States (US), Cherry began his early childhood playing sports and had big dreams of becoming a professional sportsman. He fell in love with football by the age of six after a brief stint with baseball. 



At the time, he had no idea how much the sport would change his life. Football got Cherry a full scholarship to study at the University of Akron in Ohio, and through that, he got his first big break; being drafted to the prestigious NFL, where he would spend the next couple of years playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Cincinnati Bengals, Carolina Panthers and Baltimore Ravens. 



“I was always interested in film, in entertainment in general and music and I knew really early on that I wasn’t going to have a long career in the NFL and decided to retire probably a lot earlier because I got tired of moving and travelling the world in that way. I ended up retiring in 2006 and then moving to Los Angeles in 2007 to pursue a career in film and TV,” says Cherry in an interview with FORBES AFRICA from the US over Zoom in March. 



His hope at the time was to become a TV director but like many chasing the dream in Hollywood, Cherry had to earn his stripes. He had the opportunity to cut his teeth as a production assistant after meeting an alumnus of a program called Streetlights, a non-profit organization in Los Angeles (LA) that helps men and women of color find jobs as production assistants behind the scenes. 



“The inclusion efforts were nowhere near where they [are] today. I would often work on jobs, be it TV shows or whatever, and there would be 150 people in the crew and I would be the only one, two or three people of color in that crew. It was hard for people of color to break into the industry unless you went into film school or had industry connects and I had none,” says Cherry. 



Slowly but surely, he began to make a name for himself by shooting music videos for Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams, and many others before transitioning to live-action short films. 



“In 2011, I did 11 music videos and directed my first feature and then a couple of years later, like 2013 and 2014, it was really dry and you try and figure out what your next move is. The thing about LA is if you put your effort into a project and that project doesn’t hit a certain way, you are back to the drawing board. Just because I did a music video for Beyoncé doesn’t mean the next job is going to be as well-paying or fruitful and so it is a constant struggle.” 



In a city famed for its glitz, glamor and garish mansions where ordinary people can morph into celebrities with millions in their Louis Vuitton suitcases, there is an illusion that you strike it big and rich instantly. Cherry is quick to correct this notion. 



“You are always on the grind and the hustle for the next gig and I have never been in a position where I don’t know how much money I am going to make this year. Just because you work in January, it doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed a job in February and there are times where I was like ‘I don’t even know if I am going to be able to make rent’ and that is very stressful in that regard. Everyone in Hollywood is hustling, trying to make it to the top and sometimes to the detriment of others and it is a very cut-throat world,” says Cherry.



 Throughout his 14-year “hustle” to breakthrough in Hollywood, the accomplished sportsman in him pushed him forward in those dark days. And he was not wrong to bet on himself. According to leagueside.com, “only 8% of the top 1% of the top 1% of high school football players will make it to NFL”. And Cherry was one of them and all he needed was that breakthrough project to convey this to Hollywood. That eureka moment happened while he was watching the Oscars one particular year.



“I’ve always watched the Oscars and that’s the biggest thing in Hollywood and I am always trying to see which black people are winning and in 2015, I was paying attention to every category and I am seeing awards being handed out for categories I didn’t even know existed, like sound mixing and sound editing, documentary short etc. 



“So, I remember seeing animated short category and they won an Oscar. They got up, they gave a speech and they got the same Oscar as the one that won Best Director or Best Actor.” 



It just so happened at the time that Cherry had an idea floating around in his head about a dad and his daughter. 



“I hadn’t told anybody yet. After the Oscar [ceremony], I called my manager and I said ‘I have an idea and if we do it right, I think we can mess around and win an Oscar’ and that is how I felt and she said ‘ok, let’s figure it out’.” 



A viral tweet about an Afro-Latino dad and his daughter was all the proof Cherry needed to know he had a potentially amazing idea. 



“I realized that a big reason why the numbers were higher was that people didn’t look at this like it’s a normal thing. We always assume that mums will be the ones doing this and mainstream media always assumes that black dads don’t support their kids. And that is because you don’t get a lot of great depictions of dads.” 



With that information, Cherry got connected with a great illustrator and developed a really strong campaign and took to Kickstarter to raise the funds to produce his first animated short. 



“I have used Kickstarter to raise money for both of my previous shoots and with both previous ideas, we barely reached $15,000. Hair Love raised $3,000 within an hour and I hadn’t even shared it with everybody yet. Then we raised $15,000 the first day and we hit our goal of $75,000 in five days and $300,000 in total when we ended the campaign and we became the highest-funded project in Kickstarter at the time,” says Cherry. 



And the rest as they say is history. The film gave Cherry the much-needed credibility and pedigree one needs to make it in Hollywood. 



“I felt a lot freer because I knew after struggling for 13 or 14 years, things will get a lot easier in terms of half the battle, like trying to get into the rooms and trying to get people to take you seriously. Something like that happens to you and you are in the next meeting and it’s a totally different energy and instead of people wondering ‘are you capable of doing it’, people are now giving you the benefit of the doubt.” 



Cherry has now signed an exclusive first-look deal with Warner Bros TV and is currently in the process of developing another animated series, Young Love, based on the characters from Hair Love, making him one of the most sought-after black directors in global entertainment today.

Untitled-1

HOLLYWOOD. HUSTLE. AND HAIR LOVE

The scene is not picture-perfect yet, but ace photographers are slowly capturing the creative market in Ghana.



WHEN THE iconic Ghanaian photographer Emmanuel Bobbie, known widely by the moniker ‘Bob Pixel’, tragically passed away in February this year, the news sent shockwaves through the creative industry in Ghana. Bobbie had become a hero to a battery of young and upcoming Ghanaian photographers steadily following in his footsteps to build their own brands and enterprises, hoping to make it in the sector, a move exacerbated by the growing youth unemployment in the West African country. 



Bobbie was one of the pioneers and enablers of this transformation with his work celebrated both in Ghana and the world. His death reportedly attributed to Covid-19, turns the spotlight on the creative economy in Ghana. Whilst the pandemic has seen a renaissance of all things digital, it has also applied to the photography industry that now seems to be rapidly attracting a retinue of talented young men and women finding their feet in the once not-so-lucrative and unattractive sector. 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:37% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-51906 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Asante-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">It becomes very difficult for a startup because unlike developed countries, where you get funding and co-funding, in Ghana, that did not exist and the systems are not right to enable you to set up. – Gilbert Asante</blockquote>
</div></div>



One such beneficiary of this growth is Gilbert Asante, who has been making an impression on social media and the corporate world with his photography.



Spotting a gap in the market for quality images when he began his career many years ago as a web designer, many of Asante’s photos have gone viral and been trend-setting in Ghana. 



Some of the biggest celebrities and corporate brands have queued up to the doorsteps of Laceup Media, the bespoke production house offering services covering every sphere of advertising, from graphic design to billboards, videography and commercials. 



Asante moonlights as a creative director for the company as well as being his own photography brand. 



“When I started, photography wasn’t a big thing as it is now. So, I would design a website with my team for a restaurant and the images [will be] terrible so it [would end] up making the website [look] very tacky. So that is what pushed me to invest in a camera. I just needed some decent photos. 



“At that time, there were no top photographers. So, I said ‘why don’t I take a camera and take a picture and add this to the website’. So, after that, things became curious in terms of ‘how do I make these pictures look like what I see in international publications’,” says Asante. 



His inspiration to delve deeper into the world of conceptual photography came about after a brief visit to the art centres of Japan. When he returned to Ghana, Asante knew he had found his calling. A self-taught photographer, he is now a name in the industry for his glamorous fashion shoots and out-of-the-box creative direction. But his success has been no walk in the park.



“The biggest issue I have is not based on photography but based on setting up a business in Ghana generally and that really cuts across all the sectors. It becomes very difficult for a startup because unlike developed countries, where you get funding and co-funding, in Ghana, that did not exist and the systems are not right to enable you to set up,” says Asante. 



While he was busy contending with these institutional issues, Elorm Ayayee pursued a career as a multilingual translator elsewhere. Fluent in French and Spanish, today, the founder of Elorm Ayayee Portraiture, a legacy portrait photography business in Ghana, was desperately searching for a career where she could make the most impact in the lives of people. 



“I was at a point in my career that I wasn’t making a contribution and I had worked myself into a system and at the core, I was against that. I don’t like being in a box or a cog in the wheel,” recalls Ayayee. 



Being a creative at heart, Ayayee went into publishing and worked as a ghostwriter for clients amongst many other things. 



“Photography was never on the horizon and never something I had considered… I came back to Ghana and was working with a company that did medical and surgical systems and I got married and had kids and then I realized that I had to make the call and I couldn’t have it all. I had to decide between my career and who I wanted to be as a family woman.” 



She made the tough decision to quit her career. 



“At that point, I had not been idle or jobless for over 20 years. I was always on the go and handling multiple things. I suddenly found myself with nothing to do. So, I took a trip to see my mum. One day, she had a program she had to go to and needed a photo of herself. It was the weekend and no one could do it and so she gave me my dad’s camera and I took a photo of her and until today, she says it is one of the best photos of her life.”



And just like that, Ayayee got hooked on photography. The Elorm Ayayee brand has been able to emerge as one of the top photography outlets in Ghana. Her popularity grew with time due to her ability to take captivating images of women, especially older women. 



“I immediately hooked on to what I thought my personal contribution would be. And that was birthed [by] seeing how my mother’s photo of herself impacted her and the other people and I said ‘this is my motivating factor’; seeing the way a woman sees herself when she looks at a photograph was amazing.” 



Both Ayayee and Asante are living proof of how lucrative the photography industry can be. But there is still a long way to go for upcoming talent. 



“A lot of people don’t see the business aspect of photography. There is so much big business from it and a lot of people don’t understand that and that is why they see photography as some job that is not going to give you so much security,” says Asante. 



For Ayayee, she knew the key to winning was to zone in on a specific demographic. 



“I was very clear about what I wanted to do. My niche was established when I started. I started out photographing women and I only took images of women above 50. And that kept me busy because I was offering a service that at the time didn’t really exist. I was very resolute about what type of images I wanted and my target audience,” says Ayayee. 



For Asante, on the other hand, the lack of any institutional investment meant he had to find other means to launch his business. 



“Laceup was started with about $4,000 which was money my partner and I put in at that time to purchase a few things. This was money I had saved from my previous work as a web designer. And my partner fielded the other half of it. It wasn’t that much in the beginning and we decided to build on that and make a lot of sacrifices in terms of the income coming in and how we could put it back in the business and make the company bigger. That is what helped us grow to the level we are now,” says Asante. 



Both Ayayee and Asante charge anywhere from $1,000 upwards depending on the packages they offer. 



“I didn’t start to be priced affordably because I was a mother of three and I had a limited amount of time. I felt like I had a very unparalleled skill-set which I translated into the cost I wished to receive for my work,” says Ayayee. 



The biggest hurdle in the photography business, according to Asante, is access to quality equipment. 



“All the equipment we use is imported. Every single one of them; even the backdrop paper we use for photography and that is difficult. We don’t even have servicing companies here so if cameras or equipment break down, you have to send it back to the UK and that was one of the biggest challenges we had in the beginning.” 



These are just some of the early-stage lessons they can impart to younger aspirants in the country. Zion Market Research estimated the global demand for digital photography at around $77.6 billion in 2015, projected to reach $110.8 billion by this year, and with so many young starry-eyed hopefuls still looking to make ends meet in Ghana, at least they have emerging role models who have looked through a more creative lens and proven that clicks can convert to cash.

Elom

Ghanaian Photographers On How Their Creative Businesses Click

Elizabeth Isiorho is ramping up her modelling business to provide more young people international opportunities and put African beauty on the map.



COVID-19 MAY HAVE SHAKEN the very foundation of global fashion, but the one thing that has stayed is the focus on Africa as the world’s resource hub for the creative industry, with its surging youth dividend and gifted talent pool. 



Nigerian entrepreneur and former beauty queen Elizabeth Isiorho knows this only too well, as she takes her business to the next stage, now launching Future Face Africa, which she hopes will be a pan-African talent search to discover more African faces to showcase to the rest of the world. 



Her modeling agency, Beth Model Management Africa, has been at the forefront of this quest, since 2004, to provide a platform for African models abroad. 



“Models will be given a chance to win a two-year international modeling contract with a top modeling agency, offering hopefuls not just a launchpad but a career on the world stage,” she says in an interview with FORBES AFRICA over Zoom from London in May. 



Isiorho herself had her breakthrough in the industry with the international agency, Elite Model Management. But first, a look back at how it all began. Growing up, Isiorho was influenced by her mother, a veteran in the Nigerian entertainment industry and die-hard fashion lover who always told her daughter she resembled supermodel Naomi Campbell. 



Who knew then that Isiorho would become friends with Campbell several years later and follow in her role model’s footsteps? While African fashion and beauty is now celebrated abroad, this was not the case when Isiorho first started. Modelling had several negative perceptions in Africa that she needed to break. 



Born in London and relocating to the United Kingdom (UK) Isiorho studied Business and Information Technology at the London Guildhall University. With a passion for the modelling industry instilled in her from an early age, she began her career doing a few shows in London until a serendipitous encounter with a friend put her firmly on her destined path.



“A friend of mine showed me some magazines that had Miss Nigeria UK and she said I should go for it. I was extremely shy but I went for the 10-day boot camp and on the ninth day, I said ‘this is not for me, I’m not walking that stage in a bikini’ and I said to my mum ‘I am not doing it anymore’. My mum said she had bought her ticket to London to come and surprise me on stage so I should stick it out. I did and I won the competition, to my surprise,” recalls Isiorho.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-736x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-51624" width="436" height="606" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-736x1024.jpeg 736w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-216x300.jpeg 216w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-768x1068.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-1104x1536.jpeg 1104w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-1472x2048.jpeg 1472w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/image1-scaled.jpeg 1841w" sizes="(max-width: 436px) 100vw, 436px" /><figcaption>Photo by Adebayo Jolaoso</figcaption></figure></div>



After winning the pageant, Isiorho returned to Nigeria in 2003 to continue to build her career in the modeling industry. And that is where she noticed a glaring gap in the market. 



“Because I won Miss Nigeria UK, I was very popular when I came back to Nigeria and I said to myself ‘let me get a proper agency to manage me’. But there was none back then. I did my research and I went to companies and one company told me to just drop my CD. So, there was no modeling agency in Nigeria. I tried going to the big agencies in London that work with me today but I didn’t get far.”



Instead of giving up, she decided to set up her own agency instead and Beth Model Management Africa was born. Over the years, Isiorho has grown the brand from only 10 models to over 200 with 48 of them placed worldwide across various agencies, making Beth one of the largest modelling agencies in Africa.



Not one to give up, she used grit and tenacity to pioneer the model management model in Africa. 



“When I started, I thought it would be easy but the Nigerian market was very difficult. I am talking about 2004 when parents are thinking a certain way and parents don’t want their kids to model. I found a few faces and the issue I had was trying to convince the parents that it was not about prostitution. That was the negative stereotype because they felt they exposed their bodies etc.



“The other issue was trying to sign contracts with models when we find the right faces. People were scared to sign in Nigeria whereas in London, people were excited to sign with an agency,” says Isiorho.



Due to the lack of demand for African models at the time, Isiorho decided to start a model convention. Her thinking was simple. If the international fashion industry would not accept African models, she would bring them to Africa to see the untapped potential for themselves.



“So, I sent them emails and out of 11 agencies, nine of them replied to say they were coming and one of the agencies, which was Elite Models, said ‘we have a model search and would like you to be a part of it’.”



Founded in 1983, Elite Model Look is a prestigious international modeling contest credited with discovering supermodels such as Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen, Lara Stone and Alessandra Ambrosia. This was the big break Isiorho needed for her agency. In 2007, she exclusively secured the rights to organize the Elite Model Look Nigeria/Africa contest.



“That was my biggest breakthrough because as an agency, for you to partner with one of the biggest modeling agencies in the world is a big deal and we worked together for 13 years. We discovered many stars like Mayowa Nicholas, Davidson Obennebo, Chika Emmanuella, Victor Ndigwe, Tobi Momoh, who are all on global campaigns,” says Isiorho.



Over the years, Isiorho has placed indigenous African beauty in global campaigns such as Victoria’s Secret and New York Fashion Week to name a few.



Her resilience has not gone unnoticed amongst her peers. “I have worked with Beth Models since the company’s inception and I’m filled with pride. The investment Elizabeth has made in the modeling industry across Africa is beyond glamorizing fashion; it’s the wider role the agency plays in changing stereotypes about working with Africans, giving African creatives a voice and ensuring African youth are empowered socio-economically,” says Omoyemi Akerele, the founder of Lagos Fashion Week.



Isiorho’s relationship with Elite continues to flourish even as she charts her own path. 



“Beth Models is a trusted collaborator of Elite Model Management, having organized Elite Model Look contest in Nigeria for over 10 years… In recent years, Beth Models expanded the search to Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda and used their experienced scouting skills to find fresh new talent with the potential for international modeling careers,” says Vick Mihaci, 



President, Elite Management Worldwide. With the cross-over of Africa’s rich talent repository, through incoming interest as well as the efforts of cultural emissaries such as Isiorho, it’s not long before the continent becomes the true face of the future.

The Model Entrepreneur Who Is Getting More African Faces On the Global Stage

Temitope Mayegun has made a name in Nigeria selling natural oils from fruits, seeds and vegetables, but it was a greasy path to follow.



From stock trading to skincare, in the last four years, Temitope Mayegun has built a company that sells what she calls “natural skincare products” but to achieve that, she first needed to change the mindset of Nigerians.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I got divine inspiration,” she says, “to start a company that will enrich lives and inspire a healthier and happier world.” The founder and CEO of Avila Naturalle in Nigeria felt she needed to first educate people about the toxic and unsafe chemicals they were hitherto using for bleaching and skin whitening, considering how sought-after they are in Nigeria.



The former stock broker was also frustrated she couldn’t find an all-natural skin product without bleaching or whitening ingredients harmful to the skin, so she created her own.



Today, from a humble start in 2017, her company retails over 350 products in the skincare division, 90 products in the food division and 10 products in the water and drinks division.



But it took a lot of ground work and research to start with.



“I saw that many people believe your skincare product should enhance or change your skin color,” recalls Mayegun.



With a degree in accounting from the University of Lagos as well as an International Masters in Business Administration from Eaton Business School; and having done a Harvard Business School Executive Leadership course, Mayegun’s most valuable qualification would prove to be a diploma she obtained in an organic and natural skin school in London.



Equipped with the knowledge of the goodness of natural products, Mayegun set out on the cumbersome path of changing perceptions.



“It was difficult because a lot of people were not ready to change their bleaching and whitening products. So, we did not follow the crowd even though there was pressure to go into whitening and pressure to create products that will let customers bleach their skin,” says Mayegun.



To combat stereotypes, Mayegun knew she had to create a unique product. She began with 30,000 units of pure coconut oil.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I had to create campaigns to educate the public on the importance of using natural products.”</blockquote>



“At the time, there was no pure coconut oil on the market. Most of them were watered down with other edible oils which reduces the quality. I had to create campaigns to educate the public on the importance of using natural products and sell them on the superior quality of our products.”



The hard work paid off and Mayegun sold out her 30,000 units, which was two cartons of pure coconut oil, in just two days. It was time to expand her business and with that, she needed to find capital.



“I started asking friends for a loan but I could not raise the money. I went to microfinance companies looking for a $10,000-loan and they said I needed collateral which I didn’t have.



“There were times when I worked between 17 and 21 hours a day. I would be trying to convince people on why they should use coconut oil for their skin. I knew people were not ready for natural products but I kept pushing and after a while, I got a lot of people asking for coconut oil and it was not easy meeting the demand,” says Mayegun.



Soon, word got out and the distributors came calling. Today, Avila Naturalle offers multiple natural essential oils made from carrots, avocado, hibiscus and mustard.



“When people saw our mustard oil, they were shocked that there were these oils in Nigeria. So, they bought in bulk to resell. We were the first to produce essential oils in Nigeria. People were asking if we bought them from abroad and dilute it with other products which was the norm. We are the only company that sells 100% pure natural oils from fruits and seeds.”



The sizeable beauty and personal care market in Nigeria is what Mayegun has sets her sights on.



“To make this happen we have created a multi-channel natural body care and household brand with multiple product lines, which combines a dynamic distribution network with a retail strategy as well as e-commerce,” she says, also referring to changing consumer habits in the post-Covid world.



With just $100 and a burgeoning global supply chain network, Mayegun has built a million-dollar company manufacturing natural body and hair care products and foods in Africa.

temitope mayegun

The Natural Route To Business Success

With the social scene slowly crawling back to some semblance of normalcy, entrepreneur Bukky George-Taylor is cashing in with an app for customers keen on curated events and experiences in Nigeria.



If there is one person who knows what is hot and trendy in Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country, it is Bukky George-Taylor.



As the CEO and Founder of Robert Taylor Media Ltd., a boutique communications and events company based in Lagos, Nigeria, she is the force behind some of the biggest brand activations and campaigns in the country as well as providing representation for global brands looking to penetrate the African market. 



And her latest creation, a mobile app named CRAWL Africa, launched in Lagos in March, seems to address the need to adapt to a new social life in ‘a new normal’. She calls it Africa’s first social calendar app on a mission to revolutionize social experiences in Africa by presenting a collection of curated experiences for the discerning and upwardly-mobile African consumer.



“Finding information on where to go or contacting establishments in Nigeria and across Africa can be a chore. With no access to 411 or yellow pages in Africa, CRAWL provides you with all the accurate contact information to contact businesses and to tour your city,” says George-Taylor about the new app, which currently has over 100 businesses listed.



With a degree in African-American history from the University of Massachusetts in the United States, George-Taylor has built a firm that services the corporate, entertainment, lifestyle, fashion, beauty and health sectors. This has always ensured her access to the hottest events and happenings in Nigeria.



But why choose to launch an app when the retail and hospitality sector is still recovering from the effects of a raging pandemic?



“The app launched because our city [Lagos] started to open back up with restaurants and smaller events. One of the major reasons was because of travel restrictions; the app was birthed to promote tourism and encourage people to start exploring their own cities.



“The app also enables CRAWLers to save their favorite locations or experiences for future references with a single tap while making suggestions to users based on the preferences they select,&nbsp;such as budget, location, and more.”&nbsp;



As Nigeria’s social scene gradually reopens, the events listings will be reflected on the app. George-Taylor is now also looking at other cities in sub-Saharan Africa such as Accra, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg and Cape Town in which to launch CRAWL Africa.

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Want To Party In The New Normal? This Could Be How

Osayi Alile, the CEO of ACT Foundation, on the challenges of grant-making in Africa and the need to solve the continent’s problems, especially in a Covid environment.



The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered possibly one of the most catastrophic crisis across Africa in a decade. The unprecedented events of the marauding virus have led to a dramatic increase in inequalities for millions of Africans especially for those who have no access to healthcare or employment. Among those most impacted by this pandemic and its fallout are those in the informal sector, many of whom are women.



With the virus leading to increased vulnerabilities in several key sectors of economies, African governments have become inundated with many infrastructural challenges affecting their respective populations. In the wake of the widening gap, non-profit organizations are stepping in to ensure the most vulnerable in society do not get left behind, and they are doing this through grant-making.



This, however, presents several challenges. Even though the continent, with 54 countries, is blessed with natural resources and some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, the continent still needs more resources from several sectors to address grave issues plaguing the economy.



Areas like healthcare, social inequality, unemployment and terrorism, have left a number of countries in dire straits, with their governments ill-equipped to provide much-needed resources to fix these issues. As a result, there has been a strong reliance on global grant-making organizations who have the mandate of ensuring positive change in Africa, to help provide the financial resources to solve some of the issues that affect more than a billion people on the continent, across areas like agriculture, education, healthcare and human rights.



The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation ranks as one of the largest contributors of grants in Africa. In 2016, the organization committed to invest $5 billion over five years in support of health and anti-poverty initiatives in Africa, according to Philanthropy News Digest. With the youngest population in the world, children and youth have become a key focus of grant-making organizations with the demographic receiving more than one in three grant dollars and one in four grants awarded by United States’ foundations for Africa, in 2012, according to a report by the Foundation Center.



Osayi Alile, the Chief Executive Officer of Aspire Coronation Trust (ACT) Foundation, is on a mission to become the leading indigenous grant-making organization across Africa, also tackling these challenges. Starting out as a consultant for Access Bank Plc on its CSR projects as well as being the former executive director of FATE Foundation, a private sector-led not-for-profit organization in Nigeria, Alile is on a mission to empower African NGOs through grants to help solve the pressing needs in their communities.



“Yes, a lot of help comes from abroad but we also need to solve our problems ourselves so that’s where ACT came into being. I came up with the structure and helped to put it in place then, moved on to working full time as CEO for the foundation. We knew there was a lack of funding needed to accomplish what a lot of NGOs wanted to do and we couldn’t wait for someone to solve these issues for us. We decided on the SDG goals like health, environment, leadership and enterprise,” says Alile.



Alile has over 20 years of non-profit experience in Africa and thus knows more than most about the challenges of grant-making in Africa.



“You get a lot of proposals and sometimes people are not as truthful as they should be. So, the challenge is going through proposals in our 30 states in Nigeria and making sure they are doing what they say they are doing. So, you have to make sure you are doing background checks and a lot of energy and a lot of time needs to be spent to make sure we are picking the right organization from the beginning to make the right impact.”



The organization is currently working with 70 organizations with the mission of adding 40 new organizations each year.



“70% of our funding goes to the ones that respond to our funding call each year. In the last four years, we have given over N1 billion ($2.6 million) to NGOs. Sometimes, they ask for N50 million ($131,500) and when I look at their proposal, you realize that’s not what they need. So, we work with them to streamline their organization so they are efficient.”



And in a Covid environment, the need for funding is now more pressing than ever.



“We did a lot last year because our problems were not going away with Covid. Domestic abuse does not change because of Covid. Cancer does not change because of Covid, maternal issues do not change. So, the local NGOs are the ones that had to stay back during Covid and work on a daily basis to solve these problems. With Covid, the number of cases like domestic violence went up by 46% and in some countries all the way to 100%,” says Alile.



As the organization turns five next year, Alile has shifted her focus to also recruit more philanthropists and entrepreneurs to join forces to solve Nigeria and Africa’s problems. They are currently working in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa with a goal to expand to even more countries on the continent.



“I knew we had a lot of NGOs and social enterprises that needed money but I didn’t know it was this much. When we did the first call we got so many people and it was very overwhelming. It is difficult because all the organizations are doing well and when you go to the field and you have to select which ones to give money to, you ask yourself who else is going to give money those who were not selected? So, you need to be able to put structures in place and make sure that every time you pick one organization over another, you are picking them for the right reasons,” says Alile.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="687" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG-20210414-WA0009-1024x687.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-51032" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG-20210414-WA0009-1024x687.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG-20210414-WA0009-300x201.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG-20210414-WA0009-768x515.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG-20210414-WA0009.jpg 1049w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



One of the lucky organizations that were picked by ACT Foundation is the Women At Risk International Foundation (WARIF), founded by Dr Kemi DaSilva-Ibru. They have been recipients of three grant cycles from ACT in their effort to fight gender-based violence in rural communities across Nigeria.



“The community-based initiative that the ACT Foundation supports is the Warif Gate Keepers project and it is essentially a community-based initiative where we go into rural communities and we encourage stakeholders in these communities to take ownership of gender-based violence, particularly rape and child sexual abuse. Based on our survey, 71% of women in these communities were aware of cases, however, none of them had ever been trained as first responders to cases of gender-based violence.”



ACT Foundations’ grant-enabled Warif to tackle the life-saving issues that comes with gender based violence and empower victims to speak up and seek justice.



“So, our project was to engage these traditional birth attendants who we refer to as gate-keepers where we train them as first responders of cases of gender-based violence and the impact was amazing. First, in terms of our outcomes. Now, we had an additional skill that they were able to offer and then they were also able to cascade the training in an apprenticeship like form. The second impact is as the result, we were able to not only improve on the knowledge but the behavioral change that comes with that knowledge and seek prosecution on behalf of victims,” says DaSilva-Ibru.



The impact her organization has made in the gender space would not have been without grant-making organizations like the ACT Foundation and their willingness to take on organizations with innovative ideas who are ready to implement them and help solve the many challenges facing the African continent.

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On A Mission To Empower African NGOs

Ivorian entrepreneur Charlette N&#8217;Guessan is on a mission to solve a $400 million problem faced by Ghanaian financial institutions.



The BACE Group, co-founded by Charlette N’Guessan, is on a mission to solve a $400 million problem faced by Ghanaian financial institutions to identify customers. Their solution – the BACE API, a software that uses facial recognition to help banks streamline their Know Your Customer (KYC) process.



N’Guessan, who is also CEO of the Ghana-based software company, stumbled upon the idea when she relocated from her native Ivory Coast to Ghana to take part in the one-year MEST entrepreneur training program. MEST, which is an Africa-wide technology entrepreneur training program, was founded in Ghana in 2008 and provides funding as well as skills training to Africa’s brightest software developers.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“We started talking to banks and fintech companies in Ghana and we noticed that they were spending a lot of money in terms of KYC and also things related to security.”</blockquote>



“When I first moved to Ghana, I could not speak English, so it was very difficult to communicate. But we had the ecosystem where we could learn English through MEST. That’s how I met my co-founder and we had a similar interest in terms of solving key challenges in Africa. We started to study the local market and what challenges they were facing and we started talking to banks and fintech companies in Ghana and we noticed that they were spending a lot of money in terms of KYC and also things related to security,” says N’Guessan.



With a strong background in electronic and computer science as well as software engineering, the 26-year-old set out to initially create an app before pivoting and launching an Application Program Interface (API) instead that could be integrated into any existing bank app or solution.



“Outside Africa a lot of people are trying to use facial recognition and there was some confusion about how it can work properly in Africa. But we are young and we want to do something challenging. We decided to use facial recognition instead of finger print because, for us, facial recognition was a lot simpler because it doesn’t require a lot of devices. If you go to your bank, you go to an agent and she will check your identity by looking at your face and your ID and know that it is you. She won’t check your fingerprints first. So, we wanted to bring this natural process into tech digitization and facial recognition was the technology that would be able to make this happen for us,” says N’Guessan.



The BACE API has been specifically developed for Africans by using nothing more than a device’s inbuilt camera and utilizes live images and short videos on those devices. The company has also teamed up with certified government-issued Identity documents that has granted the company access to Ghanaian passports to further expand its reach.



N’Guessan’s innovation is currently being utilized by two financial institutions in Ghana and has made her the first woman ever to win the Royal Academy of Engineering’s prestigious 2020 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.



“From 15 teams we were shortlisted to four teams who pitched to the jury and based on our track record, we won. We received £25,000 ($34,000) which we are investing into developing the product even further. It is good because the product is relevant for Covid-19 where a lot of people are no longer meeting physically.”



N’Guessan and the BACE Group are now targeting all African companies and different sectors where, she is hoping the technology will be used for remote onboarding of drivers in companies like UBER to telecom companies’ enrolment of simcards.

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The Techpreneur On The Money

Two African entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom. One tale of grit and gumption in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. 



IN 2019, WHEN BERNICIA BOATENG OPENED HER namesake makeup studio, Bernicia Boateng Studios, in London’s high street, it made her the first Ghanaian to do so. Her makeup business had grown considerably over the years, as she cultivated some big names as her clientele including, as she says, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and models Leomie Anderson and Jourdan Dunn.



She was beginning to be recognized for her work with features in publications such as Vogue and collaborations with beauty and fashion houses such as Estée Lauder and Yves Saint Laurent. When the BBC and Evening Standard were looking for a voice representing excellence in the makeup industry, Boateng was the go-to name. But then came the pandemic, the lockdowns, the second wave, and a twist in the fairy tale. 



“When I realized that face-to-face contact wasn’t something we can rely on anymore, I kind of moved the brand towards education,” says Boateng, on her decision to strategize to survive. But how did she end up in the beauty business in the United Kingdom (UK)? 



“I have always wanted to be a makeup artist because my mum loved makeup and it was something I always found desirable. I wanted to be just like my mum who was a very glamorous woman. I remember she would take us to Selfridges (high-end department store) on the weekends after drama school and she would make us sit down and watch as she got her makeup done and that is where I got interested,” says Boateng. 



Those were the days before YouTube and social media makeup tutorials when the only way one could hone the craft was by rolling up the sleeves and learning on the job or from a professional on the shop floor. And that is exactly what Boateng did. 



After graduating with a business management degree from the University of Leicester in the UK, Boateng got her first job with Mac Cosmetics as a makeup artist, before branching out to become her own professional. 



“2011 and 2012 [were the years] makeup took over and it was all over social media with videos on how to recreate makeup and I just realized that there was a gap in the market in terms of doing a luxury makeup look for dark-skinned girls and I wanted to fill that void,” she says of the early years. 



But now, in order to fill the void created by the pandemic, she has had to give her business an even bigger digital persona. 



“When it first hit, the first thing I thought of was taking my work online. A lot of people still want to look good at home and we don’t have a lot of control about where we can go or where we can eat but one thing we do have control over is how we look, how we make ourselves feel, and how we make other people feel. So, it was imperative to show people how to look and feel good,” says Boateng. 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:26% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="927" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-927x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50782 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-927x1024.jpg 927w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-272x300.jpg 272w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-768x848.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-1391x1536.jpg 1391w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng.jpg 1476w" sizes="(max-width: 927px) 100vw, 927px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">We don’t have a lot of control about where we can go or where we can eat but one thing we do have control over is how we look. – Bernicia Boateng</blockquote>
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She began with online tutorials that did so well that they were covered by the BBC. She also began creating more content establishing a more personal rapport with her 115,000-strong Instagram audience, taking them on a journey to enhancing their self-esteem. The result of these initiatives means Boateng has now found a new revenue stream to stay afloat. 



But who knows for how long until the pandemic ebbs away? With the UK experiencing harsh restrictions, startups have all either had to fold up, pivot or start all over. 



Take for example, Brimms Bottles Limited, founded by P.Y. Adjei, which had to adapt almost immediately to the new economic climate. After graduating from the University of Greenwich, Adjei worked in the banking sector for about five years before listening to his inner entrepreneurial voice. 



He began by creating content for a number of magazines before launching his own publication, which he ran for a few years. With Brexit gaining momentum, Adjei had his eureka moment during a chance encounter with a friend that led him all the way to China in search of greener pastures. 



“My time there influenced what I am doing today because I got a chance to meet a number of manufacturers and from there, I came across what I thought was a brilliant product,” says Adjei. 



That product was a stainless-steel bottle that kept a drink warm for 12 hours or cold for a whole day. 



“It looked beautiful to me and the only thing missing was the product packaging. It was mainly boring colors and that is where my creative direction kicked in. I wanted the bottles to have a better design and style and from there I started working on the idea and trying to see what I could do, design-wise, to improve it and build the product and here I am today.” 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:38% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50781 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
I remember going to see my manufacturer in Germany and they were holding a conference in Frankfurt and we got there and realized that the place was completely empty and that is where I saw how serious [Covid-19] was and how it would impact business. – P.Y. Adjei We
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But nobody could have foreseen the body blows of Covid-19.



&#8220;Brimms Bottles kicked off right at the beginning of the pandemic and I remember going to see my manufacturer in Germany and they were holding a conference in Frankfurt and we got there and realized that the place was completely empty and that is where I saw how serious this was and how it would impact business,” says Adjei. 



His problems were just about to begin. He experienced undue delays for the samples he had ordered of Brimms Bottles due to lockdowns implemented all over the world. 



“But we managed to work through that during the sample stage but finally when we got the final order in, that got delayed as well, taking about three to four months from China because of the pandemic,” says Adjei. 



Initially, the idea was to have his products at a few outlets such as cafes and were also meant for outdoor activities and travels, all of which were unduly affected by the pandemic. Now, he is leaning more towards the e-commerce aspect of the business. 



“I used my unique skills in terms of content creation and web design to make sure that my website works perfectly and to make sure I am working to get my products out there. “I am also branching into co-branding which allows a company or individual to create their bottles and co-brand along with mine so I am diversifying to give the bottles other avenues to survive,” says Adjei. 



Going digital is the only way forward for Adjei, Boateng, and many other startup entrepreneurs in the diaspora who had just begun on their journey in business, and have had to script their own rulebooks of survival. Their story is no different from their counterparts across the world. It’s one of grit, gumption and the fortitude to stay the course, no matter what.

Author: Peace Hyde

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA