Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words cleanse the mind. They are profound, creative and thought provoking.
Adichie is the fifth of six children born to high achieving parents. Her mother, Grace Ifeoma, was the first female registrar at the University of Nigeria and her father, James Nwoye Adichie, was Nigeria’s first professor of statistics. He later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the same institution.
With a power couple for parents, Adichie acquired a reading habit by the age of four.
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After secondary school, Adichie studied medicine at the University of Nigeria, switched to pharmacy, and then gave it up to go to the United States (US), when she was 19, a year and a half into her studies. She obtained a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University.
Adichie graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University in 2001. She later completed a master’s degree in creative writing at John Hopkins University. In 2005, she was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and earned a master’s degree in African studies from Yale University in 2008.It was while there that she began writing Purple Hibiscus, published when she was 26. Her work has been translated into 30 languages.
Walk along Fife Street in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and you will see some of the country’s most expensive schools and scores of students sharing a laugh in the blistering sun. Look closely, and you will see many clutching Purple Hibiscus, a work studied in many high schools across Africa.
“Purple Hibiscus is one of the greatest books I have ever read. There is so much struggle and oppression in the book that I can relate to as an African. The ways she writes and describes things like heat in the book is intriguing and make it a good read. To see an African write like this is very inspiring because it shows that we can all tell our stories no matter where we come from. To think she was just 26 years old when she wrote it makes it even more intriguing,” says pupil, Charmaine Hlatshwayo, from Mzilikazi High School in Bulawayo.
Half of a Yellow Sun and the short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, were Adichie’s next great works.
She has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Orange Prize, the New York Times Notable Book prize, a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year prize and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist.
Adichie is often described as the successor of the late Chinua Achebe. It’s a fitting coincidence that she grew up in a house that once belonged to Achebe, Nigeria’s most celebrated writer.
“Because of writers like Chinua Achebe, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized,” said Adichie at her TEDx 2009 talk, The Danger Of A Single Story.
The talk has drawn almost two million views online.
Born in Nsukka, Nigeria, on September 15, 1977, Adichie encountered injustice as she grew up. As a result, for years, the Nigerian author has inspired many with her written work and become part of pop culture. Her speeches are as powerful as her fiction.
“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful otherwise you will threaten the men.’ Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage; I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important… But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same…”says Adichie at the TEDx Euston talk titled We Should All Be Feminists, in 2012.
This talk made Adichie Beyoncé’s favorite feminist. Beyoncé sampled parts of this speech on her track, Flawless in 2014. The song reportedly topped iTunes charts in 104 countries and sold nearly 850,000 copies in three days.
“I think Chimamanda is the fearless woman’s voice that has become the drumbeat of feminism. She is intelligent, articulate and knows how to use her voice to speak for women on the international stage,” says Zimbabwean author Raisedon Baya.
But that’s not all.
Adichie’s latest book, Americanah, a best-selling novel, is being turned into a movie, with award-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o as lead. Brad Pitt is the producer, through his Plan B production banner along with Nyong’o and Andrea Calderwood.
The founder and treasurer of the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors’ Association of South Africa (ANFASA), Monica Seeber, says “ANFASA is delighted that an author has been selected for the FORBES AFRICA [lifetime achievement award]. This is recognition that authors have the power to influence people, events and thinking far beyond their own personal spheres. The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Adichie is carrying a banner for every woman who has grown up in Africa. In a few years, she has placed African women’s literature on the world map which makes us wonder what she will achieve in the next 20 years.

Adichie Is Africa, Africa  Is Adichie

Arunma Oteh’s ascent from Nigeria’s ‘Iron Lady’ to Africa’s pride was not an easy one. Yet, Oteh, who joined the World Bank as its Vice President and Treasurer in September 2015, has proven that even if the proverbial glass ceiling exists for women, it can be broken – and how.
As Nigeria’s Director-General of the Securities &amp; Exchange Commission (SEC), Oteh, known for her competence and tough decision-making skills, had boldly driven the transformation of the country’s capital markets and helped grow investor appetite.
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At the World Bank, Oteh leads a large and diverse team responsible for managing more than $150 billion in assets. Her top priorities are to maintain the World Bank’s global reputation as a prudent and innovative borrower, investor and risk manager; manage an extensive client advisory, transaction and asset management business for the bank; engage, in her capacity as one of the World Bank’s key representatives, with outside stakeholders including global private sector financial institutions, the financial media and the sovereign debt and reserve managers in client countries, as well as ratings agencies; and collaborate extensively with the finance partners throughout the World Bank Group, expanding shared approaches, in particular around innovative financing for development and for key new projects.
In a statement, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, had said on her appointment: “Arunma has deep knowledge of capital markets and tremendous experience as the former Treasurer of one of our partner development banks, we are very fortunate to be able to recruit an individual of Arunma’s obvious caliber.”
Oteh is a phenomenal powerhouse but in person, is warm and unassuming. I met her on a balmy Friday evening in Johannesburg in mid-2015.
Her five-year term at the SEC had ended in January, the same month she turned 50.
“Fifty is the new 16,” she laughed.
“I couldn’t have imagined how enjoyable it will be. It’s like I am walking on air.”
Oteh said her singular objective would be to continue to serve her country, and Africa.
“I come from a family [where] my parents have spent their lives serving, so I am usually attracted to opportunities that help me serve,” she said.
Oteh speaks with passion about Africa, about security, capital markets, infrastructure, e-commerce and governance. She also speaks keenly about topics such as women’s empowerment and youth.
“I want young people to realize their potential. I want to see Nigeria become truly one of the most industrious countries in the world. I want to see Africa be the place where no one writes those articles about wars, disease and famine, and [where] people are writing about being inspired by all the entrepreneurial opportunities here.”
Her first experience of capital markets was sitting around the dinner table with her father, who would make her read annual reports to him.
“I hated it, but God was planting a seed in me for what I have done today.”
Clearly, her parents were her greatest influences.
“I believe early foundations are critical to who you become. I also want more parents to spend more time bringing up their children. My emphasis on character and standing alone came from my parents.”
Other influences have been Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates, Madam Walker, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé and Bono. For Africa’s women, she too is now up there on that list.

W0A3975

The Iron Lady  In Charge Of  $150 Billion

As chair of the African Union (AU) Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, it would seem, far from the politics of her home country South Africa.
But it is now, in recent months, perhaps more than ever before, that her name is ricocheting in the corridors of power. Whilst political observers say she is coming to South Africa more often addressing high-profile meetings, the speculation is if she will be South Africa’s next president in 2017.
Will she be? If she does, it will make her South Africa’s first female president, which will be a political harbinger for the women’s movement.
We posed the question to the sexagenarian and anti-apartheid activist in June 2015 in Johannesburg, a day after the 25th Assembly of African Union Heads of State and Government around the theme ‘Women’s empowerment and development towards Agenda 2063’.
“That is not dependent on me,” Dlamini-Zuma had replied with a gentle laugh.
“At the moment, I am working at the AU, and that’s where my efforts should be. Who becomes the president of South Africa is a decision of whichever party wins, it will be the decision of the ruling party. And I have to do my best where I am. If you work for it, maybe it will happen. It is the decision of South Africans, but not my decision.”
A medical doctor, Dlamini-Zuma had been minister of health during Nelson Mandela’s presidency, foreign minister in the Thabo Mbeki government, and home affairs minister in the Jacob Zuma government before becoming the first woman to take on the top job at the AU in 2012.
Dlamini-Zuma’s mandate for now is clear – a united and strong Africa.
The greater financial inclusion of women on the continent, especially in agribusiness, is a subject close to her heart.
“The women on this continent are very unique in many ways. They really are the drivers of communities, of families, they are the curators of our culture, they really are the backbone of our social security as they take care of the elderly and the sick. But they also just make sure the land is tilled, there is food on the table for the children. But we need to empower them to do a lot more.”
Binding a large, heterogeneous continent with similarities rather than differences is challenging, but Dlamini-Zuma stridently believes in the pan-African dream, and the power of the youth to shape Africa.
“What is common is that we are all driven by a pan-African approach, which looks at solidarity amongst Africans, unity amongst Africans, and so I try and use what is common, what can drive all of us to prosperity and peace. And also working around the issues of women, as they are common on the continent and across the globe, and working with youth, which is also a critical part of what we do.”
In September 2015, Dlamini-Zuma received the Gülen Peace Award from the Turquoise Harmony Institute. Previous winners include Graça Machel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
One of her achievements at the AU, she says, has been bringing together Agenda 2063, a development framework and vision for Africa.
“The second thing we have been able to achieve is to get the continent to realize it has to fund its own programs…We want to make sure we are at the forefront and the world should work with us, support us, invest in Africa, but we have to invest in Africa ourselves.”
The management of diversity on the continent is another key focus. And more women in politics, as positive role models, driving the agenda for change. Whether or not Dlamini-Zuma becomes South Africa’s next president, she is certainly only a step away from proving it is possible.

The Pan-African

For citizens of Africa’s largest economy, 2015 was defined by hope, politics and economic stagnation. They will remember the year for its toxic politics, power games, political propaganda, public discourse on socio-political reengineering and economic inertia.
Nigerians were effectively waiting for their new leader to flag off widespread reforms, which was a crucial step towards fixing their damaged economy. For people with the dubious distinction of being one of the most corrupt nations in the world, they also needed to restore national pride.
Luckily, Nigeria’s brand of politics produced a democratically elected president through predominantly peaceful polls in March.
Considered to be a gentleman and excellent soldier, Muhammadu Buhari once reigned over this complex and fast growing nation as supreme military leader between December 1983 and April 1985. Booted out of office by another soldier for being too autocratic – stern, frugal and draconian – Nigerians now wanted him back for those same reasons they welcomed his ejection 30 years ago, albeit with a democratic flavor. Historians will do well to credit him with this ironic twist of national déjà vu.
They will also record his evolution from perennial presidential candidate to President as unique. Like him or not, he has emerged as a national emblem of persistence. Prior to this year’s elections, Buhari had ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011, ending his quest on each occasion in protracted legal battles.
In a world where perceptions become instant reality, Nigeria’s political trajectory to 2015 restored hope in Africa’s political culture and set the tone for other elections across the continent. The emergence of a winner with seemingly squeaky clean credentials – in a nation where graft has become a culture – rekindled investor confidence in the Nigerian economy and once again placed Africa’s most populous nation on the radar of the global community – this time for a positive reason.
“Once uncertainty was removed over the fate of Nigeria, risk levels dropped and all previous analysis has to be recalibrated,” Olufemi Awoyemi, the CEO of Proshare, said days after the elections.
Buhari’s brief was obvious: fix the faltering economy, restore peace and security, and revamp the social and political ethos of the land. The man, however, doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. His unrushed style confounded, and still confuses, friends and critics alike, and has left many Nigerians wondering if perhaps the change they voted for was a mirage. His performance to date offers a mixed ray of hope.
Battling corruption was always going to be Buhari’s forte. He has overhauled the leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and has been exhuming contractual anomalies and crude oil theft cases identified during the previous administration.
Pleading for patience, his search for incorruptible men and women to fill cabinet roles took almost five months.
He has secured the support of the United States and other G7 nations. This renewed interest in Nigeria will be useful when he goes after ill-gotten funds of indicted citizens and ex-government officials stashed away in foreign banks. The man himself has no foreign bank account.
The war against Boko Haram has also benefited from better regional cooperation. Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger now have a multi-national task force fighting the insurgency.
The Buhari administration is however yet to rescue the Chibok girls, abducted by Boko Haram in April 2014. The world also continues to watch how he will fulfil another campaign promise to cut down the size of government.
The economy meanwhile seems to lack a definite course. Without ministers and without a clear modus operandi for implementing economic reforms, financial markets and investors continue to stall, waiting for direction on key policy issues such as trade and investment, currency and interest rate management.
The president’s 2016 fiscal plan might yet provide some clues to his chosen path in to the future.

Patient And Purposeful

Two sharp jabs of failure – one on a golf course and another during a telephone call in New York – helped make Mohammed Dewji the rampant African entrepreneur that he is.
The first came on a golf course in the United States (US) when he realized he was not going to be the next Tiger Woods. Dewji had a handicap of three when he was still at school; his father spotted this and enrolled him in the prestigious Arnold Palmer Golf Academy in Orlando, Florida.
“I won the regional competitions, but when we got to the national competitions I saw younger players hitting the ball further and straighter than me and I decided I wasn’t going to make it,” says Dewji.
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Instead he went to study theology in Georgetown University – an alma mater of former US president Bill Clinton.
“While other students tried to stay awake through discussions of exchange rates, Dewji would stay after class to talk about how the readings might pertain to the Tanzanian shilling, and how Tanzania could address its economic challenges. Even at the age of 20 or so, he was thinking about how to improve life in his country,” recalls Pietra Rivoli, Deputy Dean of the university’s school of business, who taught Dewji international finance.
The second stab of failure, that proved a prod towards the road home to Africa, came during a telephone call from New York to his father back in Dar es Salaam. By this time, Dewji had a job on Wall Street.
“I asked my father for money to buy a suit. He said if I couldn’t afford a suit it was time for me to come home and work for him!” chuckles Dewji.
The return came in 1999 to the family trading house that his grandmother founded, in the mud and sand family home, in the poor town of Singida, in central Tanzania. This is the humble home where Dewji was born and was very lucky to survive the delivery.
“My mother and I almost died because I had the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck,” Dewji told FORBES AFRICA in a cover story in 2013.
Dewji’s father, Gulam Dewji, had built the family business into a prosperous import and export operation called MeTL. Fresh from the US, Dewji learned the ropes studiously and his father handed him the reins and a $1-million loan, with a promotion to CEO, at the age of 29. He set to work transforming MeTL into a pan-African conglomerate with operations in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique that clocked up $1.4 billion in revenue. He bought up loss-making government textile and edible oil plants, leftovers from the country’s great socialist industrial plans, and turned them around. He now owns the biggest edible oil refinery in Africa and runs a diversified group that distributes and manufactures everything from soap to fruit juice.
A snapshot of the shrewd deals of Dewji is the purchase of his sisal processing plant. At the time, it was running at break even with prices of around $300 a ton for sisal that is used to make everything from ropes to coffee bags. Dewji reckoned his production costs were going to go up from $300 to around $700, but also had an idea that prices too were also going to rise. So they did, to $2,100, so now MeTL is exporting 8,000 ton a year at a handsome profit.
It is this kind of instinct that has led MeTL into the competitive fuel market in Tanzania. In a mere three and a half years of operation, the company has become one of the country’s top three suppliers.
It is all part of the Dewji plan to set up in Kenya, Rwanda, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Burundi, Ghana and Nigeria by 2022. A move that he believes will increase his workforce from 24,000 – about 5% of Tanzania’s formal employment – to 100,000. This will translate into revenue of $5 billion for a group that Dewji owns 75% of. It could propel him towards his goal of becoming Africa’s richest man.
With such a sharp, shrewd eye for business, many could ask why Dewji is willing to risk a spectacular defeat by going toe-to-toe with one of the world’s best known names – Coca Cola. Taking on the giant of the fizzy drink business has proved the graveyard of many a hard-nosed billionaire entrepreneur: including British tycoon Richard Branson whose Virgin Cola was counted out in the first round.
Dewji has been in the soft drink and juice business for a while and has the machinery for mass production.
When, a couple of years ago, he launched his cheekily named Mo Cola in Tanzania – his friends call him Mo –  Coca Cola pricked up its ears in a market where it holds 96%. Dewji claims Coca Cola offered to buy him out and he refused.
“My dream is to have a drink brand that is bought across the whole of Africa,” says Dewji.
The fizzy drink war in Tanzania is slow going. Dewji turns out 12 million bottles a month at his three bottling lines in Dar es Salaam and yet has managed to capture a mere 3.5% of the market. Not that it worries this all-or-nothing entrepreneur.
“Once I can get to 15%, I will start making money,” he says.
Away from business, Dewji gives $500,000 every year to help the poor in his hometown of Singida.
“He’s very popular and a huge inspiration to many young people,” says Salim Kikeke, the BBC correspondent in Dar es Salaam.
In the future, he hopes to channel $100 million of his fortune to help others.
“Life is very short. I don’t want to die with all this money,” he says.
When FORBES AFRICA put Tanzania’s richest man on our cover in July 2013, many people asked who he was. In the next decade, fewer and fewer people are likely to ask the same question about the humble entrepreneur who could very well become Africa’s richest man.

The All-Or-Nothing  World Of Mo

In 1967, there was growing divergence between two parts of Nigeria. Biafra, a secessionist state in south eastern Nigeria, at the time represented the nationalist aspirations of the Igbo people, whose leadership felt they could no longer coexist with the federal government. The desire for a separate state led to up to 30,000 Igbos being killed and around a million refugees fleeing to their homeland in the east. Anambra, the eighth most populated state of Nigeria, provided the base for dangerous relief flights loaded with food and supplies for the war-torn Biafran population. The area was also home to Cosmas Maduka, who was only six years old at the height of the civil war.
“We had a bunker outside our house which we ran into during times where the military opened fire and dropped bombs with their fighter jets. We did not know whether we were going to survive to see the following day,”
says Maduka.
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Once, while on his way to the market, soldiers opened fire, killing a large number of civilians. Maduka narrowly escaped. In a bid to protect her children, Maduka’s mother sent him away to live with his grandparents before he later embarked on the journey that would see him become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
Maduka is the President and Chairman of Coscharis Group, franchise holders of over eight automobile brands and one of the largest distributors of spare car parts in Nigeria. The company also has interests in real estate, banking, technology, medical equipment, petrochemicals, elevators and agriculture.
Like his early childhood, getting his business to this point has been tough. While talking to FORBES AFRICA in his gigantic dealership, which houses over 300 luxury car brands, he is quick to credit someone else for
his success.
“My mother was the lady who inspired me to greatness. At a young age in my life, she looked at me and told me I am going to be successful. She said people will always like me and people will struggle to say no to me,” says Maduka.
It’s easy to see why. He is composed as he sports his trademark Jesus broche. He has a quiet confidence about him without being arrogant. His mother’s “indoctrination” would later be the impetus he needed to turn N200 ($1) into a $500-million conglomerate.
On average the company sells more than 400 cars per month with prices around N150 million ($752,787) for the top end of its luxury fleet, which includes Rolls Royce, BMW, Jaguar, Range Rover and Ford. This year, the company partnered with Ford to build one of the largest manufacturing plants on the continent for its pickup trucks.
Coscharis’ medical supplies business represents GE Healthcare, Philips and Siemens in Nigeria. Coscharis also holds the number two position in the ICT market through its own brand, Coscharis Technologies Limited, and their pool of partners which includes HP, Microsoft and Lenovo. Coscharis Technologies provides hardware and software applications to organizations.
Maduka’s success is all the more remarkable when you consider he lost his father when he was a toddler.
“The best I knew of my father was the day I saw a man lying lifelessly in a suit&#8230; It was like a festival, people were exceptionally kind to me that day and whatever I asked for, I got,” he says.
The four-year-old Maduka didn’t know it was his father’s funeral. The celebrations ceased immediately after this day. Maduka started street hawking to provide for his family. Every morning at 5AM, Maduka would wake up to sell bean cakes with his older brother, Pius, to generate money for the family. True to his mother’s prophecies, Maduka was a better salesman than his brother. As a result, his mother, who could no longer afford the tuition fees for both brothers, took Maduka out of school at the age of six.
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At the age of seven and no longer attending school, Maduka was sent to live with his uncle and serve as an apprentice selling motorcycle parts. It was not a conventional apprenticeship. Firstly, Maduka worked for seven years without pay. Secondly, the shop floor that Maduka traded on during the day would be transformed into his bedroom at night. He would wake up early in the morning to have his shower on the street before customers arrived and then proceed to manage the shop by himself with occasional supervision from his uncle.
In most countries, these conditions would constitute some form of breach of child labor laws. Maduka has a different take on the experience.
“I believe this was the best university any young man can go to because it was a system where there was no contractual agreement. If you did not behave yourself, you were sent back home to the village, but if you performed, your master would give you start-up capital for your own business at the end of your apprenticeship,” he says.
By the fifth year of his apprenticeship at the age of 13, Maduka had already proven that he had what it took to run a business on his own and was consequently placed in a new branch to manage. In Nigeria, as with many African countries, entrepreneurs are trained by trade schools, craft centers and vocational institutes. Proprietors in the small-scale industries also offer training programs based on an apprenticeship system. Whereas the government-established institutions are formal, apprenticeship training in the private sector is often informal. In lieu of this, there is an ongoing debate as to which system yields the best results. Maduka favors apprenticeship.
“I believe apprenticeship is the best university to go to. If you give a formally educated person N1 million and an apprentice N100, 000, I believe in five years, the apprentice will be able to catch up to the university student and overtake him,” he says.
Maduka learned everything about the automotive components industry outside the classroom. He learned about the internal combustion of an engine, carburettors and centrifugal regulators. He also discovered how to provide the best service to clients and where to go to get the best deals as a reseller.
He understood the power of building a trustworthy reputation with your buyers. He knew about cost price and profit margins and ensured the shop was always stocked with the products the customers often needed. That learning process ended when, due to his newly found Christian faith, Maduka closed his uncle’s store so he could fast for three days. He was immediately fired and, to Maduka’s surprise, his severance package after seven years of hard work was less than a mere $400.
“I looked at my uncle in the face and said to him I deserve something better than this, five years from now, you will regret making this decision,” says Maduka.
Adversity is a constant companion for entrepreneurs, but the successful ones learn to push through tough times. Maduka outlined three key targets for himself after being dismissed by his uncle.
“I wanted to get married before I turned 20, have children by 22 and become a millionaire by 24,” he says.
Maduka immediately put his plan into action. He formed a new company, with his brother, called Maduka Brothers, continuing to trade in automobile parts. The pair sourced parts from Lagos and resold them in eastern Nigeria. In just under a year, the brothers went their separate ways due to differing opinions on how the business’ money should be spent. After the split, the siblings became competitors with automotive shops across the road from each other. However, the apprenticeship experience Maduka had gave him an advantage over his brother.
“In business, knowing where to buy is just as important as selling. You need to buy well to sell well and I had a good relationship with all the major wholesalers,” says Maduka.
He used his relationship with large wholesalers to get his supplies at a competitive rate. Within a week, Maduka was selling enough components to get himself a three-bedroom apartment – by the age of 17. With the apartment secured, Maduka set the groundwork to achieve his first goal. At the age of 18, he met a woman who would become integral to the Coscharis empire.
“Her name was Charity and we met in church. I immediately knew she was the one. I asked for her hand in marriage and, after thinking about it for some time, she accepted.”
Maduka got married at the age of 19 and made his first million, as predicted, by the age of 24. The name of his company, Coscharis, was born by combining his name, Cosmas, and the name of the second woman he credits with all his success, Charity. Today, the group has more than 26 branches nationwide, with a presence in Ghana, Gabon and Côte d’Ivoire.
The automobile business of Coscharis Group started in 1983 when the company was incorporated with the business of importation and distribution of automotive parts and accessories of Japanese vehicles. The decision to incorporate the car business provided the breakthrough Coscharis Group needed. At a time where many businesses were choosing to remain sole proprietorships to avoid the bureaucracy and complex framework of a limited company, Maduka decided to break convention. That decision paid off.
“In 1983, the federal government of Nigeria decided to give import licenses only to motor companies and, because I had incorporated Coscharis, they placed me among multinationals like Leventis, even though it was only me and my wife,” says Maduka.
The import licenses granted to Coscharis was crucial. The Nigerian economy back then was dependent on external sources. By 1980, imports had reached a level equivalent to a quarter of the GDP. The federal government deficits had increased from $1.5 million in 1970 to $17.6 million in 1978. Nigeria’s total outstanding debt had reached the $2 billion mark by 1980. These dire economic conditions presented an opportunity for Maduka in a climate where other businesses were closing.
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“It was a seller’s market then because there was scarcity of products. In every difficult situation, an entrepreneur knows that his destiny is not in the hands of his state but in his own hands, he creates his own opportunities,” he says.
Maduka was making margins as high as 200% during this time. The import license gave him protection against the military-run government’s scrutiny and he was able to capitalize on this to grow his business. Maduka had a clear vision for his company from the onset. In the early seventies, the Nigerian motor industry had a lot of major players. Coscharis had to find a way to differentiate itself.
“Leventis was one of the foremost automobile sellers, followed by Mandilas, who were known for their excellent service. We also had some Peugeot dealers&#8230; By the eighties, almost all these companies collapsed and cars were being sold under trees with no service centers.”
Coscharis was responsible for revolutionizing the automobile industry in Nigeria by building showrooms fully equipped with in-house service centers. A second factor for Coscharis was its philosophy towards its employees. Being an entrepreneur at heart, Maduka only hired individuals with strong business acumen to ensure that the culture of innovation and competitiveness continued with the group. Maduka credits this strategy for the success of the group. The company currently has more than N50 billion ($250 million) in shareholder funds, generated in just under 40 years.
Overcoming adversity has always been one of Maduka’s strengths. Four years ago, he was faced with a scandal that threatened to scupper everything he had worked so hard for. In what he considers his worst day in business, Maduka was left with a devastating financial burden of N22.4 billion ($113 million) when he secured a loan for a business associate. At the time, Maduka was on the board, and owned a 25% equity stake, of Access Bank. He was approached by Ifeanyi Uba, the CEO of Capital Oil, for a loan to import petroleum premium spirit. After sympathizing with Ifeanyi’s inability to raise capital to save his business, Maduka took a calculated risk.
“I have never defaulted on any loans. Every bank works with Coscharis at an open credit and we are one of the few companies in Nigeria who have that relationship due to our strong financial position,” says Maduka.
He guaranteed the loan of $278 million for Ifeanyi to secure his goods, which was never repaid. In what was a huge scandal at the time, Coscharis had to repay the debt.
“I don’t think even Bill Gates can walk away from $150 million without it having an effect on him,” says Maduka.
Fortunately, the investments the organization had already made were enough to absorb the heavy shock.
Today, there is a new strategy in place. Maduka has set his organization the target of turning over a billion dollars in the next five years. Ever the entrepreneur, he has identified key sectors to help him achieve this goal. One of these is agriculture.
“Nigeria spent over $3 billion to import rice; almost 90 percent of Nigerians eat rice and we see an opportunity to create a billion-dollar business in rice over the next three years,” he says.
The current government supports Maduka’s decision and has made attempts to curb the importation of rice by raising the duty of the crop to 100%. Coscharis has acquired more than 3,000 hectares of land in Anambra State and is due to harvest the first batch.
These days, life is very different for Maduka. He has six children, two of whom are involved in the Coscharis Group. His family might not exist, however, if it was up to Charity’s uncle.
“When I told her family about my intentions to marry Charity, her uncle was so annoyed he got his gun and shot at me,” says Maduka. Luckily, he missed.
He is a firm believer in each one of his children receiving a Nigerian education before progressing to the classrooms of the United States. This way none of the children will forget their roots.
Maduka is passionate about the potential in Africa’s largest economy.
“Ten years ago, the Dangote you see today was not the same back then. The government showed goodwill and supported Dangote and today Nigeria will be a net exporter of cement instead of being an importer. Vodacom came into Nigeria and left, and now they are trying hard to return to the market without any success. A subsidiary company of a South African independent company, MTN Nigeria, has more turnover than its parent company. The potential in the Nigerian market is untapped. Saudi Arabia is selling over 150,000 units of Ford with a small population.”
“If we unleash the potential of this industry, and the government handles corruption, the true potential of this market will be unmatched anywhere in the world.”
If Nigeria does reach this potential, Maduka will be on hand to make the most out of it.

DSC8634

The $500-Million Survivor

The first thing you notice when you step onto Tesla Motors’ production floor are the robots. Eight-foot-tall bright-red bots that look like Transformers, huddling over each Model S sedan as it makes its way through the factory in Fremont, Calif., on the eastern, shaggier side of Silicon Valley. Up to eight robots at a time work on a single Model S in a choreographed routine, each performing up to five tasks: welding, riveting, gripping and moving materials, bending metal, and installing components. Henry Ford and the generations of auto industry experts who have followed would dismiss this setup as inefficient – each robot should do one task only before moving the car on to the next Transformer.
The first thing you notice when you step onto Tesla Motors’ production floor are the robots. Eight-foot-tall bright-red bots that look like Transformers, huddling over each Model S sedan as it makes its way through the factory in Fremont, Calif., on the eastern, shaggier side of Silicon Valley. Up to eight robots at a time work on a single Model S in a choreographed routine, each performing up to five tasks: welding, riveting, gripping and moving materials, bending metal, and installing components. Henry Ford and the generations of auto industry experts who have followed would dismiss this setup as inefficient – each robot should do one task only before moving the car on to the next Transformer.
It’s a $3 billion criticism, to be specific. That was the amount shaved off the company’s market value in early August after Tesla cut its sales forecasts for the year by 10% to 50,000 vehicles, citing delays in teaching the robots to make both the Model S and the new crossover SUV Model X. “The Model X is a particularly challenging car to build. Maybe the hardest car to build in the world. I’m not sure what would be harder,” admitted Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire founder and visionary CEO, who also serves in those same roles at SpaceX.
But neither delays nor the cash burn ($1.5 billion in the past 12 months) particularly fazes Musk. He just wants to focus on making the world’s best car, and the $90,000 Model S, by all rights, can claim that prize. An all-electric vehicle, it offers a week’s worth of driving on a single charge from any one of a nationwide network of free solar-powered charging stations. It goes from 0-60 in under three seconds in “ludicrous” mode, the fastest of any four-door production car on the planet, and is also the safest car in its class. When it collides with the crash-test machine, the crash-test machine breaks. You can order it online and have it delivered to your door, get software updates beamed wirelessly and receive maintenance alerts before bad stuff happens. Plus, it’s beautiful. The door handles reach out to be opened as you approach, then fold flat for better aerodynamics. Don’t believe us: Consumer Reports called it the best overall car on the market for the past two years.
These are the kinds of superlatives that shoot Tesla Motors to the top of FORBES’ World’s Most Innovative Companies list in the first year we’ve had enough financial data to consider the company. The word “disruptor” gets attached to Tesla all the time. For several years we’ve closely studied the phenomenon of disruptive innovation, identified in the late 1990s by Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen. We quantify it, based on the difference between a public company’s market value and the measurable intrinsic value of its existing business – an innovation bonus, if you will. Despite all the buzz – and that’s something we try to factor out when measuring the premium – we were initially puzzled by Tesla’s growing success. Unlike classic disruptive innovations such as steel mini-mills, personal computers and, in the car business, cheap Japanese imports, Tesla never pursued the classic route of going after low-end, price-sensitive customers first with cheaper, inferior technology. It doesn’t pursue nonconsumption, or customers who don’t currently drive cars. Tesla automobiles look and drive much like other cars, use established infrastructure like roads and confine much of their product innovation to only one aspect: the power system.
These facts don’t fit the required mold for successful low-end disruption – a traditional case study would point to Tesla hitting a wall. Even Musk wasn’t sure at the beginning. “I didn’t ask for outside money for Tesla, and SpaceX, because I thought they would fail,” he says. But Tesla has instead proved to be a different kind of disruptor, a high-end version that can be just as troublesome for the incumbents.
High-end disruptors produce innovations that are leapfrog in nature, making them difficult to imitate rapidly. They outperform existing products on critical attributes on their debut; they sell for a premium price rather than a discount; and they target incumbents’ most profitable customers, going after the most discriminating and least price-sensitive buyers before spreading to the mainstream. If you look within some large companies, you can flesh out previous examples: Apple’s iPod outplayed the Sony Walkman; Starbucks’ high-end coffee drinks and atmosphere drowned out local coffee shops; Dyson’s vacuum cleaners now have solid market share; Garmin’s GPS golf ­watches have taken much of the business from range finders. The incumbents didn’t react fast enough, and the high-end disruptors took over their market.
Tesla has built its entire company around this idea. The Model S and X will be followed in 2017 by a cheaper Model 3, a $35,000 Tesla for the masses, if all goes according to plan. And despite the fact that Tesla abandoned its forecast of turning a profit this year (even with its unusual and pro-company lease accounting), investors can’t get enough of it: Musk has raised $5.3 billion in equity and debt for Tesla since 2010, with each round increasingly oversubscribed by investors, including a $650 million secondary offering in mid-August, partly to complete its giant battery-making Gigafactory in the Nevada desert. “The willingness of the markets to support the company with various financing structures leads me to believe that everything will probably be okay, assuming the model proves viable,” said Jacob Cohen, senior associate dean at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
That viability moment should come around 2017, say analysts at Credit Suisse, when Tesla is expected to show its first significant dose of free cash flow, or operating income after capital expenditures (see charts, p. 28). The other metrics look golden: It is on track to gross $5.5 billion this year, up 54% over 2014. Its shares have soared 15-fold since its 2010 IPO to a recent $33 billion market capitalization.
Meanwhile, incumbent automakers face the same challenge now and long term: If much of the auto business ends up going electric (and that’s a big if right now with sub-$3 gas and sales falling overall for electrics and hybrids) Tesla will be miles ahead at the high-end and coming down-market to eat away at the $1 trillion industry. Detroit finds it easy to dismiss Tesla as a moneylosing startup, but it has changed the industry. “[In 2001] GM crushed all of its electric models in a junkyard,” Musk says. “When we came along and made the Roadster, it got GM to make the Volt and then Nissan felt confident enough to go with the Leaf. We basically got the whole ball rolling with electrification of cars. The ball is rolling slowly, but it is rolling.”
Peel back the aluminum skin of a Tesla Model S and you will see what high-end disruption looks like. The motor and gearbox are a fraction of the size of a combustion engine drivetrain, mounted low between the wheels to create a larger crumple zone for passenger safety. The chassis is like a giant skateboard built to accommodate lots of battery wattage.
To create a car that looks this different, Musk has engineered a team and process that look different. Call it the Musk Way. Most car companies try to capture value with an established product. Laboring under radical uncertainty, Tesla has a process that is centered on a single purpose: speed. Like the big automakers, Tesla stamps its own body panels in-house, but it also makes its own battery packs and motors in the Fremont assembly plant. It even makes its own plastic steering wheel casings – a part easily and usually outsourced – because suppliers (much to their regret) tried sending their B teams and took months to turn around designs.
Tesla cannot wait – it updates designs continuously, borrowing ideas freely from its sibling SpaceX, including its extensive use of aluminum in both the body and the chassis of the Model S, as well as drawing and casting techniques used to produce the aluminum bodies of SpaceX’s Falcon rocket and Dragon capsules. “It’s very helpful to cross-fertilize ideas from different industries,” says Musk.
You’ll rarely find someone at Tesla who worked at GM, Ford or Chrysler or an automotive supplier (Aston Martin is one notable exception). Sterling Anderson, a former McKinsey associate and MIT-trained expert in self-driving cars, was hired in the summer of 2014 to work on Tesla’s autopilot systems. Now he’s the program manager of the Model X. The reason Tesla will occasionally put someone in a position without prior industry experience is that Musk is known for selecting people based upon their ability to solve complex problems—not based upon experience. Says Tesla Chief Information Officer Jay Vijayan, “Elon doesn’t settle for good or very good. He wants the best. So he asks job candidates what kinds of complex problems they’ve solved before … and he wants details.”
Musk’s team screens job applicants for their ability to learn under uncertain conditions. Every new employee, no matter which department, has to have proven some kind of ability to solve hard problems. “We always probe deeply into achievement on the résumé,” says Musk. “Success has many parents, so we look to find out who really did it. I don’t care if they graduated from university or even high school.”
Promotions and bonuses at both Tesla (and SpaceX) are built around a 1-to-5 rating system, with 4 and 5 being “great” and “phenomenal”, respectively. “You don’t get the two highest ratings,” says Musk, “unless you have done something innovative. It has to be significant in the case of phenomenal, something that makes the company better or the product better. Anyone can be an improver: HR, finance, production, they can all figure out how to improve things.”
When Tesla first called Vijayan to ask him to consider the CIO job, he said maybe but then pulled himself out of contention. He had a cushy CIO job at Silicon Valley blue-chip software firm VMWare and wasn’t looking to step out on any ledges. Tesla appeared to be taking huge risks, and Elon Musk had a reputation of making monumental demands of the leadership team. But 18 months later he got a call back and was asked to reconsider. During his interview with Musk he became convinced this company could change the world.
Vijayan’s first major task? Build all the software to run the business, from scratch, in three months, for one-fifth the cost. Typically big companies spend millions of dollars on enterprise resource planning software – which handles product planning, finance, manufacturing, supply chain and sales – from large vendors like SAP and Oracle. When Vijayan told him such a task wasn’t possible, Musk simply stated, with a Steve Jobs-like confidence: “Let me know what you need from my side to make this happen.” Says Vijayan, “He doesn’t accept constraints as ‘givens’ the way most people do.”
Vijayan and his team implemented a basic but functioning homegrown system in four months, and with steady improvements it now gives Tesla a lightning-fast feedback loop. “We have a seamlessly integrated information system that gives us speed and agility like no other automaker,” says Vijayan. By comparison, GM outsourced its entire IT function after spinning out EDS in 1996, and only since exiting bankruptcy has it rebuilt its IT strength, but at huge cost.
After hiring folks with a demonstrated ability to solve complex problems, Tesla deploys them in small teams that sit cheek-by-jowl to hasten the solutions. “Our communication allows us to move incredibly fast,” says chief designer Franz von Holzhausen. “That is an element that isn’t happening in the rest of the automotive world. They are siloed organizations that take a long time to communicate.” Von Holzhausen was able to design the award-winning Tesla S with a team of just three designers sitting next to their engineering counterparts. Bigger automakers typically have 10 to 12 designers working on each new model.
Even the car itself is designed for speed of learning. Customers are continuously connected to Tesla via their car’s 4G wireless connection and 17-inch touchscreen control panel, which sends usage data to the manufacturer in real time. Tesla will release fixes via overnight software download or make physical ­changes at a moment’s notice. That ludicrous mode that shaves the zero-to-60mph time by 10% on the top-of-the-line P85D Model S sedan is available as an over-the-air $10,000 software upgrade. And in 2013, after receiving feedback that the back seats in the Tesla S were uncomfortable, Tesla service workers changed every owner’s seats in a matter of weeks, midyear.
Learning in an environment of uncertainty requires a willingness to admit mistakes and move quickly rather than digging in and doing nothing for fear of admitting failure. In fact, obsessively attempting to avoid failure can lead to the greater failure of missing the big opportunity.
When the Model S was introduced in June 2012 it came with a “smart” air suspension system that automatically lowered the car at highway speed for better aerodynamics and range. One day a Model S owner was zooming down the highway and ran over a three-ball trailer hitch. It punctured the underbody’s ballistics-grade armor and the battery pack above it with incredible force. No one was hurt; the car’s warning system told the passengers to exit the vehicle before a fire started in the front compartment. Tesla quickly added a titanium underbody shield to the existing armor on all new cars and made it a free upgrade on existing ones, and it updated the software so the car doesn’t automatically lower at highway speed.
Most automakers lay out their shop floor once to minimize costs and plan model lines that will remain unchanged for several years. Tesla’s production engineers are continually changing the layout of the factory to learn as much as possible. Over time, as Tesla wrings out the uncertainty in the development and manufacturing process, it will transition to a more familiar arrangement, a process that is already starting to happen in the second and third production lines for the Model S and Model X. Tesla learned the benefits of staying nimble early on with the Roadster when, in an effort to reduce costs, it tried to establish a global supply chain similar to a giant carmaker’s. Tesla wasn’t ready for that setup, and having manufacturing spread out over the world led to massive coordination problems. “We definitely don’t get it perfect on the first try, not even close,” says cofounder and chief technical officer J.B. Straubel. “But that’s how we learn.” The stakes will go way up when Tesla adds the future Model 3 on another production line. If one part isn’t right, the whole factory can grind to a halt. FiatChrysler, for example, delayed the launch of the popular Jeep Cherokee by about six months because of problems with its new nine-speed transmission.
Tesla’s innovation process is neither easy nor comfortable. A recent Musk
biography tells the story of the time when, after asking already overworked employees to continue pulling overtime before the launch of the original Tesla Roadster, one employee said, “But we haven’t seen our family in weeks.” Musk’s response: “You will have plenty of time to see your family when we go bankrupt.” Musk also looks down on holidays, having nearly died from malaria following a trip to Brazil and South Africa in 2000. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: Vacation will kill you.”
The Tesla team is successful at achieving seemingly impossible goals not just because they work harder than anyone else. It has a process for solving complex problems that is effective. “I operate on the physics approach to analysis,” says Musk. “You boil things down to the first principles or fundamental truths in a particular area and then you reason up from there. Then you apply your reasoning to those axiomatic principles to assess what is really possible and what is simply perceived to be possible.” This method leads to innovative solutions that even Tesla executives didn’t think were possible.
Says Straubel: “Musk challenges everyone to work incredibly hard.  I know that sounds stereotypical, but I think he does it to a degree that is pretty unusual, and it is highly uncomfortable for most people, but the results are fairly undeniable. If you challenge people to work hard, they achieve more than they think they can. Most leaders don’t want to do that.” Adds Doug Fields, vice president of engineering: “We take leaps of faith that are like jumping out of an airplane and designing and building the parachute on the way down.”
That’s the necessary approach when you’re making the transition from a one-car company to a multi-car company, and doing it at scale, while simultaneously building a giant indoor energy-storage business. That’s the Musk Way.

Tesla’s secret formula

When Henri Nyakarundi shut down his trucking business in the United States, he decided to return home to Rwanda. Back on the continent, his entrepreneurial instincts drove him to a novel business venture – solar-powered mobile phone charging kiosks.
Rwandans that return home with dollars in their pocket usually venture into businesses with a degree of comfort. Others prefer white-collar, eight-to-five jobs that the rapidly expanding Rwandan economy offers the western-educated young professionals.
Despite the pitfalls that start-ups face in Africa, Nyakarundi chose a different path. He is at the forefront of developing an energy business that few of his fellow Rwandans understand.
The light-bulb moment that gave birth to his latest venture occurred at an unlikely place for the 37-year-old metropolitan entrepreneur. In 2011, he noticed the difficulties that people in rural areas faced while trying to charge their mobile phones. The supply of electricity is expensive and often unreliable.
“Not only did it hit me that charging mobile phones in places that were not served by the national electricity grid offered me a unique opportunity to serve our people, I also realized that the lucky ones  to be connected to the national grid were finding the power supply to be expensive,” he says.
In Rwanda, electricity consumers are charged $0.22 per kilowatt hour (KWh). This is one of the highest electricity tariffs in the East African region where tariffs are usually between $0.08 and $0.10, according to the World Bank.
Rwanda’s high energy costs are partly attributed to the country’s dependency on expensive thermal resources. Experts say that Rwanda depends on diesel and heavy fuel oils for approximately 40% of the country’s 110MW installed energy capacity. The country imports 14.5MW. Hydropower accounts for 59% and methane gas 1%.
Armed with the statistics of the challenging energy situation in his country, Nyakarundi’s instincts told him that something needed to be done to help rural businesses.
After visiting family in rural areas, he decided to start the green energy company African Renewable Energy Distribution Co Ltd, otherwise known as ARED.
“My company seeks to offer stable and reliable energy solutions, using innovative solutions such as mobile solar cell chargers,” he says while sitting in his office in Kiyovu, a leafy suburb in Kigali.
His belief in his new venture was so strong that he invested more than $120,000 of his hard-earned cash into developing four prototypes of his solar-powered mobile phone charging kiosk.
“My solution serves as a one-stop kiosk for people who want to start a business but are unable to,” he says as he leads FORBES AFRICA to one of ARED’s latest prototypes, recently brought from the company’s contracting manufacturer in China.
To drive sales, ARED developed a cheap franchise model for its clients, who are largely low-income earners.
“The franchise model seeks to empower those languishing at the bottom of the economic pyramid using a technology that is simple, cost effective and has a flexible acquisition plan,” he says.
The mobile kiosk generates its own power, enabling a franchisee to sell airtime as well as provide other telecoms services such as the transfer of mobile money. The charging of phones or other electronic items is done for a minimal fee.
With the success that ARED has had so far, the next prototype will introduce extra features such as internet Wi-Fi technology. ARED charges franchisees $1,000 for the business unit. This includes the mobile kiosk, a point-of-sale system, phone charging accessories and a branded overall.
Franchisees are also given hands-on business training and offered transport. After acquisition of the kiosk, franchisees are expected to pay ARED a $50 monthly fee for after-sales services.
Although breaking into the market was not easy for Nyakarundi, he stuck to his guns. He knew he had something unique and vital to offer Rwandans.
His tenacity is paying off. ARED signed its first commercial deal with pan-African telecom operator Airtel. This will allow ARED to spread across Africa.
Nyakarundi expects to sell more than 500 units of his product over the next three years.
“Though the model has a social component attached to it, the business aspect was designed to be scaled for the entire continent,” he says.
Nyakarundi is part of a growing army of entrepreneurs emerging on the continent.
“Entrepreneurship is gaining momentum in Africa. Innovation is being scaled up and advances in ICT, and what telecoms operators are offering, is testimony that Africa’s enterprise culture is improving.”
He is fortunate that Rwanda is able to offer him a favorable launch pad for his business. Nyakarundi hopes to increase his mobile kiosks from 20 to more than 100 by next year.
Nyakarundi has grand visions for ARED. With the telecom sector booming in Africa, he is set on selling over 50,000 units over the next five years. South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya are his key target markets.
Like the sun shining over Africa’s plains, Nyakarundi’s future looks bright.

Charged With An Idea  To Make A Fortune

Aschool bag that doubles as a solar-powered light? You could expect the inventor to be a scientist.
Think again. Thato Kgatlhanye is a 22-year-old who studied art in high school and obtained a brand management degree at Vega School of Brand Leadership without studying a day of science. Kgatlhanye’s company, Repurpose Schoolbags, has won about $40,000 in competitions.
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“The start-up capital came from a business grant of $23,433 that I won in the first competition. I entered the business into the South African Breweries Foundation Innovation Awards and we came second. I’ve recently been selected as a sub-Saharan Africa finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, so in September I’ll be in Paris to attend that,” she says.
Kgatlhanye grew up in Mogwase, one of the townships near the mining town of Rustenburg, in South Africa’s North West province. Her father is a taxi owner and her mother is a nurse.
The idea for her bag came in the second year of college when her class was tasked to find ways of doing more with nothing. She decided to make a bag out of recycled plastic bags. The solar-powered light idea only came after a conversation she had with her mother where she was told to channel her creativity towards helping others.
“My mother told me about how she grew up and used candles to study. If she had one candle for the week and it burned out on Wednesday, she wouldn’t be able to study on Thursday and Friday. That inspired the idea,” says Kgatlhanye.
Her company in Rustenburg, which employs 17 people, designs schoolbags out of recycled plastic and integrates a solar cell which can be charged during the day and used as a study lamplight in the evening.
They make these bags for banks and companies who give them to schools. She doesn’t make more than 500 bags at a time, with one bag costing $20.
“Some of our giving partners include Red Bull, Standard bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAB, ABSA/Barclays, MTN Foundation and CPSI,” says Kgatlhanye.
At a time when power cuts, so-called load shedding, loom in South Africa, Kgatlhanye’s company is well timed.
“Thank heavens for what’s playing out,” chuckles Kgatlhanye.
“Load shedding has made the business an easier sell. The big guys that sign the cheques that didn’t understand before the kind of environment we were talking about, now understand because guess what, their child gets affected by load shedding. They’ll be like ‘oh because of load shedding’ and I’m like, almost, except they don’t have electricity at all,” says Kgatlhanye.
Kgatlhanye is looking to shed light in 24 African countries.
<h4>A Spark In The Nick Of Time</h4>
The flow of renewable energy from the REIPPP couldn’t’ve come at a better time, says energy expert Chris Yelland. Eskom’s aging fleet of power stations, many built more than 30 years ago, cannot meet the demand. They have also been burdened by delays in other power generating projects in South Africa, like the Medupi and Kusile coal-powered plants.
“When Medupi and Kusile are online they will add 25% capacity to the grid. This is great. The only trouble is it should have happened 10 years ago. Between 1999 and 2004, there was a delay as a result of policy decision. Construction started in 2007 and 2008,” says Yelland.
When Medupi’s first unit came online, it was four years late. The cost keeps growing; initially it was expected to cost $2.5 billion, but is now forecasted at more than $23 billion. Kusile (4,800MW) has also failed to escape. Its first unit was expected in 2013, but has been pushed to 2017, and will cost around $92 billion, excluding the interest on delays.
Yelland is a Johannesburg-based electrical engineer turned energy journalist and entrepreneur. He has had a lot to talk about over the last 10 years, but his favorite story is the work of renewable energy dreamers.
“That’s the only success story we have to tell. The success stories are not government success stories, they are private: private capital, private technology – built, owned and operated privately, and generated into the grid,” he says.
Yelland warns that renewables should not be South Africa’s only solution.
“It costs less to produce coal-fired electricity than renewable if you compare apples with apples. If you look at the existing fleet of power stations, the cost per kilowatt hour is certainly lower than the cost to produce renewable energy. But the cost of electricity from a new power station, like Medupi, is a lot higher than the average costs. Because that capital cost is higher.”
For Africa, energy at any price is welcome.

How Dying Candles Kindled A Bright Idea

Ageneration of small-sized nuclear plants will revive Africa and give it all the energy it needs. This is the solution of nuclear physicist Kelvin Kemm. He is the CEO of Nuclear Africa and an old hand in the energy game.
“Three quarters of African countries can become nuclear countries within the next half a dozen years. I would advise they do it,” says Kemm.
They call them high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR); a generation IV reactor that uses helium instead of water. It means that nuclear can produce energy without the need for large amounts of water to cool uranium pebble beds.
“Nuclear is the cleanest, safest and most reliable form of electricity. This is proven… work done at North West University has shown that nuclear power is cheaper than coal in South Africa, if you look at the lifetime cycle and you apply the same interest rates. What tends to happen is that in loans for coal you get a certain interest rate and then suddenly when you get a load for nuclear they up it, because suddenly it’s nuclear and it’s more risky. It isn’t more risky.”
Unlike South Africa’s 2,000MW-Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant, which was completed 30 years ago, the HTGR can be built a lot smaller at 100MW, according to Kemm.
“I am not advocating that a small African country tries to embark on a massive project, because those need to be on the coastline or on the side of very large lakes to utilize the water for cooling,” he says.
Nuclear projects loom large for South Africa. The government is at an advanced stage in its plans to build at least three plants that will produce 9,600MW by 2023.
“To my mind that’s not enough. We should be looking at 12,500MW,” says Kemm.
He believes that the waste produced by the plants is in safe hands.
“It is time for people to think and not get swept into the emotion in the press. The waste problem is not a technological problem, it is a public relations problem. The technical problem is solved. The public hasn’t been solved.”
Low and intermediate level waste from Koeberg – the gloves, paper or anything else that goes into a nuclear zone – is transported by road in steel and concrete containers to a remote disposal site at Vaalputs, 600 kilometers away in the Kalahari Desert.
High-level waste is stored on site in special pools equipped with high-density racking.
“High-level waste is spent fuel. They are balls, with uranium, that can kill in one minute. All the high-level waste that has come out of Koeberg for 30 years is still on the site. There is no legally determined thing to do with it. Only two countries in the world have a permanent plan. That is Sweden and Finland. They both dig underground tunnels, in very wet conditions, pump all the water out. Put in copper cylinders that are about a meter diameter and slide the fuel in and weld the cylinders shut. [They then] slide these cocoons down the tunnel. When the tunnel is full, they release the pumps and move up a level.”
“Their solution is to bury it in water logged tunnels. I would like to see South Africa be the first country to come up with a dry storage solution. You can very easily. South Africans are the best hole diggers in the world with a hundred years of mining to draw on.”
“Sometimes there is this offensive element where overseas people say, ‘they are only a country in Africa with African type standards and these are the same people that have never been here. How can they expect to run nuclear?’”
Kemm answers there is nothing in a reactor that South African scientists do not understand. After all, they’ve run a nuclear power station for 30 years without a hitch.

Nuclear  is the way

Tucked inside Kenya’s Rift Valley are the Olkaria geothermal fields. A mix of a national park (Hell’s Gate National Park) and steam wells, the fields are powering Kenya’s growing electricity demands.
The first steam wells, also known as geothermal wells, in Kenya were built more than 30 years ago. Then, there was little regard for geothermal power – energy generated from natural steam from the earth. It was regarded as one of the many expensive ventures by the government.
Today, the focus on renewable energy has never been greater in Kenya. Several billionaires attended the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in July in Nairobi to explore investing in renewable energy in the East African nation.
“Investors in this initiative have chosen Kenya because the government is ready to listen to ideas and help implement them,” said Sir Richard Branson who led a delegation at the summit.
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Energy demands in Kenya are growing. This is largely due to renewed investor confidence in the country as well as the government’s improving retail consumer connectivity. This has seen the government work on an ambitious strategy to generate 5,000 megawatts (MW) by 2018.
Out of this, renewable energy is expected to take center stage as hydroelectric and fossil fuel generation are cut significantly.
In 2006, Kenya created the Geothermal Development Company to speed up the development of geothermal resources. The firm took shape through funding from the national treasury to offset the cost of drilling steam wells.
However, much of the work has been done by listed state corporation, Kenya Electricity Generation Company, popularly known as KenGen.
“Kenya is taking off and energy is the anchor engine. As a power generating firm, we have now developed a robust strategic plan heavily hinged on geothermal power,” says Albert Mugo, the Managing Director of KenGen.
According to government statistics, Kenya has a total power demand of slightly more than 1,500MW. The installed capacity is 2,000MW. Out of this, geothermal power contributes around 579MW, which translates to 44% to the national grid.
“We have a potential of 10,000MW of geothermal power in this country. We can still do more in terms of contribution to the national grid,” says Mugo.
The challenge in boosting geothermal power is financing. It is estimated that drilling one well costs between $8 and $10 million. To date, Kenya has more than 260 geothermal wells, mostly in Olkaria.
“The greatest challenge in this geothermal business is the perceived risk in exploring the steam wells,” says Mugo.
Apart from KenGen, other geothermal power producers have joined the fray, such as OrPower and Akira.
Kenya is ranked eighth in the world in geothermal positioning and first in Africa.
However, the focus is not only on geothermal energy. There is also interest in wind energy and solar power. While the two are at a nascent stage, Kenya has commissioned its first large-scale wind power project.
The Lake Turkana Wind Power Project (LTWP) farm site covers 40,000 acres and is expected to contribute 300MW to the national grid. When complete, it will become Africa’s largest wind power plant. Another wind project, managed by Aeolus Kenya, is expected to take shape soon. Located in central Kenya, it is expected to feed 60.8MW to the national grid.
The government, through KenGen, is also prospecting on a 400MW wind farm. This is scheduled for implementation in early 2016. Like the abundant geothermal energy sites, Kenya also has an area close to 90,000 square kilometers with excellent wind speeds of at least 6m/s.
Solar power is taking root with a number of companies entering the household market. This has seen many homes, especially in rural areas, replace the national power grid with solar energy.
“This growth in use of solar energy by household is largely attributed to the cost advantage. Solar power is much cheaper than national grid power,” says Robert Pavel Oimeke, the Director of Renewable Energy at the state-run Energy Regulatory Commission.
It seems that Kenya’s green energy growth plan is leading the way in Africa.

Full Steam Ahead

Wind, solar and hydro energy have all been highlighted as sources of energy that help meet Africa’s growing power needs. Ghana’s Dela Wosornu is using garbage.
Decomposing organic material, known as biomass, releases gas that can be used to create energy in the form of biofuels. In Ghana, a country with a vast amount of degradable material, it is a viable option for alternative energy.
In Ghana, energy is costly and scarce; this hinders economic growth.
Biomass, such as wood and charcoal, is Ghana’s main energy source, supplying around 60% of the total energy used in the country. Biomass resources cover about 20.8 million hectares of land mass in Ghana. Most of this land is made up of crops and plants that can be converted into solid and liquid biofuels. Wosornu, a renewable energy entrepreneur, is taking advantage of this by transferring landfill gas to energy.
He is involved in the Oti Sanitary Landfill Gas-to-Energy Project, which eliminates the emission of harmful greenhouse gases as well as the spread of disease from the waste. The project reduces the reliance on producing power from fossil fuels by producing energy from the waste that would have otherwise been buried in the landfill.
The solution is quite innovative.
When organic material, such as food waste, is buried in the landfill, it is deprived of oxygen. In this condition, the organic material will decompose and turn into methane gas. The methane will slowly be released into the atmosphere, causing global warming. The project at the Oti landfill doesn’t let this happen. They cover the landfill with soil and drill holes into it. Pipes are then inserted and the gas is sucked out into a generator which makes heat and electricity.
“It’s really a matter of just bringing pipes to where the gas has collected and pumping it out through a vacuum process and then directing that gas to a generator,” says Wosornu.
According to Wosornu, the project is the first of its kind in Ghana. As cities grow and produce more waste, the environmental impact from open dumps becomes increasingly intolerable. The conversion of dumps to engineered landfills like the Oti project is essential.
“Our solution can be applied at any landfill that has received at least 400 tons a day of municipal solid waste and is in reasonably good shape. As there are many landfills in Africa and around the world that are not capturing gas, the future for landfill gas to energy projects is bright,” says Wosornu.
Landfill gas to energy projects have underperformed relative to projected gas and power output. Bearing this in mind, the projected output of the Oti project has been discounted by 70% so that its actual output will meet or exceed the projected output. The Renewable Energy Act in Ghana ensures that there are set prices for each class of renewable energy. It also offers an opportunity to redirect future investments into green energy.
The challenge for Wosornu, is finding reliable buyers for the project’s output. The high cost of doing business in Africa also makes the development costs of these projects higher than the rest of the world.
“There is no doubt that, if properly exploited, renewable energy resources in Africa can make a significant contribution to the continent’s energy supply. In particular, the potential of biofuels on the continent is huge. Within the context of the current financial crisis, stakeholders including policy makers, international partners and the UN should lead the debate on and collectively seek strategies for scaling up renewable energy use so as to increase access to energy and enhance energy security among the many potential benefits of these technologies,” says Kandeh Yumkella, Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
Wosornu is playing his part.

From Junk To Power

When Luke Callcott-Stevens, Gavin James and Doug Jenman first talked to FORBES AFRICA in 2012, they struggled to imagine what their $274-million 100MW wind farm in Dorper, South Africa, would look like. A big project with big risk.
“We built a wind farm, we installed it. All those are effectively at the cost of capital. Now it’s done… Every three days a wind turbine is being installed in South Africa,” says Jenman.
Forty wind turbines and two and a half years later, this trio from Rainmaker Energy can not only take pictures of Dorper, a tiny town in the Eastern Cape province, they are now imagining that they can cover the rooftops of London with solar panels.
“The cities of tomorrow will produce their own electricity. We won’t need power stations,” says James.
With this bold idea, the trio set up shop at 81 Rivington Street, an old electrical showroom, in London’s tech hub Shoreditch, and also, by coincidence, labeled with a fitting coat of arms “More Light More Power”.
“A lot of our growth is happening in the solar field, and it’s out of South Africa. We’ve set up a separate company in the UK, Solar Stone Energy; effectively we are trying to create a utility scale solar project on rooftops. So we are aggregating a bunch of rooftops to build a big solar power plant,” says Callcott-Stevens.
It gets even more pie in the sky – especially when we are talking about a city where the sun doesn’t shine often – the trio want to give solar panels for free.
“We cover the costs of the installation and on-going monitoring and maintenance. There is absolutely zero cost to you. You then get to enjoy the immediate benefit of reduced energy costs because the electricity, which is produced on your property’s roof is yours to use, for free. By generating electricity on your roof, we receive a Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) through a government-backed subsidy program. This is how we fund the solar installations and make a return on investment. It’s a win-win for everyone.”
They feel it could find favor with London’s 8.3 million people.
“If you look at what’s happening in the States and in Europe, in solar and wind energy, people are putting solar on their roofs and creating their own power. That is not a total solution, but it cuts back on the need to create new power plants, it changes the game. The utility business is now losing out on its most profitable market. That demand is now gone,” says Callcott-Stevens.
“Solar has gotten cheaper. Next storage is going to get cheaper. That’s not to say you won’t have coal or nuclear power stations. It just changes the game. It changes the dynamics,” says James.
Back home in sunny South Africa, where 39 renewable energy projects contribute 1,800MW to the grid, the trio’s 100MW wind farm in Dorper has been humming for more than a year. Although James says it will take another 16 years to see a profit, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Eskom, South Africa’s power supplier, regularly cuts the power – a legacy of under investment and delays in coal-fired power stations, such as Medupi and Kusile. The work of renewable energy dreamers has been a saving grace.
“Eskom’s troubles are our blessings in the whole [renewable] industry. It’s been good. The government has put its weight behind the program,” says James.
“They are seeing results and they are happy with it, so the whole fear that renewables is erratic and unreliable actually is false. Apparently the first projects have reduced power cuts by half. We would have double the power cuts if it wasn’t for the renewable projects,” says Jenman.
The competition for new projects is stiff. Last year, Eskom announced that 77 bids were received for Round 4 of the program, for a total of 5,804MW. Of these, 13 were accepted as preferred bidders, for a total of 1,121MW installed capacity at a cost of R23 billion ($1.8 billion).
“By the fourth round, the tariff prices have halved. The game’s changed. The perception of risk is gone. In Round 1 there was no market in South Africa; people were taking a lot of risk without knowing if there was going to be a market. They needed higher returns. Where we are now, the return expectation is lower, as it should be, as the market grows and matures,” says Callcott-Stevens.
“Without getting those high returns in the beginning we wouldn’t be in a place where we are established,” says Callcott-Stevens.
Hope of more business in Africa is in the wind. The trio has a further 330MW of wind and 290MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) projects under development in South Africa.
“Africa is the future – solar is all over. There is potential everywhere. Sub-Saharan Africa is obviously closer to home so it’s easier to look at. The [solar rooftop] model works really well in a deregulated market. In South Africa, we are still highly regulated,” says James.
“The rest of Africa is highly regulated. Either badly regulated, or highly regulated. We don’t want to just get on a plane and go find a site. We like to have an angle before we choose a market. There needs to be a reason before we can just go into that market. We can’t just go into a country and just say we are building a solar plant. We need to have relationships, we need to know people, we need to understand the market first,” says Callcott-Stevens.
From the dream of a small windy farm in the middle of nowhere, in Africa, to the reality of free solar panels on the rooftops of London where the sun hardly shines. What next?

The Cities Of  Tomorrow  Won’t Need Power Stations

She is the fresh face of renewable energy in Africa. By a twist of fate, this young lawyer, who grew up with her grandmother by candlelight, is now spearheading Africa’s dash for energy.  Sometimes it hurts.
“It feels like I haven’t slept for four years, I have been so busy working on deals. But it was the deal of a lifetime.”
So says Linda Olagunju on her deals to put two wind farms and two solar photovoltaic (PV) farms onto the barren landscape of De Aar in the Northern Cape. Two deals she patched together that will contribute 254MW to South Africa’s energy grid.
“The wind projects reached financial close and are currently under construction. It’s a partnership between China Longyuan, Mulilo and DLO Energy Resources in De Aar. It’s been almost one year of signing documents. The legal fees on these sorts of transactions can go up to R20 million ($1.57 million) if you are lucky.”
It’s the fruit of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement (REIPPP) program. In short, Eskom, the country’s power generator, attracted bids for private business to apply for tenders. Under it, investors generate electricity for sale at a tendered rate. This brings the total committed private sector investment in the REIPPP, since 2011, to $13.25 billion (R168 billion). It is fierce competition.
“There about 85 solid IPP [independent power producers] developers in South Africa. In Round One to Four, there was 5,200MW on offer, the next rounds are 6,300MW. It’s a bloodbath. You are competing with international companies that are coming in dirt cheap,” says Olagunju.
This may be a drop in the ocean but it’s a very important one. Renewables have been a saving grace. According to Olagunju, 39 of these projects are up and running, supplying 2,050MW to the grid.
“It’s the first successful program since democracy. It’s not that there haven’t been any independent power producer programs on the continent. It’s just that this one is the largest one of its scale and being backed by government.”
Olagunju’s childhood was far from electricity. She grew up in Matatiele, a village in the Eastern Cape 782 kilometers from the boardrooms of Sandown where she now works and lives with her Nigerian-born husband.
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“It was rural, like candle rural… [My grandmother’s village] only got electricity in 2005,” says Olagunju.
This was in time for the power cuts of 2008, when Eskom admitted that it had run out of capacity to supply electricity. At this time, Olagunju had left home to follow in the footsteps of her father and study law. At the University of Cape Town she studied laws governing fossil fuels rather than green energy.
“I’ve always known I was going to go into resources. I just didn’t know if it was going to be mining or oil and gas. The biggest thing for me is why Africa, which is so well endowed in resources, remains the poorest continent. I always hated injustice, growing up in apartheid South Africa,” she says.
Olagunju struggled to find her niche and ended up as a lawyer for Mulilo, a startup renewable energy company in 2008.
“Mulilo needed a lawyer, but couldn’t afford any. So I said I would do the services in return for shares. I still had to pay for them. At the time, the company [owed] R11 million ($870,000) and the company is now valued at R5 billion ($394 million)… in three years,” she says.
This sparked her idea of entrepreneurship.
“I always felt the way to change things is through entrepreneurship. Through law I had the opportunity to see how government makes these decisions on large scale projects… I said ‘hang on a minute, we have a lot of wind in South Africa and we have a lot sun in South Africa, so why haven’t we put renewables on our grid?’ I started doing research,” she says.
The business of renewables can take years to see a profit.
“There is a lot of risk, anything can go wrong. You are in a contract for 20 years, governments can change and I know there are laws to take care of that risk. The wind may not blow for as long as you thought it would. Your sun may not shine as brightly as you thought it would. They are long-term projects.”
“You identify the land. You go into lease agreements. Do an environment impact assessment (EIA) process that can take three years if you are lucky. You then bid your process with a construction period. If everything goes right, [a farm] will be up in 20 months.”
“Then you start seeing a trickle dividend. A trickle dividend at connection in the first seven years is very minimal. It’s nothing to write home about. It’s not even enough to pay your operational expenses.”
Then, there are the hiccups.
“We have existing infrastructure. And then we have the [REIPPP]. The grid infrastructure hasn’t been expanded to accommodate the increasing demand on that particular infrastructure. It’s not Eskom’s fault necessarily. It’s a matter of planning.”
“One of the points we raised before we began these projects is getting the grid contacted properly before you have a program. But it’s always difficult how you spend on infrastructure not knowing where those programs are going to be awarded.”
“Eskom said that they have developed a map where they now know where the hotspots are for energy projects and where now they are doing their best to upgrade in those regions in anticipation of the other [REIPPPs] being built.”
Olagunju believes gas, coal and nuclear could all go the same way.
“You can go and leverage an asset and try and participate. The key thing about these deals is to learn from them. Once you do one, you have built a portfolio. You can go and knock on a door in Nigeria, rather than say you have an idea,” she says.
If you are Olagunju, at the tender age of 31, you could also argue it’s good to have a foot in the door.

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