At the Khayelitsha Youth Clinic Site C the reality of South Africa&#8217;s overburdened healthcare system hits home. Many have got out of bed before sunrise, some have traveled 600 kilometers to be here, for the long wait for the hope of seeing a doctor. This clinic tells the story of a land where eight out of 10 people can&#8217;t afford to see a doctor. At least here it’s free. But the shortage of doctors means a snaking queue that stretches down the street every day.
&#8220;When a patient from the Eastern Cape (600 kilometers away) comes to our clinic with a broken neck to be seen by a doctor here, you need to say that is unacceptable,&#8221; says Dr. Zahid Badroodien, who works in this clinic every day, 30 kilometers south east of one of South Africa&#8217;s richest cities, Cape Town.
&#8220;This facility sees 200 people a day and we turn people away. We have three or four doctors here depending on the day. We need more people to come into the system.&#8221;
This clinic is just a small cog connected to a large lumbering wheel that tries to treat 40 million people in South Africa. Government says that over 80% of South Africa&#8217;s population can&#8217;t afford medical aid and 30% of the country&#8217;s doctors try to treat them. The majority of the country’s doctors work for paying customers who can afford medical aid.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/batten-down-the-hatches/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Batten Down The Hatches</a>
This is why the South African government is fighting for three letters. They call it the National Health Insurance (NHI) and it should mean more hospitals and more care leading to free health. In other words, it&#8217;s another medical aid scheme; but the government promises it will cover you regardless of your social status or wealth.
&#8220;Our country believes that access to healthcare is a human right. This means every single one of us is entitled to receive healthcare. It should not depend on how rich we are or where we happen to live. The right to obtain healthcare is written into our Constitution,&#8221; says Aaron Motsoaledi, the Minister of Health who sees this as his legacy.
In order for NHI to be a success, it will cost R256 billion ($19.5 billion) by 2025, according to government estimates. They plan to find the money for this through tax.
&#8220;The amount spent on the healthcare for each person with a medical aid scheme is five times the amount that is spent on each person who relies entirely on public health facilities,&#8221; says Motsoaledi.
&#8220;Even for South Africans who earn a good income, healthcare has become a burden because private medical costs have skyrocketed in recent years. Working people are spending a large chunk of their salaries on medical aid and this often causes financial constraints in their household income,&#8221; he says.
Motsoaledi has been the driving force behind the NHI. He is considered to be one who practices what he preaches. In 2013 and in 2015  he chose to be admitted in public hospitals rather than going to private facilities. Motsoaledi is also a qualified doctor who worked in rural KwaZulu-Natal. He has seen the state of public hospitals firsthand. Motsoaledi is a champion of the fight against TB and HIV/Aids treatment that has saved the lives of millions of South Africans. But, finding the money for NHI and keeping medical aids in line could be one of his greatest battles.
There is controversy long before NHI happens. Government plans to withdraw tax incentives from medical aid schemes, worth R20 billion ($1.5 billion), which will go into the NHI fund. People will be free to pay for private health insurance, but they will also be forced to make contributions to the NHI fund.
&#8220;Private care at present is often needlessly expensive,&#8221; says Motsoaledi.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/healthcare-got-available-everybody/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: &#8216;Healthcare Has Got To Be Available To Everybody</a><a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/10/02/healthcare-got-available-everybody/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;</a>
According to Precious Matsoso, Director General at the Department of Health (DOH), the NHI will not kill off the private healthcare system, but says it needs to learn to adapt. One concern government has with medical aid is when medical cover is exhausted and funds run dry; it means people remain without cover for the rest of the year.
&#8220;Under the interim period, medical schemes will continue to function, however they will be reformed to be aligned to the NHI. This means that they will start to offer services consistent with the NHI. There will be fewer options and schemes. Prices will be reduced, making medical schemes more affordable. In doing so, there will be a cross-subsidization,&#8221; says Matsoso.
There will be some room for negotiation. Overall the NHI plans merely to pay for health for the masses and doesn&#8217;t intend to manage doctors and hospitals. Here, it is prepared to enter into contracts with private business.
Another question is whether government is even capable of managing what will become one of the largest state-owned enterprises in the country. South Africa&#8217;s track record is dubious, with the likes of Eskom and South African Airways under scrutiny for losing millions.
Government shares the concern that the quality of care in public hospitals is deteriorating in the areas of staff attitudes, waiting times, cleanliness, drug shortages, infection control and safety and security.
The South African Medical Journal (SAMJ) released a report in June stating that the most significant reason doctors gave for leaving the public sector was dissatisfaction with working conditions.
There is a substantial difference in the standard of working conditions between the public and private sectors. The survey, from 2,225 doctors, showed 60.73% of public sector doctors said availability of supplies was inadequate versus only 10.15% of private doctors. What’s more, 66.37% of public sector doctors indicated concern over lack of equipment and infrastructure, with 38.78% indicating hygiene and management was not of a good standard.
Both public and private sector participants reported that nursing and other support staff was inadequate. However, almost half of the doctors working in public service were dissatisfied with support staff versus 21.5% of private sector doctors.
The report, conducted by the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA), and including members from the South African Medical Association (SAMA), found further reasons for doctors leaving were emigration, better opportunities in private practice, as well as being unable to apply for posts as they were frozen.
In KwaZulu-Natal, which has a population of 10.2 million, a serious blow came when a group of oncologists left over poor working conditions. With only two state cancer specialists remaining, both practicing from Grey’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, the province faces an unprecedented backlog with patients waiting for treatment from as far back as 2011.
This threat to the KwaZulu-Natal health department is just the tip of the iceberg. Other provinces, such as the North West and the Free State, are under strain, says Badroodien.
This is before the NHI has even been implemented.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not just the funding or the lack of doctors, it&#8217;s the other things tied to it: the lack of skills, the lack of resources, and all the external issues, like the NHI. The national health department now finds itself at a tenuous junction. The NHI is something we do need, but you need to look at the numbers. The DOH is trying to squeeze money from cracks,&#8221; says Badroodien.
All this while the queues of patients grow longer.
<h3>Examples of what the NHI package will exclude:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Cosmetic surgery that is not necessary or medically indicated but done as a matter of choice</li>
<li>Expensive dental procedures performed for aesthetic purposes and eye-care devices, such as fashionable spectacle frames</li>
<li>Medicines not included in the national essential drug list</li>
<li>Diagnostic procedures outside the approved guidelines and protocols as advised by experts groups</li>
</ul>

Suffering And Waiting On The Wrong Side Of The Divide

The Emperor’s New Coins

Just 10 years ago, Bitcoin was another office joke in Africa. The rare few who took it seriously have made millions.
&#8220;One year and seven months ago. November 2015. That was the month I started with R3,500 ($260) and now it&#8217;s worth R37,000 ($2,800). A Bitcoin was $260. Exactly one year later that Bitcoin was $900. It grew over 300%. Today it&#8217;s $2,800.&#8221;
This was the moneymaking turning point for communications and marketing employee Shireen Ramjoo who, at the age of 32, was so taken by Bitcoin she left her job in the bank to start her own consultancy, Liquid Crypto-Money.
From humble worldwide beginnings Bitcoin, a digital currency, otherwise known as cryptocurrency, was born from blockchain technology – a mass linking of computers. The midwives are an estimated 5.8 million users generating a market value of $27 billion, which represents a level of value creation on the order of Silicon Valley success stories like Airbnb, according to the 2017 Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
The impact of Bitcoin has been compared to the day paper money replaced gold and silver. It is so new that like there were no computer technicians before computers, there are few Bitcoin experts, more educated guessers.
Bitcoin is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to blockchain technology. Many financiers argue it will transform the world money system and maybe be the next dotcom-style boom in Africa. Up for grabs are billions more as peer-to-peer networks spark new business platforms and threaten to wash away established business practices that have been around for centuries.
&#8220;The first time I heard about Bitcoin, I had to write a press release for Standard Bank. It must have been early 2012. At the time I didn&#8217;t understand it, it just went over my head. I thought it was too technical. After I left the industry I wanted to be my own boss. I was looking for an opportunity and came across Bitcoin,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
She has made a business out of educating clients on Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency – topics that leave many baffled.
&#8220;We are in an evolution of money here. What people don&#8217;t realize is when the internet first started some governments were against it. As more countries started adopting it, more countries got involved. That&#8217;s the same phenomenon happening here,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
&#8220;We keep hearing of [blockchain] from a more technological point of view. Remember the topic of money is social&#8230; when you understand that this is actual money that you can use – I can go and buy bread and put petrol in my car – then you start wanting to find out more.&#8221;
Ramjoo&#8217;s venture is just one small example the business generated by the rise of this cryptocurrency. Since Bitcoin, more than 800 cryptocurrencies have blossomed in this unregulated market.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/homepage/2017/06/27/cash-falling-fashion-will-disappear-forever/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cash is falling out of fashion &#8211; will it disappear forever?</a>
So what is blockchain and bitcoin? 
When you transfer cash your money goes through the bank to another person. The bank, who acts as a central mediator, charges you a service fee and makes a record of the transaction.
Until recently, the bank was the only keeper of these records, which in turn is proof of your transaction. This is called the ledger system.  The process of verifying the information takes days and also means banks are able to dictate the cost of these transactions.
Blockchain short-circuits the ledger system in the blink of an eye, by decentralizing it. In 2008, a paper published under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto suggested instead of your transaction being in one single computer server at the bank, you could store a transaction on thousands of computers around the world at the same time – rent-a-crowd worldwide.
&#8220;There are a whole lot of people logged onto this network and confirm all these transactions all day long. What do they get as a reward for it? The answer is Bitcoin. The reason why Bitcoin exists is to reward these people that make their computers available to store data and to become a world super computer that looks over transactions,&#8221; says Ran Neu-Ner, Johannesburg entrepreneur and Co-Founder of the Creative Counsel.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/09/04/emperors-new-coins/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Emperor&#8217;s New Coins</a>
Not only does this mean there are literally millions of back-ups, so that you cannot delete the transaction should the bank be hacked, but also the bank is no longer needed to make the transaction. In effect blockchain cuts out the middleman making all the rules, all the money and protecting your privacy.
&#8220;The Bitcoin isn&#8217;t important. The piece of tech that&#8217;s important is the blockchain that gets tech around the world to become a super computer to transfer money to store contracts or whatever else,&#8221; says Neu-Ner.
Imagine a world where people go from place to place in driverless cars, where there are no stop streets, or traffic lights, and machines decide how fast you get to your destination. If you can dream it, Neu-Ner can see it.
&#8220;Think 10 years from now, when there are only driverless cars on the road. You don&#8217;t have to have anything on the roads created for human nature.&#8221;
&#8220;Imagine the scenario: we&#8217;re driving in driverless cars, we both need to get to work. Your car is in front of my car. You want to pass, so you would normally flash your car’s lights. But in a driverless car you&#8217;re not able to flash lights at each other and say move over.&#8221;
The solution will be for driverless cars to set up smart contracts and you&#8217;ll pay in [cryptocurrency].
&#8220;The guys who are working on driverless cars are working on that blockchain right-of-way system right now.&#8221;
&#8220;The keyword when you are thinking about the blockchain is decentralization… Just keep asking yourself, if something is centralized, how is it going to be disrupted? Because it&#8217;s going to be disrupted. It&#8217;s a new economy, where everyone who contributes earns their fair share in tokens,&#8221; says Neu-Ner.
Trading and spending   
Because it is an international currency, the Bitcoin, as well as the world, is your oyster. You can travel the world by spending Bitcoin. In Japan, for instance, over 200,000 stores now accept Bitcoin.
This is how it works.
While on the way, a Bitcoin can be purchased on exchange sites when you are starting out. All you need to do is download an app, load up some cash and then start buying. Some financial brokers will even purchase Bitcoin fractions on your behalf.
The exchanges vary but we&#8217;ve found bitcoinzar.co.za offers a number of companies that will accept PayPal, your credit or debit card, and person-to-person. There is even a BTM (bitcoin ATM) at a business called Metroman in Kyalami, Johannesburg, that accepts rand in exchange for Bitcoin.
It is even possible to get your salary in Bitcoin; it&#8217;s as simple as a shopping cart on an online store.
There are, however, pitfalls. You must research the apps and look for realistic returns when investing in cryptocurrency, especially ones you are not familiar with. Schemes, such as Pipcoin, offered high returns of 35% a month and many fell for it.
&#8220;Millions were invested in it and many lost money, because they couldn&#8217;t tell it was a scam. It was plugged as the coin of Africa. So if you don&#8217;t understand how coins are generated, you won&#8217;t know how these schemes operate,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
Bitcoinzar.co.za also recommends you don&#8217;t leave your Bitcoin on an exchange. Hackers know that exchanges are mostly honey-pots, with private user information, and, more importantly, Bitcoin that can be instantly stolen and transferred away to an anonymous Bitcoin wallet.
&#8220;People are losing their money very quickly. They are believing that if they buy into this hype today, tomorrow I&#8217;ll come away with a lot of money,&#8221; says Neu-Ner.
If you are looking to invest, ensure you have a Bitcoin/cryptocurrency wallet where you can keep your data offline and private. You should always question the authenticity of these wallets and the company should be transparent.
It is even possible to mine you own Bitcoins, although this method of earning is considered to be going out of date. At the current rate of exchange, you would be spending more money on equipment and electricity, unless the price escalates substantially.
&#8220;You can compare it to when the internet first came and emails. The whole process of us writing a letter, going to the post office, then waiting for the letter to get to the person. When the email came, the postal service became a third party, and not being used as much as we used it before,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
Banks are transforming
Africa is looking at adopting blockchain-based currency. In February, the South African Reserve Bank said it is open to issuing a national digital currency, which would likely be based on blockchain or distributed ledger technology. Senegal is set to roll out its eCFA, a digital version of the West African franc, later this year, and there are even plans to extend distribution across the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).
&#8220;There is going to be a new generation for banks. We are starting to see it play out in the market – governments starting to issue out their own cryptocurrency. Tunisia was the first country in the world to have its own government-issued digital currency… Some people are old school and will keep their money in the banks. But the bank of the future will not be the same as it is now,&#8221; says Ramjoo.
This is just the beginning of a new system that will transform the world and make billions in the process. Many people don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s happening; those that do will likely become even richer.
<h2>Coin Collection?</h2>
Cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, is generated in the form of data strings. Only computers can solve the complex mathematical equations. For every completed equation, a coin is created and the coin that follows requires more data and processing power to add to the string, which in turn keeps a record of every transaction ever made.
&#8220;Bitcoin is not a company, nor does a single person or organization issue or control Bitcoins; therefore, it has no central point of failure. For this reason, nobody can inflate the currency supply and create hyperinflation crises, such as those that occurred in post-World War I Germany and more recently in Zimbabwe. In 2008, the government of Zimbabwe printed so much of its currency that in a single year, a loaf of bread increased from $1 to $100 billion. In both cases, any savings that people had in the form of national currency were completely destroyed.&#8221; &#8211;  extracts from Bitcoin for the Befuddled by Conrad Barski and Chris Wilmer
&nbsp;
A previous version of this story stated that there are two licensed exchanges in South Africa. This was incorrect and the article has been updated.

Bitcoin, Blockchain And Billions

We, Men For Women

He may be one of the richest men in Ghana, employing 250,000 of his countrymen, but it all began in struggle. Joseph Agyepong Siaw holds his lean, early years in abhorrence. Reason: the serial entrepreneur and founder of the Jospong Group of Companies had the odds stacked against him from the day he was born.
“My mother told me that when it was time to give birth to me, she had to move to the village because my father had three wives and traditionally, in the Ghanaian culture, when you are in that situation you have to go to your parents to deliver your baby. So when she was walking in a farm, she went into labor and started crying for help. At the time there was no hospital so we had to call on the village prophetess to come and assist in my delivery,” says Agyepong as he talks to FORBES AFRICA of his humble past in the conference room of his Adjiriganor office, in the country’s capital Accra.
The walls of the room say it all; they are covered with trappings of wealth and numerous entrepreneurship awards.
Agyepong is an enigma in corporate Ghana. He shies away from interviews and public appearances – very little has been documented about the serial entrepreneur who has made a fortune through revolutionizing solid waste disposal in the West African country. He is assertive and confident with a demeanor that commands attention without being arrogant. His personality is warm and engaging. What was to be a 30-minute conversation went on for three hours.
Agyepong finally settles down to recount his journey, one that began with the wrong name.
“My mother named me Felix because my father was not there during the time of my birth. So I used the name Felix from kindergarten to primary school two. It was then that my father saw my name and said to me ‘your name is not Felix; it is Joseph.’ So my name was changed to Joseph.”
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As one of 17 mouths to feed, and with little income from his father’s dwindling business as a photographer, Agyepong had to rely on his wits and brawn for survival.
“In the village, life was very challenging and difficult. I was schooling barefooted, going to the farm to work before going to school. I had no money. I could not afford body lotion after bathing so I would chew palm nut and use the extracts to cream myself. I slept in mud houses without electricity. You had to be a laborer and work before you got food. My palms are hardened because I had to use cutlasses to weed. I had to walk between 20 to 30 kilometers to different places to go and look for work.”
<div id="attachment_32964" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32964" class=" wp-image-32964" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FORBES-JUNE-1724-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="390" />Joseph Siaw Agyepong (Picture supplied)</div>
The difficult upbringing only strengthened Agyepong’s resolve to succeed. With the help of his elder brother Daniel, Agyepong and his siblings were relocated from the village to Accra. Agyepong had dreams of becoming either a pilot or a marine engineer but fate left him in the street.
“I started an electrical engineering course and in 1990 I completed the course and my father said he no longer had the money to contribute to my education so I had to go into business. He suggested I should go and assist my mother who had a little shop where she was squatting in front of somebody’s business. I started helping her like a petty trader selling exercise books on the streets,” says Agyepong.
That was the first step on a journey that has led to one of the most diversified holding companies in Ghana. Agyepong is today responsible for the strategic vision of the Jospong Group of Companies, with operations in Africa as well as Asia and the Middle East. The company has business interests in many sectors of the economy with its biggest operations in waste management, ICT, and banking. Agyepong’s strategy is slightly unorthodox. He believes he is guided by a higher power with the right direction at the right time.
“When I had to sell exercise books, I was crying because I felt my destiny had been destroyed. After a while I put myself back together. What really helped me to overcome that situation was one day I was praying and God’s message came to me. The word said ‘obey thy father and mother and you shall be successful’. So I took that message and I started to move. I stopped schooling and started assisting my mother.”
At the age of 22, Agyepong would go early in the morning to his mother’s little shop and pack exercise books in boxes and walk off with them on his head to sell through the busy streets of Accra. His persistence paid off and very soon Agyepong was selling enough books that he could invest in other businesses.
“I tried every business. When it was the Christmas season, I would put the books aside and go to the local market and buy jewelry and shirts and take them round to people and try and sell them. I was doing each business on a seasonal basis and when the demand changed, I switched my products,” he says.
Soon it was time to expand. Agyepong saw an opportunity to start his own printing business and asked his mother to support him with GHC3 ($0.70) as start-up capital.
“My mission was to supply schools with my products. Because I didn’t have money and equipment, I would go to schools and talk to them as a marketer and then when I got an order I would go to a printing press with the orders and process the orders and take my commission on that order. I started building up my clientele like this until I could afford to buy a small machine and I started printing the books myself.”
That ushered in the birth of Jospong Printing Press in 1995.
The following year, Agyepong stumbled on an opportunity in construction. A client was looking for a contractor and the resourceful entrepreneur pitched and delivered the contract by outsourcing the various building activities to local tradesmen and in the process Agyepong established his construction business, Extended Builders. In 1998, during the Ghana elections, he saw yet another opportunity to print t-shirts for the election campaign and Appointed Time Screen Printing was born. Since then, the company has established a holding company with subsidiaries in oil and gas, logistics, quarry and mining, manufacturing as well as agro-business.
“I made friends with people in banks and financial institutions because they have test cases of people who have tried to start several businesses and knew what the shortfalls were. I would go to them and say ‘I want to do this business so can you give me comparable cases of businesses who have done this before and how they coped?’”
In 2006, there were difficulties in managing solid waste in Ghana. It became an issue of great concern to Ghana’s citizens, mainly due to its environmental health implications. The United Nations Conference on Human Settlement report stated that between 33% and 50% of solid waste generated within most cities in low and middle income countries are not collected. Instead it is illegally dumped on streets and open spaces. Furthermore, a 2002 report by the African Development Bank stipulates that Ghana generated about 3.6 million tons of solid waste per year, made up of predominantly organic compost, such as food, plastic and wood waste. These critical challenges presented yet another opportunity the serial entrepreneur could not ignore, one that would prove to be Agyepong’s most lucrative business to date.
To make his next business venture a success, Agyepong knew he had to overcome certain stereotypes associated with waste management.
“In 2006, whenever you asked someone to come into the waste management space, they would not do it because they thought that it was a filthy job and it was a low-grade job. So I thought of bringing in a dignified way of doing it.”
His eureka moment happened on a visit to China.
“I first visited China and saw people using tricycles, so I bought one in a container and brought it back to Ghana and I asked people to try it. I then built an assembly plant in Ghana and started assembling the tricycles myself. I started with the tricycles because I said I needed more people to help collect the waste and if we relied on a truck and the truck breaks down then we would be in trouble,” says Agyepong.
Next was convincing local government districts to adopt his innovative idea.
“I went to each district and spoke to the mayors or district executives and gave them 25 tricycles and told them to try it. They didn’t want to pay for it so I gave it to them as a pilot.”
Soon, demand for his tricycles increased and Agyepong was faced with cash flow problems. Due to the lack of profitability of the venture, he had to think outside the box to raise funds.
“I went to the bank and asked them for money to expand my printing business. I lobbied them with my printing business for money to buy a printing press and when I got the money I went to buy tricycles and I used the tricycles to develop the business all over the districts and then Zoomlion emerged.”
With a bank loan of GHC30,000 ($6,800), Zoomlion began its expansion. From starting with 1,000 tricycles, the company currently has 15,000 and 30,000 motorized and manual tricycles respectively, with a fleet of waste management trucks as well. The company also has a combined core staff of 3,000 and manages over 85,000 workers under various forms of Public Private Partnerships (PPP). Zoomlion currently has operations in Togo, Angola, Zambia and Equatorial Guinea and Liberia.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/07/04/one-name-two-investors-4-billion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">One Name, Two Investors, $4 Billion</a>
Agyepong also established The Africa Institute of Sanitation and Waste Management (AISWAM), in partnership with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), to help meet the technological and human resource needs of the waste management industry. AISWAM gives people the required skills for efficient waste management using modern technology.
For Agyepong it is not so much about the money but building an organization that can stand the test of time.
“I am passionate about getting good concepts that have longevity and I like industrialization. So, all the things that I was doing, I was looking at what businesses will succeed in the future. Waste is generated everyday. So I thought if I got into it early, and do it right, I would last. I was not looking at it in terms of how much money I could make today. No matter what happened with the economy we would always need waste management, so I decided if I just move into it and establish the base well, I will thrive.”
<div id="attachment_32966" style="width: 429px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32966" class=" wp-image-32966" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FORBES-JUNE-1566-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="419" height="279" />Joseph Siaw Agyepong (Photo supplied)</div>
There were, however, some roadblocks along the way. In 2013 the World Bank debarred Zoomlion Ghana and Zoomlion Liberia for two years. Zoomlion was accused of fraud and paying bribes to secure contracts.
“In 2008, we went into Liberia where we secured a World Bank contract and one of our staff, during the contract proceedings, committed certain errors, which were an infraction. The contract was for the construction of a landfill,” says Agyepong.
“During the auditing processes of the bid, certain things were not recorded correctly and there were certain errors that were made by our staff. This was the first international contract we had as a company moving into the international field. We delivered on the project and got paid but during the auditing process, the World Bank saw that some recordings were not done properly and we got blacklisted for two years. It was a very big blow.”
It was a wake-up call for Agyepong. He immediately set out to strengthen corporate governance throughout the Jospong Group of Companies. In 2015, the company was removed from the World Bank’s list of sanctioned companies.
Creating jobs has always been key for Agyepong, which resonates with the government.
“From Zoomlion we started creating jobs and we have more than 250,000 people working in our organization and this is a jackpot because there are huge employment opportunities. I saw the need for government to find employment opportunities but they did not know how to go about it. In the waste management business your best customer is government. You have to work with the ministry of local government and policymakers of government to achieve your goal.”
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Since the establishment of Zoomlion, Agyepong has created two to three companies every year. Investment and diversification is more important to him than comfort.
“One thing I did was I invested in my business. Every amount was put back into the business. I stayed with my wife and three children in a single room, built 10 companies before I built my house. I don’t limit myself to one business. So every year I kept moving into different businesses. My passion is employment generation so I am not looking at how do you manage the business but rather just get the right people and pay them well to manage each business.”
“The growth of the company has been phenomenal since its inception as a printing press, with operations in diverse sectors at the moment. This is hugely attributed to Siaw&#8217;s leadership style as well as his focus on quality service delivery at a competitive price. The core philosophy of the business is to identify opportunities and provide solutions, roll out innovative business models, build capacities to provide value and nurture them to become market leaders,” says Chris Koney, a journalist for the Business and Financial Times in Ghana.
Agyepong is obsessed about finding solutions to everyday problems.
“Wherever there is a problem, I like finding out how to solve it. At that time, everybody was talking about how much of a problem we had with waste management so I moved to solve the problem,” he says.
Currently, Agyepong is looking for a solution to curtail the numerous fires in Ghana. Given his proclivity for out-of-the-box thinking – and the skill to spot the potential of a tricycle in China – the flames could soon be doused.

FORBES-JUNE-1620b

A Dirty Job That Made A Poor Man Filthy Rich

It happened one Saturday afternoon; the meat was on the fire, the smoke was in the air, and a father sat his 13-year-old son down for a paternal chat that was to change his life.
The father was billionaire investor Jannie Mouton – known as the &#8216;Boere Buffett&#8217;. The son was Piet Mouton who was to grow up into a multi-million-dollar investor. Billionaire and son have beefed up PSG, the investment holding company worth $4.3 billion (market cap) that has spread to a combined market capitalization of approximately $12.5 billion in just 22 years.
&#8220;Growing up in our family, at the age of 13 I already knew what options and futures were… It was a new thing on the JSE and my dad came home and, at a braai on a Saturday, he sat me and my brother down and explained it to us. So here I had some great knowledge that I didn&#8217;t know what to do with at school, but I understood the concept of options and futures,&#8221; says Piet.
&#8220;[PSG] was part of our life growing up, the entire business concept. Being mathematically inclined, [my future idea] wasn&#8217;t necessarily to go into business with my father, but it was to go into business.&#8221;
This was the incredible inside story told from the two men as FORBES AFRICA sat down at 35 Church Street, Stellenbosch, in the heart of the quaint South African wine farm to hear how one family built an investment giant.
&#8220;My wife once told me that was your favorite child, PSG, you never ask anything about Jan or Piet, or Charity. It’s only PSG, PSG. The whole braai [barbeque], the whole evening was talking about PSG. It was very much part and parcel of how we started,&#8221; says Jannie.
The choice of the building in Church Street for this interview was a spot-on smart investment.  They call it Ou Kollege and it is as much of a reflection of their humble characters as their life stories. The wooden panels, grey walls, African paintings and sculptures of leopards have that millionaire touch. Jannie bought it with his old friend GT Ferreira, FirstRand founder and also a multimillionaire. The two men decorated it with paint pot and brush in hand.
&#8220;We bought this building and we haven&#8217;t left.  I remember GT saying to me &#8216;Jannie, it&#8217;s just a structure, you must put stuff in it as well&#8217;, so he ended up being the interior decorator here as well,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;You can see this wood paneling is the same as GT&#8217;s office on the third floor which looks very similar to what we&#8217;ve got. It had the same interior decorator at the end of the day,&#8221; says Piet, as they both laugh.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/02/01/africas-billionaires/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Africa&#8217;s Billionaires</a>
On this day, in the very room where they plotted billions of dollars of investment around the world, Piet and Jannie don matching black suits and white shirts. They are every inch the shrewd businessmen, with a dash of down-to-earth humility.
Thomas Edison, the man famous for the lightbulb, once said opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. The Moutons are dressed in suits and look like investment.
Jannie founded the group just 22 years ago after a kick in the gut. He was fired by his partners from his own stock broking firm. To add insult to injury, his name as part of Senekal, Mouton &amp; Kitshoff was on the door. The fact that Mouton will never forget August 5, 1995, shows how deeply it hurt him. At the time, probably the last thing on his mind was that this humiliation was the best thing that ever happened to him.
<div id="attachment_32675" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32675" class=" wp-image-32675" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_2492.LR_-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="390" />Jannie Mouton (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
<blockquote>&#8220;If you were fired in your life, you must have realized you&#8217;ve made a mistake. I think it was a good lesson. It&#8217;s a team effort and all the team must be happy and must respect their standing credibility and wisdom. I&#8217;ve learned a lot about that,&#8221; says Jannie.</blockquote>
That lesson hit like a sledgehammer when young Piet was told the news.
&#8220;I was in first-year and was 19 years old. The first part started with Jannie being fired. He was so ashamed he got my mother to phone us up and say he&#8217;d resigned,&#8221; says Piet.
Jannie searched his soul and vowed to own a financial services JSE-listed company. It took three months to get onto the JSE. Jannie, then 48 years old, bought a 51% share of JSE-listed PAG for R3.5 million ($273,000). He sold it two years later for R107 million ($8.35 million).
Then he went home. He settled in Stellenbosch, the town where he studied alongside fellow decorator GT, in the Western Cape.
From these humble beginnings the PSG Group took off like a rocket with annual compound growth in earnings of 50.8% a year.
Their main investments are in bank start-up Capitec, private education firm Curro Holdings, PSG Konsult and agribusiness firm Zeder – with the 31% interest in Capitec constituting roughly 40% of the value of PSG&#8217;s portfolio.
Here&#8217;s how rapidly PSG has grown: An investment of R100,000 ($78,000), on its first day in business, would be worth approximately R390 million ($30.5 million) today if all dividends were reinvested. No other company in the world matches this, according to the Moutons and researchers at the Top Performing Companies &amp; Public Sector.
Jannie is Afrikaans with a capital A. When you speak to him you can see he thinks in Afrikaans and speaks in English. Yet when it comes to business he knows, whenever he speaks, English is king. So when it came to sending his sons to school he bent the rules to claim he was English-speaking so they could grow up learning the world language.
&#8220;My wife was a bit smarter than me. She was in an English school her whole life at Rustenburg Girls’ High. She realized how important English was in life and in business… To send your children from an Afrikaans background to an English school, you had to apply officially. Otherwise they wouldn&#8217;t do it. I still have the little document that says I am English-speaking. That was to protect Afrikaans, they didn&#8217;t want Afrikaans schools and English schools to mix.&#8221;
With parental guidance, and the English language, Piet took to business like a duck to water in his first year at Stellenbosch University where he studied actuarial science.
&#8220;Remember, this was at a time when we were coming into a new democracy. We were at university, there was massive growth in the PSG share price, I think it went up from 36c and peaked at about R18 which was my last year at university. Students do take interest in what happens in the world and it&#8217;s a phenomenal story, so everybody knew who Jannie was, and obviously Jannie and GT were Simonsberg Old Boys, which was the residence where I went to,&#8221; says Piet.
With seven years as CEO of PSG, Piet is the new generation injecting adrenalin into the beating heart of this $4.3-billion company. There were no short cuts for the young Piet, according to Jannie, he had to work his way up the corporate ladder.
<div id="attachment_32676" style="width: 266px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32676" class=" wp-image-32676" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_2503.LR_-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="384" />Piet Mouton (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
&#8220;Piet had started in the group in 2004 with a company called Arch Equity. It was actually a tough day in our lives, because his mother and my wife passed away on 11th of May. On the 17th we launched Arch Equity. We never discussed him becoming CEO,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;Piet was a candidate and I stood back. His colleagues selected him. Here, in private and in public, Piet was the best candidate, I couldn&#8217;t get involved. I would never do that in my life, misuse my title and it was the shareholders decision to appoint him head of the board… For us, it&#8217;s the best CEO who must be in charge.&#8221;
Despite this, you can only imagine the pressure that Piet feels. Not only does he juggle billions in other people&#8217;s money, the chairperson is also your father, the person who started to build it.
&#8220;[Jannie&#8217;s] entire business philosophy is a lesson. The biggest one is don&#8217;t give me problems, give me solutions. Jannie always says &#8216;it&#8217;s easier to tell a guy something won&#8217;t work, it&#8217;s a lot more difficult to sit with an idea and think of a way of doing it differently&#8217;,&#8221; says Piet.
A cornerstone of PSG&#8217;s success is a 30.7% stake in Capitec Bank. In 2002, Capitec’s individual shares listings were worth less than a rand and now they are worth R531 ($41.50). The guiding spirit of Capitec is Michiel le Roux, who disrupted South Africa&#8217;s once cozy banking market by bringing in an aggressive strategy in search of deposits from low-income earners.
<blockquote>&#8220;The Moutons, as the main drivers behind PSG, have built a company that created wealth for many. Their active involvement in the beginning years to get the Capitec dream off the ground was crucial to our success,” says Le Roux.</blockquote>
Capitec was built on 300 micro-lending branches. It shook up the banking sector with new ideas, like the no-brainer of opening on Sundays.
&#8220;The five big banks, prior to Capitec, sat back and they had a nice little oligopoly. Capitec came around and they were allowed to build a great business. By the time the competition realized this is a real player, it was too late. Now Capitec is a serious competitor,&#8221; says Piet.
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PSG has proven time and again that opportunities can be found in the pessimism of others. These are tough times for South Africa, one of Africa&#8217;s most developed economies. It has suffered a string of downgrades, political uncertainty and questions about corruption and fiscal mismanagement.
&#8220;Everybody is always outwardly focused in South Africa… But it means you can actually operate in a very uncompetitive environment. You would not have been able to start a Capitec in London,&#8221; says Piet.
Now technology is also a factor.
&#8220;Each and every week, we at PSG level encourage our subsidiaries to look at the changes. It&#8217;s a fact of life. From the start [Capitec] was a bit of an IT business but now it&#8217;s becoming more and more an IT business. Just look back 10 years; it&#8217;s unbelievable how business has changed. I&#8217;ve also realized my generation has to step back, because we don&#8217;t keep pace with this generation,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;It&#8217;s going to continue changing in the years ahead. It&#8217;s a big thing at all the companies at the moment. You have to sit down and look at your business model and say ‘can it be interrupted?’ There are businesses that are just not there, take for example Kodak,&#8221; says Piet.
&#8220;Now you sit at the Capitec level and you say we mustn&#8217;t be caught with our pants down, because there are guys sitting in garages developing FinTech stuff. At least we at Capitec acknowledge – we don&#8217;t know where the problem is going to come from, we&#8217;ve got to constantly be smart about it,&#8221; says Piet.
&#8220;There are 150 people working on innovation and it’s costing us R200 million ($15.6 million) a year, to constantly scan and see if we can implement some of this new innovation.&#8221;
A recent purchase of an online lender in Poland is a Capitec move toward technology.
&#8220;The model is slightly different here. Whereas here in South Africa we are backed by bricks and mortar with 800 branches with a massive 300 ATM network, there it will be an online operation. Michiel coined a great phrase, shortly after I came back from the UK: it was either going to be a small failure or a big success. Now, where a lot of corporates go overseas and make massive acquisitions and then try implement them, Capitec actually tackled a very small business that has the potential to expand and they can contribute capital if it grows… It&#8217;s a longer path but it&#8217;s a sure way of hitting success at the end of the day. If it&#8217;s a failure it&#8217;s a small failure,&#8221; says Piet.
Another of PSG&#8217;s success stories is Chris van der Merwe&#8217;s Curro Holdings that develops, acquires and manages private schools in South Africa. What started off as a school of 28 learners in the hall of a church in Durbanville, Cape Town, now has a market cap of $1.4 billion.
&#8220;Chris van der Merwe is a unique person. Education and doing something great for the company is his passion. He tells you to your face he doesn&#8217;t understand accounts or profits. He is one of the people I admire in life, he isn&#8217;t fanatically orientated but he has a big thing about education,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;Chris was a primary school teacher who knew he was also phenomenal businessman. He built the school himself, with his own hands. He took his early pension, started with 28 kids in a class, now it&#8217;s up to 50,000,&#8221; says Piet.
In May, Curro Holdings announced it would buy the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA) – a film, television and live performance higher education institution. Step one of an expansion into the tertiary education system under the soon-to-be JSE-listed company Stadio. In six years, the share price has increased more than 300% to R44.70, with pupil numbers rising 14% to 47,589 in 2016, reports CNBC AFRICA.
&#8220;A typical school class has about 45 students. At varsity, a class could be 100, and the fees are even a bit more than school. It could be a fantastic model,&#8221; says Jannie.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2012/11/01/outbuffetting-buffett/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Outbuffetting Buffett</a>
Asked if this decision had any particular influence from recent education crisis events, like FeesMustFall, the campaign that saw South African universities come to a standstill amid violence over tuition fees, the Moutons were open.
&#8220;See, there you have almost hit the nail on the head of investments. Big macro themes, if you can get it right, you shouldn&#8217;t be limited to growth. Take the whole education sector as a whole, primary and core, if you can get it right, there is actually a massive scope for growth. You are right about the FeesMustFall, because people are becoming disillusioned [with education].&#8221;
Another company Jannie believes could surprise investors is PSG Konsult. With 270 branches and 800 advisors, each branch is its own company, 70%-owned by the individuals who run it – what Jannie calls ultimate empowerment.
&#8220;You should attract very good people alongside you and you must make them co-workers inside the business. You must trust them implicitly and give them the space to grow. That has worked significantly for our group, because they act like shareholders and look after the company,&#8221; says Piet.
Back in the boardroom, the conversation shifts toward the lighter side of life, something the pair can&#8217;t agree on – rugby.
&#8220;It&#8217;s one of the points we don&#8217;t see eye to eye on. Jannie is a Stormers supporter whereas I am a strong Lions supporter. Literally, Saturdays would be a fight to behold.&#8221;
Imagine if the idea to invest in the Stormers or Lions was raised in this Stellenbosch boardroom.

One Name, Two Investors, $4 Billion

Ameenah-Gurib147

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim: Scientist, Entrepreneur And President

<ol start="10">
<li>
<h4>Oliver Mtukudzi, Zimbabwe</h4>
</li>
</ol>
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Oliver (Tuku) Mtukudzi has 65 albums under his belt — more than Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston.
It’s a remarkable career stretching back 41 years with songs that have enlivened parties all over the world.
“I never decided to be in the music industry. It was in me. My mother said ‘you are a good singer but you will never surpass your birth cry. Your birth cry was so beautiful’,” says Mtukudzi.
Born on September 22, 1952, in Highfield, a suburb in Harare, Zimbabwe; music runs in his blood. Both his parents were musicians. They met at a choir competition and sang a duet for life. It wasn’t long before he found his voice.
“I made a three-string guitar for myself from a tin around 1969 or early 1970s with the help of a [relative]. I was always playing it. My father didn’t like it and he broke the guitar.”
It wasn’t going to stop him. He made up songs as a child and sang everywhere he could.
“One day, I decided to perform for my parents standing on the table and they enjoyed it so much I didn’t get smacked for standing on the table. My mother noticed I had been standing on the table, two or three days later. That’s how good it was,” he chuckles.
Mtukudzi followed his passion.
His Tuku Music album, featuring the smash hit Todii went gold in its first month of release in Zimbabwe.
His skill is appreciated from Angola to Zimbabwe where he sells out concerts. He has millions of views on YouTube, has starred in movies and has over 30 awards.
“I don’t understand Shona but I sing along to his music and buy his albums&#8230;. His music makes me feel alive,” says South African fan Ntuthuko Buthelezi.
There is no stopping him making the world feel alive.
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<ol start="9">
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<h4>Sarkodie, Ghana</h4>
</li>
</ol>
Born Michael Owusu Addo, Sarkodie has racked up millions of views on YouTube for his music with his debut album and first single, Baby, among the favorites.
He started out as an underground rapper which helped him cross paths with his former manager, Duncan Williams, who helped launch his career.
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Staying true to his identity, he is a big advocate of Azonto, a Ghanaian genre that is said to have been born out of Kpanlogo, a traditional dance.
Mewu, the first single off his fourth album, Mary, sold almost 4,000 copies on the first day of its release in Ghana’s capital Accra.
His hard work does not go unnoticed. Sarkodie was the first Ghanaian to win a BET award and has the most nominations. In 2015, he was ranked the 19th “Most Influential Ghanaian” by e-TV Ghana and in 2013 and 2015, he was ranked 8th on FORBES and Channel O’s list, “Top 10 Richest/Bankable African Artists.”
His ambitions don’t end here. In 2013, he launched his clothing line Sark by Yas, launched Obidi Chief Headphones which endorses, among others, Samsung and telecommunications company, Tigo.  In 2014, he also launched the music label SarkCess to empower other African artists.
2017 promises to be an even more exciting year for Sarkodie.
<ol start="8">
<li>
<h4>Davido, Nigeria</h4>
</li>
</ol>
Davido has claimed a high status in just five years. The single Back When planted him firmly in the music business in 2011.
“It was people like [Nigerian music veterans] P-Square and D’Banj who made me believe that all this was possible,” he recalls.
Dami Duro, an unexpected hit, leaked online almost a year prior to its official release, became the crown jewel for his widely acclaimed 2012 debut album, Omo Baba Olowo.
He became the talk of the continent, securing not just the buy-in of African fans by the multitude, but also unanimous media acknowledgement, with accolades including two MTV Africa Music Awards and the BET Award for ‘Best African Act’. He has also worked with MTN, Guinness, Unilever and has millions of views on YouTube.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5602 aligncenter" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-173381731-300x285.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="285" />
“God has been very good and he continues to be. I am very fortunate,” he says.
Last year, he caught the eye of Sony and dissolved his lucrative co-owned HKN record label.
“I had four offers and I went with the one that was going to get my music out there. Right now everybody is trying to grab a piece of Africa. I went with the team that believed and was actually interested in my music.”
Just weeks shy of his 24th birthday, Davido gifted himself with the something money can’t buy. He released Son of Mercy, his very first internationally recorded, produced and released EP; collaborating with R&amp;B It-Girl Tinashe on How Long.
“I could have done an outright R&amp;B record but I decided to take what Tinashe does and fuse that with the culture back at home,” he says.
Davido has collaborated with Young Thug, Future, Trey Songz and Rae Sremmurd, and has toured the world.
No doubt, there is more to come.
<ol start="7">
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<h4>WizKid, Nigeria</h4>
</li>
</ol>
WizKid is arguably currently the uncrowned king of African music.
Grammy Award-winning artist, Alicia Keys and husband Swizz Beatz, danced to his songs Ojuelegba and Caro, with Keys posting a video on her Instagram account with the caption, “This song makes me happy” and Kylie Jenner posted a video of herself dancing to Wizkid’s music on snapchat.
The Nigerian singer and songwriter is spreading the Afrobeat sound to the world. He co-wrote and co-produced One Dance, Drake’s Hot 100-topping hit, has signed a multi-album worldwide deal with Sony Music International and is a Pepsi ambassador.
WizKid, born Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, made his mark with Holla At Your Boy in 2010 and has since won many awards, among them the BET Award for Best International Act Africa in 2012 and MTV Europe Music Award for Best Worldwide Act.
His rise to fame started with singing in church at the age of 11 before collaborating with M.I in the award-winning Fast Money Fast Cars in 2009.
He now hangs out with Akon and Chris Brown and has worked with Rihanna, French Montana, Trey Songz, Tinie Tempah and Wale.
<ol start="6">
<li>
<h4>Jidenna, Nigerian-America</h4>
</li>
</ol>
By the age of 10, Jidenna Theodore Mobisson knew he wanted to do music but was afraid to tell his father who wanted him to be an engineer. It was just as well that his name means embracing the father.
“Luckily after a few years he came around and said ‘just make sure you are an inventor, innovator in your field and you treat your work like a science’,” he says.
It took years to make the dream a reality. He connected with singer and Wonderland record label founder, Janelle Monáe. With her help, two years ago, he produced the smash hit Classic Man with over 56 million views on YouTube; followed by a remix with Kendrick Lamar.
He never forgot his roots.
“As my father would tell the story, I was conceived in Nigeria and then they went to the US for me to be born there so I could have a blue passport,” he says with a chuckle.
At a few weeks old, his parents took him back to Enugu,  Nigeria, where he spent the next six years of his life before moving back to the US.
Life in the US was tough.
“My accent was a lot thicker than it is now and I was teased a lot… Even though Jidenna is my first name, like many African children in the US, I tried to abbreviate it, make it shorter and make it more of a English sounding name,” he says.
By the time he went to university, he made sure everyone knew him as Jidenna.
Last year, he released his debut album, The Chief, which he promoted, first, in Lagos and Johannesburg.
“I am a Naija boy… I want more publishing and royalties to be available to artists in Africa in the music industry so there can be more money and more job opportunities.”
Jidenna has also been working with former US First Lady, Michelle Obama, on her education initiative, does speaking gigs, private shows and was in the HBO series Insecure.
He leaves us with food for thought.
“I hope we don’t chase the American dream but create our own African dream.”
He is dreaming hard.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5599 aligncenter" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2017-Jidenna-01-194x300.jpg" alt="" width="194" height="300" />
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<ol start="5">
<li>
<h4> Tinashe, Zimbabwe-American</h4>
</li>
</ol>
Twenty-four-year-old Tinashe Kachingwe sang before she could talk. Her Zimbabwean father Michael, and mother Aimie, from Denmark, have always helped.
Tinashe was a child model by the age of three, made her first appearance in 2000 in the film Cora Unashamed and her voice starred in the cartoon feature film The Polar Express alongside Oscar winning actor, Tom Hanks.
Her debut album, Aquarius, drew a tidal wave of acclaim especially with the #1 multi-platinum single 2 On featuring Schoolboy Q.
Her graceful twists and turns and magical voice have earned her respect among the who’s who of the industry. She has collaborated with the likes of Nick Jonas, Future, Chance The Rapper, A$AP Rocky, Calvin Harris, Usher, Chris Brown and Britney Spears. Her voice has also earned opening spots on tours with Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry and Maroon 5. She also wrote That’s My Girl for Fifth Harmony, was announced as Pepsi’s newest Sound Drop artist and her Britney Spears collaboration, Slumber Party, reached the #1 position on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.
This is a solid foundation for her dream to be an R&amp;B star. Tinashe has taken her career to the next level featuring on the hit comedy Two and a Half Men and will play herself in a multi-episode storyline, on the Fox drama series, Empire, alongside Taraji P Henson and Terrence Howard.
Where there is talent, there is opportunity and money.
<div id="attachment_5603" style="width: 253px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5603" class="size-medium wp-image-5603" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-501051350-243x300.jpg" alt="" width="243" height="300" />Tinashe attends the Z100&#8217;s iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2015 at Madison Square Garden on December 11, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)</div>
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Tinashe is a brand ambassador for various multinational brands and has relationships with the likes of Alexander Wang, Ralph Lauren and MAC Cosmetics.
That’s not all.
She is the face and owner of her own lifestyle brand, Svu Svu, was honoured as one of 2015’s ELLE Women in Music and was hand-picked by Janet Jackson to perform a tribute to her at the 2015 BET Awards.
Money pours in for Tinashe and she is only 24.
&nbsp;
<ol start="4">
<li>
<h4>Don Jazzy, Nigeria</h4>
</li>
</ol>
Like many artists, Don Jazzy, real name Michael Collins Ajereh, started playing music as a child in church before moving to the UK to pursue his career.
“I worked as a security guard in the UK, and after a while I realized I could make some money playing the bass guitar. A friend of mine helped me and took me with their band to play at restaurants and different venues,” he says.
At the time, he would make £150 or £200 for playing for about five hours in London.
“The band got popular that I could make £500 per gig. I grew to the point that I played at a wedding for the President’s daughter at the time.”
This steered him to music production.
Two years later, with then partner D’banj, he decided to move back to Nigeria to make Afrobeats.
“We worked on the album in the UK, so that when we got home we would have something to present. As soon as we got home people accepted us and loved the music.”
It was upward movement from then on. Don Jazzy is a multi-award winning artist, was MTN brand ambassador and is running a successful record label which is home to stars like Dr.SID and Tiwa Savage, is in real estate and launched Flobyt, a company that provides free Wi-Fi in Nigeria.
“With Flobyt we make money from advertising because the people watch like a 10-second video before logging on.”
There is no turning back for Don Jazzy.
<ol start="3">
<li>
<h4>Hugh Masekela, South Africa</h4>
</li>
</ol>
Born in Witbank, east of Johannesburg, Hugh Masekela is committed to restoring African heritage. This world-renowned flugelhornist, trumpeter, bandleader, composer and singer has released more than 43 albums and performed with Marvin Gaye, Dizzy Gillespie, The Byrds, Fela Kuti, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Miriam Makeba.
“The music I make, I don’t call it my music. It is based on my township and indigenous rural roots in South Africa. That’s what brought me fame all over the world,” he says.
At the age of 14, he got his first trumpet and developed his signature sound in the late 1950s, melding jazz with African music.
His first album, Trumpet Africaine, was released in 1962.
In the ensuing decades, he became an international star and an outspoken political voice with songs such as Stimela, with over a million YouTube views, Soweto Blues and Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela), which became an anti-apartheid anthem.
His music did not whither with the apartheid government.
In 2010, he opened the FIFA World Cup Kick-Off Concert; South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma honored him with the highest order in the country given for achievements in arts, culture, literature, music, journalism, and sports, and the US Virgin Islands proclaimed ‘Hugh Masekela Day’, not long after he joined U2 on stage during the Johannesburg leg of their world tour.
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Masekela, who also owns a studio and record label, has numerous awards, honorary doctorates and was nominated for a Grammy for his 2010 album Jabulani in the best world music category, alongside Jay-Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Mumford &amp; Sons. He is insurance company Assupol’s brand ambassador since 2012
Masekela maintains a busy international tour schedule as his fan base around the world continues to grow. He shows no signs of slowing down. Between April and November, he will perform in London, South Africa and three shows in the US for up to $125 to admit one. His music is also sold online for about $10, and reports claim it would cost about $20,000 for a live performance from the star.
Accolades, sold out concerts and smash hits are Masekela’s way of life.
<ol start="2">
<li>
<h4>black coffee, South Africa</h4>
</li>
</ol>
Black Coffee, real name Nkosinathi Maphumulo, has not only raised the bar for South African house music, but has put it on the world map.
The multi-award-winning artist was born in South Africa’s house music province, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), raised in the Eastern Cape province, where struggle stalwart Nelson Mandela hailed from, before moving back to KZN to study music. It was worth it.
In 2003, he was chosen as one of two South African participants in the Red Bull Music Academy steering him into the South African DJ scene. He never looked back.
The DJ founded Soulistic Music, a leading management and record company, and introduced himself to the world through a self-titled album.
The year 2008 marked a very fruitful year in Black Coffee’s career. Soulistic Music signed releases from Culoe De Song, Tumelo and Zakes Bantwini, all achieving gold and platinum sales.
Black Coffee took his career a step further to collaborating with international artists. He worked with Alicia Keys on a remix of In Common, released a Superman remix with Drake and even R&amp;B superstars Usher and John Legend want to do songs with him.
One of his Pieces of Me album favorites, We Dance Again became part of a worldwide dance challenge with people taking videos of themselves dancing outside a car.
“This new Black Coffee album is crazy,” said rapper Swizz Beatz on his Instagram jamming to the album.
His work has been recognized all over the world. Last year, he was the first South African to win a BET Award. He also won three South African Music Awards and a DJ Award for Best Deep House, and does sold-out tours.
When in the US, Black Coffee hangs with P Diddy. He has earned the seat at the high table.
<ol>
<li>
<h4>Akon, Senegalese-American</h4>
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</ol>
With over 35 million albums sold worldwide, numerous awards, five Grammy Award nominations, 45 Billboard Hot 100 songs under his belt and over 51 million likes on his Facebook page, Akon is not only bankable but also unstoppable.
He has had chart-dominating singles like Smack That and Lonely, he’s made more than 300 guest appearances for the likes of Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Lil Wayne, R. Kelly and Eminem. That’s not all.
The singer and producer was not only listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the #1 selling artist for master ringtones in the world, but also became the first solo artist in history to lock down both the number one and number two spots on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Senegalese-American isn’t showing signs of slowing down. With a new album on deck for 2017, he has set his sights on breaking into Hollywood and is already well on his way to making his mark landing his first major movie in indie action thriller American Heist, a remake of the 1959 Steve McQueen movie The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery.
He is also a friend of corporates, cashing in on the Pepsi soccer ad campaign and was in FORBES’ Celebrity 100 list in 2010.
His unquestionable musical talent aside, Akon is a formidable entrepreneur and humanitarian.
He owns two thriving record labels which helped jumpstart the careers of both Lady Gaga and T-Pain and is founder of Konvict clothing.
With a heart even bigger than his resume, Akon also created The Konfidence Foundation, a youth charity organization, and in February 2014, he launched a partnership to bring solar energy to half a billion African households with the Akon Lighting Africa and, most recently, Akon Lighting Asia projects.

Top 10 most bankable artists in Africa

It was not narcissism that saw Papa Kwesi Nduom name his company after himself. It was that desire to put his reputation on the line when it came to business; that strong belief, born of a brass neck and a steel backbone, to be accountable for his work.
Today, Groupe Nduom sits atop of a business made up of tourism, investment advisory and management, financial services, technology, media, management consulting, cross border trade and sports.
It is a modus operandi born in Nduom 47 years ago, when the first opportunity knocked.
“There are certain stages in life that you get to know things. I had the privilege of getting a scholarship and spending one year in the United States in 1970. Prior to that, I wanted to be a medical doctor. I went to the United States and was introduced to other things. Through that I got to know that you could also be in business. In just that one year I took so many different classes outside medicine which broadened my view in life and all sorts of opportunities became possible,” he says.
His uncanny ability to spot opportunities led to the formation of a business empire, based in Ghana, with 60 companies in its portfolio. When we meet at the Coconut Grove Hotel, on a warm Saturday afternoon in Accra, Nduom has a spring in his step, a broad smile and an energetic “good afternoon” for everyone as he ushers us into his inner office in the sprawling resort.
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<h5 id="eow-description">The final episode of the first season of My Worst Day with Peace Hyde features Ghanaian serial entrepreneur Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom &#8211; who shares his memories of the day he lost $2 million worth of business that threatened to end his consultancy business.</h5>
At 64, Nduom’s attention to detail is slightly intimidating; his demeanor is composed and authoritative. His gaze is attentive as he reminds us politely he is flying out later that evening to the United States to complete the acquisition of a new bank. Nduom’s intuitive timing has served him well over the years. That skill was born of the transition from medicine to business. 
“I ended up at the University of Wisconsin and that is where I did the Bachelor of Economics and PhD in service delivery systems. It is there that I actually went off course. I wanted to be a medical doctor and I took all the admission tests and everything and got to a point where I needed a lot of money to continue if I wanted to get into a high-quality medical school. But I found out that I could take some different courses and take a degree in economics and get to work quickly, so I took that path so I could finish and get to work and make some money.”
“I had to fend for myself. Some of the things I do to make a living today, like finding opportunities, comes from the fact that I had to do those things myself and scrape along to survive. I had to pay my own fees, pay for my rent and go to school at the same time,” says Nduom.
In those lean days, he packed canned beans in a factory; toiled for two weeks on a construction site, in the cold winter; and spent long hours as a parking lot attendant.
“I would do the third shift at work which was at midnight and when you come back there would just be enough time to take a shower and go to school. If they said a semester was 15 credits, I wanted to take 20 because I calculated how many credits I needed to take to get out of school early because it was money I had to pay.”
The search for new opportunities to make money taught Nduom two key business principles: the first was how to negotiate.
“One job I really liked was working second shift at a meat factory. It paid well per hour and you learned how to cut meat, and you were also able to take some of the off cuts home. So you had food. So the people I shared my apartment with at that time were two Somalis who loved meat, so I used the meat to trade for other necessities which I couldn’t afford myself.”
Second lesson: the power of perseverance.
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“Right after university, my first job was with Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance in Milwaukee. I went there and applied with my Ghanaian name and the lady looked at the name Papa Kwesi Nduom and started asking all sorts of other questions. I got to a point where I couldn’t answer all the questions so I failed the interview.”
“I went back to the university and I carried a different identification because my passport had two names in it. So I went and changed my clothes and came back as Joseph Hubster Yorke Junior, which was my other name. The lady didn’t notice that it was the same person. So now, with my new name, she asked me completely different questions, which I answered and she gave me the job and I became a life insurance underwriter,” says Nduom.
Then, Nduom worked at the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin, a health insurance company, and then the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District, a county government institution. Here a rare life-changing experience, in an unlikely place, unfolded through a chance meeting.
“You never know where and when opportunity will make itself available so you should always be ready. I was on the fourth floor of my work building but on the seventh floor was a nice men’s room, which was big and had marble floors, which was really nice. So I would go and use the men’s room on that floor instead of going to the one on the fourth floor,” says Nduom.
“One day I was washing my hands and a guy comes also washing his hands and we strike a conversation. He asked if I would be interested in a job opportunity. He happened to be a recruiter who worked in the building and was looking for people that Touche Ross might be interested in. So we spoke and he set up the interview for me with the partner at Touche Ross and that is how I got the job. It was just an accidental meeting in the men’s room.”
Touche Ross later became Deloitte Touche, one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms with revenues of $36.8 billion, according to research company, Gartner. Nduom worked his way up to become a partner in the firm where he would learn his most important business skill, the art of selling.
“Every year they had a book that had all the partners in the US and in that book every partner’s production was there. In it were also the points that you earn as a bonus, so you see the entire top performing partners. So you knew where you were and what your business was supposed to do. So it is important for you to deliver. So you learn how to sell, you learn how to provide service and you learn how to satisfy the need of your customer.”
Nduom became a partner at Deloitte in 1986; with that the pressure to deliver increased. Ronald Reagan was president, Wall Street was booming and business was opening up around the world. Deloitte was in the thick of it.
“When you become a partner in the firm, you are a shareholder in the firm and basically you work for your own account. What you earn is strictly based on the business you bring in. The minimum amount you had to bring in terms of consulting fees was $1 million a year.”
Nduom moved to Washington when the firm merged the Milwaukee and Chicago offices. That put him in contact with the international division at Deloitte; another opportunity Nduom quickly took advantage of.
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“One day, over Thanksgiving dinner I told my wife that I wanted to go to Ghana to see what it was like to work there because I had never worked in Ghana before. So I bought a ticket, came to Ghana and I wanted to spend about a month or so to look around,” he says.
It was this conviction to understand the Ghanaian market that lent Nduom his next big entrepreneurial break. Initially, he sought to offer his services for free to get a feel for the consulting market in Ghana. At the time, Deloitte had representation, with Haskins &amp; Sells, in Accra as well as an association with Akintola Williams in Nigeria. Nduom looked for another opportunity and his instinct paid off, yet again.
“One of the partners said Ashanti Goldfields was their client and it was time to go do an audit, so maybe I should go with them to do an information systems audit. I traveled with them to Obuasi and spent a week, did the analysis of their systems, wrote a report and spoke to the man in charge of the whole area. He said he liked what I was suggesting which was something they might like to do but I should go talk to the managing director of Ashanti Goldfields, which was Sam Jonah, but then he was based at Diamond House in Accra.”
This principle of perseverance, which Nduom had learned a lifetime ago, when he secured his first job as a life insurance underwriter, was to serve him well – just as well, as a frustrating time was ahead.
“So I tried to talk to Sam Jonah several times in Accra and it didn’t work. I went back to Obuasi and somehow somebody there accused me of messing up with their computer systems so they ordered me off the mine. So I left the mine but sat by the supervisor’s door all day and convinced them to let me in because I wanted to talk to him about what can be done to improve their systems. He let me in and I left with an agreement to come back and organize their information systems,” says Nduom.
The contract was for a complete systems overhaul of the gold mine, involving the change of computers, accounting systems as well as payroll. Nduom enlisted the help of Deloitte to deliver the projects. After this, Nduom delivered more projects, including overseeing the merger of Touche Ross and Deloitte Haskins &amp; Sells, forming Deloitte &amp; Touche.
“When they merged they didn’t have a management consulting section and that is what gave me the opportunity to set up Deloitte and Touche Consulting West Africa and brought some other people from the US and hired them to join the team,” says Nduom.
The team had nearly 100 people in Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe. Ever the opportunist, Nduom spotted yet another gap in the market.
“While we were here, we realized that nobody was doing consulting work. So I took my own money because the firm said you are a partner in the US and not a partner in Ghana or Africa. They had no interest in setting up a branch of Deloitte USA in Ghana. Deloitte is set up as member firms. So they said we will give you two years after which you will get Africa out of your system and come back to the US.”
The two years taught him resilience. The new West African consulting business was inundated with work. Nduom secured major contracts with Texaco and Elf Oil in Nigeria, the African Development Bank and Malawi Oil. He was also responsible for setting up the computer software for Zimbabwe’s social security system.
“Eventually I became the coordinator for consulting for the African region for Deloitte and the time came for me to go back and I said there was enough work to do here so we set it up as a member firm of Deloitte. So when senior partners will get together every year to have their annual meeting, I would go as the senior partner for the West African consulting practise,” says Nduom.
Nduom became the chairman for the African region for Deloitte and held that position until the end of 2000. His says his success is down to focusing on long-term objectives, while staying flexible enough to solve day-to-day problems.
“We would look for a place to relax or do some work, we couldn’t find anything and so we set up Coconut Grove. We were looking for people to do some software work for us and we couldn’t find anyone, so we took a bus to Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and recruited some students, gave them computers, gave them software to tear apart and build again and then we started a software company. Out of that we set up a software company called TSS, then a hardware company called IBS, and out of that came corporate finance which became Gold Coast,” says Nduom.
The slogan of Groupe Nduom grew beyond expectation and owns a string of companies, from hospitality to entertainment. It has hotels, a football club and an artist management business. In media, it has newspapers, television, radio and advertising; it also owns primary and secondary schools and a university.
Nduom’s intuitive timing helped elbow out competition across his empire; a shrewd strategy that led to his worst day in business.
“I try to forget the date. It was 1995. It is the day I traveled from Ghana to Wharton to speak to graduate business school students about investments in Africa. I was one of the keynote speakers so I traveled from Ghana to Washington and my brother met me with faxes from Ghana, which said number one, I was on the Ghana Airways board at the time and I have been sacked from the board. I had consulting business with Ghana Telecom and it had been canceled. I was doing some consulting business with State Enterprise Commission and it said I was under investigation and in one day I lost over $2 million worth of consulting business,” says Nduom.
He believes this was an attempt by the government of the day to block his businesses for reasons he never found out. The event prompted a passion to be a part of the political system to prevent this injustice from happening to anyone else.
“I didn’t want anybody in Ghana to go through that experience where a government will just get up and, for whatever reason, decide that somebody should not be in business and that they should cancel their contract and just try to move him off the earth. There was a plan to do away with my businesses and everything I was doing in Ghana. They said they would smoke me out and get me to go back to where I came from. This was elevated to an extent that it became a row between the government of Ghana and the US,” says Nduom.
Nduom turned lemons into lemonade and expanded across Africa, leaving trading in Ghana until the impasse was resolved. It was, and 40 years on the business is riding high on its acquisition of Illinois Service Federal (ISF) Bank in Chicago, US. Nduom is older, wiser, with a clear eye for new horizons.
“Working here is like working in our own republic. We are governed by our own rules. You have to send a daily report, monthly report, quarterly report, a mid-year report and a yearly report. The idea is if something was to happen to you, anybody is supposed to look at your business and pick up where you left,” says Richmond Keelson, General Manager of Groupe Nduom Corporate Affairs.
What a journey – from packing canned beans in the United States to owning a bank there – a first for Ghana. The next couple of years will be spent trying to help the bank – the newest entrant into the group – find its feet in the business of its faraway owners.
Nduom is driven by the passion to have a business set up, thrive and succeed beyond Ghana.
That is the legacy Nduom is building; one opportunity at a time.

From Canned Beans To The African Dream Of Owning A Slice Of The States

For 96 years, Richard Maponya has been battering down barriers of prejudice and proving that a black man can do anything.
His journey began in the dusty streets of Lenyenye, a township in the Limpopo province of northern South Africa, where he was born. He moved to Polokwane, where missionaries trained him as a teacher. With a qualification under his belt, he moved to Johannesburg, in 1948, in search of a teaching post and greener pastures. This was during the early days of apartheid and it wasn’t easy for a black man to do anything.
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“Back in those days, you had to register your presence if you moved to a new area. I had moved to Alexandra township and I went to the pass office to register,” says Maponya.
There, he found an Afrikaner man looking for people to work at his potato farm in Delmas, 65 kilometers north east of Johannesburg. Little did he know he was going out of the frying pan into the fire.
“He asked for my documents, looked at my pass and all my documents and said ‘this boy would fit in well with the group I am looking for’. I told him I was there to just register in the new area but he took my pass, paged it and he spoke in Afrikaans with another gentlemen with him and said ‘this man is 28 years old’… He took my pass and altered my birth year from 1920 to 1926. He also took my birth certificate and never brought it back to me. I think he wanted a group of people who were about 20 to 22 years old or so.”
On that day, Maponya lost his identity forever.
“I have employed lawyers to fix that but even in the archives of our government, they don’t have any records, so I walk as a man everyone thinks was born in 1926 yet I was born in 1920. This is one thing I never talk about, you are the first journalist I’ve ever disclosed this to,” he says as he reveals the pain of his past.
Like the bags of potatoes they were going to carry, Maponya and a group of young black men were loaded in a truck and taken to the fields to work.
“During those days, black people were terribly ill-treated. We had no rights whatsoever; I was lucky my uncle worked for a liberal Englishman who rescued me from being abused while digging and loading potatoes. They gave me a small job of washing dishes and my uncle’s boss came to pick me up a week later… I stayed with him for a few days and then went back to Alexandra.”
As we meet, 69 years later, Maponya has swapped his matchbox room in Alexandra for five mansions in Africa’s richest square mile, Sandton. When we compliment his beautiful Victorian-style home, he says, “Have you ever been to my other homes?”
It is hard work, smart decisions and some laughs, like this, that have helped him make millions. Even though he is suffering from flu, he talks to us.
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Maponya’s journey into entrepreneurship began 70 years ago when South Africa was no country for budding black entrepreneurs. The tough times steeled him for his long journey to become a legendary businessman.
Rattling along in the back of the potato truck, he never thought of a life in retail but then came an interview for a job in a department store.
“They were offering me more money than a teaching post would and the gentleman who interviewed me liked me from the word go,” he says.
Even more money was coming his way. Within months, he was promoted to a fashion buyer for the store. His boss, Mr Bolton, a kind and intelligent businessman, he says, taught him about fabrics, how to select clothes, and customer service. The two worked hand-in-glove for three years; turnover increased and Bolton was promoted to CEO of the group in 1951. Maponya thought he had struck gold.
“When he got promoted, he called me to his office and thanked me for helping him reach that point. He said ‘unfortunately I can’t promote you because you have a ceiling over your head, you cannot oversee white people. All I can do is maybe make you baas boy but that doesn’t really help you with anything,’” says Maponya.
The dapper looking 31-year-old Maponya nodded his head and muttered a courteous response, expecting little else to follow.
“I was very surprised because Mr Bolton continued to speak. He said ‘I am going to let you buy clothing samples here so that you can sell them after hours and on weekends so you can make a bit of money’.”
And he did. Before long, Maponya began to recognize the budding businessman in himself. His after hours hustle paid off.
“I realized people didn’t have money to buy upfront and I started a wear and pay system and it worked so well. People would take clothes and pay for them at month end and I was making a lot of money,” he says.
After a year of good business, Bolton was diagnosed with a brain tumour and was forced to retire. With him, he took Maponya’s business.
“The person who took over from him didn’t want to hear anything about it. He redirected the stock they gave me and gave it to Indian hawkers.”
It was a blessing in disguise. Maponya was angry. To be big, Maponya thought he had to risk big. He resigned from his job to pursue the uncertain world of entrepreneurship. He started buying clothing from wholesalers. The business flourished.
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Maponya applied for a trading license for a shop in one of South Africa’s biggest townships, Soweto, but was turned down. He went to Mandela and Tambo, a law firm run by South Africa’s struggle heroes Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. At the time, it was the only black-owned law firm in the country.
“Nelson was still a very powerful speaker. He was so powerful that, I would say, he could say to a mountain, move and it would move. They fought for my license but we didn’t succeed in getting a clothing store. But, they got me a license to trade daily necessities,” says Maponya.
At the time, there was no milk delivery in Soweto. There was also no electricity for fridges, so people bought milk for the day. Maponya saw a gap.
“I was shocked. People ate breakfast with milk everyday but had no place to buy close to them. I opened a little dairy there. I started with 10 boys cycling the neighborhood on bicycles everyday selling milk, cash, door to door.”
It was from these humble beginnings that his empire grew. The business moved extremely fast from 10 to 100 men cycling and selling for him; then, big business woke up.
“Clover saw the potential of selling milk in the townships and they started coming with big trucks to sell. They took the bulk of my clients and I realized I couldn’t compete with them,” says Maponya.
With the wisdom of knowing when to let go, Maponya gave up the milk-selling business for Maponya’s Supply Stores, a backstreet store that grew into a massive retail empire that was to make him a household name.
“I started with a butchery, then a fruit and vegetable store, and then a grocery store with two tables inside where we sold cooked food,” he says.
Maponya’s Supply Stores expanded across Soweto.  Growth meant problems.
“I struggled with getting the right people to manage the stores. The only stores where people were making profit are the ones where my wife and I were operating. The other stores would break even or run at a loss.”
It became frustrating, again, he knew he had to let go.
He closed the stores he and his wife couldn’t manage. This encouraged him to look for other opportunities. There was a long list because there were no services in the township. So, he built Mountain Motors, the second black-owned garage in Soweto.
“It surprised everybody. Some say it was the biggest in the southern hemisphere. We were selling petrol in an unbelievable manner. We were getting support from every black person in Soweto. We were selling over a million liters per month,” he says with a smile.
Mountain Motors became the first black-owned garage to have a motor vehicle dealership. Like all his other businesses, it took off.
“Later on, I was invited by BMW to take over a dealership in Soweto. That made history. I would get orders from people from America. It was history that a black man would sell cars those days… I would get an allocation of about 30 cars per month and I would sell all of them in a week… I would borrow cars from other dealers and sell three times my allocation per month,” he says.
It meant, when new stock arrived, he would return the cars he borrowed and would spend two months without stock. He tried and failed to get his allocation of cars increased. Paying staff, when there were no cars to sell, was hard.
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“As an entrepreneur, you should always know when you have made money and the business won’t be worth your energy anymore. It doesn’t mean it has failed, it means you have dug everything you can from it and it is time for something new that may make you more money,” says Maponya.
Again, following his own advice, he closed down the motor business and went on the hunt for a new venture. It ushered in some of his worst days in business.
“I applied for a casino license. I qualified for everything they required [besides the skin color] because it was still during apartheid. When we went for an interview, they asked me if I have R10 million, a lot of money at the time, and I told them I don’t have it in my pocket but I can make means… they said its either you give it now or lose the license… the licence was awarded to white brothers. This is a frustrating and terrible thing I chased and never succeeded.”
As painful as it was, Maponya used his canny and shrewd characteristics to go after his lifelong dream – a world-class shopping mall in the heart of Soweto. It took him 27 years of sweat, court applications and fundraising.
“You won’t believe it if I tell you I started building it on the 28th year… I even went to Parliament to make a presentation but I kept being turned down… They said the people of Soweto would never support a mall in Soweto because they want to shop in the city where there are brighter lights and I told them it’s not true… I have been fighting and fighting but I said as long as they don’t put a bullet on my forehead I won’t stop,” he says closing his eyes to emphasize his point.
In 1979, Maponya acquired land for the mall, in Soweto, on  a 100-year lease and, in 1994, the year South Africa got its independence, after several attempts, he acquired it outright. But the battle was only just beginning.
Various attempts to finance construction failed, until Maponya’s holding company entered into a joint venture with Zenprop Property Holdings. The sweat and pain paid off and on September 27, 2007, Nelson Mandela, the man who had been in prison for as long as it took Maponya to build the mall, cut the red ribbon to open Maponya Mall.
“It was the highlight of my entire life. It was a tough exercise to get money. I could have met about half of that but I needed help. To see this come to life made all the pain I have ever gone through in business worth it,” he says.
Today, the R650-million ($48.7-million) mall has more than 200 stores and a cinema; it is also one of the largest shopping centers in South Africa and one of the growing Johannesburg attractions.
“I am very proud of the mall. It can stand anywhere in the world and compete. I am proud I have built something for the people of Soweto because I have always wanted it to be an economic hub.”
A world-class mall was not the end, merely a milestone. The Maponya Group is also in the poultry industry. They count Pick n Pay and 24 hospitals, in Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg, among their customers for eggs. They also grow vegetables.
Maponya still has filling stations. He also intends to build another mall in Soweto. Maponya Group’s ventures also include property development, horse racing, retail, automotive sales and liquor.
“I wasn’t born to be an entrepreneur, I learned to be one. I don’t think anyone is born to be an entrepreneur, you learn. I looked at the young boys of my age, when I was young, managing their father’s businesses and I had to go and say ‘baas’ to small boys like that? No, I was not going to allow it. I told myself I am going to create a business for myself and also create jobs like they do,” says Maponya.
While this unfair advantage inspired him, he was also inspired by many black small businessmen; among them was the late Richard Baloyi.
“When I was staying in Alexandra, Baloyi was the only richest black man I had ever known. He owned buses. That man inspired me, he was my role model. When I looked at him, I said ‘I want to be rich like that man, one day I will be richer than that man and indeed I did it. If he was still alive, he would shake my hand and say ‘boy you have done it’.”
Maponya’s success has earned him many friends. Apart from being married to Mandela’s cousin, Marina, he calls Mandela, his lawyer back in the early 1950s, his greatest friend.
“Mandela asked me to pick him up at the airport when he was released from prison because he knew I owned a car dealership. I picked him up at the airport and that was the most frightening time of my life. We were chased by people on foot, helicopters, motorbikes and cars. Everyone just wanted to touch Mandela. They could kill him just trying to touch him,” he says.
According to Maponya, Mandela was scheduled to sleep at one of Maponya’s houses in Sandton but there wasn’t enough security. They booked a place to sleep for the night. He says the most frightening part was when he drove Mandela to FNB Stadium, in Soweto, the next day. People were streaming from all areas for a chance to meet him. The stadium was packed.
“We managed to go in but coming out was a nightmare. There were more people outside than inside. We realized they will squash us and never allow the car to move.”
Mandela was picked up by a helicopter bound for Orlando Stadium, where there was another crowd waiting.
“When we were on our way to Orlando Stadium, we could see all the people from FNB Stadium running to Orlando Stadium.”
“I drove him after that to a few meetings but I realized I can’t cope with his schedule… I gave him a BMW 7 Series as a gift and a driver who drove Mandela from that time until he died,” he says.
To top that, Maponya has dined with the Queen and calls Bill Clinton and the Oppenheimers friends.
At this time of his life, Maponya has a lot to be proud of but still has more up his sleeve.
“I am 96 years old now and I am not going to retire. The day I retire would be the day you say to me ‘lala kahle’ (rest in peace), then that would be my retirement. I would know I have done my piece. People who retire are lazy people. You retire and do what? Bask in the sun? I am not that type of a man,” he says.
Mentoring young people is a big part of Maponya’s life. Monalisa Sam says she was lucky to be mentored by Maponya. The two crossed paths when Sam was a general manager for Maponya Mall Property Trust in 2007. A friendship was forged in the two years she worked there, before she left to co-found Tungwa Retail Holdings in 2011, a company run by black women.
“Mr Maponya has been such a big part of my journey. I think he is probably one of the most underrated elders in business in the sense that young people don’t know the lessons they can learn from him. There is so much pressure on achievement and success that we forget to build a legacy which is what Maponya did. His life story is so important for young people in business,” says Sam.
You have to admire Maponya for doing what many can’t. He could have chosen the easier path instead of pushing his way into business in a white man’s world. Easier still would have been to stick with what he was trained to do – and teach.
Maponya has been the first in many things, but this is not the last we will hear of him.

‘As Long As They Don’t Put A Bullet On My Forehead  I Won’t Stop’

Africa’s Billionaires

In a case of David against Goliath, Ameenah Gurib-Fakim beat her male opponent by a landslide to become the first female president of Mauritius, a small island off the coast of Africa that has a population of just over 1.2 million. No one expected her to win.
Gurib-Fakim, who joined the presidential office on June 5, relishes shuttering glass ceilings. In Africa, there aren’t many women at the helm of countries.
“When the people voted, they voted for a package, they knew that they would have a lady president and yet they voted massively for a party that has not made any provision for constitutional change,” says Gurib-Fakim.
Born into a Muslim Indian family, Gurib-Fakim, 56, is also a former bio-scientist and the Vice Chairman of the Planet Earth Institute, an international NGO and charity that builds a path for the scientific independence of Africa.
Gurib-Fakim published more than 28 scientific books that have been devoured around the world by students and researchers. She graduated with a bachelor of science in chemistry from the University of Surrey in 1983. She then obtained her PhD in organic chemistry at Exeter University in Britain.
“I became interested in sciences at a very young age because I had good motivated teachers who infected me with the virus of science. I went into sciences following my heart because passion was there.”
Back at home, she worked at the University of Mauritius before becoming the Managing Director at CEPHYR, a centre for phytotherapy research that focuses on using plants in cosmetics, nutrition and therapy.
“When I went back to Mauritius, I realized that the work I was doing in synthetic chemistry, the infrastructure wasn’t there and yet in the academic world you either publish or perish. I chose to publish. To publish novel things you have to have novel avenues,” she says.
This is when she started to probe into the biodiversity of Mauritius. The Indian Ocean island nation is known as a global biodiversity hotspot – it is home to about 300 plant species that can only be found on the island, which are under threat as a result of human activity and climate change.
Gurib-Fakim says she wants to drive science and technology in Africa.
“We believe a scientifically independent Africa is one with science, technology and innovation fully embedded in governmental policies and priorities, delivered by properly resourced and empowered educational institutions. A scientifically independent Africa will have both the ability to train and keep brilliant scientists on the continent, and create an inspiring new generation of academic leaders. Ultimately, we believe scientific independence means that African problems can be solved by African-led solutions,” it says on the Planet Earth Institute website.
Gurib-Fakim is also an entrepreneur.
“I didn’t stay in the academic world because my second life was that of an entrepreneur. I translated that research work on herbal medicine into a business so I can safely say I am now living my third life.”
In Mauritius many girls couldn’t go to school. After 1976, this changed and yet transformation is still the biggest problem.
“Coming back to tertiary education this is again an area where we find many women coming to do studies at tertiary level but still find the gap and where we find the downside of this, is for them to get jobs, for them to be leaders in their respective fields because society in Mauritius remains fairly conservative,” she says.
According to Gurib-Fakim, science is still dominated by males in many parts of the world.
As African countries aspire for economic growth and socio-economic transformation, Gurib-Fakim says: “It is becoming clear that any innovation or ambition to become a knowledge economy has to be driven by talented African scientists and with the knowledge that innovation is not instructed!”
She has a strong passion for protecting nature, fostering research and creating a better environment for women scientists.
This year Gurib-Fakim is nominated for FORBES AFRICA’s Person of The Year in recognition of her drive to protect her nation’s environment. She was listed by FORBES in June as being the 96th most powerful woman in 2016.
Her motto is: “Follow your heart, do what you enjoy best and you won’t have to work a day in your life.”

Step Forward The President With A Purpose

Africa has had its fair share of great leaders, like Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. However, political power in Africa is often seen as an easy path to become wealthy. Too often, cronyism and patronage oil the wheels of governments, ensuring that corruption goes unpunished and impunity reigns. Enter Tanzania’s President John Magufuli, who is defying all the purportedly accepted norms of African leadership.
Magufuli wasted no time in implementing his campaign promises, quickly living up to his nickname &#8211; the Bulldozer. Tanzanians first felt the effect of his fresh leadership when he ordered the funds for their extravagant Independence Day celebrations be redirected to buy much-needed beds for public hospitals, immediately gaining him worldwide admiration.
His firm stance on fighting corruption, his introduction of severe austerity measures, and his seemingly aggressive development agenda, have earned him accolades. The United Nations Economic and Social Council recently named him the World’s Best President.
With just one year in office, Magufuli has amalgamated several ministries, downsizing his cabinet from 30 members to 19. He has banned the purchase of first class air tickets for ministers, and government meetings and conferences are now held in state buildings rather than high-end hotels. To the dismay of senior officials, he auctioned off their luxury cars, seen as both a right and a necessity, with the generated income being channeled into public services. He has also banned any future purchase of such vehicles.
“The president’s approach so far has been commendable and his battle with corruption impeccable. I think he will sustain his current style and won’t be putting his guns down anytime soon,” says Nicodemus Minde, a Tanzanian political analyst.
By channeling resources back into Tanzania’s economy, Magufuli’s austerity measures have been lauded and the impact is already being felt. His somewhat autocratic style is facilitated by the powers allocated to the Tanzanian Presidency. These allow him to appoint and dismiss officials, and to leverage state security apparatus to flush out and punish corruption and economic crime. He has pledged to double development spending, funded by cutting government wastage, which may enable economic gains to trickle down.
Although a chemical engineer by profession, Magufuli is not new to politics. He has been an active member of parliament for two decades, heading various ministries throughout his tenure. His radical, yet effective, methods of governance set an example for transparency, good governance and strict control of government spending. Tanzanians have grown to love his style, while citizens of neighboring nations look on enviously, hoping their leaders will take a leaf from his pragmatic book.
Ali Mufuruki, Chairman and CEO at InfoTech Investment Group, describes Magufuli’s style as steadfast.
“He has demonstrated a unique kind of consistency, an undiminishing stamina and an unswerving steadiness in his fight against the vices of corruption, abuse of office and waste of public resources.”
While Magufuli’s first year in office has been impressive, it remains to be seen whether this will translate into more economic growth, given that Tanzania was already growing by 7.9% in the second quarter of 2016. His success so far has been met with skepticism in some quarters, with some pundits warning that celebrations may be premature.
Magufuli has taken up the challenge of transforming his developing nation into a world-class economy and shown a willingness to challenge the long-standing negative views about African leadership. Years from now, Magufuli’s name might be mentioned alongside Mandela and Nkrumah.

The Bulldozer Crushing Corruption

<h4>What the judges said</h4>
&#8220;We feel Thuli Mandonsela is a woman of substance who has inspired many people across Africa with her stand for the rule of law and against corruption. In seven years of hard work, she has spoken truth to power and helped keep the people running her country accountable. A difficult job she carried out with professionalism and integrity.&#8221;
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Her polite, welcoming, voice would make anyone feel at home. It is strange to see Thuli Madonsela – the towering advocate woman who has taken flak from politicians for years – at home, relaxed and flanked by her family. She ushers me into the lounge. We sit next to an open patio door, facing a cluster of colorful trees, with a welcome breeze easing this sweltering summer’s day. Every bit of furniture matches her unpretentious nature. African paintings on the walls; each ornament holds a story about her travels across the continent.
She looks good for a person who has just left office, in her own words, followed by missiles. Her biggest case so far has caused ructions – the so-called state capture report. She was investigating allegations made by South Africa’s Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas that he was a offered the job of Finance Minister by the billionaire Gupta family that has opened a can of worms.
The offer came, it is alleged, just before President Jacob Zuma fired the then Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene in December 2015. When Jonas blew the whistle, former member of parliament Vytjie Mentor also alleged she was offered a cabinet post by brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta. The family has businesses, from coal mines to media companies, and were in partnership with President Zuma’s son. Former Government Communications and Information Systems head Themba Maseko also claimed the family unsuccessfully tried to bully him to put government advertising to their newspaper.
This report was one of the last acts in Madonsela’s seven turbulent years of speaking truth to power that took nerves of steel.
Her office, in the last days, was like a house of madness, she says. There were complaints to be investigated, last-minute interviews and many loose ends from multiple investigations.
On the very last day, she and her team worked through the night in an atmosphere leavened by banter and jokes.
“It was exhilarating, as a result I never really had the opportunity to feel sad about seeing my office for the last time because there was so much adrenaline, so much to be done and it was all done,” she says.
“Then there were curve balls of having being either sued or spending time with the lawyers. On the outside I was pretty calm but on the inside I would be thinking I have three hours to complete this document but these other things were coming, so I did feel some of the pressure. There was a bit of noise on the outside but the team that I worked closely with also stayed calm. I think the only time I saw some cracks was when we were told the president has lodged an application for an interdict and they thought it was the end of the road. I had anticipated these difficulties with some of the seniors, so when the younger ones got panicky about life overtaking the good work done, we didn’t panic. We told them to calm down and continue with the report as if they haven’t heard any news.”
Zuma had applied for a court interdict to stop the report’s release, saying he wasn’t given enough chance to respond. He also accused Madonsela of saying the report was not final, implying he was misled. Zuma withdrew the court challenge on the day of the hearing.
“I’ve never said it was not a final report. All in writing, I have always promised to issue two reports. Phase one would cover whatever we knew then and what should be done to fix it. It was going to look at ministerial appointments, Mentor and Jonas’ allegations. It would look at the president’s liability because of the 30-day requirement. Phase two would be on the Catholic Bishop’s request to look into Gupta-related companies and all licenses and related matter,” explains Madonsela
Madonsela’s report has left a trail of tears and paper leading to murky business dealings that the Gupta family denies.
“I recommended a commission of enquiry because this investigation cuts across ministries, the legislator, the executive and go into state-owned enterprises, it is bigger than the arms deal (South Africa’s arms procurement scandal) and if you’re going to do an investigation like that you obviously need a commission of enquiry.”
Madonsela says she doesn’t understand why the report was being challenged and also “got a sense that if the president wanted this matter to be investigated he would have long done so.”
“This gives a perception that is not in his favor because if somebody makes this allegation about his son and this person is a member of the cabinet, a normal person who has nothing to hide would look into it. That’s a question that people raise which shouldn’t be raised about the president,” she adds.
“We asked him a simple question like why did you fire Mr Nene?”
The president chose not to answer the question, Madonsela says.
Madonsela knows how it feels to field questions about a son. Her son Mbusowabantu took her official car while she was asleep, in 2012, and had an accident.
“It was very awkward because for me, I’ve been asked very difficult questions too, I couldn’t give a different answer to journalist. The issue about my son, I have given a consistent answer whether you’re the media or parliament. I was asked by parliament and I never even got a lawyer to answer those questions, so I don’t understand.”
It’s surprising that this woman, who has worked where few dare to tread, has regrets. She feels she should have encouraged someone to sue the government for depriving her office of resources. Organs of state are compelled by section 181 of the constitution to equip institutions like hers. Madonsela’s office didn’t have electronic data capturing.
“You have to go through the whole system manually to find out where that matter is. You’re also unable spot cases that aren’t moving. I think we should have stood up, it is threatening the functionality of that office,” bemoans Madonsela.
Her biggest regret, she says, was also leaving remuneration problems to the administration. Staff were unhappy with a heavy work and light salaries. Law firms handle four major cases a year while Mandonsela’s staff handled more than 50.
Madonsela says this means low morale, contrary to her successor Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s claim, before Parliament, that hinted at Madonsela’s management style.
“I wrote in the report that staff morale was a problem. I had explained that the main problem with staff morale was finances. People are getting too many cases and it is documented, there are memos at my desk all the time,” Madonsela explains.
“In other words, had it been me I would have explained to them, provided I have evidence. I would have said here is a memo, the provincial managers have taken us to court on some of those issues. She had to say she will improve staff morale. She can’t improve staff morale without being given money.”
Parliament invited Madonsela for her last appearance, on October 12, but this was postponed to October 19. This meant Mkhwebane would sit in parliament to present the 2015/16 Annual Report after a mere six days in office.
“I remember I was with the team when we got the notice. We laughed and said nothing here is surprising. We still wanted to find out why it was postponed, but no answer was given. For me it was about leaving graciously but I think it created a clumsy transition between me and my successor. She now had to find herself presenting a report that was not hers which required prior preparation for her to defend herself.”
She also feels there should have been more quiet conversations with the government around values and processes. Institutions with more or less similar functions of the public protector spend their time doing a lot of education, she says, to the executive around the laws they have passed. Her clashes with government ended up being about processes and powers, but at the core of the disputes was the enforcement of values.
“There’s a common narrative about wrong and right. Take Nkandla [the president’s homestead that received irregular non-security upgrades], it was always about what was the ethical standard that President Zuma should have complied with. What was the responsibility of the president?”
“We’re back to the same problem again with state capture. The essence of it was what was the responsibility of the president of this country when one of his own trusted deputy ministers says I’ve been offered a bribe to take the job of my colleague and pass decisions that favor the person that is offering me a bribe. If you’re a president of the country isn’t it your job to just find out if there this is happening since the person who is saying this is implicating your friend and your child or somebody you call a friend publicly,” says Madonsela.
“It’s just an issue about ethics. Themba Maseko accuses you publicly as the president of the country that you asked him to help those people, don’t say I never did that. Shouldn’t you say I have instituted a commission of enquiry to find out why this young fellow is lying about me.”
“These people may well be lying and if they are lying they should be called to order but you need a process that checks out whether or not they telling the truth. As long as nothing is done about it you will always have this question mark. It is creating a dysfunctional executive, it’s creating fractured relationships but it’s also saying to the world there are improper influences in the state of South Africa but it may well be not true.”
These are conversations she believes would have helped cabinet with its responsibilities as stipulated in the Executive Members Ethic Act under section 195 and 237 of the constitution. Her office was inundated with requests to investigate cases she would rather not, like state capture. There were many reasons. Hands were full, she was on her way out, cases should be dealt with on last in last out basis but this case was brought under the Executive Members Ethics Act. When a case is brought in through this Act it compels the Public Protector to investigate. According to this law, cases are also supposed to be completed in 30 days, which also left her with no time.
Madonsela had to make tough choices in standing up for the truth that won her the admiration of many Africans and won her the title of FORBES AFRICA’s 2016 Person of the Year – a fitting send off for a fearless woman who never backed down even in the face of death threats.
“My children are relieved. My brother is just relieved that I made it out alive. That was his message the day I finished on the 14th, saying “sisi siyabonga ukuthi labantu abaku bulalanga (Sister, we are grateful these people didn’t kill you). I hope we keep it that way because with the state capture report, the missiles are following me. I’m done, this is just revenge, I can’t harm them in any way whatsoever,” she laughs.
Many people want to hear from this elegant and softly-spoken daughter of a domestic worker and taxi driver; she has filled her diary until the end of the year. Thereafter she heads off for either Harvard, where she may study guidance and governance, or lecturing at Oxford University. It’ll be a lot quieter there.
&nbsp;

‘Sister, We Are Grateful These People Didn’t  Kill You’

In 2001, a man looking to buy a bank in Nigeria created a buzz in the financial world. The news caught everyone’s attention because this individual did not come from a wealthy background but was a 32-year-old banker who, through hard work, had become one of the most respected financial professionals in the country. His name was Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede and he was on his way to creating a legacy in Africa.
His journey began while still a boy, in 1971, just after the Nigerian Civil War, when an epiphany struck him as he was stranded at an airport in Kaduna, Nigeria.
“I went to the airport to come home from school and I remember vividly that Nigeria Airways was the only airline available, which was a state-owned monopoly, and they had atrocious services. I got to the airport and I was left to go get my ticket at the age of 11. With all the hustle and bustle, I didn’t get on the plane and I remember standing on the tarmac, with the other losers, with my suitcase and I was crying because I wasn’t on it,” says Aig-Imoukhuede.
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“People ask me ‘why were you crying? Did you think you were never going home?’. But that wasn’t why I was crying. I asked myself, ‘how come there were other people on that plane and I was left on the tarmac?’ I said to myself ‘it would never happen to me again and I will never be left on the tarmac’. I surround myself with people who think the same way, people who are not prepared to be left on the tarmac.”
With this newfound philosophy, Aig-Imoukhuede’s path started to take shape. At the age of 12, that path became clearer when another realization dawned on him.
“We didn’t have to be rich to go to good schools, go abroad on a holiday, or for your father to own a Mercedes-Benz. But with the economy in very poor shape by 1983 and the structural adjustment program by 1984, the ability of a civil servant to keep their family in that lifestyle was greatly challenged. So we had to adjust and I noticed that adjustment and that was the first time it dawned on me that some kids came from parents who were wealthy and certainly my parents were not. I observed that my father’s brother, who went into the private sector, did not struggle. So I made a career decision at 12 that I was going to work in the private sector.”
Aig-Imoukhuede looked at the leaders of the top multinationals at the time – they all had a legal background so he decided to study law at the University of Benin. After qualifying as a lawyer, he joined the legal department of Continental Merchant Bank in 1988.
“I wanted to be an executive director of a multinational. Merchant banks recruited the crème de la crème. I remember after applying, one of the guys who interviewed me told me that he saw something in me. I was posted to the legal department and that is where everything changed&#8230; From that point, people will tell you, that in terms of professional output, I wanted to be number one,” he says.
Aig-Imoukhuede stood out among his peers. When some members of the senior management team were leaving to create a new bank, Aig-Imoukhuede was headhunted to join the team as the youngest member of staff.
“One of the assignments I was given, one year after they took me, was to get a commercial license for the owner of the bank. So, at 22, I did just that. I relished the challenge. I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t take on. I was like ‘bring it on whatever it is’.”
Aig-Imoukhuede had caught the financial bug; he wanted to move from the legal side of business and immerse himself in the banking game.
“My friends in banking were 10 years older than me and most were assistant general managers. But I brought something to the table, so they tolerated me and gave me advice. Some of them broke away from the bank to start Guaranty Trust (GT) Bank and they said I should come over with them. I went to GT Bank and I was given the responsibility of setting up what will later on be called retail banking or commercial banking. I hadn’t done it before, I had four people in this team and we started with me leading these people. Very quickly we became the most profitable unit in the bank and every three to six months we were revising our targets,” says Aig-Imoukhuede.
With a high staff turnover in the Nigerian financial markets and a culture of poaching at the banks, those who showed loyalty were able to climb the corporate ladder. Aig-Imoukhuede used this opportunity to work in many areas of the bank, including the treasury, financial control and strategy departments. By the age of 32 he was an executive director who was responsible for running the bank in the absence of the managing director and deputy managing director.
His rapid rise, he says, is down to self-belief.
“Some people call it arrogance and I say no, it is just simply confidence. I believe if I set my mind on something… I can do it.”
“I also had this sense to prove that Nigerian professionals were as good as banking professionals or financial professionals anywhere in the world. I didn’t want to be held by Nigerian standards. So if I look at something like a product or an event or a team of people, say I was running the investment bank in GT, I would say how does the investment bank in JPMorgan function and I would say this is how my investment bank must function,” he says.
Aig-Imoukhuede enrolled in a three-month management program at Harvard University to figure out his next move but he would find the answers he needed in the pages of a book.
“My late brother-in-law who had just finished an MBA at Harvard had a conversation with me and I told him I was not happy professionally and it was difficult to come to terms with that because I had just been made executive director and I was the youngest at the time and happily married to his sister, so why would I not be happy?”
“He gave me this book called Buyout, by Rick Rickertsen, who had left Harvard Business School a few years before I went in for this program. It’s a book written for professionals and there was a paragraph that says if you are the type of professional that wants to continue working for other people and help them build their worth, where you get your nice salary and bonuses, then this book isn’t for you. But if you are the type who wants to get into the game and you want to work for yourself then this is for you. After reading the book, I said I know what I want to do; I am going to buy my own bank.”
Aig-Imoukhuede looked at how he would do this and decided he was not going to do it alone.
“Very quickly in life, I determined that there are two types of people you meet, people who enable you and people who disable you. People who disable are not bad people; it is just someone who doesn’t impact you in a way that helps you succeed. Somebody who enables you is somebody who, by your interaction with that person, actually gives you leverage to step up. By the time I left university, I didn’t have time for people who disable me. I also began to build a portfolio of enablers,” says Aig-Imoukhuede.
One of those enablers was his business partner Herbert Wigwe. The pair initially met in 1989 when Wigwe was a credit officer and later on in 1991 when they worked together at GT Bank.
“He was my closest friend in the bank and the professional colleague I most respected and I believe vice versa. So in terms of selecting a partner, he was the best person I could choose. I told Herbert, ‘listen we are doing this and we are doing everything we need to run a bank and the only way we can get that reward is if we are risking our own capital. So let’s get out and buy a bank, let’s do it together’. So Herbert’s entrepreneurial juices started running. We didn’t resign immediately, we were still giving GTB 100 percent, and nobody knew and we were talking to owners of banks,” says Aig-Imoukhuede.
Initially, Aig-Imoukhuede was only interested in banks that were doing well but the inflated prices made them rethink their strategy. At the time, a lot of banks were struggling and it didn’t take long for these young Turks to find one that was suitable for them.
“I had never [considered] Access Bank and it was never an institution I had an interest in. Somebody said this bank had done a public offer looking to recapitalize and they had not been doing well therefore 51% of the bank was up for grabs if you could raise the money. We looked at it and, with limited due diligence, we said ‘fine we can do it’. It took everything we had; we borrowed money and put it together and invested it,” says Aig-Imoukhuede.
Now that they owned a bank, the entrepreneurs had to build trust.
“First of all, the acquisition was deemed to be hostile. We were working somewhere and we were young and we were not the children of rich men, we were 34 when we started and in the eyes of the public, when they knew the full story, all hell broke loose and it wasn’t very easy.”
While trying to gain credibility with the public, they also had to win the votes of the board.
“I delivered a presentation I had been practising for one week. We hadn’t slept in maybe four days. We came up with a transformation agenda and we convinced the board. We presented our track record and the fact that we were risking our own money and everything we had on this venture, so there was an alignment of goals between what we wanted to do, our personal aspirations, and what the bank needed.”
With a resolution signed, Aig-Imoukhuede was appointed Managing Director and Wigwe Deputy-Managing Director. They could now start to transform Access Bank into one of the top banks in Nigeria within five years.
The impact of the bank’s new owners was obvious in just one year. According to Access Bank, the bank doubled its balance sheet, with profit before tax more than the cumulative profit made by the bank in the previous 13 years. The bank’s shareholders fund today stands at over N430 billion ($1.4 billion) with an expanded shareholder base of over a million domestic and foreign investors.
Aig-Imoukhuede attributes the success to three things.
First was the vision.
“Initially our vision was to transform the bank into a world-class financial institution. The idea of this horrible institution taking on the renowned banks was mind-blowing and our mission was to go beyond the ordinary and deliver the perceived impossible and quest for excellence.”
The second factor was the people. Between 2002 and 2012 Aig-Imoukhuede interviewed every person the bank recruited, ensuring they hired the best of the best. Then, finally, the timing was perfect.
“I was in GT Bank representing the bank for the interaction with the government. I could see from what President [Olusegun] Obasanjo was doing that Nigeria was going to enjoy an economic renaissance that was going to be phenomenal. I said to myself if I am going to buy a bank, I am going to do it before these changes in government take off, because otherwise the train would have left the station and it is not that you can’t do it, but it would be much more expensive and difficult to do it if you got your timing wrong.”
With his objectives achieved, Aig-Imoukhuede stepped down as CEO of Access Bank in 2012. He wanted to try something new.
“I am so entrepreneurially driven and not just in the sense of making money, but I knew I would get bored eventually. Also from the perspective of managing an institution as CEO, I don’t think anybody can successfully manage a business beyond 15 years; you will begin to make more mistakes than you should. You will begin to experience diminishing returns. I think a CEO owes the responsibility to his stakeholders to leave at the top of his game. And I knew 15 years would be the maximum. The third reason was that there was a requirement that had been put in place by the central bank that, after 10 years as CEO, you had to leave”, he says.
Aig-Imoukhuede needed to figure out what life after the bank would look like. He knew it had to involve helping and transforming people.
His next venture combined his belief that nobody should be left behind with his vision to build something that lasts for generations. This led to him founding Coronation Capital, a Mauritian-based private equity investment management and advisory company.
“I like sustainability and I don’t like one-hit wonders, things that come and go or a shooting star. I believe in generational institutions, it has to be sustainable and something that would last and leave a legacy.”
“In Coronation Capital you have people that we have told ‘this is how we do it, look at the Access Bank story and let’s find out if there are any more opportunities’. So, when we find the opportunity, we see if we can come up with any compelling stories and then we look at the vehicle we invest with and we attract the people to that investment. We call it the Coronation way,” says Aig-Imoukhuede.
One of those opportunities is Wapic, a company that Coronation Capital is trying to turn into an insurance giant. It is currently the second fastest growing insurance company in Nigeria, says Aig-Imoukhuede.
Aig-Imoukhuede believes that efficient management of the capital market is the only way for Nigeria to become an advanced economy. As the current President of the Nigeria Stock Exchange, Aig-Imoukhuede is well placed to develop the country’s capital market.
“If you are worth $1 million, it will be represented by financial assets of some sort which you will keep somewhere. It could be your pensions or your savings account and you earn and continue to build. If I am someone in Kogi State who needs money to build a factory, I am not going to be able to find you and you are not going to be able to find me to get access to that $1 million. So the capital markets create the infrastructure by which the sources and users of these financial resources interact. The more developed the financial markets are, the more developed the economy becomes.”
Having just turned 50, Aig-Imoukhuede is  launching the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) to attract talented people to the public sector.
“I have had a front row seat and seen how the public sector works and I know its weakness and what is clear to me is simple, whenever you have gifted people in the public sector, just like you have gifted people in the private sector, transformation takes place. The difference is that in Africa every gifted person is going into the private sector and nobody is going into the public sector. So I am dedicating resources towards a scholarship and a fellowship, which we have signed with Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government who have a fantastic one-year post graduate program, called the Master of Public Policy (MPP).”
Those given scholarships for the MPP course are required to work for the public sector in their respective African countries for five years.
Aig-Imoukhuede is humbled by how far he has come. Spending time with his wife and three children is a priority for him but is not ready to relax yet. For Aig-Imoukhuede it is all about building a legacy and creating an advanced economy in Africa.

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