A year ago—eight years after retired nurse, Jamela Mogodi, started farming—the only satisfaction she was getting from all the effort she was putting into her 28-hectare farm was growing her own food. Every now and again, there was a little entrepreneurial excitement as she sold her tiny surplus at the nearby market for pocket change.
To take her green beans, butternuts, green peppers, dry beans and tomatoes beyond her remote Julesburg town was a wish the 70-year-old thought would perhaps come, for someone else in her family, long after she was dead. She had never imagined that on a fine August morning in 2012, she would be the toast of one of the world’s biggest retailers.
And there she was, before a few dozen journalists who had traveled 427 kilometers from Johannesburg, to her Limpopo growing fields. Walmart, the retail giant from the States, had bussed-in the scribes to witness what it called the first harvest of a multi-million dollar farming-assistance flagship project, called the Ezemvelo Direct Farm Program.
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Established last year through an initial investment of R15 million ($1.8 million), it is Walmart’s idea of fending off or disproving its critics who have vowed to oppose the company’s entry into the lucrative South African market. By the way, two of Africa’s richest 25 people—billionaire Christo Wiese and multi-millionaire Raymond Ackerman—made most of their money from supermarket chains and discount stores. Their South African retail empires Shoprite and Pick ‘n Pay—rank one and two respectively in terms of size, while Walmart’s partner, Massmart—the parent company of Game, Dion Wired, Makro and Builders Warehouse—is the third largest.
Despite the fact that it is a done deal and already growing vegetables in Limpopo, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has vowed to oppose Walmart’s Massmart takeover, until the bitter end. In submissions to the country’s Competition Commission, Parliament and the courts, the union federation cites a litany of allegations: a so-called anti-union attitude; a ruthless approach to keeping down wages; a poor health and safety record; gender, racial and other forms of discrimination; job losses; and the alleged bullying of farmers, manufacturers and suppliers.
Walmart was of course quick to counter the accusations, announcing a five-year world vision and global commitment to selling $1 billion in food sourced from 1 million small to medium farmers like that of Mogodi of Limpopo. The merger has since been approved.
In South Africa alone, through Ezemvelo—which means from the earth—the company has said it intends to spend R15 million ($1.8 million) over the next three years and to assist between 30 and 50 smallholder farmers with finance, pack-house refurbishment, skills development as well as sourcing fresh produce directly from small farms and cooperatives run by women and previously disadvantaged black people. Benefits to farmers include: the transfer of knowledge and skills on sustainable growing techniques; reduction of waste, environmental impact and input costs; as well as growing their income. You could argue that this is the kind of thing that governments normally do.
The most senior Walmart official during the tour of Limpopo was Donald Frieson, who goes by the title of chief integration officer. He says he’s been in South Africa for more than a year overseeing “the integration process”—which he says entails aligning Massmart’s merchandizing, sourcing and back office systems with those of the new parent company.
It’s all been working quite nicely, he says.
“The foundational phase is done and the focus is now on the pulling phase.”
Apparently this entails bringing on board some of the best practices found in countries similar to South Africa.
What about the unions?
“We don’t find that to be a barrier, we have no issues at all,” he says.
Frieson says the talk is largely due to misconceptions.
“When you are big there’s plenty of room for speculation. You may not be founded in that community, but you can be part of that community. We think globally, but act locally. Once we are in the market, people begin to understand the value we bring. The business case is there. We make economies and societies better.”
As for the big fight with Walmart, that Pick ‘n Pay founder Ackerman promised in the July issue of FORBES AFRICA, all Frieson is prepared to say is: “We think competition helps the customer. Everyone wins. The marketplace wins. Competition makes you better.”
Whatever the attitudes of other retailers and of organized labor, if that of senior politicians is anything to go by, African National Congress ministers seem prepared to kiss Walmart and spit at their union allies.
Insisting on saying something at the end of the one-day tour—there were no unionists around—agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson declared that “the marriage is working”, and called the journalists witnesses in church.
She and her Cabinet colleagues, among them the ministers of finance and of trade and industry, are awaiting the outcome of a study to be conducted by, among others, Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz. This follows a March judgement of the Competition Appeal Court, that such a study be commissioned but only to “determine the most appropriate means together with the mechanism by which local South African suppliers may be empowered to respond to the challenges posed by Walmart’s arrival.
Very little, it would seem, is now going to stand in the way. The Cabinet ministers’ last statement on the matter read in part: “The ministers believe that Professor Stiglitz will add depth and global know-how to the work of the panel and can assist the parties to identify an appropriate and constructive remedy to the potential negative public interest effects identified by the Competition Appeal Court.”
This means that Mogodi will realize her wish sooner, rather than later—she wants to run her farm independently within a year, but not before she raises enough money to fence it to keep animals and trespassers at bay and throw away those broom bushes that presently define the boundaries.

Walmart Tries To Be  Down To Earth

It all started with an article in Forbes 14 years ago. Steven Kark was paging through the magazine when he was struck by an epiphany. The article was about three businessmen in the United States who were raking it in through the automated teller machine (ATM) industry. Couldn’t he be a millionaire too?
Kark was 25 at the time, fresh out of university, had just married and found a new job. It made more sense to stick to this steady job but the article lit an entrepreneurial flame in him that refused to go out. He wanted to know more about the industry and bring it home to South Africa.
It wasn’t a spontaneous decision, he mulled over the idea for about a year, before he took the risk. He quit his job, booked his ticket and was off to the States. He spent almost a year there, absorbing all he could about the payment services industry, meeting manufacturers and securing contracts. Kark then bought a cargo container loaded with 23 machines and headed for South Africa. When he arrived, contract in hand, he had no clue how he would pay for the cargo, or even who he would sell to.
“In South Africa banks were wholly responsible at the time for putting in ATM machines. If convenience stores like ‘Seven Eleven’ or ‘Kwik shop’ or a ‘BP Express’ wanted an ATM [they] were totally reliant on [the] bank to put in an ATM,” says Kark.
False promises from investors forced Kark to turn to family and friends. But that wasn’t the only curve ball coming his way. Their first deal with a bank went south.
The bank in question was Saambou. The year was 2002, which saw a dramatic collapse of the bank.
Growing distrust about one of the bank’s directors led to a bank run, as rumors of the bank going under spread, it soon closed down, failing to meet the demand. It was liquidated and bought by one of South Africa’s biggest banks, First National Bank (FNB).
“That was our Black Friday actually. We had all these machines, we were really flying. All those machines were under Saambou [and] it went south. In the end we [made] a deal with Absa, they were quite ready to step into Saambou’s shoes… and today they are fantastic partners of ours,” says Kark.
Today he is the co-founder of Transaction Capital, listed in June, valued at R4.7 billion ($576 million). Transaction Capital wholly owns Kark’s three sub companies, installing ATM machines and dealing with electronic payments. Although the business is diversified, Kark treads carefully.
“We work in close collaboration with the banks today, which are expanding their footprint. If you’re going to push north outside of South Africa, you need to do it in absolute collaboration with a like-minded bank,” says Kark.
Paycorp—previously called ATM Solutions—is the subsidiary that is taking Kark north. It has more than 4,500 independent machines in South Africa and 200 in Namibia and installs at least one-a-day in shops from Cape Town to Windhoek. The fruit of 12 years of business, which has been anything but smooth.
“It was all hands on deck, I used to install the ATMs; I used to sell [them and] cash them myself. But our first time in Durban [I remember] we couldn’t offer a ‘Cash-In-Transit’ vehicle… We helped one retailer load his machine. We would go there every single morning, his wife would come out with cash hidden under her clothes and he would leave us in the back room and we would sit and load up the machine. It was unbelievable stuff, it was fascinating,” says Kark.
This industry is not for the faint-hearted. It is plagued with fraud, robberies and the infamous ATM bombings.
According to the South African Police Service Crime Report 2010/2011, there was a 61.5% increase in ATM bombings from the 2009/2010 to the 2010/2011 financial year. This after a 10.2% decrease from 2007/2008 to 2008/2009 as well 36.2% decrease from 2008/2009 to 2009/2010 financial year.
“It happens to us but certainly a lot less frequently than it ever has been. If it’s not bombings it’s something else, it’s a continuous battle where criminals will think of new and innovative ways to get their hands on your money… You need to try as best as you can to stay a step ahead,” says Kark.
One of the legacies of the ATM is that more people are using them, from cities to villages. It appears to be good for business.
“Where things are a bit geographically removed, you would find that there is a phenomenon of capital flight. If they work in town X and they live in town Y and Y doesn’t have an ATM, they would spend all their money at X. So if you put a machine where people live [they] have the ability to spend. It makes sense for everybody, there’s business for us, the community benefits, the retailer benefits and our partner banks get additional reach into those areas,” says Kark.
In fact, half of the ATMs installed in South Africa are in the villages. Little do people know, they sprang from an idea formed while paging through Forbes magazine.
Kark has framed that article, so he should, it helped make him a fortune.

I Want To Be A Millionaire…  So Fricking Bad

The bad news came down the telephone to the chair queen of Nigeria. Ibukun Awosika, just home from a business trip to Barcelona, sat on her bed in her Lagos home, working on her computer, when the telephone rang on January 7, 2004—her worst day. On this day her furniture business, that had taken years of suffering to build, hung by a thread.
It was a body blow even for an entrepreneur as feisty and resilient as Awosika. To say Awosika is a formidable woman is a bit like saying Usain Bolt can run. Her company turns out 500 chairs-a-week; if you are reading this in an office in West Africa, there is a very good chance you are sitting on one of them.
“I am not frightened of anybody,” she says during our meeting at her luxury home and you can quite believe her.
This tenacity reaches back to her roots in Ibadan, Oyo state, where she was born on December 24, 1962. Her parents, a food technologist and a fashion designer, worked away, so Awosika was brought up by her grandmother, who ran a salt shop. This was where she learned her first lessons in trading, bargaining and being an entrepreneur.
“I actually didn’t grow up wanting to be an entrepreneur. That was never part of the dream. I wanted to be a doctor when I was in secondary school, later on an architect but I eventually ended up in university graduating with my first degree in chemistry. I also took many free electives in accounting as I had a keen interest in banking,” she says.
A banking job took its time to materialize, so Awosika filled her days by working in sales at a furniture company. The job lasted a mere three months, but the passion for the furniture game has lasted a lifetime. Awosika saw a gap and set up her own operation, the first step on the way to a net worth of more than 3 billion naira ($18.6 million).
“It was called Quebees Limited. We started operations in January 1989 with two carpenters, two sprayers and two upholsterers. We worked from the back of my father’s house, then in an incomplete building next to my chief-carpenter’s house, for a while until we were able to find alternative working space… I had no money to start with. The carpenters came with their own tools, I rented the machines we used to spray. All I needed to do, was find my first job. My first job was from a bank to make wooden paper trays, wooden dustbins and computer stands,” she says.
Awosika needed a big contract to establish her business and took the chance of exhibiting at a furniture show where her chairs caught the eye of Texaco Nigeria Ltd, which was looking for a company to furnish its headquarters. To close the deal, Awosika put on her high heels and headed for the Texaco head office in Lagos.
“I walked into the office of the secretary of the chairman of the executive committee of Texaco on the day we had to sign for the contract. The secretary said to me, ‘We’re waiting for the MD of Quebees furniture’ and I responded ‘Yes, that’s me”. She called her boss and said, ‘the MD of Quebees is here”. He walked in, looked at me with a very surprised expression, ‘You are the MD of Quebees?’ he asked. I said, ‘Yes”. He asked: ‘Are you sure you can do this job?’ I responded, ‘Yes, I can,’ she says.
“I had learnt to be confident as I had always received the same reaction from people, being a young lady who was running her business. I noticed he had a business card on his desk with a familiar surname. I immediately asked if he was related to one of my peers back at school. It turned out he was my mate’s father. Doing that job and delivering on it, opened a lot of new doors and opportunities for us.”
Awosika was on a roll and on the way to a dominant position in the market. The final piece in the jigsaw was a deal with French chair manufacturer, Sokoa, a company with a €10 million ($12.3 million) capitalization, to import furniture raw material into West Africa. It made her a fortune until, she received a phone call one night in January 2004, like a bolt from the blue…
“I got a call from the former manager of Guaranty Trust Bank saying that furniture material importation had been banned. I took a breath, paused for a minute, and then said, ‘It is well”. He responded, ‘It is well? How can it be well? They have just shut your business down!’ I responded, ‘I’m sure, God has me covered, one way or the other,’” she says.
Awosika had to think fast. The government was adamant that the ban on furniture material imports—in the interests of stimulating Nigerian industry—was there to stay. For Awosika, to delay was to risk another manufacturer stepping in to take her hard-won customers.
“It was do-or-die for us… It posed a threat to the manner in which we handled our business, as we either had to resort to smuggling goods into the country, which I was not going to do because of my value system, or change our strategic direction in terms of how our production was done. Hence, we approached the French company to join forces with us in producing and assembling furniture pieces in Nigeria.”
It took months of negotiation to tie up a deal with Sokoa and Guaranty Trust Bank to build a €3 million ($3.7 million) factory in Lagos. Production resumed 11 months after the government had thrown a spanner in the works. The factory, which employs 300 people, made a profit in its second year and is expected to have paid for itself in five.
“It turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” she says.
Awosika survived her worst day and has thrown herself into helping other Nigerian entrepreneurs navigate the choppy waters of business.
“Nigerians have great tenacity. In spite of the government’s presence, Nigerians have learnt to accept many limitations, which help them think and work outside of the box to create the solutions we desire. This makes us highly productive and this ingenuity is the reason I love my country. Nigerians are fast thinking; they are dynamic. Once you create an enabling environment, you’ll be shocked at what they can achieve.”
Awosika has set up a center in Lagos for the training of entrepreneurs called The Afterschool Graduate Development Centre and is launching a television series in September aimed at helping people to turn their ideas into a business.
“This country produces graduates by the million every year, without room for them to express themselves. We don’t have enough jobs nor an incubating environment to help them manifest, as entrepreneurs. They have a lot of great, fresh ideas, but no medium of expression, they also lack knowledge. There is also a disconnect between the financial institutions and the people who make the money.”
Wise words from a formidable lady who sits on several boards of big companies in Lagos and is never likely to be short of a chair.

You Had Better  Sit Down For This One

At the end of April on a typically blustery Western Cape autumn day, a sleek private airplane glided into an airfield near the capital of South Africa’s fruit industry. Ceres doesn’t often play host to such finery and at the airfield’s perimeter fence, a huddle of children watched excitedly as the aircraft came to a halt and its door opened.
A small group of men emerged and the children seemed slightly disappointed.
They looked quite ordinary—and outwardly that was certainly the case—just a few friends on a weekend junket.
At their head was a man who shuns such attention; someone who has thrown off the shackles of a life in auditing; a man responsible for one-in-four of the private prescriptions being written at corner pharmacies and one-in-five in the public sector.
Stephen Saad is the chief executive and founder of a South African phenomenon—a pharmaceutical company that is the biggest in the southern hemisphere. It has found favor with American presidents. It has also defied the odds and based its manufacturing in a country dogged by the negative influence of a persistently strong currency; a lack of investment in infrastructure; poor skills and an attitude that has generally embraced these problems.
Saad is a multi-billionaire in rand terms and worth at least $650 million, according to Forbes, but his appearance in a private airplane, in a relatively remote rural region, is a world away from the allure and shimmer of wealth. He flew in for several hours of sweat and hard graft; a 240km cycle race to raise awareness of a condition that killed the 28-year-old son of his chairwoman and friend. The reason for the private jet? Saad assures us it is merely to save time so that he spends as little time away from what he calls his ‘big five’; his wife and four daughters.
I first met Saad in Monaco in 2004. Despite his modesty, I look back at that meeting and realize that he could easily have slotted into the glitz and glamor of the French Riviera. He was youthful in appearance and had a drive and ambition that laced every conversation.
We were at the World Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards. Saad represented South Africa having beaten off stiff opposition from stalwarts of the old guard of South African business. When the final votes were counted, an American pipped Saad at the post. The word on the night was that tactical voting had denied him the title that many believed was his.
Saad was visibly rattled. Being second in a global competition of such prestige would, for most entrepreneurs, be an accolade of which to be enormously proud.
Not he on that night.
Whether it was the nature of the defeat, with the whispers of voting to appease sponsors, or the disappointment of being second best that irked him, I’ve never quite worked out.
The disappointment in Monaco was merely one leg of a long journey. Saad graduated from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa as a chartered accountant in 1986. He joined Coopers and Lybrand as an article clerk.
“My father wanted me to extend the 30 years of family tradition by joining his practice but I knew, I absolutely knew, that there was no way that was going to happen. I couldn’t do it. One of the partners at the time recognized this and privately told me that in this industry he could see I was like a bird with its wings clipped.”
During this time, Saad was seconded to a small company that specialized in pharmaceutical wholesaling. The owner was impressed enough to offer Saad a job, which he accepted. Little did either of them know that this offer from an underperforming small business would launch the career of one of Africa’s great entrepreneurs and spawn a global pharmaceutical giant.
“We sold to markets and to people that other companies ignored. It was an eye-opener. Not many whites had ever been to a township let alone done business there. But this was where the huge potential was. I was a rep in the townships and I learnt a lot of life lessons in those days. My future thinking was modeled in those early days.”
Saad’s experiences at the grassroots of the pharmaceutical industry proved invaluable. It forged within him a philosophy that holds true in the doctors’ rooms of a remote township, as well as in the boardrooms; people don’t want to compromise when it comes to their health, but at the same time the price of medicine is crucial.
When interviewing Saad, the first few minutes are uncomfortable. He is clearly suspicious of a stranger probing his thoughts, but as the conversation progresses and the line of questioning moves to subjects that are of interest to him, with which he is comfortable, there is very little that can stop him from extolling the world according to Saad.
“When I was a rep I’ll never forget being in the surgery [rooms] of a township doctor and presenting him with two products; one was in fancy packaging and the other in a rather plain brown box. I suggested that he could give the first to his medical aid patient and the other to his cash customer, after all they were essentially the same and were based on the same active ingredient. He looked me in the eye and told me that a patient is sick no matter what his or her status, and that he wouldn’t treat them differently. He’d made his point, and I wouldn’t forget that.”
Saad became a 50% shareholder of his employer, QuickMed, and convinced the owners that the ownership of intellectual property was the only way to, not only grow the business, but to save it. He then set about employing the spirit of entrepreneurship that was to become a hallmark of everything he’s done since.
One of the early moves was to persuade Covan, a small, family-run business that manufactured eye drops, to merge with QuickMed to form a new entity named Zurich.
Zurich flourished in the early 1990s, as Saad threw himself into the business. Turnover doubled and suddenly the company was the focus of the attention of larger companies. Prempharm (today Adcock Ingram) couldn’t resist dominating the upstart and bought Zurich for R75 million ($9.1 million) in 1993.
With the purchase price came a restraint of trade on Saad. He wasn’t too worried at the time, with R20 million ($2.4 million) in his back pocket at the age of 29 and thoughts of early retirement, this technicality was a small price to pay. It was a time for reflection and planning.
Saad’s passion for the pharmaceutical industry was apparent, but education was also close to his heart. Varsity College was a private tertiary education institution that was managed poorly and under threat of closure. The idea of the college as a business opportunity was offered to Saad and his partner from QuickMed, Gus Attridge.
For a nominal sum they acquired the business. They set about restructuring the top-heavy overhead base, removing the founders and offering incentives to learners through aggressive advertising campaigns, not normally associated with the business of education. Potential students were offered a money-back guarantee should they not pass their exams, provided they attended a full program of lectures. The business began to thrive.
The business had cost just R1.5 million ($182,500), Saad sold it to LeisureNet for around R100 million ($12.1 million) at a time when education stocks on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) were attracting significant premiums to the overall market. He had again turned a company riddled with inefficiencies into a success.
In 1997, as a wealthy young man, Saad teamed up with Attridge and Steve Sturlese to form Aspen Healthcare (Pty) Ltd.
“When I look back at the early days of Aspen my philosophy was based on the experiences gained during my days as a rep and partner at QuickMed. In those days, I’d asked whether the business was about moving boxes or owning intellectual property. It was so obvious that there was a market out there that was hungry for high quality but affordable products and that needed representation. Although this knowledge had been acquired through the little sphere of doctors that I serviced, I was convinced it could be applied on a bigger platform—even globally.”
During its first year of trading, Aspen recorded revenue of R105 million ($12.8 million). The philosophy was clear from the start: buy licenses from large multi-nationals for their non-core brands. These products were important in the life of the new company selling to a new market. It was a two-way street, the people were ready to buy pills they had never been offered before, the big players were happy to off-load them.
Aspen began to own intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks and pharmaceutical dossiers, without having the expensive overhead of manufacturing and its complications.
The management realized very quickly that they had a winning formula, but their ambitions were such that there was a real danger of being restricted by insufficient capital.
To rectify this, and make way for the grand plan, Aspen targeted Medhold Medical Ltd, a small company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Aspen concluded a reverse takeover of the business and thus became a public company. Records show that at the end of June 1998, Aspen’s annual turnover was just under R119 million ($14.4 million).
A year later, it was more than R522 million ($63.5 million) and the investment community was taking notice. The company’s stock was moving.
Then the audacious deal, that defined the Aspen approach to business, was unveiled. SA Druggists (SAD) had been the object of desire of Adcock Ingram but the deal had fallen through. Despite the mismatch in terms of size, Saad went to his financiers with his plan to purchase SAD for the princely sum of R2.4 billion ($292.2 million). Fedsure was SAD’s largest shareholder at the time and would keep the insurance and manage the healthcare part of the business. Aspen kept the pharmaceutical business once all the transactions were rubber stamped, Aspen realized approximately R1 billion ($121.8 million) from the divestments.
The financiers had backed the upstart Aspen, but there was institutional investor reticence to the deal which seemed to defy conventional business logic. Aspen’s bank asked that shares in Aspen be discounted, but this was not an option for Saad and so the company was saddled with R1 billion of debt with an operating profit of around R123 million ($14.9 million).
Since the SAD deal, the story of Aspen has been one of extraordinary growth. Strategic agreements have been a key part of the growth story, not least the link with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2003, that allowed Aspen to market and distribute 40 branded products into the South African private sector.
Although the company’s phenomenal success has been based on its South African business, its ability to penetrate further afield, often a graveyard for others, has distinguished Aspen as a global pharmaceutical concern with which to be reckoned.
The Clinton Foundation chose Aspen as the first southern hemisphere-based company to provide generic anti-retrovirals (ARVs) for the United States’ government, while that country’s Federal Drug Administration pre-qualified the company for the provision of generic ARVs, funded by President Bush’s emergency plan for AIDS relief.
In 2005, Aspen secured the majority of the South African government’s ARV tender with an allocation of close to 60% of volume. At the same time, results showed that Saad’s company had generated an annual turnover of more than R2.8 billion ($336.5 million).
As the relationship with GSK became closer, and with an aggressive acquisition policy Aspen became truly global by expanding its footprint into the Asia Pacific region and into Latin America through an investment with Strides Arcolab Limited. In 2010, Australia was conquered with the massive R6.1 billion ($738.2 million) acquisition of Sigma Ltd pharmaceutical business.
I put it to Saad that perhaps the rapid expansion into so many new territories and jurisdictions would stretch the resources of a still relatively new player with a CEO who prefers not to travel too far from his home in Durban.
“I have a video conferencing facility,” he replied rather drily.
But there is clearly more to international success than the ability to talk to Rio de Janeiro and Sydney without leaving the boardroom.
“Most of my guys, the ones I’m in business with, have had start-ups and they understand my philosophy, the Aspen way of doing things. There’s no universal strategy, but on certain points there is no negotiation.”
This is where the media-shy CEO billionaire starts to become animated and I realized that to work under him is not for the faint of heart.
“I decided to bring all our people together from all our offices, from all over the world. So of course I chose Umhlanga Rocks for our conference! I stood in front of this group and told them that certain things were not negotiable. They must have passion for the business, and then people will follow them. At the same time, I told them it was essential to have humility and compassion, and that there was absolutely no negotiation when it comes to delivery. In business, you get leaders and you get managers, and there’s a very subtle distinction between the two. I want leaders, leaders are inspirational.”
Saad demands a lot of his people and clearly recognizes that as head of the company, as its inspirational leader, his behavior and his standards can never drop if his demands are to be adopted. When asked about his ability to maintain such a punishing pace, his stock response is “to rest is to rust”.
The choice of Umhlanga speaks volumes of the company’s grounding and of its CEO’s recognition of the importance of the South African part of the business. Again, the animation, even over the telephone, is palpable.
“We were told that we were mad to manufacture in South Africa. Some analyst asked me if I was doing this for my own ego. I pointed out as politely as I could that I was a shareholder and that it was the right thing to do. Today, I’m so proud to be able to have proved the doomsayers wrong. Today the billions [of rands] we invested in the Eastern Cape have produced one of the most competitive facilities in the world that sends products of incredible quality to over 100 countries. It’s up there with the very best.”
Saad is indeed a remarkable character.
On the one hand, there is a man that is driven by the old-fashioned values of integrity, hard work, passion, and one that has learned the traditional way of doing business. On the other, is a new-age thinker, one that recognizes that big business is built on layers of bureaucracy and structures but will not allow those structures to be an excuse for any of his team shirking a decision.
“At Aspen I will not tolerate a ‘cover-your-arse’ mentality,” he says with a hint of steely menace.
On the one hand there’s a CEO who is bursting with optimism for Africa and South Africa—who compares the high suicide rates of northern Europeans, who seemingly have everything, to those of the naturally optimistic African people who, in relative terms, have little; on the other, he is a sad South African who shakes his head and whose voice drops to a whisper when he tells of the union which has been enriched by Aspen shares at R6 ($0.7) (they are now R120—$14) and yet forgets the past when it comes to the negotiating table.
I wonder, when I hear him say he’d rather back a good leader in a bad industry than a bad one in an industry that’s thriving, if he might be in his own diplomatic way (and in the presence of a journalist) having a dig at South Africa’s government. I decide not to ask.
In March, Aspen’s interim results included the following highlights:
<ul>
<li>Revenue from continuing operations R7.5 billion ($903 million)</li>
<li>Operating profit R2 billion ($24 million)</li>
<li>Market capitalization R50 billion ($6 billion)</li>
</ul>
When I talk of money the enthusiasm for the interview starts to wane and there’s mutterings of most entrepreneurs that he knows not being in it for the money alone, which I believe, up to a point.
When I talk of personal goals and the future, his interest is revived.
“I still have lots of achievements that I need to focus on. It’s so frustrating living in a country where there’s great thought and great theory, great principles, but so little action. Maybe it’s my personality type but I just want people to stop thinking about it and just do it. If I was like that I’d never have gone into Brazil.”
At the end of April, Stephen Saad and the health minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, started the gruelling 240km Aspen Trans Karoo mountain bike challenge to raise funds for paediatric healthcare facilities through the Sifiso Nxasana Paediatric Trust.
“The children of Africa need the support of large organizations” were his simple words.
Saad completed the race, and when he arrived at the finish line in Sutherland his airplane was  waiting to take him home to his own children.

The Golden Wings That Couldn’t Be Clipped

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Kirsten Goss, a Durban-born entrepreneur, jewelry designer and mother has quickly become an award-winning African brand with stores in Johannesburg and London. There’s no stopping the strong-willed, go-getting Goss who has high aspirations and wants to continue expanding her exclusive jewelry chain with Cape Town also in her sights.
Goss has agents in San Francisco and New York and was recently the new face of Bombay Sapphire in South Africa. She now plans to expand to Asia.
A qualified jewelry designer and gemologist, her first flagship store was opened in London in 2002 and she recently opened another in Johannesburg. In 2009, Goss opened a state-of-the-art goldsmith studio in Durban where six designers craft her jewelry.
The London-based Kirsten Goss gallery is based in the trendy area of South Kensington on a picturesque cobbled path. Exclusive collections are heavily embellished, simple cuts which grab your attention. The pieces appeal to the independent, sophisticated woman who wants something unique. The exquisite styles are breathtaking, the gems dazzling; silver and gold jewelry with embedded precious stones.
Being passionate about the designs is important. Goss is meticulous about her work. She makes sure that every individual piece is handcrafted and personally designed, to fulfill her pride in the Kirsten Goss brand.
It took several attempts to catch the driven jewelry entrepreneur, who we managed to track down in Hong Kong. She explains her latest plans to break into the Asian market with a “pop-up” style fair.
When starting her business she took the risk and established herself as a small boutique firm which has now gone international. “We are doing an unusual thing, most people use the wholesale route to get ahead,” says Goss.
She said that her grandmother, Erica Goss, influenced her to start her own business.
“My role model is my grandmother who was a real frontier lady. She was a well-educated, typical Irish living in Africa, very frontier-orientated. She was somebody who was well-traveled. She taught me a lot,” says Goss.
“I started my business in London when I had a small child and then moved back to South Africa and visited London every month. My grandmother taught me you could live anywhere in the world. It’s all about passion, it’s all about ambition, it’s all about you and I think she was somebody who I drew a lot of inspiration from in my life,” she adds.
The designer’s Scandinavian and Irish heritage and her South African upbringing have all played a major part in influencing her designs. The use of exuberant colors clearly shows how she is influenced by her African heritage.
Goss supports a number of charities including the Make A Difference (MAD) Foundation; Sunflower Fund (leukemia); Save the Children, Enkuliso and Ekujabuleni nursery schools and the Wildlands South Africa. Her father was active in rhino conservation.
She was recently asked to design 12 pieces for the Spirit of Liberty exhibition in London. She has designed pieces for the Royal Wedding and Prince Willliam’s special birthday party.
“My dream is to have five to six galleries around the world in different locations and everybody knows that when going to a Kirsten Goss gallery they will find a truly unique piece,” says Goss.

An African Diamond  Sparkles In London

Gone Rural was registered in 1992 but founded many years before that by a British nurse—the late Jenny Thorne. Thorne and her husband owned a farm in Swaziland that now houses the House on Fire, Malandela’s restaurant, an internet café and the Gone Rural workshop and store.
“Jenny’s vision is that she really wanted to give independence and a voice to Swazi women,” says Philippa Thorne, her daughter-in-law.
Thorne has a background in design and came to Gone Rural 11 years ago as a volunteer after hearing about it from a friend. She is now the company’s creative director.
Gone Rural is a member of the World Fair Trade Organisation and makes eco-friendly handicraft made from lutindzi—a brittle mountain grass harvested in January. The grass is colored in wood burners for up to 30 minutes using eco-certified dyes from Germany. The raw materials are then sorted and weighed onsite according to orders. Gone Rural employs over 760 workers from the rural areas, a big jump from 30 in 1992. There are 23 permanent staff members in the workshop.
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The women get the raw materials delivered to them and they decide how much work they can take on. Once the orders are finished, they are picked up and brought to the workshop. This eliminates any traveling issues the women may have. Baskets can take anywhere from two to 10 days to make and if any new products are developed, training workshops are held with selected group members, who go on to train the rest of the group.
Many of the women came to Gone Rural via neighbors and relatives. The minimum working age is 16 years. Forty-eight per cent of the wholesale price goes to the women and the prices are revised every year.
“Our women are their own businesswomen and we’re basically partners with them,” says Thorne.
There is a challenge of managing growth—the company wants to help as many women as it can but it needs to keep in mind the current workers. Having 760 artisans means nothing when the orders just aren’t large enough to spread. Trying to keep everyone busy, while increasing numbers, will lead to the supply of an expensive product exceeding demand. After all, this is a business and not a charity. Someone will, however, still visit the women in the rural areas, irrespective of whether there is an order for them to fill, to reassure them that they are not forgotten.
Gone Rural’s products are sold in Britain and Canada and for the last five years it has partnered with Woolworths, in South Africa, to create food and nut Christmas hampers. Two retail shops in Swaziland and some South African curio shops also carry the company’s range of homewares, which were launched in 2011.
Even against the chaotic backdrop of the farm’s preparation for the Bushfire Festival in May, the stock room was full as orders were being sorted and ladies were brought in to finish off an urgent order—a black chandelier made from grass and T-shirt offcuts.
Gone Rural is competing against international products that are made by companies with more resources and lower prices. Ensuring that they have the highest quality possible is imperative. There are three check points in quality control. Each product first needs to pass a production co-ordinator in the rural areas. It then gets checked in the workshop with a final inspection taking place before orders are packed. The women get paid less for work that isn’t up to standard.
Visiting designers and partners such as Swazi Ceramics ensures that fresh ideas are continuously generated. The company has also gone as far using recycled plastic and T-shirt offcuts from a factory in Matsapa, Swaziland.
Swaziland is one of 15 landlocked countries on the continent; it is Southern Africa’s poorest country and has the world’s highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate. With an estimated population of 1.3 million, the unemployment rate is estimated at 40%. With more than half the population living below the poverty line, the women of Gone Rural are doing their part in meeting the basic needs of their families and have moved away from the large dependence on subsistence agriculture.
In 1996, Gone Rural founded the non-profit organization Gone Rural boMake. This is an extension of the community services Jenny Thorne carried out when she was alive. The organization receives a minimum of 20% of Gone Rural’s profits as well as the merchandizing income from the annual Bushfire Festival that was featured in last month’s issue of FORBES AFRICA.
The NGO’s focus on education awards 360 bursaries each year to the artisans’ children and assists preschool teachers in early childhood development. It has health initiatives focusing on the prevention, treatment and support of HIV/AIDS, as well as on reproductive health and chronic disease.
Three thousand people benefit from the Gone Rural boMake Mobile Wellness Clinic. The World Bank estimated that 65% of Swaziland’s rural population had access to running water in 2010. BoMake has, to date, secured the drilling and fixing of 10 boreholes and the installation of a solar water pump system for the Makhekhe community—80km north of Swaziland’s capital, Mbabane.
So what would the woman who started it all say now? It’s clear that her vision has become that of many. An amazing and inspirational woman, according to her son Jiggs Thorne: “It’s a powerful thought what Mom would say about something she started manifesting into something so great,” he says.

A Seed Feeding Hope

At popular beach restaurant Coconuts on Ilha de Luanda (Island of Luanda), Soraia Neto arrives with her three-month-old child and her child minder. Instantly disarming with her pretty, youthful features and soft voice, she introduces her two companions. “They join me in the office every day,” she says, smiling.
As 29-year-old Neto sits down to a glass of lemonade, conversation turns to business. Neto set up food distribution company Chimera Lda and truck company V.D.G. Lda in 2009. She now distributes five food brands to various clients, including international marine fuel logistics company Pumangol and plans to expand into Angola’s provinces.
“My prices aren’t more competitive but I try to offer excellent service,” Neto explains when asked how her relationship with Pumangol blossomed this early in her entrepreneurial career.
“I work seven days a week if necessary.”
Neto set up her businesses upon her return to Angola, fresh from France’s Sorbonne University. Her family moved to France when she was four years old. From ages 12 to 15, she attended the French school in Luanda before moving back to Paris where she studied economics and international business. She concluded her third internship at Africa-oriented French brand representative Pierson Export, which asked her to continue working with them in Angola. Soon afterwards, she set up Chimera Lda.
“For Angolans, all it takes to set up a business is three days, plus a minimum investment of $1,000. To speed up the process, you need shareholders. My brother is shareholder of V.D.G. Lda, my husband owns half of Chimera Lda. I’m hoping to build a group of companies in the future to spread my risks,” she says.
Neto invested $40,000 of her own money into her business and borrowed another $160,000.
“My annual turnover is $165,000, while annual profit is just $35,000 due to costs. Annual growth is 35%. I expect to be debt-free at the end of this year.”
Within three years, the number of products Neto sells has grown from one to five. She has eight employees. “This is why I returned to Angola. There are opportunities here that you’ll never get in Europe due to competition. If you’re intelligent, do things properly and have a few connections, you can grow fast here,” she says.
Angola’s food import industry is dominated by Lebanese and Indian importer-distributers, but competition is on the rise. Neto buys her products—McVitie’s biscuits; Grisbi biscuits; Suave toilet paper; Vanans pastries; Jota Food popcorn; Lays; Ruffles and Cheetos chips—from Lebanese importers Fratelli, AngoMex and IMT Trading. Suave, Vanans and Jota Food are Angolan brands.
“The Lebanese are the kings in the food market. No-one has managed to out-compete them. I love them, they truly understand African markets. I don’t import myself yet because of the big risks involved and the fact that you have to mobilize lots of money. I do want to import in the future. As an importer-distributer at the beginning of the distribution chain, you have more power and control over the market,” says Neto.
Neto has her eye on food products from the States.
“That’s dollars for dollars,” she explains. “The cost of euro products are very, very high. And with Chinese or Indian food products, you have to be physically present at the export site to control their quality.”
Neto’s goal is to own and distribute her own frozen food brand.
“I want to buy brandless cooked food in the US then design my own packaging in Angola. My brand name will be Comida da Sara, after my daughter.”
She estimates that it will take her up to two years to turn this dream into a reality.
“I’ve already got the place. It’s an old $400,000 soap factory on Samba road. But buying machines and refrigerators is a big investment. I have to make more money first.”
Neto aims to expand her food distribution network into Angola’s next frontier: its provinces, which are being made more accessible by the rapid rebuilding of Angola’s infrastructure after its 27-year civil war which ended in 2002.
“You can improve lives there with simple products. In Luanda, there is big competition,” she says. Neto already distributes products to MWA, a company that operates outside Luanda. Angola’s coastal provinces offer the best opportunities.
“Many people from the capital work in Lubango, Lobito and Huambo. They were very important during colonial times and are once again growing quickly,” says Neto.
Needless to say it is not all roses in Angola. “Many people here don’t have a professional conscience, even if you pay them a good salary. I’m trying to employ more people but can’t find them,” she says.
“Corruption is an element you have to integrate if you want to make millions and do big business, rather than a stumbling block,” she adds.
“I prefer not to because in African countries political contexts can change suddenly. I have connections with people in power, but prefer to remain independent and grow slowly but surely so that people don’t show up one day and say: ‘Hey, give back that money, it’s not yours’.”
According to Neto, being a woman is not an obstacle. “There are not many female entrepreneurs in Angola and the ones that do exist, are appreciated and respected by the other sex. As a woman, you have more power over men.”
Her femininity facilitated the start of her entrepreneurial adventure.
“It was easier to meet potential male clients and arrange meetings. They were more flexible, welcoming, talkative and less aggressive. The way you relate to people is the key to success in this business.” Neto prefers to work with men. “I think men are more serious,” she says. “Girls get pregnant and have too many responsibilities at home.”

Power Entrepreneur Shatters  The Glass Ceiling

When James Mwangi boarded a commercial plane in Nairobi, bound for Monte Carlo, he was nervous.
This was a big trip to the Ernst &amp; Young World Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Awards and the competition was tough. They call this award the Olympics, or World Cup, for entrepreneurs. It was a prize too far away in the mind of a 50-year-old like James Mwangi, CEO and group managing director of Kenya’s Equity Bank.
“I started wondering how I would be ranked when you hear stories of the personal wealth of these entrepreneurs. These people range from heads of industries like: the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world; the biggest ship building company in the world; supplier and producer of 90% of the world’s silicon chips—people with extensive experience—the majority of them are in their seventies,” he says.
Any fears in mid-air were confirmed when Mwangi’s commercial flight touched down in Monte Carlo on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Most of his competitors had arrived in their private jets.
“Not only did we not jet into the country, like most participants, we had to do a 45-minute drive to the hotel, while the others were lifted in helicopters,” Mwangi says.
“I was given a hotel room overlooking the beach on the 10th floor, overlooking yachts, more than 200 of them, expensive and luxurious yachts, at that. I realized that I am in a different place and not a usual place.”
So you can imagine the shock and surprise when the Nairobi banker, far from home, won.
“The whole hall was silent except our tables, with Nigerians and South Africans, of course.”
As they gritted their teeth and applauded, the illustrious competitors waited for the winner to walk to the front. Then, they waited a bit more.
“Instead of making my way to the podium, we started hugging and embracing each other with African joy and warmth. It was like thunder and something extraordinary had happened… We started singing the song, It’s Time for Africa and we were very excited about it—almost assuming that there was nobody else in the room until I was prodded by someone to make my way to the podium.”
Mwangi delivered the shortest acceptance speech in history, without protocol and almost incoherent, in his excitement. The roof-top drew back and fireworks crackled into the night sky over Monte Carlo—on the ground, Mwangi, the first African to win in 25 years of the awards, felt like exploding with them.
“This award makes a point that Africa is ready to be fully integrated with the rest of the world and what we hold are perceptions that are very far from reality. This is global recognition for Africans who are embracing the power of entrepreneurship to change the economic and social state of Africa,” says Mwangi.
Other African participants in these awards included: Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, group managing director of Access Bank in Nigeria and Braam van Huyssteen, founder and managing director of Tekkie Town.
It was recognition for the entrepreneur who opened up banking for millions of poor Kenyans through Equity Bank, in which he owns a 5% share.
Mwangi joined Equity Bank nearly 20 years ago when few gave a dime for its chances.
“The bank was declared technically insolvent and earmarked for closure when I joined in 1994,” recalls Mwangi.
Deposits were at Ksh22 million ($262,000), loans were at Ksh9 million ($107,000); there were 27 employees and losses were Ksh33 million ($393,000) against capital of Ksh3 million ($35,000). So the bank was technically insolvent to the tune of Ksh30 million ($357,000). He converted his family’s 15-year home loan of Ksh4 million ($71,000 in 1994) into capital, thus reducing the technical insolvency of the company to save it some interest.
“Instead of the traditional banking, we went to mass banking, high volume and very low margins. Consequently, we became relevant in terms of affordability. Through the use of technology, particularly that of mobile banking and agency, we were able to breach the last mile in terms of access to financial services,” says Mwangi.
“There was no way of going back to the family to say that we had lost everything, hence I had to work hard to redeem that which I had lost.”
Equity Bank grew and the deposits flowed in. Today the company has a turnover of about Ksh200 billion ($2.3 billion), with nearly 7,000 employees. It is listed on both the Nairobi and Uganda stock exchanges.
The Mwangi model is studied in several business schools including the Stanford Graduate Business School; Columbia Business School and Lagos Business School. Maybe, one day this method of making money at the bottom of the pyramid will be referred to by business graduates as “Mwangist” alongside Marxist and Keynesian theories.
It was the fruit of years of struggle for Mwangi. His father died when he was very young and his mother struggled to bring up her children alone. To raise money for school fees, Mwangi sold charcoal and fruit on the streets. It was his training ground for buying, selling and trading.
The blood of an entrepreneur ran through Mwangi’s veins from a tender age. As a young man, Mwangi formed a small company selling sand around Nairobi, in partnership with the current assistant minister of agriculture, Gideon Ndambuki. They had four lorries and a pickup truck; later they sold fruit and vegetables to hotels.
“Entrepreneurship is the cure for the African paradox of a continent with resources and human capital but that remains poor. The only ingredient lacking is entrepreneurship,” he says.
Anyone who can beat a fleet of high-flying entrepreneurs is surely worth listening to.

He Came, He Trembled,  He Conquered

If it weren’t true, it would sound too far-fetched to make up. The life of Penny Streeter, chief executive of healthcare staffing conglomerate A24 Group, is the archetypal rags-to-riches story of a woman who was left with nothing, didn’t give up, started small and made it big. She revolutionized the recruitment sector by turning it from a 9-to-5 business into a round-the-clock operation that dispatches temporary health professionals at as little as an hour’s notice.
Born in Zimbabwe to British parents and educated in South Africa, Streeter, who dropped out of school at the age of 16, ended up in recruitment by chance. After moving to London as a young adult, she trained as a beauty therapist but was soon looking for something more fulfilling.
“I decided this wasn’t going anywhere. I walked into an employment agency and told them I was looking for a job. They said, ‘Fantastic, we got one for you here’. That’s how I got into recruitment,” she says.
A go-getter by nature, Streeter was quickly promoted to branch manager. When the firm opened a second outlet, she hired her mother, Marion, to run it.
“We used to compete with each other about bringing in the most sales,” Streeter remembers. But one day, both mother and daughter were fired—they cost the firm too much in commission. They had worked themselves out of a job.
Irked by the limits of being an employee, Streeter decided to go it alone. She got a £30,000 ($46,611) bank loan. Her mother borrowed another £10,000 ($15,537). But their timing was bad. Within months of opening office recruitment company Elite Personnel in 1989, the United Kingdom (UK) went into a major recession. Demand for her services dried up almost overnight.
“It was a complete and utter disaster. The one day it was going well, the next day we had queues of people looking for jobs. We carried on and on, borrowing money, trying to dig ourselves out of this hole and eventually went bust,” she says.
By 1992, Streeter had lost every penny and was spiraling into debt. The furniture and cars belonging to her luxury offices in a posh part of London had been repossessed. But it wasn’t only bad timing that caused the firm’s failure. It was also “total lack of business experience”, Streeter admits. She had gone in, guns blazing and overspent.
To make matters worse, Streeter’s personal life suffered a tremendous setback. She went through a divorce which left her with nothing and—pregnant with her third child—was forced to move into a homeless shelter in a part of London her brother thought too dangerous to park his car. She had hit rock bottom.
Out of worry for the welfare of her children—“I thought, ‘How the hell do I ever bring up my kids in this environment? They are going to be drug dealers!’”—Streeter decided to give the recruitment industry another try in 1995, this time with only one asset: her determination. A value, she says, her parents instilled in her.
“At home, there was no such thing as can’t. I am lucky to be a confident person, so I had a strong belief that I could do it on my own. I knew I had to,” she says.
She started another venture, Ambition 24hours. This time, she took a different approach. Instead of getting a loan to kit out opulent offices, she rented a rickety desk in a corner of the office of a car parts dealership.
“I learnt everything from what happened [with Elite Personnel]. We didn’t buy anything. Every penny we earned we put back into the business,” she explains.
Streeter and her mother took turns working and minding the children. On weekends, they organized children’s discos to make cash.
“That’s how we raised income. We would literally earn some money to pay for a newspaper advert to recruit staff to our books and pay our phone bill. We knew we had to make instant money,” she remembers.
Ambition 24hours first recruited for the financial services industry, but Streeter’s big break came when she spotted a market gap in 24/7 medical staffing services.
“All the established agencies opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 5 p.m., including all weekend. But healthcare requires shifts around the clock, and you don’t know in advance that someone is going to fall sick,” she says.
Even though entering a market saturated by successful recruiters was a risk, her groundbreaking model took off fast, supplying round-the-clock services across England.
It was the business that within a few years would turn her into one of the most influential entrepreneurs of our time. Today, it has expanded into an umbrella group, the A24 Group, which houses a range of independently run staffing agencies, makes a turnover of £70 million ($109 million) and is said to have generated £5.5 million ($8.5 million) in 2011 alone. Streeter, who doesn’t like to discuss her net worth, and her mother Marion, are A24’s only shareholders.
Whoever imagines Streeter as a tough, aloof businesswoman in a tailor-made suit couldn’t be more wrong. The passion and love for life that drove the 45-year-old, back in the 1990s, radiates from her as she sits, dressed in a casual cotton top, a plastic pink watch studded with fake diamonds on her wrist, in her office in Cape Town, South Africa, where her business is now headquartered.
“It doesn’t feel any different, really I never set out to make millions and millions of pounds. I just wanted to provide for my family, run my business and do it successfully,” she says.
Despite making more profit in a year than most firms do in a lifetime, Streeter has stuck to her hard-earned motto of keeping it basic. A24’s offices are simple: functional carpets, plain beige walls, plywood tables and worn-out chairs. As pop music blasts through wall-mounted speakers, customer service staff outside Streeter’s unpretentious cubicle wear headphones in front of computer screens in an unadorned open-plan office, focused on attracting new business.
“I still live in the mindset of that first business. What happened then, could happen again. We’re going through a global downturn again. The same principles of don’t borrow, have crappy furniture, are still true in my business. We still have no borrowings at all,” she says laughing, “and we still have crappy furniture.”
Simplicity has become her philosophy.
“Think big, start small and keep things very, very plain,” is Streeter’s advice to young entrepreneurs. An original idea, a good business plan and hard work are far more important than large amounts of finance to get a business started. After all, she points out: “The majority of very successful entrepreneurs have started with virtually no money. The biggest driver has got to be you. People always look for others to motivate them. But at the end of the day, when you’re in business, you’ve got to be able to motivate yourself. And that’s hard.”
Needless to say, Streeter—who was named Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003 and received Britain’s highest decoration, an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for ‘services to enterprise’ three years later—drives the A24 Group with a keen eye for cost control.
“I have to make sure we’re not waking up tomorrow, the market has changed and we’re all out of work. It’s not just me now, it’s everyone I employ,” she says.
She likes to hold the reins tightly, so she’s set up a flat management structure, with herself as chief executive, a finance director and the management of the group’s agencies straight below.
“Flat management makes it easy to get to the heart of the business, without having to go through masses of chains of people. I want to be able to communicate directly with the person who can make the maximum impact and change on that business immediately,” she explains.
One of her most important decisions, she says, was to move the company’s headquarters to South Africa in 2004. With an £11 million ($17.1 million) investment plan, she set up sales and back-office resources on the tip of the African continent to supplement her UK facilities.
“My finance manager thought I had lost my marbles,” she laughs. But the move was much more than a romantic whim after a beautiful holiday to the country Streeter spent her teens in.
Although A24 was extremely successful in the UK—it was Britain’s fastest-growing private enterprise in 2002—the group had been suffering major staffing problems. Numerous employees had started to break away to set up their own agencies or join the competition, taking clients and databases with them.
“We were taking them to court to get injunctions. It was a very negative point for us. It cost hundreds of thousands of pounds,” says Streeter.
At the same time, Streeter struggled to find well-trained consultants, the group’s key asset.
“I realized that by moving operations to South Africa, I could protect the business from theft and regain with South African staff what I needed in terms of service. If we had remained in the UK, it would have been slowly eating away at us,” she believes.
Initially, it didn’t look like the smartest move. The business took a dip and two years to recover. But then, Streeter made her next move and acquired Nursing Services of South Africa, the country’s largest temporary staffing firm, adding another star to her shiny belt of agencies.
“When we came to South Africa, it was like going back in time. We found existing nursing agencies were arrogant, not flexible enough and had no service orientation,” Streeter recalls. Twenty-four-hour staffing also took off in South Africa.
Today, A24 is run from three centralized recruitment hubs in South Africa and the UK, plus smaller branches throughout both countries with 450 permanent employees and about 13,500 temporary personnel on its books.
But even someone as successful as Streeter makes a wrong call from time to time.
“I’m not immune to making wrong decisions. As CEO, you have to be able to make decisions really fast, right or wrong, and then you have to live with them,” she says, admitting that failing remains her biggest fear.
“If I’m wrong, I correct decisions quickly and hold my hands up to them. It’s better to make a wrong decision than no decision at all.”
That’s what happened in 2006, when Streeter decided to expand into recruiting services to the oil, gas, construction and engineering sectors, having set her eye on major emerging markets like the Arab Emirates. For almost two years, A24 invested heavily to prepare the launch of this new business arm. But when the 2008 global economic crisis began to unfold, Streeter knew she had to cut her losses: “We pulled out of the market immediately. Places like Dubai were starting to collapse. We could see we were going to run into huge payment issues. It was about knowing to get out at the right time.”
It was a hard decision to make, she says, but one that was once again based on the lessons she learnt from the failure of her first company in 1989, when she kept pouring money into a venture that had no chance of succeeding.
“You’re giving up business that is still there, which in a lot of ways seems ridiculous, but it’s about weighing the risks,” she says. She also shelved plans to expand operations into the United States.
Instead, Streeter decided to expand again on home ground. In 2010, she bought another competitor, the British Nursing Association, at one point the giant of the UK nursing industry, and its associated nursing agency brands Grosvenor Nursing and Mayfair Nurses, owned by Pinnacle Staffing, for a mere £2.75 million ($4.15 million).
“We’ve got that sick giant now, and hopefully we’ll get it back to where it was,” she says, without illusions about the complexity of rebuilding a struggling business.
“When you grow your own business, it’s your baby, you know it inside out. When you adopt other people’s children, they don’t do things the same way. It’s quite a learning curve and completely draining.”
Streeter clearly thrives on challenges, with acquisitions being her core expansion strategy. That’s not a new business strategy, but Streeter adds a twist: instead of fully merging the new acquisitions into her existing operations, she runs them in competition to each other. Each A24 agency operates independently, has different business strategies, different pricing structures and service models.
“I like starting new businesses and understanding their dynamics. I wanted to make sure we’re a bit like the soap powders in the supermarket: you have all those different brands but you end up buying the same one. I wanted the same effect for our agencies. The choice would always be one of our brands,” she explains. “I’m effectively trying to dominate and drive out competition.”
It’s also a way of keeping herself on her toes. Although she calls herself risk-averse, Streeter has a keen eye for new market trends and isn’t afraid of branching out. When she heard IT experts talk about the advent of another global tech bubble, she decided to invest in information and communication technology (ICT). She set up an IT development department to design tailor-made software for the group, giving it an advantage in speed and accuracy in the registration, management and booking of temporary staff.
Then, she took it a step further. A24 is developing management services software, which will be launched next year as a stand-alone operation within the group.
“In everyone’s business, technology is the driver now. If your technology isn’t right at the cutting edge you’ll be dead and buried,” Streeter believes. “Business is a real thing where what worked yesterday isn’t necessarily working tomorrow. I continually have to keep reinventing.”
Unsurprisingly, she has no intention of resting or retiring. Her business is like her fifth child, says Streeter, who has re-married and now has four children.
“The children see the business as their other sibling. When I told one of my daughters I was thinking about selling Ambition, she laughed at me and said, ‘You would sell me first’.”

No More Penny-Pinching  For Penny

How different it could have been. Property’s loss could have been the theater’s gain. Believe it or not, if she hadn’t become a property queen, Pam Golding wanted to be a singer and dancer in cabaret.
“I love dancing, music and singing!” she says of her little-known longing for the limelight.
Golding’s millionaire career, too, started out on a small stage in the 1960s in Kenilworth, Cape Town, with a handful of agents selling houses around the corner—the first of which was a cottage. The business now has 300 offices; 2,500 agents and 30,000 properties, including a French château. It is the fruit of the forceful approach of a woman who invested in difficult times in South Africa’s history when companies like Barclays and General Motors were pulling out. As the world locked South Africa with economic sanctions, Golding was opening an office in London, selling South African properties.
<div id="attachment_1002" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1002" class="wp-image-1002 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Pam-as-a-young-woman-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Golding as a young woman</div>
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“I started the company when South Africa was going through a recession and people said I was crazy to go on my own. But I rarely take notice of things such as recessions! I was determined to succeed and that is half the battle already won,” says Golding.
It was this drive that led to a strategic alliance with Savills—a property group based in the United Kingdom with more than 200 offices around the world. This alliance has helped Golding expand in the international market.
“Ms Pam Golding is a pioneering business woman who has built a formidable international business. She stands as a testament of the capability of women and as a role model for all those women who have what it takes but may be unsure about going into business,” says Kunyalala Maphisa, president of the Business Woman’s Association of South Africa.
It all sprang from humble beginnings. Golding, who is part of South Africa’s real estate royalty, attended the Collegiate School for girls in Port Elizabeth, before earning a degree from the University of Cape Town. Her early working days were spent selling the Treasure Casket children’s books door-to-door. With the commission she earned she took her mother on a trip to England. With time, she developed a knack for selling, which gave birth to her real estate career.
There was humility too. Golding’s husband, Cecil, had to persuade her to name the company after herself. More than 30 years later, the Pam Golding Group sells everything from franchises to hotels and has turned over more than $1.48 billion for the financial year, ended February 2012.
The franchising of Pam Golding Properties helped the company expand. The franchisees are given management training and support through the Pam Golding Training Academy. The group’s current CEO, Dr Andrew Golding, feels that franchising is not about saturating the market but rather about filling a gap.
Pam Golding Property Management Services manages 150 schemes at a market value of more than $1.46 billion. Golding herself has taken a step back from the business but remains its president.
<div id="attachment_1001" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1001" class="wp-image-1001 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dr-Andrew-Golding-pic-1-pic-resized-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Dr Andrew Golding</div>
“My son Andrew Golding became chief executive of the group in 1996, and I realized that the company was in good hands… Trying to achieve a balance between career and personal life has always been a challenge,” says Golding.
Golding may not have been a cabaret dancer but she has waltzed through the tough real estate market—without missing a step.

From A Cottage In Cape Town To A Château In France

In 2006, the Mozambican president’s youngest daughter took the leadership of the family’s company—Focus 21 Management and Development, Ltd (Gestão e Desenvolvimento, Lda). The company, which focuses on business consulting, engineering, logistics and the mining sector, is currently valued at more than $5 million.
“There is an ongoing specialized financial reassessment of assets such as buildings, land, interests in diverse areas such as agribusiness, ICT and logistics in Mozambique,” says Guebuza.
Guebuza’s involvement in the company dates back to 2001 when her father changed the company’s shareholder structure. Both her brothers, Armando Ndambi Guebuza and Mussumbuluko Armando Guebuza, also joined Focus 21.
The Guebuza family business was born almost two decades ago. In recent years, it has established partnerships with companies such as Star Times, targeting the market for cable television, and Cervejas de Moçambique (Beers of Mozambique).
At Star Times Media, in which Focus 21 holds a 15% interest, Valentina Guebuza serves as the chief executive officer. The company was launched a year ago in Mozambique with the majority shareholder being the Chinese Star Times International. With an investment of more than $88 million, the joint venture aims to become the market leader in cable television in Mozambique, a country that faces the challenge of migrating from analogue to digital by 2015.
The national and foreign press also highlights business partnerships established between Focus 21 and Mozambican state-owned enterprises, such as the Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique (Ports and Railways of Mozambique).
The professional profile of the three young entrepreneurs and their relationship with the heads of state of Mozambique and Angola must help.
During her childhood, Guebuza liked “to play with dolls and play ball” with other kids in Maputo, where she grew up. She adds that she had an education based on the principle of responsibility and helped the family with household chores, such as washing dishes and cooking. For Guebuza, the education she received from her parents was important in the development of her personality. In her interview with FORBES AFRICA she appeared to be an extremely modest person.
“Today, I understand what my parents always told us, that the family is the foundation of our stability; emotionally and professionally,” she says, adding that she always had a “very good” relationship with all her family members.
When she graduated in civil engineering, Guebuza had no idea that she would play an active role in the business world.
“I always wanted to be independent and I fought for it. In 2001, I started working in a restaurant. I also did secretarial work and when I was in my last year of university I started an internship at a consulting firm in civil engineering, where I gained practical experience in my field,” she says.
With her ingression into the leadership of Focus 21, Guebuza had to put on hold the Masters degree she was doing as she says the family business takes up all her time. She says she works “24/7”.
“I do not know if I am an enterprising person, but surely I have to bring in results to the group I manage. So I must split myself in two, losing nights thinking about solutions and projects that add value to our market and also to bring positive results for the company,” she says.
Being the youngest daughter of the president, Guebuza is a symbol of success in a society mostly made up of young people. She was born during the period in which Mozambique was no longer under Portuguese colonial rule, yet had plunged into civil war. The 1980s were particularly striking in the life of the entrepreneur, who still remembers the trips around the country under military escort as well as the numerous power outages.
Given her youth, Guebuza has been associating with organizations that attempt to promote entrepreneurship and employment among young Mozambicans. In the social field, this is one of the major topics to which she has dedicated herself. Low-cost housing for families is another one of her passions.
“I think we are a privileged generation in a way. We did not live in the time when we were oppressed. Some of us lived throughout part of the civil war period, others have no idea what those moments were all about,” she says.
In 2010, she became involved in the Business Fair, held in Maputo. The initiative’s main objective is to promote “a space where young entrepreneurs can exchange ideas and experiences”.
That same year, Guebuza received an invitation to join the New Leaders for Tomorrow forum, held by the Swiss organization Crans-Montana. From the relationships established with the organization, she joined the Africa Foundation 2.0 in 2011, which connects young African leaders from 40 nations to design strategies for integrated social development for the continent.
Another sign of media recognition that Guebuza has gathered at the international level was her participation in the last G20 meeting, held in Paris in October. Only 15 African Foundation 2.0 members were invited.
With an annual growth of 7.5%, Mozambique seems to be one of the most promising economies in Africa. The enormous agricultural potential, in parallel with natural resources such as gas or coal, have placed the watchful eyes of investors on the young African economy.
“Over the next 10 years, I see my country being given more weight in terms of decisions to be taken globally,” she says.
As a “dissatisfied” person and one who likes to live each day in an “intense” way, Guebuza believes that these are times of “great enthusiasm” for Mozambique. She is proud of the importance that her nation is beginning to gather on an international level and expects that the country’s economic success will result in the improvement of Mozambique’s social indicators.
The Next Isabel dos Santos? 
Often, journalists compare Guebuza to the Angolan entrepreneur, Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the president of Angola José Eduardo dos Santos. According to Forbes, she is worth at least $170 million and is considered to be the most powerful and richest woman in her country and among the richest in Africa. She was described by the Portuguese newspaper Público as: “…a good business woman, extremely dynamic and intelligent, also a professional and friendly.” 
Since 2008, she has held interests in telecommunications, media, retail, finance and the energy industry, both in Angola and in Portugal. Her commercial interests include oil, diamonds and shares in the Angolan cement company, Nova Cimangola

The Millionaire Princess

The lights are off and the curtains drawn. The Africa Corner Bar in downtown Tel Aviv is a shadow of the popular night spot it once was. It jumps more in fear these days, than it ever did to the beat. It is also out of time with name of the neighborhood it is in—the Quarter of Hope.
That name fitted like a glove when Amine Tekele Zegeta opened the bar last year. The Eritrean refugee believed he’d given birth to a place that would make worthwhile the anguish of his difficult journey to Israel.
Eight months on, Tekele Zegeta sits largely by himself in his bar. It’s Thursday afternoon and the place has only three patrons, one of whom has his eyes glued to the small TV set broadcasting an Eritrean music channel that seems to be playing the same three songs in Tigrigna over and over.
The bar has been this empty since May 23, the day a protest against the influx of African migrants spun out of control. The people of the Quarter of Hope ran amok, smashing African-owned stores and terrorizing Africans. Israeli parliamentarians called African migrants infiltrators who should be cut out like cancer.
That night a rock shattered the main window in Tekele Zegeta’s bar. Looters surged in and stole his stock. Out on the street, the rioters chanted racist slogans as they blocked a car driven by a man from the Ivory Coast and smashed his windows, before attacking any Africans they could find. The string of racist demonstrations and inflammatory language worry many, especially Israel’s 120,000-strong Ethiopian community.
“Ever since that day, I don’t feel normal. I am afraid to come to work. I open at irregular hours. I don’t know what will happen next,” Tekele Zegeta says.
It wasn’t the first time Tekele Zegeta’s bar had been hit. Several months after he opened, Israeli youth attacked him outside the bar and beat him up. A few weeks later he was harassed on the street, but managed to escape. Just two days after FORBES AFRICA interviewed him; Tekele Zegeta’s bar was again attacked when a man on a motorcycle roared up to the front door and threw in firecrackers.
“People don’t want to come here. They know there is trouble. They are lying low and not going outside too much, they don’t want to be attacked,” he reflects sadly.
Since 2005, some 60,000 Africans, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, made their way to Israel, mostly seeking refuge from war, persecution and dictatorship. Like Tekele Zegeta, they cross into Israel via its porous border with Egypt and many tell tales of vicious torture and rape at the hands of their Sinai Bedouin handlers. Once in Israel, they are picked up by the army, given basic medical treatment and taken to a prison to be processed. They are set free after 10-12 days on conditional release, a status they must renew every three months. Then they are left to fend for themselves.
Israel considers the migrants interlopers, but the country has a policy of not deporting them, especially the Sudanese and Eritreans who are given group protection because they could face persecution—or worse—if they are sent back. Because they’re not recognized as refugees, most of them are not given the rights that go with being a refugee, such as the right to housing, work and medical care. Many end up sleeping in public parks and roaming the streets by day, with no hope of making a living.
Tekele Zegeta has it tough, but he is one of the lucky ones. He is recognized as a refugee and has a work visa. He left Eritrea in 2007, leaving behind his parents and a young daughter, for a journey that took him about a month. After years of cleaning apartments and offices, he pooled his savings and borrowed from friends to open the bar. He serves coffee, tea, soft drinks and beer in Israeli and European brands as well as Asmara, a brand named after the Eritrean capital. The bar is modest; it has eight tables with plastic coverings and the walls are adorned with posters of Eritrea or Ethiopia.
“I wanted to have a place for African patrons. They can come here, drink something, talk. But I don’t know if I will stay open. How can I?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t say this is my dream but I can’t stay cleaning houses for the rest of my life. I wanted to do something to get ahead. In Eritrea, I was ok. I had a home, an income, a life. I came here as a refugee, I came here for help.”
Tekele Zegeta is highly critical of the Israeli government’s handling of the situation.
“It is clear that Israel doesn’t want us here. I have been here five years and what do I have to show for it? In other countries, after that many years, you get some sort of permanence, citizenship, a chance at a normal life. Israel keeps us in limbo. It accuses us of seeking work but is working a crime in any other country? Israel should abide by the law. It can either send us to a third country or help us.”
In a high profile campaign, Israeli authorities began a crackdown on Africans in June, arresting and deporting mainly South Sudanese nationals. Israel maintains that since South Sudan is now an independent state, with ties to Israel, no-one sent back would face danger.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also lauds his government’s plans to finish the construction of a fence along the Israeli border with Egypt and a detention center that will house some 10,000 people, in the Negev desert. The government is not saying what it will do with the thousands of people who reside in the country but have no rights.
Ethiopian MK Shlomo Molla is on record as saying: “We feel very uncomfortable about what is happening&#8230; Jews talk about how we were slaves in Egypt and how we suffered because of our religion and culture outside of Israel—but now we are making others suffer.”
Back at the Africa Corner Bar, Tekele Zegeta is cynical.
“What did the government do after the demonstrations? Nothing! It cannot go on like this. Israel can’t just throw people to the dogs. It must care what happens to us. If I close, I will be left with nothing, and I will owe money. I would be back at square one.”
Tekele Zegeta may have to shut Africa Corner Bar’s doors, no longer feeling safe in the area and in Israel in general. But he knows he cannot go back to Eritrea and is now seeking asylum in a third country. “At least, if I can be accepted in another country, that would be better,” he concludes.
For Tekele Zegeta, this place of refuge has become a place to seek refuge from. It is a sign of the times in Tel Aviv that an African as battered as he is can be considered lucky.

No Quarter Or Hope

It was a golden childhood for Nonkululeko Gobodo in the natural beauty of South Africa’s Transkei amid the love and encouragement of successful business-owning parents. While her school friends played in the sun, Gobodo spent countless hours poring over the books of the family business. Her father wanted her to be a doctor; her love was numbers and the catalyst was just around the corner.
One clear Transkei morning, a group of black auditors came to look over the books. They were working for Wiseman Nkuhlu, who in 1977, became the first black South African to qualify as a chartered accountant. This was rare in apartheid South Africa, where education and professions were the preserve of whites.
On that day, Gobodo decided that was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life and went to break the news to her father. He asked her what the highest attainable level of education in the field was and said: “That is what you will do.”
“My father always wanted his children to be free-thinkers,” she remembers.
There was no stopping Gobodo after that. She tore through her education and became South Africa’s first black woman chartered accountant in 1987.
Gobodo landed her first job at KPMG fairly easily, but working was far from easy. In those days, the big clients were reserved for her white, male colleagues. It meant she had to persuade her bosses to give her a chance.
More than 20 years later, Gobodo chuckles with embarrassment as she tells of a senior, white, male colleague who had to resign after she had taken every client in his portfolio. It led to the company offering Gobodo a partnership, but she turned it down to start her own practice. It wasn’t easy. One of her first clients, an Afrikaner at the Bank of Transkei, told her to get out because he was not prepared to do business with her. The next day he refused to see her. On the third day, Gobodo walked into the man’s office, closed the door behind her and demanded that he speak with her. He did.
There were many other difficulties. Although her practice grew, black-run businesses were still very much excluded from the lucrative, largely white-run private sector. Most of these fledgling firms leaned heavily on government business.
It didn’t stop Gobodo and she prospered on the way to overseeing a merger to create Sizwe Ntsaluba Gobodo, South Africa’s largest black-owned auditing firm, of which she is the executive chair.
Gobodo sees her employees struggle with the same battles she endured decades ago. Surprisingly, she claims that women are reluctant to step up to the plate. They want flexible hours, in order to be able to make their home and children a priority; they’d rather do consulting, on the side, than pioneer big projects to put themselves in line for a promotion. They don’t seem to be able to make the sacrifices she once made, she says.
Her calm exterior is shaken for a moment. Gobodo pauses, looking pensive as she tells of having to leave her one-month-old child at home in order to prove her mettle at work.
“Humanity needs to go back to the drawing board,” she says.
“Raising future leaders is a responsibility; it is important to add value to the lives of others as we rise.”
Dressed in a sunshine yellow jacket, with a smile that could power a small town, Gobodo doesn’t appear the iron-fisted maiden she clearly must have been to make it in the often treacherous corporate world.
“I’ve had skirmishes where people have tried to undermine my leadership, but I’ve also put them in their place, and they’ll never forget it&#8230; they never forget it,” she emphasizes.
We’ll take her word for it.
<h4>Biography</h4>
Born on October 10, 1960, Gobodo started her career as a junior lecturer at the then University of Transkei, now Walter Sisulu University.
She left to begin her articles with KPMG in the Mthatha office. She joined the Transkei Development Corporation (TDC) as senior manager of finance. She left TDC in 1992 to start an accounting practice. She had a vision to start a medium-sized black accounting firm, as opportunities opened up after the 1994 elections, and founded Gobodo Inc with a group of partners in 1996.
“The accounting profession needs another big player other than the big four (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst &amp; Young). We intend multiplying the firm in terms of number of staff and revenue within a short space of time. It will be the new house for black professionals.”
&#8211; Nonkululeko Gobodo, April 14, 2011, announcing the merger to form her present company
<h4>She has won awards too</h4>
Cape Town, 17 May 2012: Two South African women took top honors at the prestigious Oliver Empowerment Awards, as they were named the Top Black Business Leader of the Year and the Top Black Entrepreneur of the Year.
Nonkululeko Gobodo, South Africa’s first black, woman chartered accountant walked off with Top Black Business Leader of the Year and Sibongile Maseko, founder of Bongi-M Construction, received the Top Entrepreneur of the Year accolade.

Category: Entrepreneurs

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