The intimate apparel industry got a lift this week when Rihanna and Kim Kardashian announced hefty funding rounds for their respective fashion ventures.&nbsp;



Rihanna’s lingerie brand,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2022/01/26/rihanna-savage-x-fenty-lingerie-brand-raises-125-million-in-series-c-funding-after-opening-first-retail-store/?sh=763613ab7605">Savage X Fenty, secured $125 million</a>&nbsp;in Series C. The following day,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-27/kim-kardashian-s-skim-underwear-brand-doubles-valuation-to-3-2-billion" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported that Kardashian’s shapewear line, Skims, had doubled its valuation to $3.2 billion after raising&nbsp;$240 million in new capital.&nbsp;



Both&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;billionaires thanks to their businesses, Rihanna and Kardashian are quick to gush about company growth on social media and elsewhere, but, like many celebrity entrepreneurs, they are heavily guarded when it comes to disclosing crucial financial information.



Generally, celebrity entrepreneurs tend to decline to reveal how much they have personally invested and almost all are tight-lipped about sales figures.&nbsp;



“All these private companies are on a PR tear and it’s even easier when a big name is involved,” says Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester. She adds that when it comes to valuations, most startups lie, typically by a factor of 2x to 10x. “Who knows,” she adds, “because no one has seen the term sheets.”&nbsp;



Still, celebrities continue to use their fame as a sword and a shield for garnering startup recognition.



Early examples include Gwyneth Paltrow, who launched her lifestyle brand, Goop, in 2008. By the time she raised $50 million in Series C funding a decade later,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2018/03/28/exclusive-gwyneth-paltrows-lifestyle-company-goop-raises-50-million-series-c/?sh=5e55926f6880">various sources estimated Goop’s revenue at $15 million to $20 million</a>, but the company declined to confirm the number.



These days, Goop relies on selling provocative items–such as its Jade Egg (which claims to boost sexual energy when inserted in one’s vagina) and the “Keep Your Hands Off My Vagina” candle–more than her acting career to generate buzz. But when it comes to reporting annual sales figures, the company is far more reserved than its product lineup.&nbsp;



Country singer Blake Shelton, who ranks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/blake-shelton/?sh=206b1df61ea9">No. 70 in the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;Celebrity 100 list</a>, earns a majority of his income as coach on NBC’s&nbsp;The Voice.&nbsp;Last year&nbsp;Rolling Stone&nbsp;reported he quietly sold his music catalog for $50 million. But when asked about the deal recently, the famously loquacious Shelton was reticent. He is now looking to a new revenue stream,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandara/2021/03/31/blake-shelton-just-launched-his-own-line-of-hard-seltzers-heres-what-we-know/?sh=62d0cab11ea2">his own line of hard seltzers</a>, but has yet to reveal how much he has invested in the launch of Smithworks.



And soon after stepping away from their royal duties in the U.K.,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2021/02/26/how-much-are-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-worth-surprisingly-not-that-much/?sh=1fba6cedc417">Prince Harry and Meghan Markle</a>&nbsp;went on an all-American publicity spree, announcing content partnerships with Netflix and Spotify. They also signed with the Harry Walker Agency to cash in on potential speaking engagements. But when it came to disclosing the value of those deals, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2021/02/26/how-much-are-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-worth-surprisingly-not-that-much/?sh=21363347c417">former royal couple remained as secretive</a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/03/10/inside-the-firm-how-the-royal-familys-28-billion-money-machine-really-works/?sh=21f07002bccf">The Firm they fled</a>.&nbsp;



Some just lie.



Kardashian’s half-sister,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/05/29/inside-kylie-jennerss-web-of-lies-and-why-shes-no-longer-a-billionaire/?sh=7621eab25f7b">Kylie Jenner, is a prime example</a>. The reality star and Kylie Cosmetics founder boasted revenues of $360 million in 2019, making her the youngest self-made billionaire at the time. The following year, publicly traded Coty bought 51% of the business at a $1.2 billion valuation. Soon after,&nbsp;Coty’s filings revealed that Kylie Cosmetics was half the size that Jenner had told&nbsp;Forbes,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/04/06/kylie-jenner-west-virginia-governor-jim-justice-and-59-others-who-lost-their-billionaire-status-this-year/?sh=1a448b713eee">knocking her off the Billionaires list</a>.&nbsp;



So, why lie or withhold information? “The SEC does not regulate what private companies say and there’s no governing body,” says Kodali. “The venture capital community plays a huge part in propagating these lies, and nobody questions them.”&nbsp;



Kodali, who specializes in e-commerce and consumer behavior, says until a celebrity-driven company goes public, there’s no real way to quantitatively assess whether the brand has strong fundamentals. “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jessica-alba/?sh=343048a3159e">Jessica Alba’s early days at The Honest Co</a>. seemed respectable,” but it took&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2021/05/04/inside-jessica-albas-long-and-turbulent-road-to-taking-the-honest-company-public/?sh=77d0a1d16be1">going public</a>&nbsp;to confirm her books were indeed honest, says Kodali.



More recently, Kodali points to Roger Federer’s $50 million investment in sneaker company On Running as an example of a celebrity-backed venture with solid footing. The company, founded in 2010, went public in September 2021 with an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/federer-backed-shoemaker-valued-over-11-bln-nyse-debut-2021-09-15/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$11.3 billion valuation</a>. “Its growth doesn’t seem to be based on hype,” Kodali says. “I didn’t hear about it from a headline, I heard about it from running enthusiasts, then investors. It was barely mentioned in the media until it went public.”&nbsp;



Meanwhile, it remains how much of a dent Savage X Fenty or Skims will make in the traditional intimate apparel market in the long term. Simeon Siegel, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets, acknowledges that many brands are trying to capitalize on Victoria’s Secret perceived vulnerability in market share. But a lingerie company like Rihanna’s–even with its funding to date at $310 million–is still “not even in the same ballpark as Victoria’s Secret,” which reported revenue of more than $5 billion in 2021.&nbsp;&nbsp;



However, with Rihanna and Kardashian’s massive social media followings—nearly 300 million each—both women have already used their fame as an express elevator to wealth.



“I bucket them all into startups that overstate their business, and it happens in waves as the sector becomes hot all at once,” says Kodali. “But you can’t hide once you’re public.”Follow me on <a href="https://www.twitter.com/tanyaklich" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. Check out some of my other work <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/#32b2e15e795d" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">here</a>. 



By Tanya Klich, Forbes Staff

SKIMS Celebrates Launch At Nordstrom NYC With Personal Appearance By Kim Kardashian West

How Celebrities Use Fame To Fuel Their Startups—And Then Hide Behind It

Starting with just $45, Ghanaian entrepreneur Violet Amoabeng’s startup has progressed with skincare products you can eat and the unpalatable realization that the only way to make it in business is to crash, break, stretch and succeed.



IT WOULD BE HARD TO decide if you would place Violet Amoabeng’s products in the beauty cabinet or on the kitchen shelf.



Skin Gourmet, Amoabeng’s skincare range, uses natural raw materials that are pure and free of preservatives that you could use on your skin and eat at the same time.



Edible beauty?



“If you cannot eat what you are putting on your skin, then why put it on your face?” asks the Ghanaian entrepreneur who admits to always gravitating towards the unconventional.



“It made more sense because what I wanted to create was something you could either choose to eat or wear, either way it is good for you.”



She launched Skin Gourmet Limited with only $45 five years ago, but it is now a business that generates over $200,000 annually.



“My dad would not give me the money to do any business because he believed that if you don’t do business the hard way, you will not be able to survive when you hit hard times and no one will help you,” recalls Amoabeng about her journey to becoming a self-made businesswoman.



She had to think differently.



Even as a child, when her classmates were debating careers as doctors, bankers or lawyers, Amoabeng opted for poetry, when she could have easily thought of following in her parents’ footsteps.



Her father, one of Ghana’s most successful bankers, is the founder of UT Bank, and her mother was the Managing Director of the Ghana tourist board where her primary focus was social and human development.



“My dad was more of a dreamer and even though his mind was on profitability he wanted to build something that everyone would benefit from. My dad and my mum were more focused on me being a good person and they were not focused on a specific industry. They just allowed me to dream. It was more important that I would leave a good legacy. It was almost like they are responsible for how their children will affect the world.”



Amoabeng now understands just how powerful that upbringing was. Even after her parents’ divorce when she was still young, she was never separated from this goal of adding value to humanity.



Shuttling between Ghana, Uganda and Canada in her teenage years, she graduated with a marketing and business administration degree from the University of Northern Virginia before completing her masters in accounting and finance as well as in supply chain and logistics.



Her initial work experience was in her father’s bank before securing an internship with the African Development Bank in Tunisia.



“At the time, I wanted to take over my dad’s business. As life would have it, that didn’t work out but I still wanted to help people and I knew business is how to do it, but I didn’t know how it would look like,” says Amoabeng.



Her biggest challenge was acquiring capital to kick- start her business.



“I asked family members to help source ingredients etc. I would come back from work and the first formulation I made I got these three ugly containers from my mother. I had designed my logo and everything on my computer. So, I would manufacture, package, label, put it on the shelf and every Saturday I would go to the market to sell these products.”



Being from Ghana proved to be advantageous for her fledgling startup.



“I started to really focus on Ghana because even the idea of eating your skincare [ingredients] is something I realized Ghanaians used a long time ago but we have lost [that tradition]. When I go to source my ingredients, these are products that the local communities eat on a daily basis and it’s been done for a long time. Preservatives are not needed because these communities have not had electricity for a long time so they had a way to preserve the products and keep it [to] the highest qualities.”



To get people to try her products, Amoabeng would give them away for free.



Her father’s lesson in the business of not expecting “any handouts from anyone” started to pay off.



“My dad also started his company with almost nothing and he knew he had to struggle. In my dad’s mind, it is important to struggle because it is the struggle that makes you strong and innovative.



“I started with the love of making body butter without doing any research. The entrepreneurial journey has been crazy hard. It will crash you and it breaks you and stretches you but you enjoy it. When you see an obstacle and it’s hard but every time you find a way over it and that is what makes it incredible. With every stage you overcome, you become a little bit greater,” offers Amoabeng as advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.



Amoabeng has managed to transform Skin Gourmet into a successful startup story with an average revenue growth of 80%. What makes this remarkable is the fact that this has been achieved organically with no outside investment or bank loans.



And with that, she has learned her greatest lesson in business.



“I had a limited way of thinking and I had to retrain myself on how to think. Nothing is impossible, everything is possible and if you can’t do it, it is your fault. You never blame anybody for anything that happens to you.”

Screenshot 2022-01-25 at 14.37.28

The Ghanaian Entrepreneur With An Appetite For Business

Tapping into Rwanda’s waste-to-wealth economy, Ysolde Shimwe and Kevine Kagirimpundu have come a long way in their eco-friendly shoes. They repurpose used tyres to make soles and have survived the pandemic with their sustainable offerings opening yet another new store this year.



WORDS AND PHOTOS BY RIDHIMA SHUKLA



IN A CLATTERING FACTORY IN Gahanga, minutes from Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, stands a black and grey block of concrete, distinct from its beige cohorts and the large swathes of yellow mud around it. The sound effects surrounding this unsuspecting installation include the cacophony of churning machines, the resolute tearing of sheets and the grinding of scissors in sync, and this is all accompanied by the strong smell of ethanol hanging in the air.



These are the sights and sounds that greet you as you enter the manufacturing center of Rwanda’s home-grown, eco-friendly footwear brand Uzuri K&amp;Y.



Over 40 people, in colorful masks, sit across from each other on tables as per the new norms of social distancing in the workplace.



Each table is a team of trained experts connected by a chain of processes needed to complete the production lines for Uzuri K&amp;Y. The final result – comfortable, cruelty-free footwear – line the right end of the facility, stacked neatly on dark brown wooden shelves. The two 29-year-old founders of Uzuri K&amp;Y, Kevine Kagirimpundu and Ysolde Shimwe, are nearby, beaming with pride. Their personalities match the myriad colors around them.



Shimwe speaks about her eco-friendly ware: “We use repurposed rubber for the sole and biodegradable fabrics painted with natural dyes, and synthetic vegetable leather for other parts of the shoe as well as natural adhesives to put it all together – you can say we are part of the circular economy.”



Sustainable green trends are undeniably fashionable and the young entrepreneur-duo clearly have a deeper emotional investment in their products.



As Shimwe adds: “We care for our people and our planet. We want to sell a Rwandan product with love.”



The duo started Uzuri in 2012, and their vision fit right in with Rwanda’s aim of becoming a waste emissions-free country by 2050.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot-2021-12-30-at-08.04.13-1024x630.png" alt="" class="wp-image-53793" width="630" height="387" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot-2021-12-30-at-08.04.13-1024x630.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot-2021-12-30-at-08.04.13-300x185.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot-2021-12-30-at-08.04.13-768x472.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot-2021-12-30-at-08.04.13-1536x945.png 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screenshot-2021-12-30-at-08.04.13.png 1860w" sizes="(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px" /></figure></div>



Kagirimpundu shares that as students, they would pass by landfill areas situated close to residential neighbourhoods and wonder how they could become a part of the solution to rid these sites of waste.



Currently, a large chunk of Rwanda’s Greenhouse Gas emissions come from densely-populated nation’s urban landfills and inspired by that same thought, Uzuri’s footwear uses the repurposed rubber from otherwise polluting and non-biodegradable tyres.



The young entrepreneurs were still at university in 2012, studying creative design and 



contemplating their future in the limited job market for designers in Rwanda, when they had the epiphany.



“We were in university and we used to wonder where we would find jobs after school. We had a passion for design and fashion. We decided to create something by Rwandans for fashion-lovers everywhere,” says Shimwe.



Ideas and ambition are often a great combination for entrepreneurial success. However, youth and a lack of experience often lead to more failures and lessons than instant success.



“It wasn’t just shoes in the beginning, we wanted to make everything: bags, clothes and accessories. We knew very little about investment management and technology,” adds Kagirimpundu.



Working with local tailors out of their homes and with just one sewing machine, the two young women started by manufacturing colorful bags and other accessories to sell on Facebook.



The open source social media platform not only allowed them to gain visibility but also gauge customer reaction.



“We learned to improve the quality and function of our products through customer feedback. Our little venture paid us in lessons.”



In 2014, Uzuri received mentorship from a Swiss entrepreneurship program based in Rwanda that helped the brand streamline its purpose and guide the duo’s approach to business and sales.



“They advised us to stick to one thing, one product! It was very difficult for us to choose because we were fond of them all,” says Shimwe.



The amateur entrepreneurs made their choice and haven’t looked back. With a range of trendy, functional footwear, Uzuri was rebranded under the waste-to- wealth model of business.



“The biggest challenge was finding skilled labor.



So without capital or experience in shoe design, we approached a local cobbler, Francios, who owned a street shop in the city center to work with us as our lead shoe-maker,” says Kagirimpundu.



With this, the duo embarked on a journey to shift consumer behavior in a country not yet familiar with sustainable fashion and with a general mistrust of local products.



“In our culture, rubber sandals are often considered cheap quality footwear, unfashionable. We wanted to break away from that and substitute it with the idea of sustainability,” offers Shimwe.



“We did not have money for a website. We used to deliver door-to-door on moto-taxis,” says Kagirimpundu.



Delivering door-to-door was the easy part for customers often returned the shoes for alterations, asking for a better fit or a more comfortable style.



“Sometimes they would not buy them even after alterations. We did not make much money but we gained insight into the minds of our target audience,” the two concur now.



The real-time feedback allowed the Uzuri founders and their shoemakers to better the design quality while engaging in a personalized brand-building exercise with their customers.



Small grants won at entrepreneurial competitions allowed the two founders to keep their business afloat. And, in 2015, after much trial and error, Uzuri graduated from a Facebook store to a real brick-and-mortar shop at Kigali’s international airport.



“It is a restricted area, but we pitched our brand as one made by Rwandans with pride to the authorities and they allotted us a space of 15sqm.”



After selling over 2,000 pairs of sandals at the airport store, the two opened their first shop in 2016, in one of the most developed commercial zones of the city, at Kigali Heights in Kimihurura.



For the next three years, Uzuri’s footwear with ethnic African prints appealed to the expatriate and tourist community. Their customer-base kept growing but Rwandans were still weary of stepping out in the locally- made Uzuri sandals.



“We changed our marketing approach and brought back focus on our local audience by involving Rwandan models for all our advertising needs and we advertised in Kinyarwanda,” say the two.



As Uzuri slowly got endorsed by Rwandans, its popularity kept pace with the expatriate community and the wealthy tourists looking to go back home with a piece of Rwanda.



“2019 was a great year for us. We were selling fast. We had to expand our store by breaking a wall and into the adjacent store, to fit in all the customers and the shoes,” says Kagirimpundu.



To match the demand, the businesswomen scaled up manufacturing and opened another store in the city center for reaching out to their local clientele living far from the posh neighborhoods in the east of the city.



“But, then the pandemic hit and our 80% expatriate and tourist clientele came to a halt, people did not want to spend on shoes.”



At a time when Rwanda’s retail market consisted mainly of repurposed and imported fashion goods, Uzuri was attempting to shift consumer behavior with sustainable fashion.



The 2018 ban on the import of used clothing and footwear by the Rwandan government and the onset of the pandemic disrupting cross-border trade actually catalyzed Uzuri’s sales.



“While we expected our sales to flat-line, Rwanda’s fashion-lovers came to our rescue by capturing 80% of our pandemic sales.”



As Rwanda’s citizens receive their Covid-19 vaccinations and businesses gain momentum, the buying power of the residents is picking up steadily and the duo have launched another store this year.



However, the impact of the pandemic can be seen in the decisions of the young entrepreneurs. They have recently closed their airport store, as it no longer drives the same level of profits, what with travel down.



“Our other stores need our attention and we can look at re-opening the airport store when tourism goes back to normal,” they say.



Starting out with a few shelves in a local shop to renting big stores in the best commercial zones in Kigali, 



Kagirimpundu and Shimwe have come a long way. 



“Design is all about problem-solving and we have applied our education to solve the problems in our business,” says Kagirimpundu.



With the pandemic forcing people to work from home, the duo have also now launched a new line of home slippers.



They saw an opportunity and took the chance.



The company has sold over 44,000 pairs of footwear so far; last year, their revenue totaled $300,000.



A combination of local talent and innovation in footwear, Uzuri’s model did not command the same market share for years, as it does today.



What next?



The two smile and agree: “We have invested every penny back into the business and our employees. We want to empower our community and those who work with us.”



Over the course of eight years growing their business, the Uzuri founders have become proponents of the win-win philosophy of sustainable innovation and branding. The company is now looking to expand into Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania, to continue selling “from Rwanda with love”.

Screenshot 2021-12-30 at 07.53.20

Sole Survivors: The Two Entrepreneurs Stepping Up Rwanda’s Waste-To-Wealth Economy With Their Eco-Friendly Shoes

The future of the world is linked to the future of Africa and this tech giant is investing in it to enable startup successes.



BY PAULA SLIER AND SASHA STAR



GOOGLE ANNOUNCED IN EARLY OCTOBER THAT it would be investing $1 billion into Africa over the next five years. This is to focus on improving connectivity and enabling startups to flourish. The move is hardly the first but a reaffirmation of its commitment in Africa which it has been a part of for 14 years.



“If you look at sub-Saharan Africa, it’s home to 1.1 billion people, most of them very, very young. But only about 300 million people use the Internet on a regular basis,” reveals Google’s sub-Saharan Africa Managing Director, Nitin Gajria. “So there’s about 800 million people that have never experienced its power. Our goal with this billion-dollar investment is really to play some role in hopefully building a vibrant Internet ecosystem on the continent.”



In Gajria’s view, a key aspect of the ecosystem is emerging startups and the impact they can make. “I believe that no-one is better placed to solve some of Africa’s most profound challenges than young startup founders, young developers and the startup community in general.”



One of the startups that Google has taken under its digital wing is Food For Mzansi. The initiative, which recently turned three, focuses on South Africa’s agriculture sector, offering a platform for farmers to “grow” their communities by sharing their stories, news, opinions, career opportunities, and even recipes.



“We wanted to create a citizen journalist network — to upskill people and train them in basically everything from media ethics, to how to get stories and tell stories,” explains co-founder Kobus Louwrens.



The tech company facilitated the Sinelizwi remote training program that equipped 62 journalists with the skills and mentorship required to find sources and develop stories.



Although it began as an in-person workshop in the rural Eastern Cape province, like many projects, it was forced online by the Covid-19 pandemic and was thereafter conducted over WhatsApp.



“We are still fairly young in terms of our state of development and Google coming aboard with support and funding definitely fast-tracked that for us,” Louwrens shares.



“There was a vast information exchange and our team received a lot of experience in regards to structuring a much more sustainable project than I think would have been possible without the input from those experts.”



Gidi Mobile is another startup that Google has identified as improving the lives of those on the continent. The Nigerian startup enables low-income students to access online learning through its app, allowing them to attend classes on a variety of subjects and test their understanding through game-like modules.



“In the West, education has traditionally been the thing that has helped people grow and lift them up. The problem we have in the developing world is that the people who have the greatest need to be lifted up are precisely the people who cannot afford quality education,” states founder Tunji Adegbesan who has been teaching teenagers since he was one himself.



Gidi now has access to expertise and has helped to create STEM content that relies on gaming technology, rather than conventional learning. By participating in tournaments and quests, users find themselves engaging with the subject matter and actually having fun doing so.



While a wealth of exciting ideas are springing forth from Africa’s depths, real challenges still stand in the way of ensuring that all citizens can benefit from them.



“There remain challenges with connectivity — whether it’s the cost of a smartphone, network coverage, data speeds, data costs — these are all real, tangible, meaningful challenges that the lay person on the street faces,” Gajria admits.



Google is laying the Equiano subsea cable along the west coast of Africa.



As Gajria states, “Anyone who is looking at Africa has to realize the potential and opportunity that exists. I can’t help but believe that the future of the world is inextricably linked to the future of the continent.”

Screenshot 2021-12-21 at 09.10.45

How A Billion For A Billion Is Going To Enable Startups in Africa To Flourish

Speaking to FORBES AFRICA from snowy and cold Toronto, Kenyan-born journalist Salimah Ebrahim delves into the details of her new entrepreneurial tech (ad)venture, Bramble.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“We always tell the stories of success, but we never dwell on the struggles that it took to get to that success.”</blockquote>



These are words of 38-year-old Salimah Ebrahim who has gone from journalism to becoming an entrepreneur to fully immersing herself in the tech space. However, she does believe that her journey as a journalist is no different from her journey as a co-founder of both Artery and Bramble.



To help “facilitate humanity online”, East African-born Ebrahim speaks to FORBES AFRICA about her journey to both Artery and Bramble. The concept behind Artery was more about culture creation rather than just content creation.



“We were obsessed with gatherings,” Ebrahim says recalling the launch of Artery in 2018. Pre-pandemic, Artery was about letting people into your space and allowing them to submerge themselves into different cultures across the globe.



“My journalism career has taken me across the world,” Ebrahim says. “And during this time, this is sort of taking me to Bramble, I noticed that my goal always as a journalist was the same as what I wanted as a kid. I wanted people to kind of see the ‘other’ and to do less ‘othering’ in general. And to know that the same type of desires that you have in Vancouver you have in Nairobi. This is in terms of what you want in a day, what you want for your family, what you want for yourself, the aspirations, the goals, the shared music and poetry.”



In March 2020, the concept of <a href="https://www.notion.so/Meet-Bramble-b45d17ecae674e43a378610c440b90e8">Bramble </a>came to life.



In 2019, the Artery community co-created thousands of intimate gatherings in real life across half a dozen cities. When the pandemic began, they decided to move their showcases online, like many other companies across the globe. However, Artery quickly noticed all the tools that exist for online interaction were built for meetings.



“We tried to make it work on Zoom, but quickly realized we had to reimagine the technology itself. Being a cultural organizer and a tech company put us in the unique position to reimagine the virtual experience of gathering. Our solution was based on the idea that we all have teleconferencing apps, but they all lack context. And context is critical, so we had to think about what design decisions would actually make remote communication more fun, less claustrophobic.”



For the past two decades, Ebrahim has dedicated her life to storytelling, always in unique and captivating ways. All of this started with her love for her country, Kenya.



Like her father, Ebrahim was also born in Nairobi. Her mother is from Zanzibar but eventually also found a home in Kenya. One of the first languages Ebrahim learned to speak was Swahili. In the 1990s, Ebrahim, along with her family, moved to Vancouver, Canada.



However, this is when the journalism bug really began to bite.



“And all over the world. I had family; extended family in India, London, South Africa, Zanzibar&#8230; And so for me, quite young, I found those physical newspapers and I always remember, I would always check with the weather first, this was a really important connection to all of them,” Ebrahim recalls. “I remember being seven or eight years old, and being at friends’ sleepovers in Canada, and I might have been the only seven- or eight-year-old that went in and asked for the morning paper after a sleepover. It wasn&#8217;t even about me, it was just about people I loved and lived in the world. And I wanted to know what was happening.”



After beginning her international journalism career in the alleyways of Cairo, Ebrahim spent years reporting on culture and politics from the Middle East, covering the war in Iraq and reporting on environmental security challenges in Africa. She also was on the trail for the historic 2008 US presidential campaign, and for a time was based in Washington DC covering the White House.



“I&#8217;ll say this when people look at my career path, they see dots. They see I&#8217;ve worked as a journalist, they see I&#8217;ve worked as an environmentalist, they see I&#8217;ve worked in tech, and all I see are lines where people see dots,” Ebrahim says.



“Because through those lines of all that work has been the central question of my life that I have had since I was a very young kid, which was really impacted by where I was born and where I grew up, which is ‘how do we see each other, how do we find ways to help people see what they would call the ‘other’ so that they are the ‘other’ no more’.”



It’s through being a journalist, when she had to work more than one job, or try to be an active member in the technology sector as a woman of color that she has begun to appreciate the moments of struggle.



It’s the story of struggle and authenticity that make ‘the connections’ that have always played a part in Ebrahim’s story.



“I once interviewed Maya Angelou, and she said to me that people talk about these great leaders like Martin Luther King or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Ebrahim says. “And they don&#8217;t talk about like all sides of them. They don&#8217;t talk about their faults and their fables and their humor. And the problem is we only tell stories with the parts of success.



“I read articles, and I&#8217;ll read something about someone and be like, ‘wow, they&#8217;re just a different person than I am. Or they have this different ability or whatever. And we don&#8217;t dare emulate them. And that&#8217;s a great tragedy.”



Ebrahim believes that virtual spaces will continue long past the pandemic as a new way to tell stories and socialize with people online. That is why platforms like Bramble will become an important element in people&#8217;s lives.



“The metaphor of a physical space is incredibly useful – it lets people explore, it lets the organizer design the experience in real time, and it’s just really fun.”

Screenshot 2021-12-21 at 08.55.25

The Pandemic Way Of Connecting And Storytelling But With A Twist

The transportation industry is not without its challenges. However, 28-year-old tech and transit guru Shahzeb Memon believes that it’s these challenges that will be the driving force shaping better economies. It’s in solving them in the emerging markets that along the way, SWVL is even achieving unicorn status.



It’s mid-day when the splendorous Spanish afternoon sun fills the bustling Barcelona office of SWVL, and pours into the Zoom call we are having with Shahzeb Memon, the Global Head of its Transportation As A Service (TaaS) business.



Though based in Barcelona, Memon begins by harking back to his sunny days in Kenya where he has spent enough time to call it his most favourite country in the world.



“Why? Well, that is simple. I feel like of all the countries I have worked in, Kenya is the one place I feel de-stressed,” Memon recalls fondly.



Through SWVL, headquartered in Dubai, Memon finds himself trying to solve the transportation challenges in Kenya and beyond thanks to his proclivity for technology and his philanthropic nature.



The company specializes in an application for hailing buses. The whole idea is built on giving people a mode of transport that is “safe, reliable and accessible”. The key driver for anyone who works at SWVL is to be passionate about this ideology.



Memon’s passion has its roots in Karachi, Pakistan, where he grew up. He says his inclination for the transit-tech space began when he saw how inaccessible basic transportation was to people in his home city, specifically for women and children.



“In a city like Karachi, there are a lot of people. There are millions with not enough transport opportunities available, and the transport options available for people are limited,” Memon says to FORBES AFRICA.



“Especially women who need to go from A to B. So the mothers or sisters; a big reason why they are not able to be part of the workforce is when you look at a country like Pakistan, if there are four men in the workforce, there&#8217;s only one woman. And the biggest reason why a woman is not there is because the transportation options don&#8217;t really exist.”



And now, Memon is proud to be part of a company that prioritizes accessibility, the empowerment of women and looks to the future to see what the digital world of transportation should look like.



It’s this future thinking that has landed SWVL in the unicorn club.



At the end of July 2021, Nasdaq – the American multinational financial services corporation that owns and operates three stock exchanges in the United States – announced that SWVL is expected by the end of the year to be the first $1.5 billion tech unicorn startup from the Middle East.



According to Nasdaq, it is also the only tech-enabled mass transit solutions company to list on any stock exchange.



“For us, it is just a number,” Memon says, “It is also probably just the validation, but this is just the start. We don&#8217;t see that as the end, or where we&#8217;re going to get complacent. The problem statement is $8-trillion globally, we are at $1.5 billion, which is nowhere near to solving the problem at all.”



Unicorns in Africa and the Middle East are only now slowly becoming more prevalent. Unicorns are privately held, fast-growing startups with a valuation equal to or above $1 billion. Unicorns are “rare creatures”, which, according to Ian Lessem, Managing Director of HAVAÍC, is expected to rise in Africa in the coming years.



In a recent press release, Lessem says the number of billion-dollar companies is growing faster than ever before.



“It is thanks to a combination of factors, not least of which has been the interest in these growing sectors from venture capital investors,” explains Lessem. “Across the globe, the number of billion-dollar companies is doubling in half the time, all while delivering leading returns.”



“We celebrated on the day we found out but then the next day we continued with our work,” Memon says.



In a perfect digital world, Memon believes that SWVL’s proprietary mobility solutions, “powered by cutting-edge technology”, are going to help solve mass transit supply and demand challenges in complex, emerging markets.



Having been in this space for some time, he jokes that even at 28 years old, he is a dinosaur in the young business but in being in the transit-tech space he realized how many problems you could solve by just empowering that space.



“There&#8217;s such a big massive gap&#8230;” Memon says. “Markets in which we operate, there is a massive opportunity to solve a problem like sexual harassment. And if you look at some stats in Cairo or in Karachi, 95% of the women who have traveled on a mass transit system, claim to have been sexually harassed.”



This has become a personal mission for Memon who wants to create a small dent in solving these social issues that come with transportation.



“It&#8217;s not a mission that I think I&#8217;ll be able to see in my lifetime, but the mission and the eventual goal is to be able to live in a society where safety is at the core. Reliability and convenience are at the core. And solving for transportation essentially becomes the backbone of solving for so many other problem statements, and is the biggest reason why economies also flourish.”



In just four years, SWVL has been able to open mass transit systems across 10 cities in Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Further, the company empowers drivers in emerging markets – who frequently experience income uncertainty from existing mass transit operations – to earn approximately double that of other ride-sharing platforms. Although there are plans to expand into different parts of Africa still, Memon explains that the reason SWVL decided to set up another shop in Nairobi is because the country “checked all the boxes”. These boxes being affordability, an already existent bus culture and the third being&#8230;



“Actually the most important was Kenya is the only market where mobile penetration [is massive] and because of the revolution of M-PESA. The digital economy and the addressable population was massive,” he explains.



“We&#8217;re actually in final conversations to lock a few B2B accounts within Uganda, within Rwanda, and so on and so forth, some big ones as well. So that will kind of penetrate our strategy into eastern Africa. South Africa is also on the radar. It&#8217;s just because of Covid-19 that we haven&#8217;t been able to go much deeper.”



SWVL places a lot of emphasis on employing female drivers which coincides a lot with the vision that Memon has to see a future where women are more included in driving, literally, the economy forward.



“I&#8217;ll be very honest, in Pakistan, I have been very privileged,” Memonsays. “I got a chance to go to a great school and then to a great university, to travel to great places which would essentially require me to start asking questions, and then do some critical reasoning and thinking. You start realizing is this the society in which we live, and why are they&#8217;re not built on the right premise of equality.”



Bringing digital into the transport space has not always been easy but Memon&#8217;s inspiration has always been to place opportunities for women, young entrepreneurs and those who have previously been disadvantaged at the forefront of his mission.



&#8220;Our society is not built on the premise of providing the same sort of options and opportunities to everybody. There&#8217;s a lot of injustice that exists. So by me getting and acquiring more and questioning my personal beliefs, I would say; that really got me to this realization that this is not something that should be happening.



“If I was born in a society like this, I should not be dying out of a society like this,” he strongly adds in conclusion.

IMG_1640

The Techpreneur Driving Change One Bus At A Time

As FORBES AFRICA celebrates a landmark 10th year, we look back on our stellar collection of cover stars and features and some of the most &#8220;quotable quotes&#8221; from the last ten years. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-Dec_Jan-RGB-793x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52876" width="298" height="385" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-Dec_Jan-RGB-793x1024.jpg 793w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-Dec_Jan-RGB-232x300.jpg 232w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-Dec_Jan-RGB-768x991.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-Dec_Jan-RGB-1190x1536.jpg 1190w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-Dec_Jan-RGB.jpg 1258w" sizes="(max-width: 298px) 100vw, 298px" /></figure></div>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">I often say I can sleep on a mud floor as well as a feathered bed and be very comfortable. It has made me someone who can do without things in life because of what we went through.-Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, December 2020 /January 2021</blockquote>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“IF WE CONTINUE DOING THE RIGHT THINGS IN AFRICA WE CAN CREATE A VERY EXCITING AND COMPETITIVE GLOBAL MARKET HERE.”– Patrice Motsepe, October 2011 (launch issue)</blockquote>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-28-at-17.31.24.png" alt="" class="wp-image-53194" width="439" height="349" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-28-at-17.31.24.png 686w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-28-at-17.31.24-300x239.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 439px) 100vw, 439px" /></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1-782x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52782" width="318" height="416" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1-782x1024.jpg 782w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1-229x300.jpg 229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1-768x1006.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1-1173x1536.jpg 1173w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1.jpg 1240w" sizes="(max-width: 318px) 100vw, 318px" /></figure></div>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">THERE IS NO BULLSHIT WITH WOMEN. WE DON’T WASTE TIME OUT OF POLITENESS.– Wendy Appelbaum, August 2012</blockquote>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">You have to sit down and look at your business model and say ‘can it be interrupted’? – Jannie Mouton, July 2017</blockquote>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">LIFE IS ABOUT TRIPPING AND FALLING AND LEARNING FROM MISTAKES, PULLING YOUR STRENGTHS AND MOVING ON.– Gbenga Oyebode, July 2018</blockquote>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">It’s not only all about how much money you would have made and what you would have got. It’s about having a little bit of fun.” – Sol Kerzner, October 2014</blockquote>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2018-MARCH-RGB-793x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52852" width="414" height="535" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2018-MARCH-RGB-793x1024.jpg 793w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2018-MARCH-RGB-232x300.jpg 232w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2018-MARCH-RGB-768x992.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2018-MARCH-RGB-1189x1536.jpg 1189w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2018-MARCH-RGB.jpg 1258w" sizes="(max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px" /></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-MAR-RGB-793x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52878" width="336" height="434" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-MAR-RGB-793x1024.jpg 793w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-MAR-RGB-232x300.jpg 232w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-MAR-RGB-768x991.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-MAR-RGB-1190x1536.jpg 1190w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FA-2020-MAR-RGB.jpg 1258w" sizes="(max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px" /></figure></div>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“If you fall flat on your face, beat yourself up and do it again until you succeed&#8230;” – Richard Branson, March 2018</blockquote>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“USING YOUR INFLUENCE TO CREATE IMPACT AND BETTER THE LIVES OF OTHERS — THAT IS WHAT BEING A POWERFUL WOMAN MEANS TO ME.” – Graça Machel, March 2020</blockquote>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-28-at-17.31.36.png" alt="" class="wp-image-53193" width="339" height="384" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-28-at-17.31.36.png 454w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-28-at-17.31.36-265x300.png 265w" sizes="(max-width: 339px) 100vw, 339px" /></figure></div>

quotes

FORBES AFRICA 10TH ANNIVERSARY: FROM PAST EDITIONS- Who Said What

By:<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/people/briandevans1/">Brian D. Evans</a> | Forbes Councils Member



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="pressboard-ad-sponsorship-tag_1634734872602">Inc 500 Entrepreneur. NFT Enthusiast &amp; Consultant. Founder at <a href="https://www.inc.com/profile/bde-ventures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BDE Ventures</a>, a marketing and consulting agency.</h4>



Unless you&#8217;ve been living under a rock, such as the EtherRock that recently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/23/people-are-paying-millions-of-dollars-for-digital-pictures-of-rocks.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sold for&nbsp;</a>$1.3 million, you&#8217;ve probably heard about non-fungible tokens&nbsp;(NFTs). NFTs have become the rage on the internet, offering a novel opportunity for creators, artists and developers. With tons of projects and tokens, the NFT subsector is<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/nft-sales-volume-surges-25-bln-2021-first-half-2021-07-05/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;worth billions of dollars</a>, making it a fast-growing subsector in the cryptocurrency and blockchain scene.



NFTs aren&#8217;t just valuable economically. They&#8217;re also revolutionary when it comes to branding. Projects such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Koala Intelligence Agency, Art Blocks, CyberKongz&nbsp;and many more are changing brand-building approaches.&nbsp;The days of physical brand building, which has helped companies such as Nike, Gucci, etc., create their followings, is being replaced by a digital metaverse with a cult following.



CryptoPunks and BAYC NFTs (both of which I own at least one of) have created communities of core enthusiasts that are rarely seen with mainstream brands. For instance, it&#8217;s rare to find someone changing their profile picture to a new Nike kicks or Patek watch, no matter how valuable those assets are. But on Twitter, you can find many people&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-bored-ape-avatars-are-taking-over-twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">changing their profile pictures</a>&nbsp;to avatars of their favorite NFT project.



These vibrant communities help in increasing the value of NFTs. Today, the most popular NFTs are worth more than a small house in some parts of America. For instance, CryptoPunks tokens, pixelated humanoid characters that were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/12/christies-sold-cryptopunks-nfts-collection-for-millions.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">given away for free back in 2017</a>, were worth a minimum of about $400,000 when I wrote this.MORE FOR YOU<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/09/19/empathy-is-the-most-important-leadership-skill-according-to-research/">Empathy Is The Most Important Leadership Skill According To Research</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2021/09/22/why-us-talent-shortages-are-at-a-ten-year-high/">Why U.S. Talent Shortages Are At A 10-Year High</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/09/26/you-probably-need-more-friends-heres-how-to-make-them/">You Probably Need More Friends—Here’s How To Make Them</a>



As a consultant with my own agency, I see a lot of projects early on. Every successful NFT project adopts different but similar brand-building strategies. These strategies have helped create a vibrant community for them, which means more awareness and mainstream interest. But despite the current popularity and value of the NFT sector, I think there&#8217;s still plenty of room for improvement in approach and technology.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Access And Utility&nbsp;</h2>



NFTs as access passes are a growing theme. This is when owning an NFT gives the holder access to certain benefits. Such benefits range from being part of an exclusive club to real-life benefits such as having access to certain works or events and even access to stories are part of it for some. One interesting case is VeeFriends. (I own a VeeFriend as well.) Gary Vaynerchuk created the collection of 10,255 tokens, and holders will be able to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gary-vaynerchuk-releases-his-first-nft-collection-veefriends-301284312.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">attend VeeCon</a>&nbsp;for the next three years.



Here are three access and utility strategies for those getting involved in NFT marketing:



• First, improve access by stacking on the benefits and quality of what the end user gets access to.



•&nbsp;Next, you can improve the technology itself to have NFTs more closely integrated with &#8220;opening the doors&#8221; — meaning nothing else is needed but the NFT itself to physically grant the access.



• Last, the NFT utility that we see today probably won&#8217;t be the utility we see in five years. We&#8217;re in for a lot of innovation in the coming years, and you can capitalize by being more creative than the next person.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Rarity And Exclusiveness</h2>



NFTs easily create scarcity, which has made the assets more valuable. For instance, CryptoPunks and BAYC have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/26/22639353/cool-cats-bayc-generative-nft-profile-avatar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">only 10,000 NFTs each</a>, and this rarity means anyone who owns them is part of an exclusive group. Not only does it make the NFTs more attractive to others, but it also makes the owners want to flaunt them.&nbsp;



BAYC has many different &#8220;traits&#8221; (visual properties) for its 10,000 NFTs. Food for thought for builders would be to make a few hundred NFTs with 10,000 traits or some outrageous change from the current norm.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Die-Hard Community</h2>



NFT projects usually focus on creating a strong community before anything else. They use strategies such as community engagement, opinion polls, extra benefits and more. Gala Games also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gala-games-and-opera-announce-multi-level-partnership-to-create-carbon-neutral-nfts-301322430.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has NFTs</a>, but it takes customer service to new levels and has one of the most engaged and helpful Discord servers I have ever seen.



Establishing communities for NFT projects really comes down to getting buy-in from your audience. Make sure they fall in love with your NFT, story or project. Focusing on your first 1,000 fans can carry you very far in reaching a wider audience.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fun, Interactive And Meaningful Experience</h2>



Another way NFT projects go about brand building is by offering members an interactive and fun experience. Koala Intelligence Agency perhaps does the best job of this, by&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nft-collection-koala-intelligence-agency-090102495.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">making its tokens &#8220;agents&#8221;</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://stockhead.com.au/cryptocurrency/nft-alpha-how-to-find-the-next-pudgy-penguins-is-it-koala-intelligence-agency/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">giving owners missions</a>. It feels like a secret club that people want to be a part of.



User experience and story buy-in are key. You want NFT owners to feel like they&#8217;re part of the experience. Find ways to make each person feel special, and like they&#8217;re part of the story.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Potential Of NFT Projects</h2>



Given the value that many NFT projects already have, their brand appeal will likely only increase with time, and they can create a metaverse as popular Nike. Already, NFT projects are gaining mainstream interest from celebrities and sports stars.



Even mainstream brands are watching the NFT scene. For example,&nbsp;<a href="https://thenextweb.com/news/nike-blockchain-sneakers-cryptokick-patent" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nike patented CryptoKicks</a>, and other consumer brands such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.morningbrew.com/marketing/stories/2021/10/06/agencies-are-figuring-out-how-to-safely-guide-brands-through-the-wild-world-of-nfts" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Coca-Cola</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/taco-bell-potatoes-return-celebrated-with-nft-crypto-collectibles-2021-3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Taco Bell</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/asics-nft-sunrise-red-collection/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ASICS</a>&nbsp;have used NFTs as part of their marketing strategies. Similarly, NFT projects are already getting mainstream coverage. For instance, CryptoPunks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/uta-cryptopunks-nft-film-tv-vieo-games-1235005392/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recently signed a deal</a>&nbsp;with United Talent Agency to let the agency represent the project for TV, games and other media. Thus, NFT projects are already on the path to becoming global brands, led by art, incredible marketing and community building.



If you&#8217;re getting involved in creating and marketing NFTs, the thing to keep in mind is deep involvement from your audience. If you can get your audience on your team and out there championing you in a big way, you&#8217;re much more likely to make it.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Follow me on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.twitter.com/BrianDEvans" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Twitter</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandevansla" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.&nbsp;Check out&nbsp;my&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inc.com/profile/bde-ventures/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">website</a>.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/people/briandevans1/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/people/briandevans1/">Brian D. Evans</a>



Inc 500 Entrepreneur. NFT Enthusiast &amp; Consultant. Founder at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inc.com/profile/bde-ventures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BDE Ventures</a>, a marketing and consulting agency.&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.forbes.com/u/a07bec07-5dff-47ea-9653-14b56a7dab7d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read Brian D. Evans&#8217; full executive profile here.</a>…&nbsp;Read More

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How To Make An NFT Project As Popular As Nike

Tanzanian agripreneur Darpan Pindolia is trying to balance local production with global offerings. The versatile earth in East Africa is his calling card to international success in regenerative farming.



BY INAARA GANGJI



THE TERM ‘REMOTE WORK’ VERY WELL APPLIES TO Darpan Pindolia. His place of work is the lush green farm he has set up outside the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he ponders under the African sun, about how he can continue to explore the natural



bounties the East African region is bestowed with for the sustenance of farmers as well as for sustainable agriculture.



Herbal plants and superfoods are his specialty. The local farmers grow each plant using organic permaculture practices and sustainable methods of generating energy. Any waste is converted to biogas and rainwater is harvested, leading to zero-waste production up until the factory level, with all value-adding done locally.



Pindolia’s priority is creating a sustainable and profitable organic African brand called Dhow Nature Foods. He was raised surrounded by these green ideas as his family grew their own vegetables and made oils at home in Tanzania. Even when living in Australia later, Pindolia bought organic grains from farmers and milled the flour at home.



“Whether you are well off or not, ultimately, your appetite is very similar&#8230; food is your fuel and it’s really important where it comes from and how it’s grown,” he says.



The 37-year-old draws on the example of the pesticides and fertilizer industry in India – where his family originally hails from.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">There are no African brands – a lot of them have brands based in London that are portrayed to be African-produced, but they’re not based in Africa, and they don’t make a big impact and effect.</blockquote>



Government lobbying for their use led to many farmers not seeing profits as the soil quality declined over time. While there are no additives in local superfoods such as Moringa that Pindolia grows and are known for their health benefits, the regenerative farming methods mean the products have no negative impact, from a business perspective, on both the land and the economy. In addition, the company contributes to the local community by focusing on training, hygiene and education.



“For customers, they know where their food comes from, so that was the basic thesis of the business model. We want to be a model of what a sustainable business should look like. As the younger generation, if we don’t address inequality through the capitalist model, who’s going to? All businesses should have a social enterprise responsibility,” says Pindolia.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-53056" width="395" height="592" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-7-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="(max-width: 395px) 100vw, 395px" /><figcaption>Photo by Dharmit Laxman</figcaption></figure></div>



Dhow Nature’s focus is as a local African brand challenging misconceptions and setting standards for what sustainability looks like in the Global South.



“This is another reason why we do things&#8230; I think there’s big opportunity in that space&#8230; there are no African brands – a lot of them have brands based in London that are portrayed to be African- produced, but they’re not based in Africa, and they don’t make a big impact and effect,” he emphasizes.



With the factory only starting production in 2017, the introduction of e-commerce last year has taken this local brand international, with new customers in the United Kingdom, Australia and across the world.



A civil engineer by profession, Pindolia found it to be a real learning curve scaling the company, from branding to distribution, despite being adequately backed by personal finances.



“Now we do bulk and branded. And we supply to some of the really well-known companies around the world as a small business.”



But the real challenge, he thinks, is in the future – as a global competitor in the online space – in marketing and generating sales. And this, besides how difficult it is to ship to anywhere from Tanzania. He hopes to hire a CEO and scale even further into new markets such as Europe and China, having just launched in the United States.



“Your standards and your team, everyone has to be basically globally competitive in terms of their skill-sets, otherwise you’re not going to survive. And that’s probably one of the hardest challenges we face, because we’re working in Tanzania, we don’t have access to that global talent. So [we are] just trying to manage that balance of global talent or global expertise to achieve that skill,” he adds. Despite the challenges, what keeps Pindolia going is the fact that his products ultimately help people. With over 



13,000 customers across the globe, many leave heart-warming stories behind on what impact the products are having on their health. One story is of a customer who could not play his guitar anymore because of arthritis, but then after consuming giloy, or heart-leaved moonseed, one of Dhow Nature’s products, his fingers are moving again.



“When we are young, we are so skeptical [of local remedies]&#8230; One of my visions is if we can actually catalogue these systematically because they work; in the long-term, it is to capture that knowledge before we lose it as a generation,” says the farmer looking beyond the greens, to new horizons of agricultural thought and practice.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-11-1024x682.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-53060" width="606" height="403" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-11-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-11-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-11-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-11-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit-Laxman-11-2048x1364.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 606px) 100vw, 606px" /><figcaption>Photo by Dharmit Laxman</figcaption></figure></div>

Dhow-Forbes_Dharmit Laxman (1)

SOIL TOIL: The Agripreneur Who Wants to Cultivate Regenerative Farming To New Heights

Philip Opperman lives and works in a picture postcard. On the banks of a tranquil lake east of Rwanda, this South African farmer runs a popular restaurant bar and sells fresh fish. He came looking for peace but found so much more.



WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPH: RIDHIMA SHUKLA



ON YET ANOTHER RAINY DAY IN RWANDA, A TWO-hour drive 50km east of the capital of Kigali, and finally down a long dirt road – muddy in the rain – a charming village awaits.



A glistening lake appears from behind a wooden gate and as you take the descending steps towards it, from across the picket fence in the distance, a man in his late 50s is in a green yard with his back to us. There are birds and bees on the tall palm trees, and the dogs on the property lazily eye the new visitors entering this tropical haven.



It’s an ideal workplace for a man born and bred on a farm although far away in South Africa. 



The son of a dairy farm owner, Philip Opperman grew up in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city, during apartheid.



His life was about soccer, school and long days helping out at the farm, until he was inducted into the South African Defence Force in 1981 for a two-year compulsory stint, and his view of life changed, far from the pastoral pleasures of his father’s farm.



Now resident in his adopted home, Rwanda, Opperman tells FORBES AFRICA, when we meet and as he unravels his journey from South Africa to this village in the hills: “I turned 18 in the army. It opened my eyes to what was going on in South Africa.”



After being relieved from the military, he went on to follow his family trade and pursued a degree in “animal agriculture” but life, yet again, had other plans.



He found himself working as a construction manager navigating some of the most unwelcoming parts of Africa.



Destiny took him far away from his Pretoria farm, as he crisscrossed the continent, for the next two decades laying out infrastructure projects in Nigeria, Angola, and Cameroon.



Back in South Africa, as the project manager for the Government Communication and Information System building in Pretoria, in 2012, Opperman had a chance to meet with staff at the Rwandan Embassy to seek permission for running a loud drilling operation next door.



The senior official at the embassy was looking for a qualified builder to construct the Park INN by Radisson hotel in Kigali, and asked if he was interested. His life was about to change completely.



“When I was offered the job, I had to look up the country [Rwanda] on Google; it was a tiny dot in the heart of Africa.”



While spending a lot of time in Kigali, Opperman found himself having not much else to do in the city. But the hill country, blessed with natural resources, stretched far beyond the city limits, and so he decided to buy a small, tranquil piece of land on the banks of Lake Muhazi in the eastern province.



This became a favorite spot for him and his friends, where they would convene to catch fresh tilapia and camp under the stars.



Sitting by the lake, fishing, was Opperman’s greatest joy, when in 2013, he found that the Rwanda Development Board was looking for investors in fish farming.



“I decided to move away from construction because I was looking for peace.”



It felt serendipitous to the farm boy in him, as his tiny plot by the lake had the ideal ecosystem to farm-fresh fish and entertain guests at a beautiful location by the waters.



After procuring the required licenses from government agencies, which was a smooth process, he set out to build his house on the same property adjacent to his new wintering cages in the lake.



Here, he now lives with his Rwandan business partner, Charlie, and their two young kids. Asked why he chose to live on the farm, he cheekily responds: “Away from your assets is closer to your losses.”



As the need for fresh fish was paramount in Rwanda – which primarily sold frozen fish – business picked up quickly, as hotels, restaurants and big households became Opperman’s regular customers. But due to a shortage of fingerling suppliers in the region, he was unable to meet the demands of his regular clientele or maintain his stock.



So he decided to innovate and expand his property four-fold to begin culturing fingerlings too on his farm. Enterprises across Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) came to know of his venture, which led to a boom in his business.



The next step was to set up large breeding ponds up the hill on his newly-extended property. One milestone led to another, and by 2017, he had become one of the leading producers of fresh fish in the country.



But, as Opperman puts it: “Farming is a gamble – you never know what might destroy months and years of hard work, an infestation, or a storm could drastically change your circumstances.”



In the same year, algae bloom in Lake Muhazi caused major oxygen depletion in the water body and while other fish farmers suffered great losses, he was able to mitigate the damage because of the strategic positioning of his wintering cages, as they had a steady circulation of freshwater.



Tapping into his entrepreneurial spirit, he planted macadamia too adjacent to his farm.



In 2019, Opperman added a restaurant called Fish Pub to his lake-side repertoire. The menu was simple and initially the kitchen ran out of his own home. But large crowds flocked to his offbeat, off-grid location, bringing buying power from the city into the country.



When he had first started out his weekend relaxation camp by the lake, the area was still disconnected from the formal electrical grid. His efforts led to a transformer being installed in the area and electrical lines being drawn through the village. Inadvertently, his entrepreneurial pursuits also resulted in many homes in the area receiving electricity for the first time, thus endearing him to the locals.



In 2019, his lake-side restaurant and bar, made with fine teak, became a cultural landmark hosting guests from afar, providing them with food and ambiance.



But with Covid-19 in 2020, business took an unconventional turn. “The first lockdown had a huge impact on all economies and mine was no different! We imported our fish fodder from outside of Rwanda and with the borders closed, that became impossible. It also became harder to sell the fresh produce due to its short shelf-life!” says Opperman.



He halted the breeding of the tilapias in order to feed and maintain the population in his ponds with the remaining fish fodder.



But his diversified investments helped him stay afloat during the pandemic. As the restaurant industry worldwide is slowly reviving, as also in Rwanda, Opperman now awaits his first harvest of macadamia nuts.



He is among the many expatriates – including other South Africans – who have made Rwanda home, benefiting from the country’s ease of doing business, and its abundant resources and natural beauty. Opperman says his indefatigable spirit resonates with Rwanda’s own resurgence from a difficult past into a hopeful future.



“I have everything I need right here, I am home!”

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 14.03.58

The Man Who Found Peace In A Busy Restaurant In The Heart Of Africa

Marketing ideas that match the company brand

World’s Most Influential CMOs 2021

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



Pullquotes:



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



It was not an easy ride.



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



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



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



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

Screenshot 2021-09-30 at 18.41.20

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

South African businessman Teddy Daka says infrastructure is what drives economies and jobs and is leading innovation in this sector.



Teddy Daka watched the recent unrest that gripped South Africa with a heavy heart – an experience shared by many in the country. With violence and looting rife in the country’s Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, logistics and transport came to a standstill and critical road, telecommunications and transport infrastructure worth billions was destroyed in the process.



At the time of the interview, and in such a scenario, still in recovery from his own brush with Covid-19, Daka managed to bring humor and a positive outlook to leadership and the future of South African business. As the head of Zutari, an engineering, procurement and construction firm in South Africa, Daka is optimistic. “My colleagues say I’m crazy about infrastructure.” says Daka, an academic, philanthropist and executive who has led business transformation in the tech sector.



Previously, when at the helm of tech firm Etion in 2013, he brought its engineering background to the forefront in a digital business environment and saw it as a JSE-listed company. “I wanted to help one more time, to give back to society,” says Daka, returning to business as the co-CEO of Zutari.



However, this turnaround period has come with its own challenges in a Covid environment. But the pandemic has seen the acceleration to a digital business, which Daka sees as a way to bridge the gap between local and international businesses. “Being a company that is transitioning into a digital practice made it much easier to see how we can work around the pandemic… We ramped up very quickly on our remote working tools.”



Daka seeks to find advantages.



“If there’s any silver lining to the pandemic, it’s the acceleration, the pushing of companies to go digital faster than they would ordinarily – it’s allowing us to catch up with more advanced countries… There’s no doubt that the pandemic has begun to equalize between the Global North and the Global South in the use of technology.” Belief in South Africa’s innovation potential is a core fundamental to his optimism despite the recent strife the country has seen, “[For example], South African banks on the digital transformation side are more advanced than American banks. We came up with apps, the way we transfer money… we’re right on the cutting edge of how these things are done.” Daka believes that there is much more room for growth in other industries, particularly when it comes to infrastructure development, and that private and public partnerships are key to achieving this



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“There’s no doubt that the pandemic has begun to equalize between the Global North and the Global South in the use of technology.”</blockquote>



growth – and that the responses to both the Covid-19 pandemic and civil unrest are good examples of the state, business and civil society working together to achieve key goals.



“These challenges have brought the parties together – and that’s what we need.” A firm believer in the role that infrastructure has to play in societal upliftment, Daka has a personal commitment to the engineering, procurement and construction industry facilitating growth for the South African economy and its people.



“If I look at my country, if I look at our continent, the goal is to try and bring the infrastructure that allows for economies to grow… That road that we have connected between a village to a city, we’ve increased the traffic between the two, it allows an economy to begin to grow within that space – that’s the impact I am talking about.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“How can we create the impact that we want as engineers?”</blockquote>



“How can we create the impact that we want as engineers? Why is it that with all of these massive budgets that governments have, they struggle to bring the necessary impact. In our view – it’s because of the lack of engineering.”



And when a businessman draws inspiration and hope from nature, you know he has got it right. “I’m more optimistic than ever, and I’m less fazed by what I see today. I tend to take a long-term view… If you listen quietly, when the chips are down, you begin to hear the birds singing,” concludes Daka.

Teddy Daka

How Engineering Can Lead To Social Change In South Africa

Entrepreneur Shane Duthie is hoping to reverse the decline of bee populations in South Africa, with not just the sustainable removal of hives from urban areas to places of safety, but educational awareness about the critical role bees play in our lives.



Bees play a largely hidden crucial role in society as we know it and our continued way of life is inextricably linked to theirs.



Research suggests bee populations worldwide are on the decline due to a range of factors, many manmade and avoidable with due care.



Shane Duthie is hoping to help South Africa change that, with not just the sustainable removal of hives from urban areas to places of safety, but educational awareness as to the critical role bees play in our lives.



He has started Bee Kulture, a Johannesburg-based company that he hopes to expand around the country in the coming years, bringing a fresh outlook to the market with the ethical treatment of bees in mind.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/233680938_330962585423332_8639589017355650474_n-819x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52381" width="532" height="665" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/233680938_330962585423332_8639589017355650474_n-819x1024.jpg 819w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/233680938_330962585423332_8639589017355650474_n-240x300.jpg 240w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/233680938_330962585423332_8639589017355650474_n-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/233680938_330962585423332_8639589017355650474_n-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/233680938_330962585423332_8639589017355650474_n.jpg 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 532px) 100vw, 532px" /></figure></div>



“There has been a steady decline in bee populations due to manmade factors such as lack of space, pesticides and pollution, but also climate change. We want to bring more awareness around this,” Duthie tells FORBES AFRICA, adding he was inspired to start his company after seeing the age profile of many currently in the industry, who bring an “old-school” view to the job.



“We belong to the Southerns Beekeeping Association in Johannesburg and I found myself the only person under 50 there. That is also reflected in the industry. I wanted to bring a new brand to the market with a new, environmentally-friendly outlook.



“We started 18 months ago and have grown rapidly to now have 38 hives. The majority of them have been re-hived from domestic homes or businesses, which is the main part of what we do. This has been done in a safe and sustainable way.



“This was initially for domestic clients, but we now do work for corporates as well. What differentiates us is that we save the hive, taking care to ensure we move the brood (eggs) and the wax with the bees. Some other companies just rip out the hive and destroy it.



“We have partnered with pest-removal companies, which allows them to advertise the fact they do the removals in a sustainable way, but we also deal with Bidvest, Sanitech, Rentokil to name a few. We had a hive at a power station that we removed for Eskom recently.”



Duthie says what is also unique about his offering is that Bee Kulture allows companies to sponsor hives, which they can then offset against their ‘green’ initiatives.



“When I was in the United Kingdom, there was a concept of corporates being able to sponsor trees that were being planted to offset their carbon emissions.



“We have something similar, where corporates can sponsor bee apiaries. They pay for the maintenance, and in return, we fully brand the site for them and they can use it in PR and advertising to show their commitment to the environment and their sustainability goals.



“I believe we are the first company in South Africa to offer this.” But on a much more serious note, Duthie says they are also trying to partner with farmers to put apiaries on their land in what is a win-win situation for both.



“That will assist farmers with pollination. Especially the macadamia farms. It can increase their yield by up to 30 percent, just by having some bees on site to cross-pollinate and work for the farmer. We have just begun this process and are not there yet, but I see this as an important pillar going forward.”



Bee Kulture also produce their own honey brand, which Duthie says is “pure” and different from what you would traditionally find on the shelves at supermarkets.



And then there is the education side, with schools visits and community days where Duthie explains why finding workable solutions for the relocation of hives, rather than destroying them, is in everybody’s best interests.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Screenshot-2021-09-02-at-19.47.25.png" alt="" class="wp-image-52371" width="265" height="149" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Screenshot-2021-09-02-at-19.47.25.png 686w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Screenshot-2021-09-02-at-19.47.25-300x169.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 265px) 100vw, 265px" /></figure></div>



“We do a lot of talks at schools. We don’t charge for these, we just do it for the awareness part of it so people can understand how crucial bees are to our local environment. We want to get more people, especially youngsters, to recognize why it is so important to save them.



“For instance, 80 percent of the world’s leading 107 crop types are pollinated by bees. They are an absolute necessity to our food sources. There is a lot of interest. We had a session at a school last month and the Q&amp;A alone from learners was about 45 minutes long. “You could see they were very engaged with the subject and that is very encouraging.”



Duthie says the rapid growth of the business in promising, and the next phase would be to create a model that would allow franchises to be set up in other areas of the country. “WewouldliketosetupafranchiseinCapeTown and elsewhere in the future, and use our existing client-base, many of whom have a national profile, to service those areas.



“We could also potentially take the concept overseas. I still have roots in Manchester from when I was there and that is something I would like to explore in the future.”



By Nick Said

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To Be or Not to Bee: The African Entrepreneur Creating A Buzz

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



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



So Olagoke Balogun had to look at his business afresh.



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



The second hurdle was the location.



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



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



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



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



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

Category: Entrepreneurs

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