Picture yourself living in early 19th century Africa. What would you be clad in? Most likely an outfit made of traditional cloth, perhaps Kuba cloth.
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“We have one of the most beautiful art forms in Africa,” says Crown Prince Kwete Kwete.
Prince Kwete is the son of the 125th king of the Bakuba Kingdom, King Kot Mbueki III. Textiles from Africa are said to be one of the most important gifts to the world of art. The Kuba cloth is associated with royalty and has inspired great artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Matisse’s appliquéd techniques were influenced by the Kuba cloth displayed in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Kuba cloth originated with King Shamba Bolongongo and his son, Shaamweky. From the 16th century, the Kuba people have dressed themselves in Kuba cloth, wrapping it around their waists like a skirt. The cloth is made of raffia from the palm tree. The raffia is picked and dried, softened and woven into different lengths and sizes. The process can take three to four weeks or up to a year.
“Textiles are a sign of wealth for us and every king has a cloth that he wears during ceremonies. When a member of the royal family dies, women from the kingdom wear a certain color cloth for six months. Designs are symbolic and used for particular ceremonies,” says Prince Kwete.
When a king dies, his wives wear special red cloth with subtle patterns in velvet on the borders and openwork embroidery in the middle. Specially designed weavings made of leopard skin and shells are reserved for the king, his wives, the royal court and dancers.
The Kuba cloth is made by the people of the Bakuba Kingdom in the Democratic Republic of Congo—formerly Zaire. But it is the Shoowa, a small sub-tribe of the Bakuba who are renowned for making intricate textiles from the palm fiber creating a tuft pile-like effect using the clipped raffia threads. Weaving intricate geometrical designs can take up to a year.
Some of the designs are on display in museums around the world and have been studied by scholars like George Meurant of Belgium. The beauty and complexity of the Kuba cloth has only recently been appreciated at a time when the most elegant designs are disappearing. European collectors of African textiles started amassing collections of embroidered cut-pile textiles towards the end of the 19th century. These pieces often fetch millions of dollars at auctions. Most collectors are private individuals in America, Britain, France and Poland.
Kuba cloth is on the brink of being lost; Prince Kwete is trying to preserve it with the help of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
“The Kuba cloth is displayed in leading museums, but people do not know where the Bakuba Kingdom is located. Kuba is still existent and we are a population of approximately half a million people including immigrants. Congo is bigger than Eastern Europe and Kuba land is three times the size of Belgium,” he says.
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Together with his father, Prince Kwete is working with the central government of Congo to reach out to other Africans through culture.
“DRC is known for war, but there are attractive investment opportunities in the country.”
King Kot Mbueki III is the first king of Bakuba to have travelled to Kinshasa and Europe.
“He ‘broke away’ from the kingdom by preserving tradition,” says Price Kwete who describes the Bakuba Kingdom as democratic.
“The king is there to reign and not to rule. We have managed to maintain our culture and art because each tribe is represented in the king’s court. When selecting a chief of a village, the people of a village have to go to the king and suggest someone. My father then honors the people’s wish by appointing the suggested person. This goes back nine centuries.”
According to Kenyan fashion model Emma Too, the Kuba cloth is one of the most valuable African textiles together with the Ashanti and Kente from West Africa. American fashion designer Ralph Lauren is known to have made several designs using the Kuba cloth and supermodel Iman wore Kuba designs when she modelled for Africa Heritage. The cloth is also used to decorate homes. Because of its growing demand, the market has been flooded by fake cloth.
“You can tell an original Kuba cloth by how it has been sewn, designed and the quality. If you compare a genuine and fake cloth, the quality of material is world’s apart,” says Prince Kwete.
The people of the Bakuba Kingdom use the cloth as a source of income to support their families through school.
“Since our main source of income was farming and that can barely sustain families, you find people selling their valuable pieces,” says Prince Kwete, who regularly organizes auctions to arrange money for projects in the kingdom.
The price of the Kuba cloth depends on the year it was made, how long it took to make, the design and history of the piece. There is a museum in Mshenge—the capital of Bakuba—which is used by the royal family to display valuable pieces.
“Once any society in Africa loses its identity and adopts a new one, your culture disappears,” says Prince Kwete.

The Cloth Of Kings—For Sale

Stacked plastic boxes of Dutch Wax, the colorful patterned fabric ubiquitous in West African communities, obstruct the cramped staircase of Yinka Shonibare’s studio, a converted warehouse in east London.
Now a signature of his work, the tangled history of the material encapsulates some of the themes central to the artist’s canon. Originally based on Indonesian batik printing techniques, the fabric was commercialized by Dutch and Belgian traders in the 19th century and sold on to West Africa in huge quantities. Since then, Chinese manufacturers have begun to capture large swathes of the market.
Dutch Wax is, like Shonibare himself, a cultural chimera, a combination of global influences. Born in the United Kingdom in 1962 to Nigerian parents, Shonibare moved to Lagos at the age of three and returned at 17 to complete his education. Today, his joyfully subversive work mixes quintessentially British iconography with African accents, taking aim at a broad range of domestic and international issues.
“My point is that identities are often made up of different influences from around the globe&#8230; no culture is actually static,” he says of his chosen material. “A lot of cultures actually take and reuse things. But there is a romantic wish to freeze culture in a sort of time warp. Even within the continent of Africa, no such thing [as stasis] actually existed within traditional cultures. People always incorporated and took on new things as part of a growing, dynamic, living culture.”
<div id="attachment_1151" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1151" class="wp-image-1151 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/143776123_10-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="713" />Artwork Homeless Man by Yinka Shonibare</div>
He is comfortable with the Nigerian-British or British-Nigerian labels he is routinely given. The world accepts “hyphenated identities” as does he.
“I have no wish to run away from my identity. I’m informed by history. I’ve been defined by a colonial encounter with Nigeria… So, I enthusiastically explore that historical fact in my work because to stand outside of it would be to delude myself. If I don’t define myself by it, then others will. So I might as well do it first.”
Shonibare resisted definition from an early stage. At art school in London during the last days of the Soviet Union, he began working on art that explored perestroika. His tutors, however, saw an African artist and with that, came preconceptions. He was asked, he says, why he was not producing “authentic” African art.
That was difficult, he says for “somebody who grew up in a cosmopolitan city like Lagos, watching Sesame Street on television. I don’t think people understand that here. They think Africa is still the jungle. It’s coming from that mentality and that’s why I thought I’ll give you ‘Africa’, but I’ll give you Africa with a twist.”
“At the time, I guess I was facing the world and trying to understand how I was perceived by it. I learned through that process that actually, as a black man in Europe, anonymity was rather difficult. Now things are different, but I think then, whatever I did, people would have said ‘that’s a black man who doesn’t make work about being black.’”
Shonibare’s reaction to this early pigeonholing created the signatures he uses to this day—British imagery remade. One set of photographs cast Shonibare himself as a Victorian dandy. Another of his most popular pieces—which had a long residency on the empty fourth plinth beneath Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square—was a scale model of Admiral Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory: its sails made of Dutch Wax. The work is frequently playful, an ironic comment on aspects of European society and globalization through the eyes of someone with a “hyphenated” identity.
“I think for me, it’s just generally amusing. No-one ever questioned Picasso’s obsession with African clichés—why can’t I do the same to European culture? There was a fetishization of African culture by a lot of modernist European artists. So as an African artist now, I can do the same to European culture with a lot of amusement,” says Shonibare.
Post-colonialism and the colonial ties that link global Africans like Shonibare to Europe remain a major theme in his work. Unlike some of his contemporaries, however, he has avoided sliding into bleak assessments of the crushed optimism of early post-colonialism. The reason, once again, is his refusal to fall into line with preconceptions and labels.
“It’s extremely important not to be anybody’s victim. Power does not lie in victimhood, so you are more assertive if you are in control of your own image and your own culture. One group does not have a monopoly on aesthetic pleasure. Anyone has the power to express themselves in the way they want to. I dictate the terms of my own work,” he says.
In the same vein, he refuses to appear to be suffering for his art. Shonibare is wheelchair-bound after contracting Transverse Myelitis in his youth.
“I think what’s normally expected is some sort of sob story of the victim. That’s not the narrative I’m particularly interested in; especially where historically my people have been oppressed and disempowered. Why should I fall for another victim narrative, when I could actually take control of the means of production?”
“That sounds very Marxist,” he laughs. “The artist is meant to be some kind of van Gogh who will die with no money and suffer generally, but I actually think in 2012 that’s just old hat. It’s not interesting. You have to take control.”
Art, he says, has been a spiritually and commercially fulfilling career—although his father would still have preferred him to become a lawyer. It’s one that continues to provide new outlets for his musing on identity and culture. For the next five years, his latest work—a ballerina dressed in bright purple and green Dutch Wax fabric, will rotate in a glass bubble on the corner of the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden. In August, he curated a major exhibition of African art and culture at the opera house, overseeing, among other performances, an African ensemble performing Handel’s Messiah in the heart of Britain’s cultural establishment.

Yes, But Is It African Art?

She should have been a psychologist, but she ended up as a Bollywood film star instead.
Tarina Patel was born in Cape Town and schooled in Durban, South Africa. Like many in her family, she moved to Mumbai, India, to study medicine. In her first year she realized that it was not for her and returned home, where she majored in psychology and law. After earning an honors degree in clinical psychology she headed back to India.
Instead of working at one of her father’s medical centers in India, Patel became a model leading her to an, often precarious, acting career in Bollywood, where, according to Patel, there’s no security, tough competition and the people often abuse their power.
The unglamorous side of the industry is filled with struggle and rejection and if you’re not made of strong stuff, you’ll get swallowed. Patel jokes that her psychology background helps her survive.
Her academic family wanted her to do her Masters in Psychology at Yale University in the States and couldn’t understand why she had become an actress in India. They now travel to film shoots with her.
“With success comes a certain amount of acceptance,” she says.
Patel may not have any formal training in acting but feels that her modeling career more than prepared her for Bollywood. She has starred in numerous films including, Bhool Bhulaiyaa, in 2007. Ask her what her biggest film was and she’ll tell you that she’s yet to have one. She doesn’t feel like she’s reached the pinnacle of her career.
Last spring, Patel ventured into the unknown, yet again, as a guest star in one of South Africa’s popular soapies, The Wild. Playing a Bollywood diva, Patel took to it as easily as she did to her life in India but admits that she prefers films. Despite being on a break, she also managed to squeeze in a dance performance on South African Idols.
Patel is married to a former deputy director general at the South African Department of Trade and Industry, now turned businessman, Iqbal Sharma. Her life is a constant balancing act.
“My husband has always been my partner in every way, always encouraging me to fulfill my dreams and not worry about anything else,” she says.
The South African beauty wants to produce, which seems like the natural next step.
“It will be my first feature film that I’m producing, so you can understand my desire to do the maximum pre-production, rather than jumping in blindly and learning a lot of very expensive lessons along the way!” she writes from a shoot.
Patel is constantly on shoots and is in the process of filming a documentary on her life in the industry. She owns the rights and is trying to sell it.
“Being in the industry, particularly in India, it must be the most difficult and trying industry in the world,” she notes.
Being in Bollywood, one needs to speak Hindi. As a Gujarati—who grew up in South African boarding schools and speaks fluent English and Afrikaans—Patel had to teach herself the new language while modeling. No small task.
Patel finds life in India very exciting. Her face changes when she speaks of it; she’s both excited and serene. Weeks before the interview, she was in London three times over a three-week period and was everywhere from Moscow to Dubai for four months before that. As you read this, she’s somewhere in Europe hard at work. Patel jokingly says that Johannesburg is like a village and a farm compared to Mumbai. Why Bollywood?
“I didn’t stop and think about it… I just did [it].”

From Cape Town To Bollywood

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Tayo Oviosu is a trained engineer with a penchant for venture capital and private equity. His journey to spearhead Nigeria’s first mobile money company and foremost mobile money transfer service has been long and winding.
Oviosu was born and raised in Lagos, then moved to the States in 1994, aged 16. He earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Southern California. Later, he began with a couple of start-ups where his entrepreneurial spirit was born. Regardless, he went to work for Deloitte Consulting where he led a number of system integration projects. The thirst in Tayo was far from quenched and stirred him to seek formal business knowledge at Stanford University, where he obtained his MBA.
While at Stanford , the thought of moving back to Nigeria drifted through Oviosu’s mind.
“Many people had warned me that Nigeria was still too much about who rather than what you knew,” he says.
This was a major deterrent for him and instead, he started thinking of what he wanted to do long-term.
“I concluded, I wanted to help build an ecosystem of early stage venture capital in Africa, help build entrepreneurs and see businesses come to life,” he says.
Oviosu thought of ways to marry his tech background with these lofty aspirations and this led to his next venture with one of Silicon Valley’s priced tech houses, Cisco Systems, where he helped develop strategies for businesses’ investments in Africa. This project brought him back to Africa. As an early stage venture capitalist, experiences with colleagues and business partners—while carrying out the project in South Africa—drew his entrepreneurial fantasies closer to Nigeria.
“I get a real kick out of bringing ideas to life,” he says.
In 2008, Oviosu took up the gauntlet and returned to Nigeria. Loaded with ideas, he joined Travant Capital Partners, a private equity firm, within which he executed investment strategy in West Africa and also spent time identifying opportunities within the Nigerian market.
A few months into his involvement with Travant, Oviosu knew the time was now.
“I was more convinced about Nigeria and the opportunities that are present in this country more than ever,” he says.
Of all these opportunities, one particular issue stood out for him—having to carry cash, to make payments and transactions, was rather frustrating. This led to the quick realization that there was very limited access to financial services in the country.
A huge number of Nigerians are unbanked, but an estimated 60 million of the country’s 160 million people, have mobile phones.
“This got me thinking—what if the phone became the primary means of electronic transactions,” he says.
That is where the mission to bank the unbanked, for profit, started.
Oviosu raised seed capital from friends and family, while he nursed the idea and hunted for the right people.
“Learning to navigate and operate in Nigeria is indeed, an art, one I’m still yet to master. However, if you’re passionate enough about a course, you will overcome any hurdles,” he says.
Oviosu’s passion did the trick and in 2009, Pagatech, the company that was to make his fortune, was born, a direct consumer mobile payment service. Its first product offering, Paga—a direct to customer mobile service—was launched in February 2011. The service allows users to send cash, pay bills and make payments using the cellphone or the internet.
“I’m extremely motivated about what I can see Paga doing for Nigeria and that inspires my team and I to overcome any frustration that may come along,” he says.
“When I’m not working or thinking Paga, I enjoy listening to good music and dancing away. I’d like to be remembered as a fun guy.”
With more than 200,000 transactions, since it launched, 153,342 users and $16 million in transaction volumes, Paga has taken off like a rocket and there seems to be no stopping Oviosu now.

I’ve Got Your Number

The hustle of the noisy, crowded, streets of Lagos is spawning a raw sound that is catching the ear of the world. They call it Nigerian urban music and it could be a gold mine.
Twenty million people-a-month, in 98 countries, tune into Nigerian urban music on YouTube and the numbers are rising rapidly.
“Nigerian urban contemporary music is about young, powerful, trendy, attitude-driven Africans who are not talking about poverty, exclusion or famine. They are saying we’re the new world, the new way, get in with it or forget it,” says Obi Asika, CEO of Storm Records—a leading entertainment company—who also sits on the board of COSON—Copyright Society of Nigeria.
<div id="attachment_1136" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1136" class="wp-image-1136 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MI_Bubbles-Magazine-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />M.I</div>
Nigeria is in a prime position to take advantage of this music. It has some of the finest recording studio technology in Africa and a thriving home market on which to test new sounds. The only problem is corruption and rampant music piracy, which threatens the growth of this vibrant Nigerian music.
Asika says the deterrents to growth are regulation, copyright and piracy issues, which leave artists with a lack of income from record sales.
“It is a constant battle but we are making a lot of progress,” he says.
“If you give Nigeria the same resources the Americans have, we will have full domination of the entertainment scene. This is a fact because they don’t have the story. We have a unique story, a unique culture, a unique urban identity and it is in high demand.”
One of the problems is the average Nigerian musician’s recordings can be bought at the side of the road in Lagos traffic, for a pittance. It means concerts and live shows are the moneymakers.
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For this reason, the United Sounds of Africa—a music project taking African talent on a seven city tour of North America—was created. On tour will be: Tuface; M.I; Jesse Jagz; Ice Prince; Brymo; Timi Dakolo and J.Martins. They will play in Atlanta; Houston; Washington; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago and Toronto.

Twenty Million People Can’t Be Wrong

When Ruth Obih completed her legal studies she could see law and nothing else.
“I wanted to be a lawyer so badly, I was bent on it! That was my passion,” she recalls with a smile.
It didn’t work out that way for Obih. After practicing for a year, her first legal firm decided not to retain her. It was a blow to her dreams, to say the least. Few knew then, including her, that this set back was to put her on the path to a fortune.
Obih forgot law and made a 180 degree turn into fashion. She enrolled at the London College of Fashion and returned to Nigeria with her newly acquired skills.
“People always admired what I wore. So, when you tell me you like what I’m wearing, I’d tell you I sell it,” she says.
Fashion whiled away the time, but Obih yearned for more.
“I get bored really easily and always set new tasks for myself. On achieving them, I move on to my next task,” she says.
So it was back to London, where Obih enrolled for her Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test (QLTT) in the hope of practicing law again. While studying, she interned at a property law firm and became intrigued by the business of real estate. With no formal training in property, thoughts of using her legal skills in the real estate business flooded through her mind.
In 2006, Obih started 3Invest Limited UK, in London—a company focused on providing legal advice and property for those wanting to invest in real estate. A good response in London, led to thoughts of how this kind of service would fare in Nigeria.
Obih moved back to Nigeria later that year. She registered 3Invest Homes in Lagos and began hunting for properties to market with her legal advice.
In January 2007, Obih made her first big sale—a property worth millions of naira. She moved money from her thriving fashion label—Ruru Tunics—to secure the deal.
“I never went to the banks to ask for a loan. I almost have a phobia for that,” says Obih.
Sale after sale, 3Invest grew in leaps and bounds, as did Obih’s ambition.
“Yet again, it was time for me to do something different, I had toyed with the idea of starting a real estate advocacy platform using radio,” she says.
It took a number of approaches to radio stations and months of uncertainty. In the end, Obih’s proposal was accepted leading to the launch of Nigeria’s first real estate radio show, in March 2011, called Real Estate on Air.
“This show, is geared at empowering the Nigerian populace and helping them make better informed decisions when investing in real estate, the program is a one-stop shop, for real estate in Nigeria,” says Obih.
She also runs a real estate blog, driving traffic to the radio show.
With a fashion brand; a growing real estate business and a radio show under her belt, Obih is not done yet.
As a business woman, Obih describes herself as shrewd and dynamic.

Law, Fashion, Property, Radio, Success

“I was born into business,” says coal mogul and media magnate Quinton van der Burgh.
“I knew I wanted to be a businessman from a young age. An entrepreneur is born, you know inside yourself what the passions are and where you want to drive yourself in the future.”
His eyes light up as he talks of working for his father’s supermarkets. Through this job, the Simba Chips Company gave him a pile of Ghostbusters stickers for which children clamoured. So, always the entrepreneur and scholar of the science of scarcity, he priced the stickers according to market forces—high prices for scarce stickers, lower prices for common ones. He bought one of his teachers lunch and she allowed him 10 minutes during lunch break in which to do his deals.
“I was on a sales mission. I told him [his classmate] that if he didn’t come to school with the money the next day he’d be in trouble.”
This landed him in the principal’s office and was one of the reasons why he was kicked out of school.
Van der Burgh felt that school was a waste of time and spoke to his family about entering the business world. He moved to England on a holiday visa and began trading shares under a friend’s name, for commission. After two years, he managed to get his business visa. London is where he learnt difficult lessons. He lived with 14 other guys and learnt how to wash his clothes and cook.
“A few people took me for my money, so I was down and out a few times,” he says
When he lost investors’ money, he pleaded with his boss to give him one month to make it back. He made an excuse about having a problem with his bank account to borrow £50 ($78) from a friend.
“I learnt my lessons on how to be cleverer about my next transactions and from there I grew and grew on my own,” he says.
Van der Burgh learnt the hard way.
“I’ve gone bankrupt a few times, not so much in my later years but in my early years when I was naïve to the fact of how business works. It’s tough when you think you know it all but you don’t, that lesson is the best lesson you can learn and take it into your next business development.”
That’s how he made his first million by the age of 21.
“I always wanted to have a Ferrari by 26. By 32—when I could afford one—I realized that I didn’t need one, but it was my goal and I couldn’t go against what I believed in,” he says.
From Ferraris to bowling alleys, he knows what he wants.
“Growing up I was a Richie Rich fan and I thought that it was a fantastic idea to put a bowling alley into the house. It was a bad idea when it came down to building the house. It worked out to be 10 times the price but worthwhile when you have friends over and it’s a fantastic game when you have a competitive nature&#8230;.”
“I’m an average bowler, I’ll get there one day,” he says.
Another one of his ambitions is to be the richest man in Africa by 2022.
When he returned from London he bought equity in the family-owned investment holdings company, Burgh Group Holdings, of which he is chief executive officer. He works in close partnership with his father, Stan, and his brothers, Stanley and Wayne. Burgh Group Holdings has a portfolio of several companies including mines; a plant hire company; an earth moving equipment company; several hotels and commercial properties, as well as a production company.
Experience has taught him to have fingers in many pies.
“I diversified into a variety of different businesses where I tried to spread my risk because I never wanted to be in that position again, where I had nothing. It’s a terrible feeling, to go from something to nothing and have to build that up again. That was my best lesson,” he says.
His next big idea was being a television and film executive producer.
“I’m passionate about the creative aspects of media. Had I studied I would have liked to have learnt about the media game, filmography and how to become a director or a good producer,” says van der Burgh.
“But you need to understand the industry and everything I have learnt to date has been the hard way, from other people and having to understand the industry, the market and how things are done. I attach myself to experienced people, that’s how I learn very quickly,” he says.
He stays away from what he calls ‘passion projects’—films for South African viewers—because the majority of such movies die. He believes that the South African film industry needs to emulate Hollywood.
“I just change a few things around, cast aspects, the story line and where it’s going and then we can make 90% of our money back and we can double our profits in international markets&#8230;
If you just produce for this country you’re going to be breaking even, if not make a loss, and that just doesn’t appeal to me. I’m passionate about what I do but it has to make business sense,” he says.
With Sharp Shooter—a documentary about photography—behind him, his most recent venture into the entertainment industry is Clifton Shores. He funded and starred in the unscripted reality series, shot in Cape Town; under the direction of Hisham Abed, who directed The Hills and Laguna Beach. The series follows four American women—alongside South African cast members—who come to Cape Town to work for Quintessential Events, Van der Burgh’s events and marketing company. It aired in South Africa in late August. He has two movies, a thriller and a romantic comedy, in the pipeline.
One day, he wants to produce films in the filmmaking hub of Los Angeles in the States. For now, he lives between Cape Town, Johannesburg and Witbank, where he can keep an eye on Eskom power station Duvha—to which he supplies coal—through his back window.
His mining interests lie in Eyethu Coal, Iyanga Coal, I.M.E.C, Zingaro and Twin Cities Trading. Between 60 and 70% of his mines’ coal is sold to Eskom—South Africa’s energy provider, for which they also wash coal.
Van der Burgh is always looking for innovative business ideas.
“I thought to myself ‘half our profits are going out the back door to contractors for transport’. I knew we needed a turnkey solution and a new and sustainable strategy so we started doing it ourselves.”
“Our multi-billion [rand] family mining development has great partnerships; which trust and like us for being hard workers. We work according to the trust of the handshake. I’d rather cost the money than make money, ruin a relationship and have a bad name. We have not one bad name, I say that with confidence,” he says.
He is not interested in easy business.
“I don’t want to sit in my office and just collect a check. I want to master business and create new innovations,” says van der Burgh
With the launch of swimwear range, Wet Peach, in South Africa, van der Burgh says that he’s looking into launching a fashion channel. He’s also dabbling in the music industry.
The entrepreneur describes himself as being down to earth.
“I don’t enjoy people with money, they are full of themselves&#8230; although I am a prankster and like to have fun,” says van der Burgh.

The Born Businessman

Flamboyant, young, handsome, sociable and most of all: successful, beyond most people’s dreams. With his Panama hat on, sipping a drink at his rental house’s swimming pool only four steps from Luanda’s beach, Thomson-Payan looks like an actor in a gangster movie: too smooth to be true. But he’s the real deal.
Thomson-Payan owns Electrix Group which makes more than five times Thomson-Payan’s initial $200,000 investment each month. The annual turnover at Electrixtel, the telecommunications arm, is $15 million. .
“In five years, we’ve had well over 1,000% growth or between 100 and 200% growth per year.”
Electrix created its construction company, Topson SA, two years ago. Its services company, ESS, counts Schlumberger, ConocoPhillips, Trafigura and FMC among its major clients.
Thomson-Payan’s granduncle was former Colombian president Alfonso Lopez, while his father was a diplomat and a successful international entrepreneur. With a background like that, you could say he was born for success. But that’s not the whole story.
“I first came to Angola in 2007 after my friend, who lived there, told me to check it out. I was sick of working in a corporate American office. When I arrived, I was stupefied. There was so much to do.”
Thomson-Payan went to Babson College, the top entrepreneurial school in the States.
“I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. When I was 10, my dad told me to work for my own car. By the age of 15, I’d saved enough money by doing odd jobs. That’s when it started.”
When he was 19, Thomson-Payan moved to Shanghai and lived there for a-year-and-a-half.
“I studied Mandarin nine hours a day. Then I started an outsourcing company called China Source. We still have a three-person office there.”
China Source’s bigger clients spread the word. Suddenly, things moved forward fast.
“One day I received an email from a guy named Marcelo Claure. I had no idea who he was. It turns out this 35-year-old guy owns $7.5-billion company Brightstar—the largest mobile phone distributor in the world.”
Thomson-Payan met Claure in New York.
“He asked: ‘So where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?’ I bit my tongue and said: ‘Running my own company or running yours!’ I was 20 or 21 at the time. He gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse—to become his right-hand. I worked with him as a senior business development manager, and we grew from 35 countries to 54. We worked crazy, crazy hours. Sometimes from 7am to 4am. But it was an amazing experience and education… amazing.”
In his second year at Brightstar, Thomson-Payan started studying law at Florida International University in the evenings. Meanwhile, he was itching to start something new.
“Africa was the only part of the world that Brightstar hadn’t conquered. This continent is a difficult market to break; you have to be very hands-on here. After my visit to Angola, I raised some capital among Swiss and American investors, friends of friends. We then started Electrix.”
Electrix now has between 100 and 120 employees, 95% of them Angolan; 25 stores in Luanda, Malange and Lubango; and store-within-a-store contracts with supermarket chain Nosso Super and gas station chain Pumangol. Cellphone brands distributed by Electrix include Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Alcatel, Apple and HTC.
“In the retail industry, we’re the fastest growing mobile phone distributer and the only one with our own brand.”
Electrix sells airtime, internet, cable and satellite TV, digital cameras and computers and it’s launching a gaming division. The company buys large chunks of airtime at discount prices from Angola’s biggest cellphone players, Unitel and Movicel.
“The beautiful thing about Angola is that there’s no landline infrastructure. Mobile phones are not a luxury, literally everybody needs one,” says Thomson-Payan.
Smartphones aren’t hot in Angola. Eighty percent of Electrix’s phones are sold for under $50.
“The large majority of this country lives under the poverty line. You’ve got to fit into that market. This is one of the reasons we’ve partnered with a company and brought in our own brand, BLU, with a price range of between $12 to $250 for smart Android phones.”
Electrix understands the Angolan market. BLU has a 30-day battery.
“Imagine that, in a country with major electricity problems!”
In July, Electrix implemented electronic recharge systems that look like credit card machines.
“We sell a few $100,000 per week’s worth of Unitel and Movicel recharge cards to Pumangol and our other retail clients. But they are high-risk, because you’re basically moving cash. These machines will allow us to distribute airtime instantly without risk and minimal operations. Credit cards haven’t hit the Angolan market strongly yet.”
Competition is the drive behind these revolutionary ideas.
“Five years ago in Angola, in a business where Brightstar makes a two percent margin, we were doing 80%. Crazy! But margins have gone down a lot; competition has grown. When I started, to differentiate Electrix, I literally filled my big truck with phones and drove off to the provinces, where margins are a lot higher.”
“When the market matured, margins went down and no one wanted to drop their prices anymore. My competitors started giving clients credit. So I told my biggest clients: ‘Look. You guys have the cellphone stores. What are your main costs?’ The answer was always inventory, which for an average cellphone store can go up to $35,000 or $50,000. So I’d say: ‘I’ll put in the inventory and we’ll go 50-50 on the store and become partners.’ That meant I gave them credit, but now I owned 50% of the retail business. So I was making my margin in the wholesale, plus 50% of the retail margin and could control my debtors. As a result, we’re now the largest retailers in the Angolan cellphone industry.”
Unlike many foreigners operating in Angola, Thomson-Payan has never had an Angolan business partner.
“I suffered for two years because I didn’t have anyone to lean on, but now I don’t need to lean on anybody because all my contacts are my own.”
Thomson-Payan says the toughest aspect of doing business in Angola is the bureaucracy.
“Many people will say corruption. But there are two ways to get things done here: corruption and relationships. The second option is actually better. Let’s say you want to get your stuff out of the port quickly, so you pay someone 500 bucks. But as soon as someone else comes and pays him 550, he’s not going to give you any more love.”
“I know a guy at the port, he’s a good friend of mine. I called him from Europe because I knew he was getting married and then I brought his wife’s wedding dress over. That guy will remember that for the rest of his life—it’s a true relationship. He’ll always be there for me and I’m really there for him. I try to build genuine relationships that in the long run are so much more valuable for both of us.”
Thomson-Payan was in the right place at the right time.
“After 15 years of independence war and 27 years of civil war, Angolans need absolutely everything. They’ve got the money to pay for it, but no one here to provide it. If you’re here and can offer first-world service, the sky is the limit. Angola is a perfect storm for business.”
Electrix opened a new office in Johannesburg, South Africa in July. The company is scheduled to start operations in Mozambique in the next three months.

A Good Call

The first ever World Cup on African soil brought the whole continent together. Africa was finally able to showcase its beauty to the rest of the world. The passion, vibe and pure energy were beyond all imagination. People took to the streets, sang through the cold winter nights and the world was introduced to the vuvuzela. Who could ever forget it?
The international football governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), once said: “Brazil is football”. So it’s hard to think that the country synonymous with the beauty of football could be struggling to put on such a huge event in the sporting world. Is it true? Are the Brazilians more concerned with lifting the cup for the sixth time than putting together a spectacular event?
Brazil is the only team to have qualified for all the World Cups and has won it: in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002. The country last hosted the World Cup in 1950 and is currently ranked 13th by FIFA, Spain and Germany are ranked first and second respectively.
The excitement of a World Cup at the home of legends has been tainted by allegations of corruption and reports that construction was far behind schedule and over budget.
When news of Delta Constructora’s withdrawal from the Maracanã stadium, in Rio de Janeiro, redevelopment and its investigation for corruption and bribery by the federal police came out, it threw a $3.7 million investment into doubt. This money was meant to contribute to the Maracanã Rio 2014 construction consortium, which included Odebrecht Infraestrutura and Andrade Gutierrez. With only two companies left in the consortium, the question was whether there were going to be enough funds to complete the project. At the time, the construction company also had numerous Rio transport infrastructure contracts.
Maracanã was built for the 1950 World Cup final. It holds the record for the largest attendance at a World Cup final, at 199,854 supporters. By April, work on the stadium was about 40% complete and open for public tours. It is the venue for the 2014 World Cup final and is supposed to be completed by February 2013, in time for the Confederations Cup.
PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, Mauricio Girardello wrote: “When building a facility for one event, you need to balance the demands of a limited use with other uses that will make the facility more financially viable over the long term.”
This is something South Africa knows all too well. The country is faced with the problem of unused stadiums that it spent close to $1 billion to build. The 94,000 capacity Soccer City, in Johannesburg, is being used for concerts, games and tours but others, like Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, are sitting empty and costing millions to maintain each year—due to the fact that there are no provincial teams large enough to take the leases over from the provincial governments and the inability of the stadiums to cater to the large rugby teams and their supporter’s needs. The other legacy left by the 2010 World Cup was the dire state of the South African hospitality industry. In 2011, the average occupancy rate dropped to around 48% and many hotels had to shut their doors. The millions of visitors were gone and had taken their money with them.
Danny Jordaan knows what it’s like to stage a World Cup. Jordaan was part of the formation of the South African Football Association (SAFA) in 1991. His World Cup involvement spans almost 15 years and his experience with the 2010 World Cup, held in South Africa, earned him the position of special advisor for the 2014 World Cup; a member of the 2014 World Cup and Confederations Cup’s organizing committee; a member FIFA’s Transparency and Compliance Committee and part of the FIFA technical evaluation team for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
“The infrastructure of Brazil needs huge investment and so their infrastructure program has greater demands on Brazil than in South Africa,” he says.
Access roads, parking lots, subways, trams, monorails and shopping malls are just some of the infrastructure projects Brazil will need to focus on, aside from stadiums. Construction of the $500,000 North/Center (Manaus) Monorail has been awarded to a consortium consisting of three companies.
Brazil’s planned infrastructure budget is around $11.2 billion and it is expecting $102 billion to be contributed to its GDP by the end of the two tournaments. Three point two billion dollars is allocated for airports.
In February, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) and a Brazilian partner secured 51% of a 20-year concession to expand, operate and maintain the Guarulhos Airport in São Paulo. The airport is said to be one of the worst in the world. Brazil has decided on the privatization route for its airports in the hope to meet the demands that will be placed on them by the millions of expected visitors.
The two countries, Brazil and South Africa, have been sharing information and expertise since the 2010 World Cup, when a Brazilian soccer delegation came to visit. Like Brazil, South Africa received a lot of bad press, with people citing high crime rates; poor preparation and calls to move the tournament to Australia.
Jordaan feels that this criticism rears its head when the host country is in the developing world.
With this shared experience, how much cooperation is there likely to be? There are two sides to this coin. Some would say that the key to hosting a great World Cup would be to use the experience and expertise of those who have come before. But on the other hand, you can argue that Brazil would want to keep all business and money within the country by giving Brazilian companies the opportunity of large-scale projects.
Jordaan says this is where joint ventures come in. He says that as much as the government will not give a 100% tender to a foreign company, having a Brazilian company on board will certainly help—like in the case of ACSA.
“Brazilians are passionate about football. So I think that once they get the bricks and mortar sorted out the people will turn it into a wonderful celebration and that is what we are looking for”, he adds.
One of the issues facing the organizers was the passionate but poor Brazilian fans. In Brazil, students and pensioners are allowed a 50% discount on tickets. As an institution trying to make a profit, this may not be what FIFA had in mind. As a compromise, the organization has agreed to set aside 300,000 tickets for these supporters.
It really has been one thing after another for the Brazilians. The sports minster, Orlando Silva, resigned last October under accusations of corruption. The Brazilian Football Association’s president has also resigned. At some point the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was not speaking to the Brazilian Confederation of Soccer’s president, Ricardo Teixeira. At the same time the minister of sports, Aldo Rebelo, was not speaking to FIFA’s general secretary, Jérôme Valcke.
In 2000, FIFA introduced the continental rotation policy, which began with the 2010 World Cup in Africa; South America was next in line.
There is a major difference between the South African and Brazilian World Cups, beyond geographics. Unlike Brazil, South Africa went through two competitive bids, the first was lost to Germany for the 2006 World Cup and the second was secured against five African countries with a 500 page bid book. South Africa had to show that it had the capacity to host the tournament and provide 17 government guarantees. Brazil was up against Columbia in the 2014 bid, but the South American Federation unanimously decided to back Brazil as the option for 2014.
This seems to have caused problems. One of the more thorny matters was the sale of alcohol at matches. Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (ABI) is the largest brewer in the world and one of its brands, Budweiser is a major sponsor of the tournament. The problem was that Brazil’s Soccer Fan Statute—Article 13: prohibits alcohol at Brazilian soccer games. After heated words and years, the World Cup Bill—to lift the ban on alcohol—was passed by the lower house of Parliament in March, the Senate in May and received the final approval and signature of the president in June. The Senate changed the Bill so that it applies only to the Confederations and World Cups.
Some members of Senate were holding out because they felt that their law on alcohol was in line with the FIFA 2004 Safety Guidelines—Article 19: ban on the sale of alcohol and that the ban has helped reduce violence at games.
Jordaan’s tips for a world class World Cup are simple. First, you need the necessary legal framework and then you get the infrastructure going. These seem to be lessons the Brazilians would have done best to learn much earlier in the game. All new reports from both sides seem to be positive that Brazil is back on track, or at least trying.
You’ll get a different story if you ask the millions who live in Brazil’s slums—the favelas.
One of the harshest measures in the preparation for the soccer tournaments, as well as the Olympic Games in 2016, is the forced removal of favela residents. Some have been around for over a century and have now been declared Imminent Domain—meaning that the government has the power to remove the residents and use the space for public use. The proposed 2016 Olympic Park is an extravagant project destined on a favela site.
In a video produced by non-profit organizations, Phesca Brazil and WITNESS, a devastated grandmother tells of how she was born in Morro da Providência, in 1941, and her mother before that. Three generations of her family currently live in the favela. Some residents talk about how they’ve only been given a month’s notice.
Other favelas are enjoying some improvements to the power, water and sewage. There have also been reports of armed police raids with tear gas, rubber bullets and tanks to clean up crime.
All this aside, the eyes of the world will be on Brazil. The only question is whether they will feel the pressure to step up their game and put on a fantastic show or merely the pressure to lift the cup.
“The people [Brazilians] will not react as South Africans. What South Africans did was embrace other teams and the event hype and passion continued and South Africa celebrated in the streets even though their own team was long out of the tournament”, says Jordaan.
“If they [Brazil] don’t [win on home soil] I think it will be a difficult moment”.

The Land of Pelé  Tackles The Tough Times

Political risk continues to remain elevated in Zimbabwe. The introduction of a government of national unity (GNU) saw a decrease in violence and human rights abuses but little else. Differences between Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF) and the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are glaring and threaten the future of the government.
A key source of political risk arises from the upcoming election. Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states have reaffirmed their position that no election can take place until all conditions of the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) are fulfilled.
A key condition of the GPA is the formulation of a new constitution. A draft constitution has now been completed and submitted to the GNU for comment and suggestions for amendment. The two factions of MDC have supported the draft constitution and are ready to put it to a referendum.
President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 32 years, is adamant there should be an election this year, but reality is that it may not be before 2013. It is likely the next election will be close. ZANU-PF will be reluctant to relinquish power to the MDC, which it accuses of being sponsored by the West. The voters themselves are eager for change following years of economic stagnation.
The European Union (EU) said it was considering easing decade-long sanctions if the country implements a new constitution; a move that could encourage a free and fair poll.
Politics will undoubtedly trump any economic policy considerations. As such, Zimbabwe is unlikely to see any significant economic reforms to revive the economy of what was once Africa’s bread basket. The indigenization drive will take center stage economically especially as the election draws closer. The indigenization legislation aims to ensure that 51% of foreign-owned companies are owned by indigenous, black Zimbabweans.
The indigenization program, which is in full swing is led by indigenization minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, who is seen as a die-hard ZANU-PF loyalist. One of the thorny issues for the program is the fate of the lucrative mining industry. The government is locked in a dispute with the country’s largest foreign investor, South Africa’s Impala Platinum (Implats). The miner has complied with the law by divesting the required share of the company to indigenous, black Zimbabweans. The government is to get 31% of Implats. The miner has requested that the government pay market prices for the stake. The cash-strapped government has refused to pay. The dispute still rumbles on.
From the resources sector the zealous Kasukuwere has turned his attention to the financial sector. The target is the four foreign-owned banks. Indicative of a rift within ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe Reserve Bank governor, Gideon Gono, has warned of the implications of indigenizing the banking sector, the backbone of any modern economy. The minister of finance, Tendai Biti, also added his voice of concern to such a move. ZANU-PF is likely to disregard these voices of reason and power ahead with the indigenization campaign until the elections. Indigenization is likely to be a vote winner for ZANU-PF. Therefore, investors will remain wary of the country’s investment climate.
Zimbabwe’s political environment will weigh heavily on an already injured economy. The minister of finance in July downwardly revised growth for 2012 from 9.4% to 5.6%. The revision is on the back of a poor harvest, inadequate donor funding and incoherent policies. Zimbabwe grew 9.3% in 2011.
Political uncertainty will surely remain in place until elections are held. Until then, the economic policy will remain incoherent, which will in turn be detrimental to the economy. Zimbabwe’s economy will only show signs of sustained recovery with a democratically elected government.

A Free Vote Could Be The Best Medicine

The elephants feeding off the nearby shrub looked remarkably placid as we strolled along the boardwalk that was high enough from the ground for them to pass underneath. But shortly after they kicked up a shindig, trumpeting and rumbling, whether from love and joy or from anger, I could not say.
Sitting, feet up, afterwards on the veranda of my Pafuri Camp tented chalet, I watched a hippo wallow lazily in a still pool of the Luvuvhu River down below. Staring back blankly with heavy-browed eyes, it—every now and then—snorted contentedly. Behind it on a sandbank lay a crocodile, mouth agape, as if dead.
<div id="attachment_1099" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1099" class="size-large wp-image-1099" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Enos-Mngomezulu-Wilderness-Safaris-head-guide-at-its-Pafuri-Camp-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Enos Mngomezulu, Wilderness Safaris&#8217; head guide at its Pafuri Camp</div>
Waterbuck moved about the reeds and a couple of baboons approached the river for a drink. Then, the peace was shattered briefly by a fish eagle and a purple heron getting into an almighty scrap on the opposite bank.
This is daily life at Pafuri Camp to the north of South Africa. The 24,000-hectare spread of land, within which the Wilderness Safaris tourist facility falls, is a national treasure, which could have been lost had the Makuleke community not decided to keep it as a protected area. That decision has proved as wonderful as the Pafuri.
It was a prescient choice, benefiting Kruger National Park in particular and nature in general by extending the roaming area of the park’s animals and by keeping under formal protection a landscape of extraordinary scenic beauty and biodiversity.
Wedged between the Luvuvhu and Limpopo Rivers at the Kruger’s northern extreme, Pafuri is made up of a rich mixture of wetlands, floodplains, savannah, Mopane veld, riverine and fever-tree forests, rugged hills and dramatic gorges.
Its climate, location and geology combine to make it the southern-most extreme of several tree species, causing it in turn to be a favored destination for botanists; not least baobab lovers who come to admire the exquisite species spread around the veld and by the roadside. Among its exceptionally rich birdlife, there are several species that are found nowhere else in South Africa, making it a favored destination for bird lovers as well.
The Makuleke decision to keep it as a reserve, served a further purpose. It introduced the concept of community-held contract parks that has been applied since in various parts of South Africa; ensuring the formal protection of valuable parts of the natural environment that might have been lost otherwise, as well as giving back dispossessed people a living.
The arrangement did not come easily. It was steeped in the hurt and bitterness of the apartheid era, which, for the Makuleke people, went back to a day in 1969 when government trucks arrived at their village, set among the brooding forests and woodlands of the Pafuri. Livingston Maluleke, a leading member of the community, told me of that painful day. Staring across the Luvuvhu from where we were sitting on the veranda of the Wilderness Safaris lodge, he recalled how villagers were bundled onto the trucks with only what they could carry and transported to a strange new place about 25 km outside Kruger National Park’s Punda Maria gate.
“It was terrible. Our old people, to this day, shiver when they talk about that experience,” he says.
The government’s thinking behind the forced removal was to add land to the Kruger as well as to allow security forces to better counter the anti-apartheid insurgents who were making use of the lush vegetation for moving back and forth between South Africa, Mozambique and then Rhodesia. The borders meet at the confluence of the Limpopo and Luvuvhu rivers. The spot is known as Crooks’ Corner for the way outlaws used it in olden times to skip from one country to another to evade arrest.
The landmark decision to keep the area as a reserve was negotiated with South African National Parks (SANParks), after the community had won back the land in 1998, under newly democratic South Africa’s land-restitution process. It was not an easy choice, Maluleke told me. Some of the old people wanted to move back there. But eventually the deal was negotiated whereby SANParks would continue to run the conservation aspect and the community would benefit in the form of jobs and an income from the concession given a decade ago to Wilderness Safaris. There is another lodge named The Outpost and a guide-training school that operates under similar concessions.
<div id="attachment_1098" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1098" class="size-large wp-image-1098" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Masingita-Hatlane-deputy-chairperson-of-the-Maluleke-Communal-Property-Association-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />Masingita Hatlane, deputy chairperson of the Maluleke Communal Property Association</div>
The concession holders have been contributing to conservation projects as well.
Wilderness Safaris, for instance, has helped with the reintroduction of game to the area, most notably the translocation of white rhino, giraffe and wildebeest from the heavily populated southern region of the Kruger Park. It says its anti-poaching operations have involved 20 game scouts from the community.
The money from the concessions has been going into a trust run by the Makuleke Communal Property Association (CPA). The estimated R3 million ($369,000) that has been generated so far has been going into projects like street lighting for two of the Makuleke’s three adjoining villages; crèches for two others; a community hall for another and improvements to schools. Each of the villages decides how it wants its portion of the income to be used.
In 2007, notable conservation recognition came with the declaration of Pafuri’s string of wetlands situated mainly along its Limpopo River boundary as a Ramsar site of international importance. In 2010, followed the United Nations Development Program’s Equator Prize that recognizes the efforts of local communities to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Last year followed SANParks’ Kudu Award for community contribution to conservation.
Now there are changes in store that could affect the way the contract park is run. Under the arrangement concluded back in the late 1990s, SANParks ran the conservation aspect in terms of much the same rules as applied to the rest of Kruger. Administrative decisions have been taken by a joint management board (JMB) that includes representatives of SANParks, the Makuleke CPA and officials from government’s environmental, tourism and security departments. A few years ago, the concession holders were also allowed to sit in on meetings as a way of streamlining JMB decisions.
According to Masingita Hatlane, deputy chairperson of the CPA, the system has been under substantial review by an independent company. The central idea to have emerged—from what is called the Conservation Development Framework it produced—is that the JMB should be restructured and that the administration of Pafuri should pass to a park manager. How exactly it will work, is not clear though.
“We felt we should co-ordinate the conservation and the commercial side and be better able to implement JMB decisions. But there are many aspects that still need to be sorted out,” smiled Hatlane, a school teacher who is known as Mavis; as we sat at the Makuleke village’s community center, where guests are sometimes treated to traditional dancing, drumming and such cultural events.
A key question is whether the park manager should come from the ranks of the Makuleke, from SANParks or the concession holders, or whether it should be an independent person from outside. Another question is where the manager’s office should be—inside Pafuri, where a lack of communication facilities would be a problem, or in Makuleke village, which is almost a two-hour drive from the park. The most likely site therefore is Kruger’s Punda Maria Gate, which best addresses the various problems.
But then still remains the big question: Who foots the park manager’s salary and his staff and office bill?
Though not spelled out in so many words, the implication of the proposal is that, rather than being run as an appendix to Kruger, the Pafuri should be treated as a park in its own right, with the Makuleke through their CPA taking a more direct hand in its administration. Part of the reasoning is that whereas the community lacked the experience to do so from the outset, it is now in a better position to take charge.
The importance of the Pafuri’s retention as a reserve is underpinned by another factor. Situated where it is, it is the kingpin of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park between Kruger National Park, Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park and Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park that make up the scheme.
There was even talk of constructing a bridge inside the park over the Limpopo River to provide a direct tourist connection between the two southern reserves with the Zimbabwean park. Apparently, the wetlands inside the park dictate that the bridge should be outside the park boundary. But as the imaginative transfrontier scheme is firmed up, so Pafuri’s part in it and the Makulekes’ decision to keep it as a reserve should keep standing out more prominently for the landmark development it represents in the conservation history of South Africa and increasingly also of the broader region.

Paradise At The Crossroads

At the Careers in Africa Summit in London this May, the queues alongside recruiting stands wound around the Hilton Canary Wharf within minutes of opening, as 1,500 pre-selected, high-quality African candidates gathered for a matchmaking event with global companies looking to source African talent from the Diaspora.
Over the road, the Wharf itself was unusually busy for a Saturday afternoon, as global banks desperately worked through their scenario planning after the carnage on European markets. Once, the UK financial services industry in Canary Wharf and the Square Mile would have hoovered up many of these candidates. The city has been a magnet for global talent for decades, picking up not only the best from British universities, but those in Asia and Africa as well.
Now, that seems to be changing as resurgent African markets attract global businesses desperate to find new sources of growth, and as entrepreneurial members of the Diaspora look to return to capitalize on opportunities back home.
“The general atmosphere [in Africa] is much more optimistic,” says Wynand Smit who left a risk management job in a UK bank to return to South Africa to work for Rand Merchant Bank earlier this year.
“This is in stark contrast to the gloomy atmosphere in the UK where the focus, in my experience, was much more on the uncertain EU situation and potential future impacts,” he says.
The opportunities on the continent, as well as family considerations, led him to return after a successful few years in London and the Netherlands. However, for others the conditions in developed markets are a compelling reason to head back home. London’s slide—and the slowdowns across the rest of Europe and the United States—has come at a time when African economies have proved their resilience in the face of global economic turmoil.
The UK banking boom in the early part of the new millennium saw the sector expand from just over 5% of the country’s GDPin 2000 to more than 10% in 2009, when the country’s recession began in earnest. A royal flush of new, strict regulations, economic downturns in almost all developed markets and the existential threat to the Eurozone, which makes up the UK’s largest trading bloc, drove many institutions to the wall. The bloodletting that followed has been brutal.
According to figures compiled by Bloomberg, there were 58,000 job cuts in London’s financial services industry in 2011 alone. 2012 has seen that pace maintained, with bank after bank responding to the continuing pressure from regulators to build capital by cutting costs and headcount. Trading firms have seen losses mount as stock indices continue to be battered by the ongoing turmoil in the Eurozone; and corporate finance houses have seen their client base retrench in fear of a second recession. The Royal Bank of Scotland alone has slashed 30,000 jobs since its nationalization in 2008, and more cuts are still to come as the slim hopes of an economic recovery in the near-term fade away.
Hugo Lambrecht, who manages the African finance and banking practice at CA Global Headhunters, says that he has seen both the number and the profile of candidates change over the past few years of recruiting. Whereas before, the company’s focus was on finding expatriates for roles on the continent, the last two years have seen an upsurge in returnees—of the 280 people his team have placed in that period, around half are returnees. With a lack of experts in transaction banking, corporate finance specialists, investment professionals and chartered accountants, it is a good time to be in the executive search space in Africa, Lambrecht says.
It is not just finance that is benefitting. The compelling demographics of the continent continue to underpin growth in the fast-moving consumer goods and the financial services sectors across most economies. One major constraint for these businesses, historically, has been their ability to source executive talent with the financial and management skills required to operate in global companies, and the understanding of the complexities of relatively unstructured African markets.
The economic downturn in the West, combined with a growing understanding amongst multinationals and businesspeople that African markets are now a far cry from their mid-90s gloom, has created what Richard Putley, managing director of Executives in Africa, calls “a perfect storm”.
Putley’s company specializes in sourcing executive talent for international companies operating in Africa, particularly the retail sector, where knowledge of local market conditions is of paramount importance. What most companies are looking for, he says, is somebody that you would call ‘business bilingual’.
“This is a person who has the ability to work for an international company to ensure that the global policies and procedures that are in place for an emerged market are translated into a language that can be understood and delivered on a local level.”
These are individuals like Olu Kolawole. After spending the bulk of his career in the US, Kolawole had risen to become director of construction at Pathmark Stores, a supermarket chain. But just over a year ago he decided to abandon the relative sanity of the West Coast to head back to his native Nigeria and the chaos of Lagos. He admits that he was driven in part by a “nationalist instinct” and a feeling that “it was time to give back”, but equally the strong and visible opportunities in his home country were an attraction.
“You also see the challenges of being back in Nigeria—challenges in terms of constant utilities, challenges in terms of security, both of life and property. But then you decide that at some point, with the growing uncertainties in the economy and job security in the US, you start to really consider the opportunities in Africa,” he told FORBES AFRICA.
“When the opportunity came to come back, I really sat down and thought about it, but you know, you look at my career path over the last 10 years, which was rapid in the States, and you see that you’ve kind of peaked.”
With mergers and acquisitions trimming workforces in the US retail sector and growth in the industry slumping from 7-10% pre-crisis to just 2-3% in recent years, the chance to reboot his career with a move to a fast-moving market was too much to turn down.
“You realize a lot of these global brands see the African continent as the next frontier and you want to take a pioneer role. You know the lay of the land, you know what modern retail is supposed to be like,” he says.
Kolawole is now chief operating officer of CoolWorld Electrical Retail Stores, a subsidiary of international consumer goods giant PZ Cussons. It has not been all plain sailing. Business processes can be frustratingly slow or nonexistent and corruption “is at a level that you’ve never understood before”. The city has its inconveniences including interrupted power and security concerns. But even so, Kolawole has no regrets—yet. His role allows him to make changes to the way things are done and bring in his own best practices, and his remuneration package allows for a good quality of life, despite Lagos’ reputation for exorbitant prices.
“You have to negotiate your terms properly before you take the plunge. Nigeria is an expensive place but there are companies here willing to pay top dollar for talent. When you are negotiating a salary, you have to really negotiate properly and make sure you have everything taken care of. If you miss your utility payments or something, and you miscalculate, it really affects your overall income,” he says.
After three months, he brought his family over, including his two children, aged 10 and 12.
“It’s probably been tougher on the kids because they’ve lived their whole lives in the States. They still ask me when we’re going to go back,” he says.
The answer is: no time soon.
For some returnees, however, the motive is altogether more altruistic. OB Sisay spent 15 years in London working as an analyst in political risk consultancies and investment funds until September last year when he left his job and began the process of moving back to Sierra Leone.
Currently flitting back and forth between the UK and the country of his birth, Sisay is setting up a number of small enterprises, including a farm and a transport business and taking over his family’s holdings. Salaried jobs are hard to come by but once he has established a domestic cash flow he and his wife will up sticks and head to Freetown. Most of his family fled the country during Sierra Leone’s civil war but after years of stability and a new government that has put development top of its agenda, they are beginning to come home.
“We have a country to develop. You can’t all sit in the UK, earn huge wages and come on holiday for three weeks. The country has a huge shortage of human capital and so a few of us kind of think that the pocket has to take second place to the country. One of my cousins has quit his post as a gynaecologist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and he’s back here, he’s got a clinic. Another one is back here to work for the procurement department. The attitude is that we want to develop our country.”
The move is proving incredibly rewarding.
“Every morning before I get out to do my running, I’ve made a difference to one to three people’s lives, whether that’s someone who has come to me with a problem with their children’s education, somebody comes in sick, they’re in hospital and they need money. It’s not that much money, but I feel as if I’m making a difference. Whereas in the UK I get up, put my suit on, make big speeches, get congratulated, get paid very well and come back home. Meanwhile, Africa is still where it is. Somebody needs to fix it,” he says.
There is commercial opportunity, he acknowledges, as Sierra Leone builds from scratch during its post-war reconstruction and as international money finds its way into the country. But being a part of that development is far more compelling and exciting.
“Everything means a lot more. The elections mean a lot more; policymakers’ decisions mean a lot more. I don’t want to come back here in 10 years with kids who barely speak the local language, who only claim they’re Sierra Leonean because their parents are and I find myself a stranger in my own country,” says Sisay.

From London To Africa  In The Brain Gain Game

“I may have left Nigeria, but Nigeria has not left my heart,” says Beatrice Hamza Bassey, a Nigerian partner at the New York offices of prestigious law firm Hughes Hubbard. She is a product of a country many have fled to seek greener pastures in the great Nigerian brain drain.
Nigerians are fanatical about tertiary education. At home and abroad, they pursue exceptional professional qualifications; however, only a handful, willingly invest their expertise in the country as many a Nigerian are caught in the zeitgeist of ‘finding the golden fleece’. The gross underfunding of educational institutions has left the quality of education questionable as many migrate to develop expertise abroad.
Expatriate skills are highly sought after to make up for the lack of skill in the country. For many, the causes of the brain drain, is a double-edged sword. Those who were privileged to be educated in the West easily secure employment in Nigeria, which prompts young Nigerians to follow in their footsteps. At the same time, there is a high rate of unemployment among local graduates.
This shows a dire need to establish more educational institutions to accommodate the country’s expanding population while simultaneously providing the same standards as Western institutions.
Bassey, who also sits on the board of the Nigerian High Education Foundation, says: “Nigeria produced people like me. The education I had there prepared me to compete on the global stage. This means that we once had an excellent structure which we must find a way to return to. I’m very passionate about issues concerning education in Nigeria and the plan is to help raise more funds to push this course forward.”
She is a product of the famous Queens College, Lagos, University of Maiduguri and Nigerian law school. Bassey believes that in spite of the good, corruption still has the country in its firm grip.
“I was noticed because I worked hard. With hard work, the sky is your limit here. In Nigeria, hard work is not just enough.”
At the Pan African University, home to the prestigious Lagos Business School, FORBES AFRICA meets graduate students who are passionate about entrepreneurship.
Graduate student, Chivuzo Offiah, is positive about the future.
“We have the resources, the human capital and immense potential, this is why there are so many expatriates doing business here. Yes, a lot of professionals have left the country but there are still a lot of equally smart people here who can turn this situation around.
“Nigeria needs to give these people a chance. Executing the right policies at government level will make all the difference. Nigeria is a market for any economy. We need a critical mass of Nigerians who will clamor for change. You don’t wait to be empowered, you grab empowerment with your hands,” he says.
Offiah’s view is echoed by Godson Ikiebey, a PhD student in government policies.
“The government is inept, corrupt and incompetent but I still believe in the future of this country. I believe in remaining here to be the change we are clamoring for,” he says.
Jeremiah Iyamabo, a PhD student in marketing communications, is from a different school of thought.
“Based on the status quo and my goals, I do not intend to remain in Nigeria as the structure is not enabling. I tie the issue of the brain drain to the collapse of our collective value system, which has led to the breakdown of infrastructure. Why would I be faithful to a system that doesn’t have an enabling infrastructure for our development? There is a great disconnect between the educational institutions and what the industry needs. It is the responsibility of the government to bridge that gap and put the right structures in place.
Tope Falade, another master’s student, is also concerned about the future.
“I blame the citizenry of this country for not being bold enough to demand accountability from those we put in power.”
Previous attempts to reverse the brain drain, by attracting talent that had left the country, proved futile. For Nigeria, the impact of the brain drain is too costly and cannot be ignored any further.
In recent years, the Nigerian government—under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo—addressed the issue of turning the brain drain into a brain gain through the formation of two new organizations. Nigerians in the Diaspora Organization (NIDO) and the Nigerian National Volunteer Service (NNVS) were created to harness the skills and talents of the Nigerian diaspora.
Bassey said: “On the brain gain, I won’t hesitate to find ways to lend my expertise to my country where required and I will embrace the opportunity to bring my skills back home in due course.”
From the halls of Nigeria’s finest institutions, to the corner offices of prestigious firms across the globe, all voices lean towards one truth—the future of Nigeria’s work force, dangles on a precarious precipice.
“We will be doing ourselves a great dis-service as Nigerians, if we don’t find a way to return to the previous level of excellence on all facets,” says Bassey.

Should I Stay  Or Should I Go?

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

Walmart Tries To Be  Down To Earth

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

Category: Focus

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