Contemporary art created by African artists in Africa and abroad has long been recognized across the African continent – yet failed to make any international impact.
Thankfully that has spectacularly changed, and over the past few years, African art has hit a tipping point.
For instance, shimmering bottle top wall-hangings by Ghanaian sculptor El Anutsui decorated the exterior of the Royal Academy in London last year and his work New World Map sold for £541,250 ($873,400) in 2012.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29642 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-211x300.jpg" alt="" width="211" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-211x300.jpg 211w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-300x427.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006-600x853.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-006.jpg 720w" sizes="(max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px" />
But while renowned artists such as El Anutsui and Ibrahim El-Salahi from Sudan have broken through the international ceiling and are bought by museums in London and New York, most African artists remain invisible to the West because they don’t exhibit there.
Art entrepreneur Touria El Glaoui quickly realized when she traveled through Africa on business that she saw “amazing talent and amazing art” yet there was no international platform for those artists, only “a huge gap”.
So last year she came to London, which is at the heart of the international art market, and set up 1:54, London’s first contemporary art fair dedicated to visual art from Africa.
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Same time as Frieze Week
El Glaoui timed it to coincide with Frieze Week, a landmark on the London art calendar attended by 70,000 art buyers.
“The artists we showed were both established and more up and coming, but perhaps they didn’t have a gallery, they didn’t have representation, they hadn’t yet been collected by a museum,” she says.
Although a risk at the time, piggybacking Frieze Week proved a great success. The art, sculpture and photography on sale at 1:54 was priced between £2,000 ($3,200) and £200,000 ($322,000), and the 14 exhibiting galleries sold every single item and played host to 6,000 visitors including the great and good of the art world.
Those collectors who turned up late found all the works had been sold and actually complained ‘why didn’t you bring more work with you to sell?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, given last year’s success, 1:54 is back in October, with 85 artists sold through 27 galleries, and this time has taken two wings of Somerset House in Central London.
So what led El Glaoui to become an art entrepreneur with a passion for helping artists from Africa build an international career?
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Learnings from dad
El Glaoui was born into a family of artists in Morocco, and her 90-year-old father is Hassan El Glaoui, one of Morocco’s most famous living figurative painters. This, and the fact that she has been dealing with galleries on behalf of her father for 15 years, gave her instant credibility in the art world.
She has learned hugely from the experiences of her father, who quickly established himself in Paris, but chose to return to Morocco to paint in 1965. He took a long time to rebuild an international reputation.
“Of course today, my father sells in the secondary market at Christies and Sotheby’s, but an international gallery would have changed where he is in terms of pricing.”
She is keen to share this insider’s knowledge of dealing with galleries and the international art market with up and coming and more established artists from Africa.
“All artists would prefer to be considered mainstream artists, and I know what’s needed for them to succeed.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29641 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-300x223.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="223" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-300x223.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-600x445.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004-768x570.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-082-083-Touria-El-Glaoui-004.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
El Glaoui explains that the price which collectors are willing to pay for art is to a large extent influenced by factors such as having an agent and a gallery to promote an artist internationally, having work bought by influential museums and private collectors, and also by winning art prizes.
Linking artist with collector is critical, and so El Glaoui is excited to have recently signed a deal for 1:54 content to be exhibited on Artsy, the New York based online art gallery which links 250,000 subscribers with established galleries and artists around the world.  This will give her artists a global platform for sales and recognition.
Putting African art on the map is just what she intends to do, and El Glaoui has ambitions to replicate the Fair in other countries, the obvious next location being New York. Finally, once the 1:54 brand is well established she would like to bring the 1:54 Fair back to Africa.

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Putting African Art On The Map

The international buzz around contemporary African art has never been louder.
African art has always been celebrated on the African continent, but has singularly failed to be regarded as collectible by most Western mainstream collectors and museums. The most important art works created in Africa have long been considered to be antique and traditional.
Modern African art’s exclusion from the Western mainstream has been controversial, so the pace of change in 2013 has been exhilarating. Major museums in London and New York have showcased leading African artists and have been buying their work enthusiastically.
Dramatic installation art pieces—three-dimensional works that are often created in exhibition spaces—by Ghanaian artist El Anutsui are being displayed by major museums both sides of the Atlantic. And London’s Tate Modern, a leader in art trends internationally, has recently set up an African Art Acquisitions Committee to purchase works by contemporary African artists, an acknowledgment that the Tate’s permanent collection was too focused on Western European and North American art.
The Venice Biennale, possibly the world’s most influential contemporary art exhibition, had record attendances from African countries last year, with the leading prize, the Golden Lion, going to the Angolan pavilion, a major boost for African contemporary art.
It all adds up to a sneaking suspicion that this is the age when African art truly becomes collectible.
Ask Bonhams, the only international auction house to specialize in contemporary African art, and they will tell you the African market is booming. Buyers include international museums and private collectors from Europe, the United States and particularly from Nigeria. And Bonhams deny that it’s a bubble.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31298" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-300x150.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="150" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-300x150.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-600x300.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-768x384.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
For the last five years, Bonhams have held their annual Africa Now auction.
“Five years ago it was difficult. We didn’t know who our prospective buyers were, we had no mailing list, and it was a daunting prospect,” says auctioneer Giles Peppiatt, the director of contemporary African art at Bonhams.
“Contrast that with our latest sale in May last year which was our most successful yet, we smashed 20 world records for prices made by an artist and we sold 91% of items up for sale. In total we achieved £1.3 million ($2.1 million),” says Peppiatt.
“We sold seven wooden sculptures, made by Ben Enwonwu for the Daily Mirror newspaper in 1960, for £360,000 ($580,000) against an estimate of £80,000 ($129,000) to £120,000 ($194,000).”
Bonhams most notable moment came in May 2012 when an El Anutsui wall hanging made from bottle tops welded together with copper wire sold for £542,000 ($890,000). It is the highest price yet paid for African art at auction.
It’s not surprising that prices for El Anatsui, a celebrated Ghanaian artist living and working in Nigeria, are rocketing. His massive sheets of shimmering bottle top installation art have been bought by major galleries, and last summer he won a major art prize, the Charles Wollaston Award, for his giant installation draped outside the Royal Academy exhibition in London.
Major events in Africa focusing purely on contemporary African Art have been building interest for years. The Joburg Art Fair is well established and has been dedicated to selling living African artists’ work since 2008. The Dak’Art Biennale goes back to 1992, providing a creative platform in Dakar, Senegal for more than 20 years.
International art buyers with deep pockets descend on London during Frieze Week in October, and the auction houses and exhibitions compete to take money from them. This year they are joined by 1:54, a new art fair that was launched in Europe, to take the unique energy from the current African art scene and to sell directly to global collectors in London.
1:54 is the brainchild of Touria El Glaoui, the daughter of respected Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui.
“By hosting this fair in Somerset House in central London our intention is to foster exchange between artists, curators, collectors and the public from all backgrounds and nationalities,” says El Glaoui.
The fair has been named after the 54 nations that make up Africa, and aims to represent all countries and styles, as well as artists from the African diaspora.
Edson Chagas, the Angolan photographer whose work became the basis for the winning Angolan Venice Biennale pavilion, is one of 70 artists represented at 1:54, as is Abdoulaye Diarrasouba, known as Aboudia, from Cote d’Ivoire.
Several of Aboudia’s large-scale acrylic on canvas paintings have been bought by the Saatchi Gallery and are soon to appear in a Saatchi exhibition. His style is inspired by graffiti and depicts street life and the traumas of war.
Aboudia was born and worked in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan until the most recent civil war in 2010. Now he moves between Abidjan and New York.
“I’m exhibiting at the 1:54 fair because I feel it’s important to show my work to people abroad and to venture beyond the Ivory Coast,” he says.
Aboudia thinks others should follow the example of Charles Saatchi, the owner of the Saatchi Gallery.
“He has the courage to search for new things and nurture them. He doesn’t wait until [artists’] careers have already been developed. Life is about taking risks. Emerging artists benefit from being brought to the world’s attention,” he says.
The fact that quality African art is being widely bought by leading galleries is music to the ears of Oba Nsugbe, a leading Nigerian barrister working in Britain. He is a member of the Tate Modern African Art Acquisitions Committee, which is responsible for delivering a detailed strategy to purchase world class African art.
“This would have been impossible to conceive 10 or 15 years ago. We are placing African art alongside other world class art where it belongs—to be conserved in a world-class forum. What more do you want?”   FL

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The Smart Money is  on African Art

Think back to the magic and memories of your favorite cartoons such as Tom &amp; Jerry and The Powerpuff Girls. How many of them had characters of different races or, at the very least, were in a language other than English?
Uganda-born entrepreneur Akaliza Gara, founder and managing director of ICT company Shaking Sun and Yambi Animation Studios, has been asking these questions for a long time. As an entrepreneur in Rwanda’s animation industry, she now hopes to use animation as a tool to tell African stories to the world and in turn, promote and preserve her continent’s rich culture.
From an early age, Gara has been exposed to a world that gave her the liberty to dream beyond conventional careers. Her mother was a teacher and her father, a lawyer, worked for the United Nations, various NGOs and government institutions.
“I had an unusual upbringing. My family moved to a new country, on average, every three years. By the time I was 21, I had lived in seven different countries,” she says.
Gara began her high school in Switzerland, spent two years in Kenya and completed her schooling in South Africa. After that, she moved to Canterbury, England, where she took a BSc in Multimedia Technology and Design. She was miles away from home but never felt out of place.
“Most of the Africans would hang out together. Sometimes I would be walking on the street and I would see another African, someone I had never met, and we would give each other a little nod of acknowledgement,” says Gara.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-29451" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/GirlsInICTDay_2013-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GirlsInICTDay_2013-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GirlsInICTDay_2013-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GirlsInICTDay_2013-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GirlsInICTDay_2013-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GirlsInICTDay_2013.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
In her final year of university, she applied for her dream job as an animator at Pixar Animation Studios, in the United States, known for blockbusters such as Toy Story, Monster’s Inc. and Finding Nemo.
Three months went by and Gara, anxiously waiting, hadn’t heard from them. She decided to call them.
“I managed to hack a website and get a phone number for a top person at the company. I gave him a call and asked for a job. He was, understandably, quite confused and angry that I had got his number. He told me to call human resources, said ‘good luck’ and hung up. I was very disappointed, for some reason, I expected him to be impressed with my initiative and offer me a job.” After graduation, Gara moved to Uganda’s capital Kampala. The rejection from Pixar sparked something in her that made her even more determined to prove her mettle.
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While looking for a job in Kampala, Gara’s uncle informed her of the fantastic opportunities in the ICT sector, for youth and women, in Rwanda. Having researched the country, Gara saw the many opportunities and relocated. One of her main challenges was overcoming the language barrier and speaking Kinyarwanda, the local language.
For the first two years, Gara worked as a private consultant and also started to save for a master’s degree in animation. However, she found her clients were more interested in her skills than her qualifications.
She shifted her focus and put RWF5 million ($7,500) of savings towards her company Shaking Sun. The company, launched in 2009, is a multimedia enterprise specializing in graphic design, animation and web development.
“The field is largely male-dominated and there are many challenges for women in the field shared by those of us in Africa and outside Africa. One is the lack of female role models. The stereotypical image of an ICT expert is a young white man, so many young girls grow up without even considering their field because they see ICT and technology in general as a boy’s thing.”
In 2013, Gara received the opportunity of a lifetime to be a part of the team that created Rwanda’s first animated series, The African Tales. The series was part of The Know Zone, a project focused on educating the youth through animation. The episodes were five minutes long and aired on national TV station, RTV, for 15 weeks.
The African Tales reignited Gara’s lifelong dream of becoming an animator and instead of seeking out a world-renowned animation studio to work for, she started her own company Yambi Animation Studios.
“When I was a kid, most of my favorite cartoon characters were male and usually white and almost always American. I want to create characters that represent my culture and values for the generation of African children growing up today.”
Gara is determined to educate young women about opportunities in the ICT field. She is part of a number of initiatives such as Girls in ICT Rwanda, a group of female ICT entrepreneurs and professionals encouraging teenage girls in Rwanda to consider ICT as a career as well as be part of the Microsoft 4Afrika Advisory Council, which seeks to help change the perception of women in ICT in East Africa.
Gara never got her dream job at Pixar but it drove her to become a frontrunner in African animation. Everything in life happens for a reason, and Gara firmly believes that to be true.

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What Do You Do If You Can’t Be At Pixar?

Joy Ndungutse’s two-storied home in the upscale Kagugu area of Kigali is a fitting showcase of her artistic taste and talent. There are woven baskets on the walls, wooden chests and African figurines by the stairs, and an open patio featuring plush red cushions and a view of Rwanda’s rolling green hills.
Ndungutse, 57, is sprawled on a sofa, and offering homemade organic juice. “Try it,” she insists. Her large-heartedness becomes more evident when she says: “My whole life is devoted to the welfare of women. I want them to win awards and be motivated. You empower a woman, you empower a community.”
Ndungutse is referring to the brand she founded and has made her so famous, from Kigali to Madison Square in New York. Gahaya Links, a range of home décor and tribal jewelry handcrafted by Rwanda’s rural women, is sold across all Macy’s stores in the United States (US).
To think Ndungutse’s life started in a dingy refugee camp in Uganda.
<div id="attachment_29434" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29434" class="size-medium wp-image-29434" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5250-300x209.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="209" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5250-300x209.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5250-600x418.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5250-768x535.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5250-1024x713.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5250.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Joy Ndungutse Founder of Gahaya Links</div>
Born poor into a family of “farmers and cattle-keepers”, Ndungutse spent her childhood in Uganda as a refugee with her parents, far from her hometown in Rwanda.
“I have seen and felt hunger, there is nothing I don’t know about suffering, and that is the reason I do what I do,” she says. She had eight siblings growing up, and while her father went looking for food, her mother would boil water to give the children hope there was food coming.
“We would see the steam and imagine food on the plate. The mothers suffered the most, that is why I really wanted to work hard and do something for the lot of rural women,” she says.
Ndungutse would see her mother and sister weaving baskets and that income paid their school fees. She soon studied to become a secretary, and found herself winging her way to the US. But her refugee upbringing never left her mind. That was to shape her career in the years to come.
“I was a very good secretary. I met my husband in Washington and lived in the US for 15 years until the war started in Rwanda. I had both my children in the US.”
In 1994, she returned to Rwanda and saw the country in shambles in the aftermath of the genocide. She wanted to help rural women left hopeless by the tragedy.
“I was not a rich woman, but I had skills to share, having studied design in America. I knew how to weave baskets.” Ndungutse’s business venture literally started under a tree in a small village called Gitarama in Rwanda’s southern province.
She began by teaching 20 women, and that figure has now grown to a network of 5,000 Gahaya Links weavers. She taught them traditional weaving in turn empowering them.
“I told the women they should change the way they weave and make it income-generating. I taught them to make quality products under that tree,” says Ndungutse, who also roped in her sister Janet Nkubana to help. The baskets were made from local materials like sweet grass, bamboo and papyrus. A visiting friend from New York saw them and placed an order. The handcrafted baskets were a hit.
“The products appeared in Parade magazine in the US and that was an opening for us. We subsequently did an exhibition in the US and Macy’s loved our products. We have been displaying our products in Macy’s since 1997. We are very strong partners with them. We have also done O bracelets for Oprah, have done necklaces and bags for Kate Spade, and I once gifted baskets to Bono and he wrote a letter thanking me,” says Ndungutse.
Along with her sister, who continues to be her business partner, Ndungutse’s next task was to train the women and step up production to make it sustainable. Her mother offered her large home, where she trained the local women.
“We trained the trainers and they trained others, creating a network. We now have 75 cooperatives across Rwanda.”
Ndungutse says Rwandan President Paul Kagame launched her products at Macy’s to show his support for the people of Rwanda.
“President Kagame inspires me. I do not want to fail him. I tell people he is our hero. He is very committed to the empowerment of women in Rwanda. How many presidents would stand in a department store to launch a product?”
Ndungutse also has a line of jewelry sold by American retail major Anthropologie. There have been awards as well, notably from The Museum of Arts and Design in New York. She has now put up a new factory in Kicukiro district in Kigali and has added a textile component.
“My life is simple. I laugh a lot and like to have a good time. I work hard, even on weekends. Next year, we are planning to open in the European market. Our designs are inspired by tradition, and positioned for the high-end luxury market,” says Ndungutse.
<div id="attachment_29436" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-29436" class="size-medium wp-image-29436" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5260-300x208.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="208" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5260-300x208.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5260-600x416.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5260-768x533.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5260-1024x711.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Joy-Ndungutse_5260.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Joy Ndungutse</div>
The basket-weaving program has no doubt fostered a sense of security and entrepreneurship among the women she supports.
“Basket-weaving has a reconciliation factor. We are working with all women not [differentiating them as] Hutus and Tutsis. Through the weaving, they have been able to forgive each other; they don’t live in anger. I feel wealthy when I see the change in their lives. They are able to hold their heads high and support their families. I may retire soon, but I want to leave a legacy of women who become real entrepreneurs. When that happens, I will die a happy woman.”

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Bracelets for Oprah, Baskets for Bono

A blank projector screen hangs in the middle of a room in William V.S. Tubman High School. A handful of expatriates and Liberians mill around, waiting for the film that was scheduled to start rolling over an hour ago. Young women wait expectantly behind a table filled with snacks and baked goods. But most of the yellow plastic chairs are empty.
After plugging and unplugging a jumble of chords and tapping a few computer keys the film begins to play. Restless children and 20 or so adult members of the audience sit as a film titled No More Selections We Want Elections screens. It traces the 2005 elections that saw President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf come to power. The sound is gritty, light streaming through the sheer curtains washes out the image on the screen and the audience is small.
This is the first time Liberia has held a film festival. The brainchild of Pandora Hodge, a young Liberian student, and a collection of her colleagues from the University of Liberia and SPARK, a Dutch NGO that fosters entrepreneurship in post-conflict countries. The Image of Liberia film festival was held over three days in Monrovia in February and aired Liberian and African films in classrooms and communities throughout the city. Some screenings were packed and went off without a hitch; others ran late and attracted a sparse audience.
Through the festival, Hodge and her team hope to challenge the war-torn image of Liberia and build up interest in the art house cinema called Kriterion that she and her colleagues are trying to establish. Films about Liberia’s brutal recent history – it’s civil unrest that spanned three decades, killed 250,000 people and destroyed the nation’s infrastructure – are notably absent from the program that is filled with a small selection of Liberian and African films.
“We are creating a platform where young people can go to express themselves. A cinema is a really good way to get people involved and get people aware of what is happening in the country and abroad,” says Hodge.
Inspired by the model of a cinema that was created in Amsterdam by university students involved in the anti-Nazi resistance movement in the aftermath of World War II, Hodge hopes that Monrovia’s own Kriterion can provide part-time employment to students and also become a hub for Liberian cinema and intellectual debate. The Kriterion model has also been adopted by students in post-conflict cities like Sarajevo.
But, establishing an art house cinema will be a challenge in a country where most people get their slice of cinema in ramshackle video clubs, sitting on wooden benches watching Nigerian, American and Indian films off eerie television screens that sit small in the darkness. In Monrovia, cinemas are virtually non-existent – two of the three cinemas, remembered fondly by Liberia’s pre-war generation, have been demolished. Only Rivoli, a cinema in downtown Monrovia, is still standing and seems to screen Bollywood movies exclusively. These cinemas aired mainly American movies as films were largely limited to government public relations and propaganda. But Hodge and her team, through surveying and research, found Liberian audiences want to see more locally produced films.
Unlike some of its neighbors in the region, like Nigeria and Ghana, Liberia has never had a vibrant film culture. Liberia’s cinema scene is small and amateurish with only a handful of directors producing quality films.
Derick Snyder, a filmmaker and producer, describes most Liberian films as birthday party quality.
“You got a little camera for your daughter’s birthday and you just film the yard. We’ve still got a lot to learn,” he says.
Snyder is one of a handful of Liberian producers who are able to shoot and edit quality films. Most actors are untrained and perform for free; those with talent and ambition head to Nigeria, Ghana or Gambia. Lack of access to equipment, technical know-how and stale plotlines, have hindered the growth of Liberia’s small film industry, says Snyder.
“Everyone is doing ma, pa, daughter crying in the living room love stories,” he says, adding that Liberians prefer the drama and slick effects of many of the Nigerian films.
Snyder, like many producers, has a day job shooting events for the United Nations Mission in Liberia and produces films on the side. He says most filmmakers struggle to earn a living.
Unlike other African countries, the Liberian government provides limited funding for the arts.
But, over the past year, there have been efforts to develop filmmaking by organizations such as Accountability Lab, an NGO focused on funding small projects that encourage accountability. Nigerian-Liberian director Divine Key Anderson heads a part-time film school that helps train students to make short films focused on accountability issues.
“Since 1847, we have been writing papers and not much has changed in this country and that is because 70 percent of our population are illiterate… but with film even a blind man can see,” says Anderson, who, like Hodge, agrees that film can be instrumental in creating political debate and change.
For James Emmanuel Roberts, who made No More Selections We Want Elections, the arts play a vital role in creating national identity and broader political and social debate. Roberts, 70, headed the national cultural troupe in the 1970s and helped create a satire television series called Kotati, meaning ‘sit down there’ in the Kru language, that aired on Liberian state-run television.
Roberts argues the development of a film scene in Liberia will play an important role in creating a collective historical memory that was largely erased by the 1980 coup and civil war, during which many records and archives were destroyed.  He says that cinema could help Liberians shape the story of their nation, whose recent history has been narrated by outsiders, namely Western journalists. Roberts and his son are currently working on a film on the 2011 elections.
After I finish interviewing Roberts, the public electricity cuts out and Hodge and her team rush to fuel up a generator for the next screening.
Creating an art house cinema, in a country whose cultural scene is only just beginning to re-emerge a decade after the civil war, will be a challenge. Hodge is confident she and her Kriterions are up to the task and that the film festival will continue to attract a culture-hungry audience.

Us On Film

This generation of young African women is the most ambitious yet. They are eager to build industries, reform societies, save lives, rewrite history, and transform the continent.
Our annual “20 Young Power African Women” list illuminates the brightest stars and Africa’s most outstanding female game changers. We enlisted a group of young, professional African women to help identify the most innovative, courageous, daring and successful young women aged 45 and under. It is a subjective list, no doubt, but it is the closest you will get to a definitive list.
Meet the 2013 class of 20 Young Power Women in Africa: the continent’s emerging power brokers, the Amazons to watch, and the custodians of tomorrow.
<h5>Isabel Dos Santos</h5>
<h5>Angolan. Investor</h5>
The daughter of Angola’s President, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos is Africa’s richest woman. She is also one of the continent’s most powerful businesswomen. Through her various holding companies, she controls a 25% stake in Angolan mobile telecom operator Unitel, a 25% stake in Angola’s Banco BIC, 25% of ZON Optimus, a listed Portuguese cable TV company, and just under 20% of Banco BPI, one of Portugal’s largest publicly traded banks. She is also partnering with Sonae, Portugal’s largest retailer, to launch 5 new food hypermarkets in Angola in 2014.
<h5>Mimi Alemayehou</h5>
<h5>Ethiopian. Executive Vice</h5>
<h5>President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)</h5>
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In 2010 U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Ethiopia-born Mimi Alemayehou as the Executive Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government’s development finance institution. She helps manage OPIC’s $16 billion war chest, channeling American capital to fund investment opportunities in emerging markets. Prior to her OPIC appointment, Alemayehou served as the United States Executive Director at the African Development Bank.
<h5>Lupita Nyong’o</h5>
<h5>Kenyan. Actress and Filmmaker</h5>
Nyong’o is a Kenyan actress and filmmaker who made her Hollywood debut in acclaimed film director Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” as Patsey. Nyong’o was born in Mexico, raised in Kenya and educated in the U.S. She is a graduate of Yale University’s School of Drama. In 2009, the breakout actress was also the lead in MTV’s award-winning drama series, Shuga. Nyong’o’s cousin, Isis Nyong’o was named one of Forbes 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa in 2011. Another cousin, Tavia Nyong’o, is a professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
<h5>Hadeel Ibrahim</h5>
<h5>Sudanese. Mo Ibrahim Foundation</h5>
Hadeel Ibrahim is the daughter of Sudanese-born British mobile telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim. She is the founding Executive Director of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which was established in 2006 to support leadership and good governance in Africa. She also serves on the Boards of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice and the African Governance Institute (AGI).
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<h5>Minoush Abdel-Meguid</h5>
<h5>Egyptian. Private Equity Investor, Entrepreneur, Investment Banker</h5>
The Egyptian-born investment banker is the cofounder of Union Capital, an Egyptian investment firm primarily focused on small and medium-sized enterprises. Abdel-Meguid is also founding president of the Egyptian Young Bankers Association, an organization that mentors young banking professionals.
<h5>Monica Musonda</h5>
<h5>Zambian. Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Java Foods</h5>
Musonda is the founder of Java Foods, a Zambia-based food processing company that manufactures the eeZee brand of Instant Noodles. Musonda previously worked with Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, as the director of legal and corporate affairs at Dangote Group, where she led a project to build a cement plant in Zambia. She currently serves on the Boards of Dangote Industries Zambia Limited and the Central Bank of Zambia. Musonda is also the Chairperson of Kwacha Pension Trust Fund, Zambia’s largest single employer pension fund. She is an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow and was named a 2013 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
<h5>Lindiwe Mazibuko</h5>
<h5>South African. Politician &amp; Parliamentary Leader for Democratic Alliance (DA)</h5>
Mazibuko, 33, is a Parliamentary Leader for the Democratic Alliance (MP for North Durban) and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly in South Africa. As the country’s fourth youngest parliamentarian, Mazibuko is already being touted as a future leader of the Democratic Alliance. Mazibuko was named South Africa’s Most Influential Woman in 2012 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2013.
<h5>Tara Fela-Durotoye</h5>
<h5>Nigerian. Founder, House Of Tara</h5>
The Nigerian-born entrepreneur and lawyer is the founder of House Of Tara, Nigeria’s leading beauty and cosmetics company. House of Tara develops a wide range of African-themed beauty products and perfumes and also operates Nigeria’s foremost beauty academy. In 2013, Fela-Durotoye was nominated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
<h5>Claire Akamanzi</h5>
<h5>Rwandan. Chief Operating Officer, Rwanda Development Board</h5>
Akamanzi, 34, is the Chief Operating Officer of the Rwandan Development Board (RDB), a government institution tasked with accelerating economic growth and development in Rwanda by enabling private sector growth. Akamanzi has had a successful career in public service, serving as Rwanda’s commercial diplomat in London and as a trade negotiator in Geneva for the Rwandan government at the World Trade Organization. She was also previously the Deputy Director-General of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA).
<h5>PROSCOVIA Alengot Oromait</h5>
<h5>Ugandan. Member Of Parliament</h5>
Proscovia Oromait, 20, is the youngest parliamentarian in Africa. In 2012 she was elected Member of Parliament for Usuk County, Katakwi District in Uganda. Her father, Michael Oromait, served as the MP for the same Parliamentary seat before his death in July 2012. She is a member of Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement party.
<h5>Sibongile Sambo</h5>
<h5>South African. Chief Executive Officer and Founder of SRS Aviation</h5>
Sambo is the founder and Managing Director of SRS (Sibongile Rejoice Sambo) Aviation – the first black female owned aviation company in South Africa. SRS is an integrated provider of private aviation services offering South African and international clients VIP Charter, tourist charter and helicopter services. The company also provides maintenance, sales and fleet management services to private jet owners.
<h5>Vera Songwe</h5>
<h5>Cameroonian. Country Director, World Bank, Senegal</h5>
Vera Songwe, a Cameroonian national, serves as the World Bank’s Country Director for Senegal, Cape Verde, Gambia, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau. She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute with the Global Economy and Development and Africa Growth Initiative.
<h5>Angellah Kariuki</h5>
<h5>Tanzanian. Politician</h5>
Kariuki, 37, is a Special seat Member of Tanzania’s Parliament and the country’s Deputy Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
<div id="attachment_5969" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5969" class="size-medium wp-image-5969" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/83362281-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Artist Wangechi Mutu attends the 2008 Whitney Museum of American Art&#8217;s gala</div>
<h5>Wangechi Mutu</h5>
<h5>Kenyan. Artist and Sculptor</h5>
Considered one of the most important contemporary African artists of recent years, Mutu’s first major solo exhibition in the U.S., Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey, opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in March 2013. Mutu’s work has achieved much global acclaim with exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Miami Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Her first solo exhibition at a major North American museum opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March 2010.
<h5>Ola Orekunrin</h5>
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<h5>Nigerian. Medical Doctor &amp; Founder, The Flying Doctors</h5>
Orekunrin, 25, is founder and Managing Director of Flying Doctors Nigeria Ltd., an air ambulance service based in Lagos, Nigeria. Orekunrin’s company is the first air ambulance service in West Africa to provide urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services for critically injured people. She is a 2013 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and was named a Young Global Leader in 2013 by the World Economic Forum.
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<h5>Rapelang Rabana</h5>
<h5>South African. Entrepreneur</h5>
One of Africa’s most recognizable young entrepreneurs, Rabana, 29, is the CEO and founder of Cape Town-based Yeigo Communications, which develops software for telecoms-related services including Voice over IP, instant messaging, SMS messaging and push email services. In 2008, Telfree, a Swiss mobile telecommunications firm, acquired a 51% stake in Yeigo. In December 2012 she founded Rekindle Learning, a company that provides adaptive mobile learning solutions.
<h5>Folake Folarin-Coker</h5>
<h5>Nigerian. Fashion Designer</h5>
Coker is the founder of Tiffany Amber, one of Africa’s leading fashion labels. She is the first African-based designer to showcase for two consecutive seasons at New York Fashion Week. In 2009, she won Designer of the Year at African Fashion International in Johannesburg, South Africa followed by Fashion Brand of the Year in 2011 at the Arise Fashion Week in Lagos, Nigeria.
<h5>Valentina da Luz Guebuza</h5>
<h5>Mozambiquan. Investor</h5>
The 33 year-old daughter of Mozambique’s President Armando Guebuza heads Focus 21 Management &amp; Development, a large family-owned investment holding company with interests in banking, telecommunications, fisheries, transport, mining and property. Focus 21 owns significant stakes in Beira Grain Terminal and Chinese Pay TV Company StarTimes’ operations in Mozambique.
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<h5>NoViolet Bulawayo</h5>
<h5>Zimbabwean. Author</h5>
Zimbabwean-born author NoViolet Bulawayo is the first Black African female and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker prize for her debut novel “We Need New Names”. She is the author of the short story Hitting Budapest (2010), which won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. NoViolet Bulawayo is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in California.
<h5>Amini Kajunju</h5>
<h5>Democratic Republic of Congo. President &amp; CEO,</h5>
<h5>Africa-America Institute</h5>
<div id="attachment_5967" style="width: 226px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5967" class="size-medium wp-image-5967" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/181837445-216x300.jpg" alt="" width="216" height="300" />Amini Kajunju speaks during the Africa-America Institute 60th Anniversary Awards Gala at New York Hilton on September 25, 2013 in New York City.</div>
A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Amini Kajunju is the President &amp; CEO of the Africa-America Institute, and the first African woman to serve at the helm of the oldest non-profit organization of its kind in the United States. Kajunju joined the Africa-America Institute in October 2012 from the New York-based Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO) where she had served as Executive Director for 10 years. Under her leadership, Kajunju has bolstered the organization’s programming and served more entrepreneurs than any other institution of a similar size in New York City.
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20 Young Power Women In Africa 2013

Without deliberate design, Maria McCloy has been a pioneer throughout much of her career. “People reading your magazine would probably cringe, but there are no spreadsheets and I don’t have a business plan. I just do it.”
Fresh out of university in the heady creative energy of South Africa’s early democracy, McCloy and two partners founded multimedia company Black Rage Productions. It was the starting point of an exciting, ever-evolving career, and McCloy credits the network of contacts that she built up at Rage for the success of her mini empire.
Rage grew quickly into a television production company that produced several art and culture magazine prog-rams, a record label that rode the mus-ical wave of Kwaito, and a website that became the go-to guide for urban culture.
Although she rejects formalized business structures, McCloy is always on the lookout for a new opportunity, and her instincts tend to be spot on.
“One holiday I was home in Lesotho and I met a guy selling wire earrings – lots of people there sell lots of wire earrings – and I thought, wow! These are amazing,” she says.
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McCloy managed to convince David Magwai, a vendor selling jewelry outside a cathedral in Maseru, to customize his wares for her.
“I said to him: ‘Please make these bigger for me’. And he said: ‘Your ear is going to break off, but okay’.”
Back in Johannesburg, some of the artistes McCloy had met through Rage noticed the earrings and soon she had a customer base of musicians, writers and actors.
Then Stoned Cherrie designer Nkhensani Nkosi featured them in her collection. Mantsho founder Palesa Mokubung and industry doyenne Marianne Fassler followed suit. Of course, having the likes of award-winning singer Lira wear the earrings did not hurt their popularity.
“People in the office were keen on (the earrings), so I started giving them as gifts and then those people bought them as gifts, and the process grew organically,” McCloy explains.
It prompted McCloy to turn her love for accessories into a small business. She formalized her trade, selling earrings, clay necklaces, and vintage bags and sunglasses at a craft market once a month.
It was during Rage’s promotion of the Congolese gangster film, Viva Riva!, that McCloy’s dual passions united. As part of the publicity for the movie, she was asked to put together a media gift bag. McCloy took the standard press kit one step further and came up with a clutch bag sporting the film’s logo – and added a new range to her business.
She started selling clutch bags in unique African prints. Even when demand increased, she says, each bag remained unique, as the geometric prints and bright colors of the fabric gave shape to a different accessory each time.
“Cloth had always been a big part of me; I wore it as a headwrap. At home my mother had a big pile so I think it really resonated with people to see it on a clutch,” she says.
McCloy happened on her next big idea while shopping in Johannesburg’s inner city. It was the push she needed to establish Maria McCloy Accessories.
“I saw a pair of shoes, very bridal, in a traditional wedding shop, a pair of seShoeShoe shoes… Clutches may be a bit more specific but everyone needs shoes.
“The whole thing with the shoes and the cloth is that it shouldn’t just be saved for a special occasion, it should be worn every day. We think Western clothes are normal and African clothes are for traditional occasions, but actually no, use it everywhere. It’s beautiful! Don’t wait for the West, because that’s what happened. The West decided African print was in and we jumped on it when we’ve always had this stuff,” she points out, clearly exasperated.
The fashion world’s current fascination with traditional African prints has certainly helped Maria McCloy Accessories. “I want it to be forever because this is in our history,” says McCloy, who is looking forward to working with historically significant textiles, such as Asa-oke, the hand-woven fabric from Nigeria, and Kente cloth, the silk and cotton material native to Ghana.
One Sunday I stop by McCloy’s stall in Maboneng, Johannesburg’s gentrified inner-city precinct. Her customers come from all walks of life – locals and tourists. I watch as a teenager swaps his trainers for ankle boots covered in a tan-and-brown print originally from Mozambique. Next to him, a woman tries to work out if her iPad will fit into one of McCloy’s custom-made journal holders.
As the popularity of her collection continues to grow, McCloy has started receiving queries about bulk orders, and is even considering starting her own manufacturing line. She already employs three people and is on the lookout for an investor to take her business to the next level.
McCloy readily admits that her success cannot be attributed solely to chance. Since she was a child, she has had a keen eye for accessories and prints, as well as an interest in fashion and art trends. And after a long career in the media industry, her extensive social network has been instrumental to the growth and popularity of Maria McCloy Accessories.
“My customers have been extremely supportive… They’re also my muses because sometimes they’ll ask for a certain shoe or a certain bag,” she says, explaining how the range expands as she tailors to the trends set by her customers.
McCloy credits Buti Mabote as one of her most important support structures in running the business. Their relationship is so multifaceted that it defies a formal definition. Mabote started out as a customer, but today he manages the logistics of Maria McCloy Accessories. He
liaises with clients and mans the stall when McCloy is away at her day job, which is in public relations for mass media company Viacom International.
“I realized there’s potential and I’m happy for Maria because she has invested a lot in this – time, her own money, ideas… I’m just there as support to make it happen for her. I’m quite happy to see (the business) growing, because as she grows I believe I’m growing,” Mabote says.
“My wife and I are normally here every Sunday, even if we’re not selling for Maria. It’s part of us. If you look in my car, in the boot, there’s something of Maria’s in there, whether it’s a shoe or cloth or a bag.
“Every day I have to do something for Maria, every day,” he says proudly.
“When she grows, I grow also. And I can say we’re friends now.”
Mabote’s attention shifts to a customer who has picked out a large pile of clutch bags and pumps. Alison Vieira explains that she is Canadian, and travelling the world in search of indigenous designs, crafts and products to sell in cosmopolitan Toronto.
Amazed by the success of a small, independent retailer, Vieira says she hopes to do more business with McCloy if the samples go down well in Toronto.
McCloy is pleasantly surprised; it seems her business has grown yet again.
Maria McCloy Accessories does not rely on the business school-sanctioned models of calculating risk and predicting margins. Instead, its evolution is a result of McCloy’s entrepreneurial spirit and instinct, combined with the power of human connection and a personal touch.

Maria McCloy: An eye for print and an instinct for business

Unearthing hidden gems at a grassroots level is vital for most African countries, but it is one of the most difficult aspects of football administration.
Scouts have a keen eye for talent, but they also need to identify other factors. Silky skills alone will not guarantee success for any player.
I would say that most African countries believe that somewhere out there, on the dusty streets of a remote village, is the next Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto’o or George Weah.
You are not just looking for one special individual, but rather a new wave of talent to take your football forward into the future. What you really need to find is potential; it is highly unlikely you will find anything near the finished article.
You need to be able to look at a player between the ages of 13 and 16 and take into account his current attributes before deciding if he has potential.
There is no exact science to this. Football history is littered with players who looked like world-beaters when they were 15 years old, but faded into obscurity a year later.
Then there is an element of luck. You need to be in the right place at the right time to spot a gifted player. There is a difference between gifted players and talented players. Some players have natural ability on the ball, great dribbling skills, quick feet and an accurate shot, but they do not have the potential to develop an all-round game that will enable them to make a career out of football. A player may be able to make an accurate 10-yard pass to a teammate but unable to hit a 30-yard ball.
Individual skills are one thing, but football is a team sport and young players must be able to blend into a side and be able to use the ball to help those around them.
Every player needs basic skills to play the game. Once those are identified, you can look for areas of excellence to work with. For example: a center-back should be good with his head; a striker should be able to shoot with both feet; a winger should be quick and have the ability to cross.
If these skills are not immediately obvious, a coach needs to believe that they can push them to the required level. It is often guess work and there are many other elements to be considered.
There are the physical factors to take into account, which have become more important in the modern game. Players are now well-oiled athletic machines, using muscle as well as skill.
Generally, players with a slight physical stature will struggle to make it as professionals because they are too easily knocked off the ball. There is a lot you can do to help players develop in this area, but genetics will always work against some. The quick pace of the game today also requires excellent aerobic capacity, endurance and power. Again, training will help most players reach the required level, but for some the capability is just not there. If a player cannot last 90 minutes in a game then he will be unable to make it at the highest level.
Another huge distinction between those that will be successful and those that are not is personality. You can have all the skill in the world, but if your attitude is wrong it will be worthless.
Discipline, desire, determination, dedication, drive, self-confidence, motivation and concentration are all important factors in helping a player make the most of his physical attributes.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo did not become global superstars on skill alone. They had the drive to do hours of extra training, when everybody else had gone home, and the dedication to stay away from off-the-field temptations.
Again, this is something that can be encouraged with youngsters, but they need to want to take on the challenge themselves. It cannot be forced.
The attributes mentioned above can often be dependent on the sociological factors that players find around them. What level of education have they received to date? Do they come from a stable and nurturing background?
These can determine the type of personality within individuals and how easy it will be to nurture their skills—on and off the pitch.
You also have to assess how well a young player takes instructions and whether they can adhere to tactical discipline.
In a well-oiled team, each player must understand and stick to their roles within the side. When a player has the ball, his teammates must know exactly where to position themselves. They must also never deviate from that unless instructed otherwise by the coach.
It sounds simple, but there are many scenarios that a player must understand. Displaying tactical discipline can be extremely difficult for some. No matter how skilful a player is, they will become a hindrance to the team if they cannot follow a coach’s orders.
All of this is not foolproof and individuals develop at different rates. There are many players who were released by their club before they made the first team that went on and enjoyed stunning careers elsewhere.
When they were 18, they did not show enough of the above, but by the time they reached 23, they had a level of maturity that made it easier for them.
Samuel Eto’o was released by Real Madrid when he was 19 years old, but can now point to four African Footballer of the Year titles, three UEFA Champions League wins, league titles in Spain and Italy and the status as one of Africa’s greatest ever players.
History says that Real Madrid was wrong, but did Eto’o show enough to suggest he would go on to be a superstar? You would have to say he did not and it highlights the difficulty in deciding who will make it and who will not. There is no crystal ball.

THE TROUBLE WITH Finding THE Next Eto’o

African leaders have highlighted the need to mobilize domestic savings to support investment that will drive economic growth. However, as is often the case in Africa, progress in realizing many government initiatives has been slow. The increasing development and penetration of financial services provides hope that a few lofty ambitions can be accomplished. After several rounds of recapitalizing and consolidating the banking sector, the central bank reports that Nigeria now has almost 29 million bank accounts.
The regulator last April introduced a policy that effectively raised the minimum savings rate to 3.6% to increase savings in the country. It’s a move that hurt banks because it raises their funding cost. But are savers really winners?
From an early age, my parents communicated the value of saving for a rainy day but I think every African should question the wisdom of that statement. A savings culture certainly provided small opportunities to improve the quality of my life but in the school of wealth-making, the impact can be compared to drizzle and not rain on a cloudy day. The discipline of setting money aside gave me the opportunity to spoil myself with little things such as a special pair of shoes or an ice cream treat. The rewards were not life changing.
Apart from cases of inherited wealth, the richest people in the world got wealthy by either investing their savings in assets or in a business idea.
Savings do not make people rich because the returns on savings are almost always lower than the inflation rate. In most African countries, this gap is very significant. In Nigeria, where the bank savings rate is around 3.6% but the 3-year average for inflation is in double digits, many will argue that it makes more sense to spend savings as quickly as possible because the purchasing power of a saver is stronger today than in the future.
Investments offer a different wisdom. Over the last decade, Nigeria has generated mouth-watering returns to investors. From telcos to consumer goods companies, Africa’s second largest economy has made many rich. The financial markets have also provided some joy. Over the last decade, Nigeria’s stock market has provided an annual average return of 17.2%. Those that used debt wisely as leverage over this period, made even more returns.
However, many of these investments are out of reach for the typical middle class saver. This reflects the level of sophistication of the Nigerian financial market. Financial institutions must improve the product offering for investors because despite the level of poverty in the country, the potential to attract savers is huge.
The stock market only has around 5 million investors but according to a 2012 report by Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access, an independent financial sector development organization, 56.3 million people, representing 64% of Nigeria’s adult population, do not even have a bank account.
Financial institutions that create a model to encourage and mobilize savings from small scale farmers, who represent the largest group of working people in the country, and others in the informal sector will be big winners. It is estimated that over $7.6 billion is currently outside Nigeria’s banking sector. That is a figure that should capture the imagination of bankers, asset managers and financial planners.
The tough task will be finding a way to rake in the funds for investments.

Invest for a rainy day

When she speaks, heads turn and minds change. The entrepreneur from Senegal is on an untiring mission, advocating her own brand of Afro capitalism. She turned an age-old African drink into a fashion accessory and raised millions. In 2013, Magatte Wade is back with another idea to tap into her African roots.
Every year, Wade speaks at more than 20 conferences across Africa. Her message is proving to be a popular turn in a business world hungry for hope. It rarely fails to disappoint those expecting a feisty African woman with a reluctance to mince words.
“You can’t just say it sucks and leave it,” says Wade of the continent’s shortcomings, at the Women of West Africa entrepreneurship conference, in Lagos in June.
“If you can’t do business in your country, leave and go to Rwanda!”
When one delegate complains that banks do not want to lend to start-up companies, Wade shoots back across the hall.
“Banks never want to fund start-ups, get over it. What about the money we, women, spend on weddings, millions ever year. Why can’t we put that money to better use in business?”
Wade, educated in Germany and France, has a good line in homespun homilies mixed with common sense in bite-sized pieces, in an accent that swings between New York, Paris and Dakar. Her critics could say she was glib, but that could be too dismissive of a 37-year-old woman, who has made a lot of money and noise. Whatever people say, Wade certainly holds a room with her strident free-market evangelism.
“I ran into a guy from Kenya the other day, who said his friend had quit her job as a banker to open her own hair salon, after hearing me speak in Nairobi. She is now securing private equity funding and has opened her two hundredth salon,” says Wade.
Wade, in the midst of a tiring day, tells FORBES AFRICA her story in the middle of a lounge in a plush Lagos hotel.
It all began at her grandmother’s knee. Wade grew up in rural Senegal, where her grandmother grew vegetables to sell at the market.
“She simply told me that no one could be better than me,” says Wade.
“Her influence was more important than anything else, it helped me become an entrepreneur. That is why I turned down business degrees at Harvard and Stanford, because they would have ruined me as an entrepreneur. These courses teach you to be a good manager, but not an entrepreneur.”
Wade proved herself early in life—she introduced the world to an age-old Senegalese drink made from the hibiscus flower. At the time, the drink was losing out to canned drinks and was dwindling in Senegal.
“All I care about is that now, in Senegal, people are beginning to understand the value of hibiscus. When I started that company, people laughed at me. It was cruel, really, but they laughed and said, ‘Oh, Magatte, after all your fancy education, you’re now going to make flower drinks,’” she says.
“Africans have a bad attitude towards indigenous resources and products… We have a tendency to believe that anything indigenous to us is not good enough and can’t wait to get rid of it, and that’s how they die off.”
The hibiscus drink was called Adina, which means “life” in Wade’s mother tongue. The slogan “drink no evil” helped it take off and the business accumulated $30 million in capital. It saw the shipping of mountains of hibiscus flowers across the Atlantic to factories in the States. It revived the hibiscus growing business in Senegal, attracted investment from Pepsi and made Wade a fortune.
In 2009, Wade left the company when she believed the venture capitalists were taking the brand in a direction that did not represent her. She formed a new company, Tiossan, which she hopes will do the same for the ethnic beauty products of Senegal that Adina did for the country’s hibiscus drink.
“I’m convinced that if people, like me, don’t do what I do, a generation from now, they will disappear because everyone is busy buying western brands at elite level, and at bottom level, buying knock off products from China. Africans don’t believe in the traditional stuff and indigenous knowledge is dying off,” she says.
This time, once bitten, twice shy, Wade wants to stay in control and has fended off investors. Either way, she accepts that business in Africa is not for sissies.
“I also really try to focus on people who have the right mind-set too. There’s a lot of laziness in the system right now but when you find like-minded people, who are not willing to take any shortcuts, I find those people, rally them towards me and I hope that together, we can begin to form a new metric,” says Wade.
For all of her fire, there is a fragile side to Wade. Tears roll down her face as she talks of times of frustration in Senegal.
“I went to the ports, when I started my company, and I saw the customs guys. I said to them: ‘I’m here—I’m a child of Senegal just like you are. I have all my diplomas and more passports than you can imagine. I don’t have to be here if I don’t want to. But, I have nowhere else to go because this is where I came from and I cannot live happily elsewhere, if this place doesn’t get better—I have tried it. At 25 years old, I bought my first home in Silicon Valley, where I was making tons of money, but how could I live that way when there is so much misery back home? I have nowhere to go, this is the only place I have, so let’s make it right but I cannot do it without you,’” she says.
“I would rather die than not have my dignity. People get so excited about money and material things but I couldn’t really care less.”
Money, business, Africa, women and dignity—Wade’s head is full and her legs are on the march. Whatever she says next is likely to be interesting and could change your life.

Young, Gifted  And Firing Back

It’s refreshing when you come across a foreigner passionate about Africa. The continent has become the new big market for multinationals all over the world. But Ewan Cameron, CEO of Lonrho Hotels is not jumping on the bandwagon, he’s had his sights set on Africa for a long time, and not only for business, he’s also ardent about the continent and its people.
“My interest in Africa came at an early age, I’ve always been interested in the people and the culture,” says Cameron.
<div id="attachment_979" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-979" class="size-full wp-image-979" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/test.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533" />Lansmore Masa Square, Garborone, Botswana</div>
Cameron has a long history in the hotel industry though he’s only 39. Born and raised in Glasglow, Scotland, he started out waiting tables and cleaning rooms at the Swallow Hotel and Conference Centre in Dundee, while he studied Business Sciences at the University of Dundee. After graduating in 1992, the Swallow Hotel Group offered him a position as front house manager of the hotel. His keen interest in hotel management won him a transfer to the Glasglow Swallow Hotel, where he became the business development manager. Then the United Kingdom’s two biggest hotel groups, at the time, Thistle Hotel Chain and the Forte Hotel Group, noticed him. Cameron went with Forte, because of its international exposure. Thistle is the biggest hotel chain in the UK but had no hotels outside the region. Forte has hotels all over the world. Cameron’s portfolio included some heavyweight clients like UBS, the Ford Motor Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He later took over new business development at Forte. In 1999, Forte bought the Holiday Inn franchise. And in 2002, Cameron moved over to head up franchising. This is where he got his real feel for Africa. He travelled extensively overseeing operations in the Middle East and Africa. Cameron worked closely with Southern Sun, which at the time was running some of its hotels under the Holiday Inn brand. But in 2008, Southern Sun cut ties with the Intercontinental franchise and dropped the use of Holiday Inn.
Cameron also decided it was time to cut ties.
“I tried for years to convince Forte to expand in Africa, but they were not interested, they wanted to expand in Asia and the Middle East, I wanted to grow Africa. I drew up a strategy for Africa and Lonrho liked it,” Cameron recalls. The Lonrho Group has been operating in Africa for over 100 years. It is invested in luxury hotels across Southern Africa. It also runs airlines and is involved in the agricultural sector. The group took Cameron’s strategy and made him CEO in 2010. Since then, he has wasted no time in implementing his ambitious plan. Lonrho has partnered with easyHotel Group to roll out 50 new hotels by 2016.
“There is growing demand in Africa especially for the business traveler,” notes Cameron. Lonrho has five-star luxury hotels in 16 countries in Africa. The group is now moving towards building more business-friendly hotels.
“These hotels wouldn’t have the luxury that our high-end hotels offer, but they’re comfortable for the business person going on a quick trip,” he says. His strategy is to open hotels with a fresh and modern design. They will offer all the services a businessperson needs, like a conference venue, gym facilities, a coffee shop for meetings and full Wi-Fi. Hotel managers are also being trained.
“Our managers should be able to link travelers to local businesses and help link them to potential clients and vice versa; the hotel needs to become a one-stop shop,” he says.
The new low-cost easyHotels have opened in some countries with rooms from $35. In June, Lonrho opened a hotel in Gaborone, Botswana. Another hotel opened in Beira in Mozambique in July. There are plans for new hotels in Nairobi in Kenya, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Accra in Ghana.
<div id="attachment_981" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-981" class="size-large wp-image-981" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/lonrho-head-office-photos-033-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="713" />Ewan Cameron, CEO of Lonrho Hotels</div>
Later this year, Lonrho will also open its first hotel in South Africa in the Johannesburg city center. The hotel will be situated outside the new Gautrain rail link from O.R. Tambo International Airport. In recent years, several international hotel groups have opened hotels in the affluent Sandton area, but not many have ventured into the city’s center.
Cameron is not one to follow the herd; he believes that not everyone travelling to Johannesburg wants to go to Sandton. He is also not too worried about going into areas that pose political and social risks. Lonrho recently purchased a second hotel in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). For decades, the country has been torn apart by war and civil unrest. This has not deterred Cameron who believes there’s rich tourism potential in the country’s capital. Cameron is certainly a risk taker but he does his homework and says he has an exit plan for every hotel the group owns. He works closely with the Mckinsey research group for facts, figures and other data on Africa. According to Mckinsey research, the DRC will be the fastest growing economy in Africa by 2026.
But not everyone has an appetite for risk. Tsogo Sun Holdings, Africa’s biggest hotel and gaming group, is not convinced there is a real demand for hotels in Africa. It already has a strong footprint in Africa with its Southern Sun hotels and feels more confident in South Africa than the rest of Africa.
“There are no volumes in Africa,” says Tsogo Sun CEO, Marcel von Aulock.
“African economies are small and there’s still very little corporate activity to propose new hotels.”
Tsogo recently posted a solid set of annual results. The group raised earnings 39% to R9 billion ($1.1 billion). Von Aulock is also no newcomer to the industry. He joined Tsogo’s finance department in 1999. Ten years later, he took over as the group’s CEO. He believes he understands the hotel industry and while he does see opportunities for further expansion on the continent, he feels the timing needs to be right.
Tsogo’s approach to the hotel industry differs from Lonrho’s. The group is focused on taking full ownership of hotels; it doesn’t just take over the management and operations.
“We want to own the land the hotel is standing on, we want to manage and operate it and own the brand, and it’s not always easy to do that. But we are not about taking the easy approach,” adds Von Aulock. The group recently closed its famous Southern Sun Grayston Hotel in Sandton after 30 years, because it didn’t own the land. The tenants raised the rent and Tsogo felt it was no longer feasible to remain on the property.
“This served as a lesson for us, that’s why it is more important now that we stick to our business model,” says Von Aulock.
But he concedes this is one of the main reasons it’s hard to penetrate Africa.
“Land is still a very controversial issue, the operating costs are very high. If we build a hotel in Africa, we have to set up our own power generation, our own water purification and sewerage systems—it requires a massive cash injection,” says Von Aulock. This is where Tsogo and Lonrho differ. Lonrho takes over existing hotels, rents the properties and provides the management and operational expertise to run the business.
Tsogo has also done well with its gaming business in South Africa, but says it has no plans to open casinos anywhere in Africa.
“Again there’s no market for gambling in Africa. The South African market is very different—our casinos here are doing very well, even in tough economic times, there’s still spending capacity in South Africa, not in Africa, there’s no middle-class in Africa and unfortunately that’s where the spending comes from.”
But Tsogo Holdings is not staying away completely. It’s still positive about future growth and says it will continue to look for opportunities. It owns 95 hotels in southern Africa, most of which are four- and five-star hotels. But last year, it ventured into the business traveler market opening a two-star StayEasy hotel in Lusaka, Zambia. The hotel is a nice fit for corporate travelers looking for tourist activities. It is attached to a shopping mall, another strategy Tsogo is exploring.
“We want our guests to have quick and easy access to any services they may need,” says Von Aulock.
Tsogo has also taken over distressed hotels successfully. The group recently bought The Grace in Johannesburg’s northern suburb of Rosebank for R85 million ($10.12 million). The iconic boutique hotel closed its doors in August last year after the operating company ran into financial difficulty. Tsogo Sun has spent over R20 million ($2.4 million) on refurbishing the hotel. The new 54 on Bath hotel opened its doors in July.

Staying In Hotels

After 12 years on stage, fans worldwide still marvel at the performances of Africa Umoja, a colorful musical that took two old pals, Thembi Nyandeni and Todd Twala, 10 years to craft. These two performers came from the dusty streets of Soweto. Together, they created a world-class theater piece that showcases the African cultural renaissance through rhythm and dance and has visited more than 30 countries.
Young people idling in the streets motivated Nyandeni and her friend to create this production.
“Showbiz helped me to find myself. Now I want to protect others who are vulnerable,” says Nyandeni. Her father supported her throughout her dancing career by taking her to discos and parties. “My father would drop me and wait for me outside and I would dance through the night. At four in the morning, he would take me home with all my friends.”
Past members of the troupe have performed in big shows on Broadway in New York, like The Lion King. On average, dancers spend about five years with the troupe. Collen Mavundhla, aka “Mosquito”, is one of the oldest cast members. She’s been there since the group’s inception. “I’ve seen a lot of cast members being developed into professionals,” says Mavundhla.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-919" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/tribal_femaleDancer-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />
Umoja’s recent performance in Lagos attracted captains of industry, senior public sector officials and members of the diplomatic community. First Bank, Nigeria’s oldest bank and the show’s sponsor, was so impressed by the performance that it proposed to partner with the dance troupe. According to Folake Ani-Mumuney, head of marketing at First Bank: “The choice of Umoja is really based on the theme behind Umoja, which is the spirit of togetherness. This is something that transcends South Africa. It is something that finds a place across the globe and Nigeria.” Ani-Mumuney believes the proposed partnership will go a long way to bridging the gap between Nigerian and South African businesses and correct some of the negative perceptions that exist about the countries.
Relations between South Africa and Nigeria are strained after South Africa deported 125 Nigerians from O.R. Tambo airport. “When the political relationship hits a bad patch, South African companies bear the brunt of it as they are the face of the bilateral relationship in Nigeria. Business people suffered most from Nigeria’s retaliation on the visa issue and they formed the bulk of those turned back at the airport recently. The foreign minister had already threatened to ‘clamp down’ on SA’s companies if SA did not apologize for its immigration officials’ actions,” wrote Dianna Games of the South Africa Nigeria Chamber of Commerce.
For Africa Umoja, partnership with a Nigerian bank is an opportunity for them to be part of the solution. “Umoja is not just a South African story, it is for everybody African. So I would like to put together 12 South African and Nigerian singers and dancers to create a show that will be a symbol of unity between us. My vision is to bridge the divisions between Nigeria and South Africa,” says Nyandeni. She concedes that the road ahead is not going to be easy. In addressing tensions, cultural diplomacy will be an invaluable tool. There are prevailing negative stereotypes, she says, that need to be dispelled. Yet there are few neutral channels to nurture understanding.
Of course, to discourage stereotyping will require more than one show. But, says Ani-Mumuney,
“I always say one thing about the creative industry; it is only limited by the limits of our imagination, which
is limitless.”

Dancing Across The Divide

David Adjaye believes that African skylines are set for an explosion of growth as the continent’s resurgent economies look for new expressions of their increasing potency and self-confidence.
Speaking at his studio in North London, the architect says that the continent needs to define its own vision for urbanization and ensure that its architectural revolution reflects Africa’s cultural, geographical and climatic contexts.
Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, Adjaye traveled extensively in his youth, following his father’s diplomatic career through Africa and the Middle East. It was that exposure that was to later inform his work when, after studying fine art, he found architecture and became fascinated by the relationship between buildings and their environment.
<div id="attachment_425" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-425" class="size-large wp-image-425" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/js57_Peace-Centre0144_RT8-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Nobel Peace Center, Oslo. The Canopy is a temporary installation by David Adjaye that serves as a gateway between Oslo City Hall, where the Peace Prize Ceremony takes place, and the Nobel Peace Center.</div>
“I realized that by having been brought up in very different contexts—cultural, religious and social contexts—I had somehow developed an appetite for learning more about how the built environment worked with that, and how it reflected that architecture in its human sense.”
Today, Adjaye is one of the world’s leading architects—in 2007 he received the Order of the British Empire for his services to architecture. His portfolio includes the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which is scheduled for completion in 2015.
For a 2010 exhibition at the Design Museum in London, Adjaye traveled to cities across Africa, photographing the buildings which, although in varying states of development or decay, show startling commonality.
Today Adjaye runs through his own potted history of African architecture: Colonial builders erased much of the pre-existing urban culture in Africa, replacing it with tropical versions of European architecture. Upon independence, new leaders embraced a vision of the future that was still largely European.
“I think the early leaders on the continent felt that modernity was the way to embrace or celebrate a sort of new world of empowerment for their nations. So you find a lot of modernist experiments, but modernist experiments that could not avoid the specificity of the geography and the climate. So you have what I call a kind of tropical modernism,” he says.
When the money and ambition began to wear thin, this modernism was replaced by economic pragmatism, driven by international donors who made their architectural choices based on their own financial imperative, and using their own approved contractors and designers.
<div id="attachment_426" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-426" class="size-large wp-image-426" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/nma_b110127_f-1024x722.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="334" />National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.</div>
“So you have very odd late ’70s early ’80s buildings that sort of appear, that have nothing to do with the context; they’re just blips,” Adjaye says.
With debt relief and the mineral-driven boom of the late 1990s, which gathered pace in the early years of the new century, African leaders began a new drive for modernity. With this financial independence and growing economic self-confidence has come a stronger sense of cultural identity across the continent, which is manifested in the creative arts.
“I think you see it in literature, fine arts, performing arts and architecture, they’re all in line. They all lead the image of what nations want to project of themselves.
“This image of most of the countries on the continent getting rid of their debt and suddenly discovering vast minerals and negotiating this, means that there is an opportunity to really explore the idea of modernity for these nations. And architecture comes to the forefront of that, because architecture is the image of the city and the future. Architecture is the image of the city as it sees itself. The story of the city is written in books, but it’s also written in buildings.”
The notion of buildings-as-ambassadors has gained currency in the past decade with the successful reinvention of the Emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the state of Qatar.
“It totally worked,” Adjaye says. “It gave the Emirates a skyline. For my father’s generation, the Emirates was a horrible desert and a place you never went to.”
Where the Emirates initially failed, he says, was specifying what its own version of modernity was. It is a trap he is keen for Africa to avoid. Buildings need to exist in their context, rather than just mimic the current, internationally dictated interpretation of Western modernity.
“I think if there is much more criticality about the way in which buildings are built to their climate, you get a much more unique skyline,” he says. “That doesn’t require more money, it just requires more desire on the part of the patrons to insist on a response that makes things specific, rather than insisting on an approach which is just novel.”
Africa’s modernity, Adjaye says, should be dictated by the same geographic features that defined its early cultures. This means ignoring the artificially imposed national boundaries and shaping regional identities from the unifying climates and cultures across the continent, but also avoiding the “colonial trap” of what he calls “Disney-fication” of culture.
For inspiration, Adjaye looks to New York.
“I love the Rockefeller Center. It’s not a cheap building, but it’s an efficient building. It’s a building that strove to understand the time that it was in, which was the ’30s… It talked about density in the city, it talked about networks, it talked about interconnectivity. It talked about living in the heart of the city. It gave a model which was not iconic in terms of imagery but iconic in terms of place, and it’s still a fundamental part of New York.”
That specificity of place and time has created a building that is more than functional—an artifact that helps to define the city it is in.
“There’s something compelling about coming over that bridge from Brooklyn or Newark, New Jersey, and seeing that skyline. It’s like… it’s so powerful. It’s original. That’s the vision we need in Africa. What is the model of living in Africa that nowhere else in the world you can have? The person who cracks that, cracks the game. Not the person who imports the model that we’ve seen before.
<div id="attachment_424" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-424" class="size-full wp-image-424" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/iStock_000015967621Small.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="800" />New York City, Rockefeller Center, GE Building, viewed from 5th Avenue.</div>
“You’ve got to make a model that makes people say ‘I want to go to that city in Africa because it’s just so great. The life there is something I can’t have in London. It’s contemporary, I can have my life there, but it’s completely unique.’ That’s a hell of a thing.”

The Quest For A True African Skyline

Richard Pike remembers February 19, 1981 as the worst day of his life. It was the day a motor accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Pike, his brother and four friends were driving to East London to compete in a university rowing regatta. They drove a pick-up truck, hauling a trailer laden with rowing boats. A short drive out of Johannesburg, the trailer jack-knifed. It threw Pike and his fellow passengers from the vehicle.
<div id="attachment_307" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-307" class="size-large wp-image-307" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Amollo-028-1-687x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="707" />Richard Pike during the Cape Argus</div>
“I found myself lying on the ground, unable to move, for hours; I remained in the same position, waiting for a helicopter to airlift me to a hospital,” says Pike.
The helicopter took Pike to the Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, where even the most seasoned specialists were horrified at the sight of his broken back.
“My lower spine had developed a curious s-shape,” says Pike.
It meant, at just 18, Pike faced life in a wheelchair – a sentence he refused to accept.
“I would not be who I am today, if it were not for that fateful day,” says Pike.
Nearly 30 years on, Richard Pike, through sheer determination and medical miracles, has the full use of his legs and a thriving career. He has worked his way up through the ranks of South African business to become the CEO of the country’s largest staffing and recruitment agency, Adcorp Holdings.
It was a long, painful journey from despair on the side of the road to East London. It took almost a year of operations and hard work to work his damaged legs back to life. During this difficult time, he spent many nights lying in his hospital bed asking himself: “Why me?” The nurses, who tried to help him, bore the brunt of his anger and arrogance.
It was so bad that years later, Pike felt the need to apologize to the nurses in his book, Tangled Toes, Pins and Needles.
“Eventually, I decided to live like a poker player and play the hand I was dealt. It was hard, but it was about how I played the hand. I had to constantly talk to myself and visualize the end result; where I was going,” says Pike.
Pike’s stubbornness almost undid the good work, as he defied doctors’ orders to rest and limit movement. Looking back, Pike admits this was a big risk. He wore a heavy body brace for many months. It was hot and uncomfortable, but crucial in easing his spine back into place. Often, he fell to the ground or became frustrated at being helped like a child to do simple things. All the while, he refused to give up.
“I hate living in the past. I soon realized that the regret and speculation around my back was futile.”
Three decades on, Pike admits he doesn’t go into crowded rooms for fear a slight push may send him crashing to the ground, but this hasn’t stopped him living life to the full.
“I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true: only when you realize what you’ve lost do you appreciate what you have.”
Pike expressed this by becoming an adrenalin-relishing sportsman. He competes in triathlons, the annual Argus Cycle Tour, plays golf and is learning to fly helicopters. He is married with three daughters.
Pike began his corporate career at Deloitte and Touche, five years after the accident. He moved on to HL&amp;H, where he became finance director.
In 1995, he formed his own company, the Morgan University Alliance. The company focused on skills training and development. He then sold the company to Acumen Holdings in 1999. The merged company, now known as Adcorp, has a turnover of $785 million. Since taking on the role of CEO in 2001, Pike has grown the business in South Africa and on the continent. It has 90,000 contracted staff on its books.
Pike concedes that South Africa is facing a huge problem of job creation. His tenacious, outspoken personality often opens him up to harsh criticism, but he refuses to be silent. He often engages in heated debates with the unions.
According to his research, unemployment in South Africa is almost double the official statistics of 25%. “We can fix this; send students who have just matriculated into the services sector where they will receive on the job training. With a monthly stipend, at least they will have dignity and self-worth and from there they will use their skills to move into higher earning jobs,” he says.
“We need to deregulate the labor market, introduce youth wage subsidies and cut all the red tape for small and medium business. If we do this now, we may make a dent on the growing unemployment rate.”
In the meantime, Pike is focused on growing Adcorp on the African continent. He wants to grow the business and extend its reach. But he also wants to embrace technology. He’s already working with partners to develop new systems that will advance the recruitment process. He says technology will make the employment business more efficient. Some argue that the rise of social networks could see the demise of recruitment agencies, as information is spread at lightning speed. Pike believes the industry needs to embrace the fast pace of the world or risk being left behind. It’s pretty much how he felt 30 years ago, on that fateful day.
<h3>What did he learn?</h3>
“It’s not what happens to us that defines us, it’s how we respond to adversity that teaches us the most valuable of life’s lessons. The fateful events of my accident of 19 February 1981 were without doubt the most definining for me in terms of the way I live my life and the way I run my business. I regard myself as a very goal-orientated individual who is both extremely resilient and highly tenacious. I also regard myself as an optimist and look forward to the future with enthusiasm. All of these character traits I trace back to the invaluable lessons my life changing accident taught me. There is no doubt that these character traits have served me extremely well in my role as the Chief Executive Officer of a publicly listed company. Although I would not want a repeat of those fateful events of 1981, I have no regrets and regard my accident as the best experience of my life.”

Crushed But Not Broken

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Why is Africa left out in the cold when it comes to food and wine? The continent has so much to show in this regard.
We have diverse cuisine along the length and breadth of the continent. Our wine industry, and even our soil, is older than that of Europe. Winemaking was perfected by the ancient Egyptians while the rest of the world was still living in caves. Africans and Asians have more tastebuds than the rest of the world, hence our affinity for spicy foods, sweet wines and cider. The Afrikaans people of South Africa also reflect this through a love of brandy with Coke. In fact, Afrikaans rapper Jack Parrow says Afrikaners were born to drink brandy and Coke.
Yet we hold Europe up as the pinnacle when it comes to wine and the appreciation thereof. Being a Master of Wine and part of the Institute of Masters of Wine is the highest accolade any wine professional can aspire to. It takes a lot to earn such an esteemed designation.
The Americans, may the gods of pleasure bless them, have taken a bold anti-establishment stance against this mystique that seems to dictate wine appreciation in polite society. They love their wines, like the Texans love their big cars, to be very rich and heavy with a long, satisfying aftertaste. So big is their influence that even French winemakers are making their classical wine in this style to gain approval in what is fast becoming the world’s biggest and most influential market.
<div id="attachment_103" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-103" class="size-large wp-image-103" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/KIETH_023-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />Keith Dudula</div>
Tim Hanni, an American Master of Wine and a sought- after wine consultant who admits to being a Francophile, has also made a big u-turn when it comes to wine appreciation. He wants the wine industry and the greater wine-drinking community to look at the subject in a fun and approachable manner. Hanni’s wine appreciation system focuses on the individual; just as we all have different shoe sizes, so we have different palates and no two people have the same tastebuds. We simply need to discover what kind of tasters we are. There is the tolerant taster who loves big, heavy- bodied wines; the sensitive taster who loves a smoother, more palatable wine; land like milk and honey. Morocco, to the north, is home to the tagine—a round clay cooking pot designed to simmer while more ingredients are added.
The tagine is a stew and can be made with meat or poultry. Moroccans then add lots of fruit like pears, apricots, raisins, prunes, dates and preserved lemons. A dish of this size would not sit well with a heavy, full-bodied dry red wine. A good choice would be a light red wine like a pinot noir or a fruity white number with some acidity like a pinot grigio, or an unwooded chardonnay, as the dishes also have dairy ingredients like milk and yoghurt. Couscous is the main starch served with a tagine and sensitive wine tasters would be at home with this pairing.
Over in West Africa, Nigerians favor spices, scented leaves and palm oil to flavor their dishes. Like in Morocco, meat and stews are slowly simmered so the meat is soft and tender, but unlike the Moroccans, dishes here are added with ground fish to add flavor. Egusi stew or soup, made from seeds rich in fat and protein, is one such dish, with beef and fish as the main ingredients. Egusi is quite spicy and pairing it with a wine is not that difficult. Heavy, rich flavored red wines would work well here, as would sweet wines. Food and wine pairing may seem like a science, but it is actually quite easy once you follow and break some of the rules to suit your specific taste and needs. How the food is prepared, and what is added to the final mix, usually dictates the right wine for the table. African food is diverse, incorporating as it does fresh fish, fruit, grain and starch. In food and wine, pairing is everything. It is all about balance and food should never overpower the wine or vice versa. So get in touch with your African palate and enjoy.
Happy tasting
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-102" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/HiRes-1022x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="475" />
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Tag: African

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