Esther Mbabazi was eight when her father died in a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This could have deterred her childhood dream of being a pilot. It didn’t and Mbabazi found comfort in the skies.
“We don’t stop driving because loved ones die in car crashes, why stop now? However it just made me realize the value of lives I have on board, so safety is definitely a big deal to me as a pilot.”
Safety is important in most passengers’ minds when turbulence hits. Usually there is a reassuring announcement made by a mature male. Many passengers are surprised when they hear a female voice saying:  “Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking. We are experiencing a bit of turbulence on our descent. Just sit back we’ll be landing shortly.”
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In 2013, Mbabazi became Rwanda’s first female commercial pilot. It was a dream that began at the age of four where she would see planes take off from Bujumbura airport, close to her home in Burundi. At the age of seven, she took her first flight on a family trip to the Unites States (US). It was love at first flight.
“I didn’t get to go into the cockpit but I knew this is where I belonged, back then they’d give kids back packs and I was just an excited child on the Virgin Atlantic.”
After high school, Mbabazi started training at Soroti Flight School, also known as East Africa Civil Aviation Academy, in Uganda where only two women made it through. She secured a scholarship from RwandAir to continue her commercial license training in the US.
“At Flight Safety Academy in the US, the number [of female students] was bigger. There were up to 20 female students from all over the world including the first female Saudi Arabian pilot, Hanadi Hindi among others from Asia, Europe and South America. There were about 10 female instructors and the chief pilot, Nancy Ritter, was a female too. But as many as we were we didn’t even make up 5 percent of the academy.”
Two and a half years later, Mbabazi made it.
“Making history was not my goal, achieving my goals is what I delight in, like I said, do what you love and people may appreciate it. After getting my commercial license I didn’t celebrate, I was looking forward to the next cockpit I’ll get into. This, for me, is my way of celebrating, flying!”
Mbabazi believes she is in the minority because of the belief that flying is a man’s job. She is delighted that she has paved the way for many dreamers in proving the critics wrong.
“I like to view my challenges as the reasons to celebrate having reached my goal. As a woman in a male dominated field, no doubt, you have to prove yourself, but hard work always pays off.”
Mbabazi is among many women in Rwanda who are the backbone of the country. Rwanda is going through great lengths to rebuild itself from the 1994 genocide, which left a dominant female population of an estimated 51%.
Laws have been set in place to provide more gender equality in the country. Women are allowed to own land and take more initiative in business and in politics. Rwanda has the highest number of women in parliament in the world and was the first country to have more than 50 female members of parliament.
And now there is a woman in the air.

Love At First Flight

Munhava, an area in Beira, Mozambique, is tense. The protests begin at midday with burning tires and the opening of the first shebeens. Acrid smoke hazes across the sky in the searing heat. By 2PM the mob has resorted to violence
Now, in the humidity of dusk, it is eerily calm as we wait patiently for darkness and the first wheezes of diesel generators from the more upmarket dwellings in the near distance.
The air is rich with fried fish, excrement and kerosene. A vivid stench of poverty framed by the sea. Across the slum, in a small landfill, scavengers rake over debris and waste before burning the rest. The laundry swinging on the line in front of me is trackmarked with soot.
A small riot on the ragged edge of Mozambique’s second largest city may not seem like a big deal but the dispute, aimed at the local municipality, was over what is arguably the most contentious issue facing African slums today—electricity.
It echoes a pattern of unrest we are seeing from Kibera in Kenya to Khayelitsha in South Africa and across the Sahel. Electricity is fought for and fought over in the poorest corners of the world. All around us in Munhava, makeshift cables and wires hang dangerously from tin shacks, so tightly packed they blend into each other. For those without the savvy to misappropriate electricity from the local provider, EDM, there is little option but unreliable and inefficient sources of energy. Somali store-owners pile their wares high with firewood, charcoal, candles, kerosene, battery-powered flashlights and palm oil. The deeper scandal is evident on these humble wooden counters across which the poor hand over the little they have for scant solutions. According to some estimates, the poorest of the world pays 20% of the world’s lighting bill, but receives only 1% of the benefits.
Kerosene and paraffin swallows 25% to 30% of a family’s income in Munhava. There are other costs too. Across from where I sit, the one-room shack, lit by kerosene at dusk, will probably have concentrations of pollution up to ten times the level that is considered safe.
At dusk each day, throughout sub-Saharan Africa, some 600 million people, or around 66% of the region’s population, prepare for the darkness and life without electricity. In rural communities, that number climbs to a remarkable 85%.
Sipping a warm beer from a broken refrigerator, I reflect that darkness has dogged even my recent travels across the world. On the road into Beira, I  reflect on the need for mainstream debate around energy poverty in Africa.
Energy is needed to reduce the world’s greatest child killer, acute respiratory infection. Up to 1.6 million people worldwide die from exposure to excessive levels of smoke in their homes from cooking fires. A quarter of all these deaths occur in Africa.
When I travel across Africa and ask people from all backgrounds what they need from electricity, the answer is often as simple as a light at night or a simple stove.
Yet when I sit in squatter homes in Kinshasa, where power is available but subject to rolling blackouts that can last days and weeks, and ask the same question, I am given insight into the new Africa. There is a need to power laptops, televisions, refrigerators and air conditioners.
No two situations are the same in Africa. But whose needs get priority? It appears the latter, the aspiring consumers. Today, the direct link between economic growth and electricity on the continent is finally placing this issue on the international agenda.
Last year, the United States president, Barack Obama, launched Power Africa, an initiative that will commit $7 billion over the next five years to support the energy needs of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Tanzania.
The human cost of work productivity in Africa due to the lack of access to electricity cannot be underestimated. If a population lacks adequate access to power it blocks any significant economic progress and in turn stability. It’s an issue that makes me think about the burgeoning youth population. With the competitive edge that technology provides, unreliable access to electricity hinders African youth.
Today, young people in Africa make up almost 40% of the working population, yet 60% are unemployed. Increasing energy access has the potential to boost sustainable development, as well as build human capital on the African continent. Without electricity, hopeful entrepreneurs are not able to gain access to market information and technologies to expand their businesses and schools are not able to prepare students for a knowledge-based economy.
In many ways, Africa has two key energy problems: there are many millions of people who have no grid extended to them, and won’t have in the foreseeable future, and the energy production in most countries is insufficient to meet the demand of those already on the grid, let alone those not yet connected. That is why power failures are so common in developed Africa.
But what are the solutions? Accelerating access to energy, particularly clean, renewable resources such as wind, water, the sun, and biomass among others, is ideal. It reduces pollution that contributes to climate change, while promoting Africa’s productivity and economic growth.
Such initiatives have the potential to make a difference in the lives of millions of Africans but it still isn’t enough. Collectively, the private and public sectors must work together more to strengthen Africa’s technical infrastructure to expand access to energy.
Everywhere, I read of radical solutions, from oceanic wind farms to mass solar power programs in the Sahara and hydropower on the Congo River to a scheme initiated by Harvard University alumni to extract energy from ordinary soil.
Some investors are backing jatropha, a plant whose seeds produce an oil for burning in generators. There is also an effort to tap geothermal energy. The Great Rift Valley, from Eritrea to Mozambique, could produce 7,000 megawatts. Kenya hopes to get 20% of its energy from geothermal sources by 2020.
To understand the existing and realistic scope of alternative energy solutions, I recently visited the Bisasar Road landfill site in Durban, South Africa. I was there to produce a short film around a project that converts landfill waste, a form of biomass, to methane gas and in turn electricity.
In Durban, trash is quietly and effectively making enough energy to sustain 3,800 households. Peter Seagreen, the sprightly 74-year-old mechanical engineer in charge of the Durban site, says converting trash to electricity would have been beyond imagination when he was growing up as a ships engineer. Bounding around the site like a teenager, he marvels at the technology at his disposal but bemoans the lack of knowledge around its potential.
“We are converting rubbish into electricity yet the local community barely realizes we can achieve this. It’s a miracle if you ask me. It also makes me wonder why this is not being expanded across Africa. We are the only ones doing this, yet Africa isn’t short of landfill waste.”
Arguably the most exciting thing about the prospect of creating electricity from gas is the dividend it could provide for gas-rich nations like Mozambique, Tanzania and potentially South Africa. The possibility of gas pipelines powering and empowering remote communities with electricity from similar turbines is attractive. It is a game-changing dynamic that could liberate rural areas.
Of course the argument between robust and pragmatic solutions to energy poverty, and the role gas could play in it, are tempered by the debate around global warming and fossil fuels.
But, time is not on our side. Over the border from Mozambique, in Malawi, the booming charcoal trade is relentlessly damaging the nation’s reputation as an evergreen country. Malawi has the highest deforestation rate in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The disappearance of forest cover has also resulted in massive soil erosion and siltation in low-lying areas, leading to flooding that has been disrupting operations at Malawi’s biggest hydroelectric dam, the Nkula Hydroelectric Power Station.
Then again, in Malawi and elsewhere in the SADC region, charcoal’s attractiveness to impoverished locals is not difficult to understand. A sizable bag in an urban area costs around $7. For an average family of seven, this might last them nearly a week, but if they were to use electricity for all their cooking and heating, they would probably spend more than $15 during this time. Not to mention the high cost of electrical cooking appliances such as hotplates and heaters. A new hotplate costs around $30, beyond the reach of ordinary Malawians, most of whom live below the poverty level of $2 a day. In contrast, charcoal stoves, made in China, are around $2.
What the success of the Durban project shows us is that we should be looking towards expanding energy solutions that are already in place. Landfills, often in the heart of African cities, form a center point for the poorest of the poor. Using them to generate electricity, a proven science, could open the door for other more practical solutions.
Today, the fundamental obstacles to energy have been researched and established. The barriers, while complex, can be overcome, and international co-operation can help. Technology is also on our side. We do know how to build power systems and meet energy demand efficiency. What is required is a political prioritization. Energy access must become a continent-wide priority.
Innovation could provide the best chance we have to transform the energy landscape but it is also sobering to think that around 90% of the world’s designers, our greatest minds, spend all their time working on solutions to the problems of the richest 10% of the world’s customers. What if they were to use their expertise to solve the greater problem in the developing world?
African townships draw in and absorb young people from rural areas. They are also places of unbridled ambition and hope, not necessarily idleness and squalor.
In ‘Shadow Cities’, a book that describes a tour of slums across the globe, Robert Neuwirth recalls that New York’s Upper East Side was once a shantytown. He suggests that all cities start as mud. But, in the modern connected technological world we know, the odds are stacked against the slum dwellers when there is no energy to power ambition.

In Need Of A Miracle

The world’s leading industrial goods manufacturers are turning to resource-rich nations in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East for their next phase of growth.
Industrial behemoths like 3M, ABB, Alstom SA, Caterpillar, General Electric (GE) and Siemens AG have all built up their presence in these fast growing territories. The economic logic for both countries and companies is simple: development, trade, more market share, more revenue and more profit.
In GE’s case, African countries that produce large amounts of oil, natural gas, metals and other commodities also need electric turbines, oil production gear and other heavy equipment to improve the petroleum, energy, healthcare, transportation and water sectors. Company-to-government and joint venture (JV) agreements have been GE’s preferred method of doing business here. A raft of manufacturing and manpower training facilities aligned to its projects across the continent are expected to benefit from GE’s global research and development spend, which totaled $3.9 billion, $4.6 billion and $4.5 billion in 2010, 2011 and 2013 respectively.
The Connecticut-based company acknowledges that its growing footprint in Africa and other emerging markets is not entirely risk-free but is nevertheless critical to its long-term growth objectives.
John Rice, GE’s vice chairman, has stated on several occasions that GE likes to cast a wide geographic net because orders for its products come intermittently. GE currently generates more revenue from Latin America than in China and India combined.
The company’s order book in Africa may soon rival its Latin America portfolio. Its focus appears to be just in time as African governments search for credible global players with core engineering capabilities to help develop state-controlled assets in critical economic sectors.
Nigeria’s local supplier base is expected to grow from 10 to 100 over the next decade and it is working with the government and private sector to add 10,000 megawatts of power to the national grid. These sectors are also helping to modernize and expand Nigeria’s railway fleet and network. And guess which engines run on most of Africa’s smoky locomotive trains?
“The big change for GE in Africa occurred when we bought a company called Vetco Grey (in 2005), which is the oil and gas equipment business,” Jay Ireland, the president and CEO of GE Africa tells FORBES AFRICA.
“That gave us a footprint in Nigeria and Angola that we didn’t have before. That’s now part of GE Oil &amp; Gas.”
The IMF forecasts sub-Saharan GDP growth of 6% in 2014, up from 5% in 2013. Inflation is forecast at 6.3%, the lowest annual average for the region in 30 years. According to the World Bank, consumer spending accounted for more than 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth last year. For the first time in memory, the rewards of doing business in Africa seem to outweigh the risks.
GE’s recent investment in Nigeria reflects its grand ambitions on the continent. According to Ireland, the company’s proposed manufacturing facility in the south eastern coastal town of Calabar will eventually cost the firm $1 billion and an additional $750 million will be pumped into the project over the next five years to galvanize local sourcing of goods, services and labor, including an expansive human capital management and development agenda that will have a positive impact on the host community and country.
Eventually, more than 2,300 direct and indirect jobs are expected to evolve out of the new factories. Calabar is a historic location, known for its annual month-long carnivals. With GE in tow, the calm, rustic town will lose its serene mood. And as the local economy begins to boom, centuries-old agricultural practices will give way to engineering and manufacturing jobs.
“We want to be in Nigeria… we will be part of a duty-free zone in Calabar… where we can attract employees and impact the community and the environment positively,” says Ireland.
These are grand ambitions. GE’s work on the continent is cut out and the competition to repair Africa’s decrepit infrastructure is fierce. But, Ireland is a laconic but thoughtful man. This trait may be what the company needs to tackle the difficulties of doing business on the continent. It is an interesting time to be in Africa.

Renewed Focus In Africa

A new tide of expectation grips Africa’s most populous country. Lights could soon be going on all over Nigeria. At the risk of stretching the metaphor—light is at the end of the tunnel.
It is a tunnel that Amaechi Agwunobi—a 35-year-old entrepreneur—has traveled for years. Agwunobi runs a business center offering internet, lamination and photo copying to two universities in Lagos.
“I have spent more money on petrol for my generators than I have been making from the business. Yet, I also have to pay electricity bills. If we had constant electricity, my business will be more profitable,” says Agwunobi.
Seni Osikanlu lives at 1004 Estate, a high-rise residential estate in Lagos. She prefers to pay a heavy service charge that guarantees constant power.
“In Lagos, it’s easy to have constant power—you just have to be prepared to pay through your teeth for it,” she says.
This is everyday life for millions of Nigerians who grew up with the joke that the national power generator, NEPA, meant: Never Expect Power Always. Or, that its successor the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) stood for: Please Hold Candles Near.
It is the conundrum of an oil and gas rich nation with the lowest electricity coverage in the world. Economists say poor power supply costs Nigeria billions of dollars in imported generator diesel and lost output. It also hampers Nigeria’s quest to be the economic engine of Africa.
After many false dawns, the Nigerian power sector is now steering towards private money with the sale of 16 assets, unbundled from PHCN, to private investors following a bid process in November. The power sector can now invest money to increase generation and expand transmission and distribution.
Sahara Energy, a Nigeria-based conglomerate with a local partner, a joint venture between NEDC and Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO), is one of the approved bidders. It has a majority holding in two of the assets that were sold by the Nigerian government: Egbin Power Station, the largest power generator in Nigeria, and Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company, the largest distributor.
Kola Adesina, the chairman of Egbin Power Plc, a 1,320-megawatt (MW) capacity plant, says the power station is producing a mere 1,110MW.
“Unfortunately, in the past eight years, two of the turbines went down. We had to fix them because the boilers were down,” he says.
“Primarily, between 2001 and 2003, we provided diesel to the emergency power plants in Abuja (45MW). It was a serious logistical nightmare because we had to deliver about 10 trucks every day for 30 months to fuel the plant. We then got the boilers fixed with our technical partner. By doing so we had the privilege of reducing the original costs we could be facing.”
Adesina says, by April 2014, another 220MW will be restored.
“Rather than throwing it into the grid and subjecting the capacity to both technical and distribution losses, we have decided that the new turbines will now go to both Ikeja and Eko Disco. It will be shared 120MW and 100MW respectively between the two distribution companies which translates into more capacity being available in Lagos,” he says.
Crumbling infrastructure, vandalism and distribution losses are a problem, says Adesina.
Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc. (Transcorp), a Nigerian conglomerate with a diversified portfolio, acquired 100% of the Ughelli power plant for $300 million in the privatization.
“We took over the plant in November; at that time it was producing 160MW. Under our plan, we said we will be able to get the plant back up to 650MW within the first three years and in five years, recover the entire 1000-megawatts capacity of the plant. We have been a lot more bullish, however, and are running far ahead of our projections,” says Obinna Ufudo, the CEO of Transcorp.
“We expect that by the end of 2014 we should be at about 700MW, which is in excess of what we promised to do in three years. We decided to have a single-minded focus on this plant and by doing so we are able to supply more power to the national grid and begin to affect the lives of the Nigerians and the economy a lot quicker.”
Transcorp have also signed an agreement with General Electric to develop a new 1,000MW plant at Ughelli.
“We intend to be the largest producer of power in Nigeria and eventually begin to look across the continent where we are able to extend our expertise.”
Both Ufudo and Adesina are certain that Nigerians will benefit from more power by the end of the year.
“I believe all the generation companies, which are now in private hands, will double their outputs by the end of the year. Producing power is one issue. Getting it to the homes is a different issue and this is where the distribution companies come in,” says Ufudo.
Stanbic IBTC is one of the many home-grown financial institutions lending to the power privatization process.
“We supported a number of bidders both on the GENCO (generation companies) and the DISCO (distribution companies) side. There were only local banks that participated in the acquisition phase and they provided about $2.7 billion worth of debt to the bidders. Other than Standard Bank of South Africa (majority shareholder of Stanbic IBTC), there was no other international participation in the PHCN privatization process,” says Soji Omisore, the head of mining, energy and infrastructure at Stanbic IBTC Bank Lagos.
The litmus test lies in bidders’ performance in the long run and how they handle risk.
“No project is without risk. The opportunities are prevalent but so are the risks. We are a Nigerian bank, we understand Nigeria and we take Nigerian risks,” says Omisore.
“From our perspective, the power sector in Nigeria is a challenge, but therein lies the opportunity—it’s not an easy sector. We believe there will be roughly up to $5 billion of capital expenditure and beyond that, there will be further expansion of about $1 million per megawatt required. Currently, we have just over 9,000MW of installed capacity; we’re only producing about 3,500MW to 4,500MW, depending on the rainfall patterns for a population of over 165 million. So, in terms of our per capita consumption, it is extremely low.”
Omisore also believes in the need for a very strong regulator as the market develops.
“The third phase will be the further expansion where we will increase capacity from the current 9,000MW to 20,000MW by 2020 as projected by the government. While this is achievable, I still perceive it to be ambitious. There are still many parties that need to play in order to affect that. While the government has done well, there is still significant room for further improvement in terms of the regulatory aspect, bankability issues and the general perceived risk attached to Nigeria,” he says.
When it comes to financing though, there are no sacred cows as there are a few boxes to tick on the part of the financial institutions. Omisore highlights the quality of bidders, their level of experience, expertise, past records and potential equity contribution as important factors.
“It is better to have a bad project and good sponsors, than a good sponsor and a bad project as the good sponsor will make the project happen,” says Omisore.
Now Nigerians wait to see whether the light bulb moment for their government is really as bright as everyone hopes it will be.

Let There  Be Light

On the second day of the trial, set to last three weeks, the heavy and cold rain over Pretoria’s Gauteng North High Court, didn’t stop the army of journalists from tussling for a glimpse of the accused outside the court.
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The 27-year-old Paralympic athlete was charged with the murder of his 29-year-old girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s day last year. He is out on R1 million ($93,000) bail.
In the tangle of stepladders and tripods there was shoving and anger. Even passing school children and shop workers pushed into the fray.
This is the media frenzy and fuss around Pistorius’ trial. Bernard Hotz, the director and head of the business crimes and forensics practice at Werksmans Attorneys, is one lawyer uncomfortable with it.
“Remember, the person who is on trial here is Oscar Pistorius not the judiciary system. I personally feel that it is problematic for the media to be involved in the way they are. In terms of the bill of rights, the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” says Hotz.
The attorney adds that there’s too much speculation and analysis happening after each word uttered by witnesses, that could hamper the work of the courts.
“If you walk in the street and ask anybody ‘so did he do it or didn’t he do it?’ Most of the people may say he did it, he should go to jail. Whether or not that is right, it can only be decided upon by the judge after hearing all the evidence and applying law,” says Hotz.
But Hotz says he believes the presiding judge, Thokozile Masipa, is strong enough to control the trial.
Masipa, who was once a crime reporter, was stern in court. She warned journalists that if they don’t behave they won’t be treated with soft gloves. This follows the publishing of a picture of a witness, transgressing the conditions of the court.
“You’re dealing with human psychology, if you watch the television, everybody in the court is playing to the audience. That for me runs contrary to our court system in South Africa, bearing in mind we don’t have a jury system here, it’s about presenting evidence to the judge who must decide the case based on the evidence and the law,” says Hotz.
Guilty or innocent, Pistorius will dig deep for this trial.
“Quiet easily, the total cost of the trial, including the year’s preparations, could be anywhere between R6 million ($559,000) and R8 million ($745,000),” says Hotz.
Hotz, senior litigation attorney with 21 years of law experience, says his hourly rate is R3,750 ($350) and R37,500 ($3,500) per day.
“If you take me as an attorney, with my team dealing with a complex civil litigation matter, the cost would be in the same region. Unfortunately, the cost of litigation, not only in South Africa but throughout the world, is exceptionally expensive.”
Pistorius can negotiate a package deal of R100,000 ($9,300) a day for the three weeks of the trial. He could end up paying his legal team up to R2 million ($186,000) over this time.
The price of justice appears to come at a premium.

The High Price Of Justice

“My name is Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, not Central Bank Governor. I enjoy my job but if you want me to quit, I will honorably quit.”
Those were the words of the Central Bank governor to a Nigerian Senate Committee in 2010. He was summoned to defend himself after attacking Parliament for consuming, in salaries and allowances, a quarter of what the Federal budget allocates to overhead costs.
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Back then, he didn’t have to quit. In February, almost four years later, a statement from the office of President Goodluck Jonathan announced his suspension on account of far-reaching irregularities. The following day, a 13-page investigative report, dated June 2013, surfaced online. It was produced by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, an obscure government agency. The damning report appears to contain the evidence hinted at as Sanusi’s suspension was announced.
In the months before his suspension, it became public knowledge that Sanusi had fallen out with Jonathan after the leak of a letter he addressed to the president alleging that tens of billions of dollars of oil revenue was unaccounted for. It was reported that Jonathan was deeply embarrassed by this. Sanusi confirmed that the president asked him to resign for the leak. He refused.
Sanusi was appointed to the office in June 2009, five months after he was named CEO of First Bank of Nigeria, the country’s largest bank by assets. It was a critical time in the banking industry. The shock from the global economic meltdown was still reverberating across Nigeria. The stock market had crashed and there were rumors that many banks were only alive because the Central Bank was propping them up with cash.
One of the first things he did as governor was to carry out an audit of Nigeria’s 24 banks. Within his first four months, he sacked eight bank CEOs for malfeasance and poured nearly $4 billion worth of bailouts into the banks they ran. In boldness and scope it was the most momentous thing in Nigerian banking’s recent history. That action sealed Sanusi’s reputation as a no-nonsense banker. Most of what he did afterwards was viewed in that light. It was therefore not much of a surprise when he took on the powerful National Assembly a year later.
Under him, the Central Bank was widely respected. In January 2013, inflation fell to 9%  and stayed in single digits until the news of Sanusi’s suspension broke. He was fiercely committed to the stability of the naira; regularly tinkering—with mixed success—with forex regulations to keep the exchange rate stable.
Time had him on its Most Influential Persons list in 2011. In his final months, foreign investors expressed concerns about the future of the Nigerian economy post-Sanusi.
He was born into aristocracy. His grandfather was an Emir of Kano, one of Nigeria’s oldest kingdoms; his father a foreign service bureaucrat who went on to become Nigeria’s ambassador to China in the 1970s.
“He adored Chairman Mao Zedong’s China, which for him was one in which the black African—seen everywhere else at the time as inferior—was worthy of respect,” Sanusi wrote in the Financial Times.
It would have been easy to conclude that Sanusi shared his father’s adoration for all things Chinese, especially when he announced, in 2011, that Nigeria was going to take the unprecedented step of diversifying some of its external reserves into Renminbi. But the central thesis of that piece was that Africa must recognize that China is in Africa not for African interests but its own.
For a central banker he was extremely outspoken.
He had always been that way. In the 2000s, he regularly wrote and published in newspapers and online forums ardent opinion pieces touching on some of Nigeria’s most contentious issues: politics, religion and ethnicity.
He was a polygamous Muslim prince—with a degree in Sharia and Islamic Studies from the International University of Africa in Sudan, earned several years after his Master’s degree in economics—who boldly championed women’s rights. In April last year, he disclosed that the Central Bank had mandated Nigeria’s banks to reserve more board and management positions for women.
Last year, he announced that he had no plans to run for a second term. By Nigerian standards it was another unusual move; public officials never turn down the opportunity of a second term. But it may simply have been that the hard-nosed Sanusi had realized that he didn’t stand a chance.
In the end, it was a terse statement that ended his time at the Central Bank. For someone who made his name as an insider critical of what he saw as the government’s penchant for undisciplined public spending, it was ironic that the millstone that pulled him down came labeled with the same failings. For now, however, no one knows how true those allegations are.
In his appraisal of his final moments, Sanusi was as clear-eyed as he was when he inherited a deeply dysfunctional banking system.
“This is about consequences for decisions I have taken. This is something that is long overdue. I am surprised it took them so long.”

‘I Am Surprised That   It Took Them So Long’

Just how well Africa is rejuvenating its geopolitical space, including its trade and scientific ties with its sovereign states and the rest of the world, will be the crux of discussions at this year’s meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, in Abuja, Nigeria’s administrative and diplomatic capital, in May.
For Africa’s most populous nation, the benefits of hosting the prestigious event will go beyond the superficial. For starters, Nigeria is a land of speeches, conferences and seminars. If grandiose eloquence from politicians, community, business and religious leaders was all it took to transform a nation, then the country would be the most developed nation south of the Sahara. The presence of the world’s most influential people in Abuja will be an unprecedented opportunity for Nigeria to showcase its vast economic opportunities and deepen the dialogue on economic reform between the international and Nigerian private sectors.
Nigeria’s reputation is constantly in flux. Its quest for global leadership and respect is reflected in its diplomatic forays around the world, its contributions to global culture and the arts, its youthful and entrepreneurial populace, its consumer base and its emerging status as a leading South-South economy. Its recently concluded the sale of several state-owned assets in its power sector, and government should earn well over $10 billion when this phase of its privatization program ends in 2016.
In November, Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan appointed his top economic adviser, Nwanze Okidegbe and finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as co-chairs of the 2014 WEF in Africa steering committee to prepare the country for the meeting of heads of government and chief executive officers of global firms.
The steering committee is supported by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and led by Frank Nweke, a former minister of information. The group also includes Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and president of Dangote Industries; Tony Elumelu, the chairman of Heirs Holdings; Bisi Onasanya, the group managing director of First Bank of Nigeria, the country’s oldest and largest bank by assets; Nduka Obaigbena, the publisher of ThisDay newspaper and Wale Tinubu, the group managing director of Oando, Nigeria’s leading home-grown energy company.
Nigeria is arguably one of the fastest growing economies on the African continent, posting an average 7% GDP growth each year for the past decade, and poised to achieve increased revenues from the non-oil sectors in 2014, according to the IMF. West Africa’s leading economy is also plagued by industrial spats and strikes in its hospitals and schools, widespread graft and internal terrorism, mostly from the militant Boko Haram group.
The Nigerian government grabbed the opportunity to host the 2014 edition of the WEF on Africa summit with relish, eager to showcase its hospitality and status as a developing nation, while further cementing Abuja’s reputation as West Africa’s conference capital.
More than 800 delegates from around 70 countries are expected to review the progress the continent has made since the previous meetings and to do justice to the theme for this year’s event: ‘Forging Inclusive Growth, Creating Jobs’.
The WEF Africa team in Geneva are clearly seeking to advance the debates and consensus for action reached during previous meetings which focused on the need for sustained economic growth, improvements in governance, improving agricultural output, accelerating investments, competitiveness and collaboration with other reemerging economies, and scaling innovation.
“The theme aligns perfectly with the medium- and long-term aspirations and commitment of the Federal Government of Nigeria,” says Okonjo-Iweala.
“With the whole economic and political world focused on Nigeria during the meeting, it places enormous responsibilities on the country.”
Focusing on issues particular to the region—whether in the Middle East, Africa, East Asia, or Latin America—the regional WEFs are different from the annual retreat in Davos, Switzerland which has a much wider scope of examining global political, economic and social issues.
“Africa’s remarkable growth trajectory is projected to remain above 5 percent in 2014 with West Africa the fastest growing sub-region, representing the continent’s largest business opportunity. Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest economy and most populous nation—with over 160 million inhabitants—already plays a crucial role in advancing the continent’s growth; yet it is also emblematic of the challenges of converting natural wealth into solutions that address persistent social challenges, says the WEF.
“Nigeria currently receives a very significant share of Africa’s foreign direct investments (FDI), and I reckon that discussions at the 2014 WEF on Africa summit would reveal the need for even more FDI for important economies like Nigeria, and attract broad-based investments that will lead to the creation of millions of new jobs,” Ogho Okiti, the special adviser to President Jonathan’s chief economic adviser, tells FORBES AFRICA.
Unlike debates and resolutions at the United Nations (UN) which are usually confrontational and perceived as quixotic by critics of the global body, the WEF has maintained a collegial culture over the decades. Three days of thematic talk comprising of workshops, interactive sessions, working breakfasts and lunches, and cultural events in Abuja are expected to facilitate pragmatic responses to insightful queries such as why nations continue to experience jobless growth and, in Africa’s case, growth bereft of sustainable development; why African nations trade more with the rest of the world than they do with themselves; and which regional blocs score top marks for infrastructure improvements, economic integration and HIV/AIDS reduction in its communities.
The WEF’s rich database and extensive use of research methodologies helps it produce reports such as the ‘Global Risks Report’, the ‘Global Gender Gap Report’ and the ‘Global Competitiveness Report’—there is also an ‘African Competitiveness Report’.
Dangote has described the WEF’s non reflection of Nigeria’s involvement and impact in Africa’s development over the years as unfortunate. On a broader scope, Africa’s numerous challenges, such as poor governance; diseases; widespread access to affordable shelter, education and clean water; poverty and poor electricity supply have been at the core of many of the forum’s initiatives. WEF gatherings encourage partnerships and the commitment of its corporate members towards solving some of these problems. Perhaps this event in Abuja might offer a solution to the Boko Haram scourge.
One candid moment that has etched the WEF permanently in the annals of Africa’s global experience was the 1992 Davos meeting where former South African president FW de Klerk shared a podium with the late Nelson Mandela. This was where Mandela reportedly made his very first speech on South Africa’s economic future under the ANC government. That speech laid the foundation for social harmony and global support for South Africa.
Founded by a University of Geneva professor of business policy, Klaus Schwab in 1971, the WEF is positive evidence that discerning conversation will never go out of fashion.
Two remarks made during the 2013 WEF in Davos illustrate why the meetings will continue to inspire the world’s business and political elite to create positive change. The first is an excerpt from United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s speech.
“As a boy, I studied in the dirt. There was no classroom. Education made me what I am; it made my dream come true… I shared my message with refugee children: Don’t lose hope, study hard. I did it, you can do it too,” he says.
The second is an observation by Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame.
“Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story.”

Africa Must Pen Its Own Story

“And the Oscar goes to…”
The camera panned across five nervous nominees: Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle; June Squibb for Nebraska; Julia Roberts for August: Osage County, Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine and newcomer, Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave.
Last year’s best supporting actor, Christoph Waltz, was on stage at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles at Hollywood’s night of the year—the 86th Academy Awards.
<div id="attachment_2618" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2618" class="size-medium wp-image-2618" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/476325217-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />THE OSCARS(r) &#8211; PRESS ROOM &#8211; The Academy Awards(r) for outstanding film achievements of 2013 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, MARCH 2 (8:00-11:00 p.m., ET/5:00-8:00 p.m., PT), at the Dolby Theatre(r) at Hollywood &amp; Highland Center(r) and televised live on the ABC Television Network. (Photo by Rick Rowell/ABC via Getty Images) LUPITA NYONG&#8217;O</div>
Lawrence was the favorite for her role of Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle, but it was not to be. In a blaze of emotion, up stepped a daughter of Kenya. It was March 2, seventy five years after Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Academy Award. In more than seven decades, a mere seven black women have won in either the Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress categories; only three hailed from Africa.
“Lupita Nyong’o is already an African icon, not just for what she has achieved with her remarkable win at the Academy Awards, but more importantly for what she has almost overnight come to symbolize, the undeniable truth that African women are increasingly charting their own course,” says Biola Alabi, the managing director of M-Net in Africa.
“Here is a beautiful black woman, comfortable in her own skin, clearly highly educated, who can champion the next generation of African talent; she is a blessing to Kenya and the continent and long may she prosper. From where I sit, it is an absolute truth that the lead performances were Kenyan and Nigerian—I know its trendy to call Chiwetel Ejiofor black British but he is an Ibo boy and we claim him. However, perhaps African countries can begin to understand and appreciate the nobility of the higher arts of song, dance, theater and film and invest and support them… I would have loved to see her shout out Kenya and say something in Swahili but, hey, you can’t have it all,” says entrepreneur Obi Asika, the chairman of Social Media Week Lagos.
What a difference six months makes. Back then, 31-year-old Nyong’o was a struggling unknown in Hollywood who lived lean and carried her own clothes.
The role that was to change her life, cast her alongside London-born Nigerian, Ejiofor, in a film based on the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup—the tale of a free man kidnapped into slavery.
Steve McQueen cast Nyong’o three weeks before she graduated from Yale School of Drama, after a chance audition in New York. Her manager had the script ready for another client, but when Nyong’o was asked to read, McQueen was keen on her playing Patsey. It went to a second audition with the casting director.
“It was a one-hour, very gruelling audition. Then I was shortlisted and invited to Louisiana to audition with Steve about two weeks later. So it was three auditions in three different states,” she says.
Filled with excitement she phoned her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, a professor back in Nairobi, to tell him the news that she was going to be in a film with Brad Pitt.
“My father said he had never heard of him, but he was glad I had finally got a job,” says Nyong’o.
It has been a long and winding journey that began in the gentle world of amateur dramatics. It was with the Pheonix Players in Nairobi that Nyong’o took her first tender steps in Shakespeare.
Drama teacher, Ian Mbugua, who ran the Phoenix Players for 19 years, remembers it well.
“Lupita first came to us as a student from Rusinga School. She was brought by her father Professor Anyang’ Nyong’o who had obviously seen her talent. Nyongo and his wife Dorothy were very supportive of the theater and used to bring young Lupita to productions. He left her in the capable hands of James Falkland who put her as Juliet alongside George Mumbai, who played Romeo,” says Mbugua.
“Needless to say she gave a sterling performance… I was very impressed by her parent’s support. At a time when parents wanted their kids to study medicine, law, engineering, the Nyongos supported her dream to be an actress. She always approached rehearsals and performances with the seriousness they deserved. She was very eloquent and had wonderful stage presence. She was a passionate actress. Off-stage she had a great sense of humor and was always quick to laugh.”
“We remember how brilliantly she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Phoenix Theatre, at the age of 14 years; how she cracked our ribs during St. Mary’s School plays, or at the British High Commission, when as a teenager, she played Natalya in Anton Chekhov’s The Proposal,” says her mother, Dorothy Nyong’o.
Nyong’o emigrated to the United States 10 years ago, where she earned a degree in film and theater studies from Hampshire College. In her summer break, she headed back to Africa where she worked on the production crew of Mira Nair’s The Namesake. In another Nairobi summer, she served as a production assistant on the set of The Constant Gardener starring Ralph Fiennes.
“Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me,” she told the New York Post. “He asked me, ‘So what is it you want to do?’ I very shyly, timidly admitted that I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and he said, ‘Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do—only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.’”
The second of six children, Nyong’o was born in Mexico City, where her father, a politician in Kenya, had fled to following the disappearance of his brother in difficult political times. The Nyong’o family hails from the Luo people in western Kenya, like Barack Obama’s father. When Nyong’o was less than a year old, her parents moved back to Kenya, where her father is now a senator representing Kisumu County; her mother is the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation. Her parents sent her back to Mexico, at the age of 16, to learn Spanish.
Fast forward to the Oscars, Nyong’o, who sports short kinky hair and a pale blue dress, a color she says reminds her of Nairobi, picked up the award for one of the great moments in movie history. The moment when the sadistic cotton plantation owner Edwin Epps, played by Michael Fassbender, whips Patsey near to death; when it becomes unbearable, he forces her friend Solomon to take over.
“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s, and so I want to salute the spirit of Patsey for her guidance,” says a tearful Nyong’o on Oscar night.
What is next for Kenya’s first Oscar winner? Her next role is in a thriller set on an international flight, with Liam Neeson, that opened in February. It is likely to sell well in Nairobi where a whole new generation of young Kenyan actresses are learning their lines for the amateur stage with one eye on Lupita and the other on the future.

Lupitamania!

They call it the Ring of Fire and in the last few years it has been getting hotter. This is the ring of sporadic protests around Johannesburg. The howl of the poor on the doorstep of one of the richest cities in Africa.
Most of these protestors vote and their dissatisfaction could signal a drop in support for the ruling ANC, which has guided South Africa through its 20 years of democracy.
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The protests happen on different days, but follow the same pattern. Burning tires, rocks on the road and fighting between protestors and police. In many weeks, they are as frequent on radio as the traffic news.
The police struggle to control the unrest. Schools close their doors as demonstrators pelt police with stones and petrol bombs.
Protesters burned down two of the Independent Electoral Commission’s voter registration stations in February.
In Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg, acting commissioner Lieutenant General Lesetja Mothiba says police saw 569 protest marches since November, of which 122 were violent.
“The South African public must realize what is confronting the members [police] on a daily situation while dealing with these issues of protest marches and demonstrations. These are not petty things, these are not issues that you can say &#8216;go read a book&#8230; and it will tell you how to deal with these issues&#8217;,&#8221; he says.
Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane says the slow response to service delivery protests was leading to violence. She claims that opportunists, who lost out on government tenders, fueled some of the protests.
“Protests would not have happened if government responded quicker. Where violence happens we must act,” she says.
Research on service delivery protests by the Centre for Sociological Research, at the University of Johannesburg, suggests that, despite overwhelming support for the ANC, communities are frustrated with their ward councillors and local government.
Peter Alexander, the director of the center and South African research chair for social change at the university, says 60% of South African youth are unemployed, leading to discontent.
“The protests that swept across the country are not a novel occurrence on the social and political landscape. Impoverished residents of neglected townships have been voicing their dissatisfaction with ineffective and inadequate service delivery since the ANC rise to power in 1994,” says Alexander.
The communities involved in the cluster of service delivery protests share problems and frustrations. Poverty and unemployment are high. There’s a lack of water, sewage systems, street lighting, paved roads and housing.
“Many people don’t have the full range of service delivery, and they are continuously used as voting fodder in elections. Protests are about a range of issues, dominant to them is the youth unemployment. Their frustrations cannot be interpreted merely as a sign of displeasure with service delivery. Deeper discontent with available channels for participatory democracy underlies the protesters’ anger.”
The majority of protesters support the ANC. They are unhappy with their party because they believe the promises for a better life have not been fulfilled. To make the matters worse the government doesn’t understand, says Alexander.
In November, as Bekkersdal residents, west of Johannesburg, took to the streets to demand better government services, ANC veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela acknowledged that conditions in the area had not changed since 1994.
ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, campaigning for elections in Kagiso township in February, denied that service delivery protests were a sign people have abandoned the ANC.
President Jacob Zuma, in the state of the nation address in February, also downplayed the gravity of the recurring service delivery protests.
“The dominant narrative in the case of the protests in South Africa has been to attribute them to alleged failures of government. However, the protests are not simply the result of failures of government, but also of the success in delivering basic services. When 95% of households have access to water, the 5% who still need to be provided for feel they cannot wait a moment longer.”
Africa Check, a non-profit organization that promotes accuracy in public debate and the South African media, found that the figure differs between provinces. The president does not clearly define what he means by access to water, the most recent census claims that access is defined as either being inside a household, garden, or a communal tap in the street. Zuma’s claim does not speak of the quality of water—2.4% of Gauteng households said their water smelled bad in a 2012 household survey by Statistics South Africa. Nationally, 60% of households rated the quality of their water-related services as good.
Proof, that it all depends on which side of the protest you are shouting from.

Burning Ire In  The Ring Of Fire

“It was so painful, I wanted to cry.”
These are the words that summed up the worst day for Adetunji Omotola of African Wine Circle.
It was a day that began so innocuously. Omotola was merely moving his business and consignment of wines and glasses from Ghana to Nigeria, while he flew to South Africa on business. But, when he landed in Johannesburg, he received a phone call which ushered in the nightmare.
Wine was a new business, by chance, for lawyer Omotola. He was working in the insurance industry. As a Nigerian, working in South Africa, it was quite tough to earn the trust of clients. He began to host wine dinners to help win over customers. So, when this deep voiced, imposing man decided to quit the insurance industry, wine was the next best step.
Omotola moved to Ghana in June 2008 to pursue his wine dining business, selling South African wine. He saw the perfect business opportunity in festive Ghana as they celebrated their 50 years of independence as well as hosting the Africa Cup of Nations.
Without doing much research, he packed his bags to start Veine Wines Ghana. He set up shop, signing a one-year lease for $14,000 in East Legon, a suburb in Accra. His first case of 1,200 South African wines arrived in Ghana&#8230; Omotola held his first wine tasting evening on a Saturday night, in September 2008. In Accra, Saturday is a sacred day.
“I didn’t know the Ghanaians buried their dead on a Saturday. So I almost had a blow-out. I just wasn’t bothered about the culture, I just wanted to go in there and sell the wine. And do my things the way I did it in South Africa. South Africa is very cosmopolitan. So this all leads to excitement, people come to this first tasting. So I was coasting along, I was doing my business,” says Omotola.
He soon realized that the area he was staying in was expensive, making his business expensive. Ghanaians don’t spend much and are modest, compared to Nigerians which he says are showy and love to flaunt their wealth.
“It was quite expensive because there were mass products at the time like Distell’s Two Oceans, Nederburg, and Drostdy Hof wines. I was in that market, where there was this cheap wine that was under $10 a bottle and I needed to break out of that market and I needed to break into Nigeria.”
“I was moving to Nigeria, with the idea that people were going to be buying things for three times the price. Nigerians are very generous. At the time 5,000 naira was about $30 and they didn’t mind paying that for a bottle and buying a case of 12 for around $400. So the wine that I would buy in South Africa for maybe about $100, I could sell for $400 in Nigeria. I was very excited. That took me to Nigeria,” he says.
This led to the sad story.
Omotola started looking at Nigeria as his lease in Ghana was running out.
“I started doing wine events in Nigeria, the big next door neighbor, the richest country in that region. It was a natural move. I’m Nigerian, I have ties there, so I started to move there,” he says.
He began by selling the wine cellar to another entrepreneur in Nigeria for $6,000. It was in Ghana and had to be freighted to Nigeria. It was a good deal, he was selling it for around three times the price he had bought it for in South Africa. Omotola had struggled to sell the cellar in Ghana; Nigeria was the only option.
Omotola had to freight what was left in Ghana: a mountain of wine glasses and wine. These were given to an agent who would see to it that the goods arrived in Nigeria. While that was happening, he decided to go to South Africa on business.
On landing, he took an unexpected call from Nigeria.
“Would you believe that they broke the wines and the bottles? I had paid $400 for freight in Ghana and 54,000 naira ($330) for duty in Nigeria. They damaged the crystal glasses. They broke 27 bottles of wines out of 72. The rest stained the cartons. All the cartons were wet and you couldn’t put the wines in them. They delivered fewer glasses and less wine… I was in South Africa. The wines had been forklifted, which rammed into them, when they delivered them in Lagos.”
“How do I solve the problem, being remote? So, it was a nightmare for me and I felt that I was helpless. And there was a breach of trust because the agent in Nigeria who had helped me to bring in the cellars successfully, for a person who recommended or referred him to me the first time, was now an agent who disappeared even before the consignment had arrived,” Omotola says.
This agent had gone to Spain and wasn’t answering his phone.
It was very painful, Omotola says. He felt that he had wasted money on paying duties, freight and losing some of his stock. Worst of all, he has yet to get reparation.
“We didn’t get any respite. We didn’t get any response. We didn’t get any compensation. The advice that we’ve given ourselves is that anything that is not containerized in Africa, you’re on your own. Because they can damage it and nothing will happen.”
“The lawyer that I had instructed was adamant that he will not write a letter until the New Year. So we lost an opportunity to reclaim about R50,000 ($4,600) in terms of the costs, phone calls, time, the loss of stock etc,” Omotola says.
“Everything was severely damaged. And just because of this I’ve been very scared to send anything unaccompanied to anywhere via freight.”
It was psychological damage more than anything, Omotola adds. He says he still begrudges all those companies involved; the law firms and the agent, whom he says he still calls today to remind him that he is still alive and that one day justice will be done.
“This is a Nigerian who did that to me. You can imagine if they do it to a foreigner. That foreigner may never come back, but because I’m a Nigerian, I’m laughing about it.”
Nonetheless, Omotola set up shop in Nigeria with what was left from this accident. Although, he says it wasn’t easy. He changed his business name to First African Wine Circle. He says the biggest challenge was the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), which he says is where everything must be registered but it takes a year to get approval, whereas registering with Ghana’s food and drug board was easier. This was one of the reasons Omotola started his business in Ghana rather than Nigeria.
“Most of the big companies in Ghana are owned by Nigerians. So if I had paid three years rent, which is generally what people pay in those parts, I would have still been in Ghana. I would have been very successful. Now, Ghana has discovered oil since my exit and their GDP grew by 14%, that feel-good factor would have benefited my business,” he says.
In Nigeria he made a few changes to the way he ran his business. Instead of importing South African wine, he would buy wine in Lagos to avoid a repeat of the accident.
“That’s been working for me very well. That was the reverse way of dealing with it,” he says.
In 2010, leading up to the first football World Cup on the African continent, Omotola saw another opportunity. He could ride on the World Cup fever in South Africa, while hosting wine dinners and tasting events. In South Africa, he called the business African Wine Circle.
This month, Omotola’s business should be going into Tanzania. By the end of the year, he wants to see African Wine Circle in Uganda and Mozambique. But, he is still wary of shipping so much as a glass.

Shattered

Murky rivers are flooded with chemicals; plastic and paper block the drains. Piles of litter are scattered on the ground. Above, colorful plastic bags sweep across the sky. This was the scene as 16-year-old Andrew Mupuya walked to school.
At the time, the secondary school student waking up to the devastating effects of pollution. According to Unicef,  almost 2,000 children from around the world die every day from contaminated water. Science Daily reports that air pollution is responsible for more than 2 million deaths every year.
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Mupuya often thought of ways in which he could help the environment. He was also looking for an opportunity to support his family and pay his school fees after both his parents lost their jobs. All it took was some initiative from the government and himself.
“In the 2008/2009 financial year budget, the government of Uganda mentioned the intention to ban the polythene bags in the country to promote environmental conservation. Because of this, I began to think of what could replace the polythene bags because they are intensely used,” says Mupuya.
His research showed a great need for the environmentally friendlier paper bags. Unsure of how to start the business, Mupuya sought advice from his entrepreneur teacher who put him in contact with a woman who taught him everything he needed to know about making paper bags by hand. Mupuya sent samples to various clients who were impressed. Demand was high, but Mupuya needed capital.
“I realized there were a lot of used plastic bottles in the community. I collected them and sold them to a plastic recycling plant in Mbuya, located in a Kampala suburb, at 400 Ugandan shillings per kilogram ($1=UGX2,400). I mobilized the school students during their free time to volunteer their time to collect the bottles. We were able to collect 70 kilograms within a period of one week and sold them, making 28,000 Ugandan shillings ($11). This project remained running in the school by its entrepreneurship club. I borrowed 8,000 Ugandan shillings ($3.3) from my teacher to meet the required 36,000 Ugandan shillings ($15).”
Youth Entrepreneurial Link Investments (YELI) started as a one-man business that kept Mupuya busy. He sold the handmade paper bags to retail shops and kiosks, restaurants and roadside sellers. The raw materials were initially sourced from Kampala and later Mupuya imported them from Nairobi, Kenya. He made a profit of 24,000 Ugandan shillings on one ream which would take him three weeks to complete. After employing a few students, he managed to sell one ream in one week.
“Aspiring entrepreneurs should never blame a lack of capital for why they have not yet started a business; capital is your brain. Personally, I started on zero, I created an idea and I later had to think of how to get capital.”
In 2010, YELI became Uganda’s first registered paper bag company.
“It’s an initiative that’s creating change through the youth and impacting them. It’s creating change to me and my community through employability and conserving the environment by providing eco-friendly products.”
Over the years, Mupuya has faced problems handling the large orders and juggling business between classes. The worst was the criticism from peers and teachers who did not believe in his project and often told him he would fail if he didn’t focus on his school work.
Almost five years later, Mupuya, now 22, manages a staff of 16 making 18,000 to 20,000 eco-friendly bags per week, and all of them are made by hand. They cater to 72 clients that range from restaurants, retail shops, supermarkets, medical centers and pharmacies. Some of their larger clients include Maganjo Grain Millers, the biggest flour producing company in East Africa, and Tuskys, one of the biggest supermarkets in Uganda.
YELI has also received great acclaim since launching. In 2012, Mupuya won a $30,000 Anzisha Prize that recognizes young entrepreneurs in Africa. Other awards include a FERD Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2012, and in 2013 he won Inspire Africa’s innovation prize. Mupuya was also placed on the FORBES 30 Under 30 list in 2013 for young Africans who are helping to change the continent in a positive way.
“My advice to young Africans is, more than ever before, focus on entrepreneurship instead of looking for jobs within multinational companies. Basically, stop looking to be employed for a limited amount of time but rather work for yourself. There is no employment time limit when you work for yourself.”
By 2020, Mupuya would like to see the YELI paper bags manufactured out of a bigger plant that will cater to all countries across the continent. It is his vision is to create a better Africa. One where clean water runs though rivers, plants grow from the nurtured ground and all one sees ar

Bagging Profits

When former Ugandan president, Idi Amin, gave Asians a 90-day ultimatum to get out of the country in August 1972, he sparked a desperate fight for life for more than 60,000 people.
Some, who feared Amin’s brutality, had nowhere to run. Their bodies were found in the waters of the Nile.
Hitherto happy families fretted as they sought survival. Among them was a Ugandan Indian retailer’s family that took flight leaving behind, in the midst of panic and confusion, a 16-year-old son.
This vulnerable teenager was Sudhir Ruparelia.
More than 40 years on from this tearful parting, Sudhir is ranked by FORBES as the 24th wealthiest person in Africa with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. His is a remarkable story of hard work and endurance.
In an interview at his plush office chambers, in the heart of Kampala, Sudhir recalls how staying behind didn’t bother him when his family fled to Britain.
“It was an awful moment for the Asian community. You couldn’t predict what was to happen to you the next day. But I convinced my parents to leave me behind on the promise that I would join them later,” he says.
Sudhir’s Ugandan-born parents had established a shop and gas station in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda. They ran it for years.
The bravery and tenacity that that helped Sudhir survive and prosper amid chaos can be traced back to his childhood.
Sudhir studied in schools that were far away from the wildlife park where his parents ran their business. This meant he traveled long distances alone.
He cadged lifts on trucks ferrying traders. The trucks would leave the bush loaded with fish and salt and return packed with merchandise. Although the East African railway service was booming at that time, Sudhir says it was only for the rich.
At school, there was no communication with his parents until the holidays.
This forged a hard edge to Sudhir. All he wanted from his departing family was money to survive. His wish was granted.
For six weeks, Sudhir ran riot with his friends.
“We had a lot of money to party and drink. The security personnel occasionally stopped us but we always sweet-talked them into releasing us,” he says.
His moment of truth came when intelligence men arrested one of his friends. They wanted to extort money.
“Once he was released, we all decided to leave since the city was also getting desolate. There were just about 100 Asians left,” says Sudhir.
There was nothing left, but to flee.
Sudhir landed alone in London and didn’t even know where to find his parents. Together with other exiles, he was checked into a refugee camp. On the second day, he set out to find friends in Finchley Central. He found eight of them living in a two-roomed house. He never returned to the camp.
After five weeks in London, Sudhir found his family, but only to tell them that he wasn’t content with his refugee status and that he was moving on. He headed to Birmingham and Manchester where there were jobs that could promise permanency.
Sudhir tried to get work at Ford Motor Company but was thwarted by a union closed shop. He moved to Ilford, in northeast London, where he found a job with a company that made test tubes for laboratories. He handled red-hot wax in making centimeter markings on test tubes.
“This was the most sickening job in the entire factory. I barely had any protection and the heat was unbearable. No wonder I worked for only five months and moved back to Finchley Central,” says Sudhir.
Next, he tried to join the Royal Air Force (RAF). He passed the tests and was on the verge of signing for five years.
The problem was he was a minor and needed the consent of his parents. His mother declined. Her idea of the military had been tainted by the cruelty she had witnessed by the Ugandan army. Sudhir’s father differed but the mother held sway.
The RAF offered education. Sudhir hoped for academic success, but it was not to be.
Next, came a string of lowly jobs leading to a supermarket where he worked hard and bought a car. He used it as a cab at the weekends for extra cash. At the same time, he enrolled at a college for A-level studies, majoring in economics and accounts. He completed his studies and worked for a number of companies.
His wife, Jyotsna, with whom he worked at the supermarket, advised him to concentrate on one business. When they got married, Sudhir ventured into real estate in London. He bought properties, renovated them and sold for a profit.
Through this time, Sudhir had an uncle who had stayed behind in Uganda. He kept the link with home.
In February 1985, Sudhir returned to Uganda, aged 29, with $25,000 he earned through real estate deals in London. Due to unrest, Uganda was hit by foreign exchange shortages that caused the decline of the Ugandan shilling (Ush) to a low in 1985 of Ush600 to $1.
Sudhir says he kept a low profile for over a year to allow him time to study and understand the ruined economy.
In December 1986, Sudhir opened a wholesale store, in Kampala’s central business district, dealing in imported beer, salt and wine. The civil war left the breweries of Uganda in ruins.
This made it lucrative to import beer, with household goods, from Kenya. Sudhir positioned himself as a channel between importers and retailers. He became a trusted business partner to the importers, who supplied him the items on credit and claimed payments after a couple of days, to accelerate returns. He ran the system effectively and set up the first solid distribution structure in Kampala.
“While in London, the strongest trait I learnt was being disciplined. I ensured that the suppliers’ money was always readily available as agreed,” he says.
After just three months, he became the number one dealer in imported beer in Kampala.
Armed with a sound supply chain, Sudhir wasted no time in elevating himself to importer. This required piles of foreign exchange. So, he started a currency exchange service, which was another untapped market in Uganda.
Though the sector operated informally, the demand was overwhelming. Sudhir earned $10,000 in profit every day. He invested part of this money in prime properties in Kampala.
In 1990, the government moved in with a policy to regulate forex businesses, which had mushroomed. Sudhir’s Crane Forex bureau became the first to be licensed in the country. This catapulted him beyond his wildest dreams. In just six months, Sudhir says, he was making more money than the commercial banks.
He itched to grow his financial services empire and in 1995 created Crane Bank with $1 million.
Part of his frustration, was the way commercial banks operated as if they were doing everyone a favor. The charges were high and the choice limited. Sudhir’s came up with a motto for his new bank: Serving To Grow And Growing To Serve.
He lowered bank charges, extended banking hours; becoming the first to operate to 5PM and on Saturdays. He also cut red tape.
Today, Crane Bank is worth $120 million in capital and has 38 branches across the country. The country’s second largest commercial bank was voted Bank of the Year Uganda in 2009 and also won the Banker Of The Year award in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 by the Financial Times in London—where Sudhir’s working life began.
In 2011, the bank posted a 32.3% increment in profit, before tax, rising to Ush90.23 billion ($37 million) from Ush68.19 billion ($28 million) in 2010.
“We are currently about 35 million people in Uganda. Only three and a half million live in Kampala. The rest of the population is in the countryside. That has guided our philosophy of opening more branches up country,” says Sudhir.
His plan is to open 10 branches a year for the next three to four years, with the hope of expanding into Rwanda in March this year, followed by South Sudan.
In his office, Sudhir’s wide collection of awards is impressive. He has won almost of the top investment awards in Uganda, including the Presidential Export Award for 2002, 2006, 2005 and 2009. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Law in Business from the Uganda Pentecostal University for his investments in the Ugandan economy.
A family man, with two daughters and a son, Sudhir’s investments are run under the umbrella of Ruparelia Group of Companies, which also holds high value assets in the property development and management, insurance, education, media and hotel sectors.
Through his floriculture company, Rosebud Ltd, Sudhir has been exporting 13 million roses to Europe a month earning him a profit of $5 million per year. Production is set to increase once he acquires a planned 200 additional hectares. He will effectively produce one and a half million stems a day, creating 7,000 jobs and projected returns worth $95 to 100 million per year.
It hasn’t been all rosy at Uganda’s largest flower exporting farm though. The firm was cited in alleged environmental degradation. The National Association of Professional Environmentalists have accused Rosebud of polluting the Lutembe wetland, on the shores of Lake Victoria, with pesticide and fertilizer effluents, according to FORBES.
However, the National Environment Management Authority, a semi-autonomous institution and principal agency in Uganda charged with the responsibility of coordinating, monitoring, regulating and supervising environmental management in the country, says it has found no fault with Rosebud.
“We licensed Rosebud in 2004 with well stipulated guidelines to follow in safeguarding the environment. We have been monitoring their operations and have no queries save for the wrong perception of some members of the public,” says the authority’s executive director, Tom Okia Okurut.
Sudhir, who is hesitant to delve deeper into the matter because it is before a court, says his plans have the blessing of the environmental regulator.
Last year, residents tried to block the road leading to the farm in protesting the expansion plans. Through his lawyers, Sudhir sought a court injunction to have the development continue.
The Ugandan parliamentary committee on natural resources also instituted investigations into the matter but the speaker halted the proceedings citing sub judice. The real estate business is simpler.
Through his estate holding company, Meera Investments—named after his first daughter—Sudhir owns at least 300 residential and commercial properties in Uganda, from Crane Chambers in the central business district, to scores of apartment blocks, shopping centers, office buildings and tracts of valuable land. He estimates his rent is around $600 million a year from his real estate.
His five-star Speke Resort and Conference Centre, situated on 75 acres, by the shores of Lake Victoria near Kampala, played host to the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which drew 59 leaders. Built for the Commonwealth meeting, the resort has 780 rooms, 10 conference rooms, a 1,000-seat ballroom and nine meeting rooms that can accommodate groups ranging from 10 to 300 people. It also has Uganda’s only Olympic size swimming pool, an equestrian center and a host of bars and restaurants.
The plush hotel, worth around $165 million, caught the eye of the late Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi, who tried to buy it for $120 million. Sudhir turned him down.
His other assets include Speke Hotel, Kabira Country Club and Speke apartments, all high-end facilities in prime zones of Kampala and worth millions of dollars.
Sudhir also bought Victoria University from Edulink Holdings Ltd to add to his educational institutions portfolio already comprising of Kampala International School Uganda (KISU) and Kampala Parents’ School. The institutions are worth more than $40 million.
Asked what guides his investment, Sudhir says it is instinctive risk taking rather than feasibility studies.
“In Africa, feasibility studies are a waste of time. It’s about ability to see opportunity and take it up. If you did feasibility studies for a country like Uganda, you would never do anything,” he says.
Sudhir, the man who drove a cab for pennies and turned down Gaddafi, can never be accused of shrinking from a challenge.

The Man Who Earns  $600 Million A Year In Rent

The rain hammered down on Maputo, as if in protest, the night the Sacred Monster died. It squalled in from the dark and rough waters of the Indian Ocean, on gusts of wind, as Mozambique mourned. It should have been gentle rain, like tears in the night, but Mario Coluna would have appreciated this mighty show of natural force over the land of his birth; after all, it was natural power and uncanny force, born in Africa, that drove the Sacred Monster to a hallowed place in world football.
Coluna could hold any football crowd in the palm of his hand; outwit any opposition in his head and launch rockets with his boots. His explosive acceleration and body strength often overpowered the world’s finest players.
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On this night, February 25, after a heart attack, Coluna lay in peace at a Maputo hospital close to the streets where he learnt the game with his father’s socks tied into a ball. He was 78, 44 years since he stopped playing, and remains one of the most determined and skilful Africans ever to lace up a pair of football boots. In this age of hyperbole, peopled by overpaid and overrated players; Coluna was a man who wore modestly the word great. His country gave him a state funeral on February 28 and declared it a public holiday.
“It is not easy to say goodbye to someone whose life was among the greatest,” Luis Filipe Viera, the president of Benfica, told the club’s official website.
“Someone whose life path is unique and whose legacy will endure far beyond him. It is said that we are born equal. Untrue! Coluna was born different, for the better, much better.”
The Portuguese journalists called him the Sacred Monster—O Monstro Sagrado—because he was both terrifying and beautiful with the ball at his feet. He helped Benfica win 10 league titles and the European Cup twice; scoring in the victories over Barcelona in 1961 and Real Madrid the following year.
The win to retain the trophy, in Amsterdam in 1962, was as much an African triumph as a European one. In goal was Alberto da Costa Pereira, from Nacala in Mozambique, the captain Jose Aguas, born in Lobito, Angola, along with Coluna and Eusebio from Maputo. Players born and bred in Africa had a hand in all five goals as Benfica came back from 2-0 down to win 5-3.
On that May evening, as Coluna smashed in a goal from 25 yards to make it 4-3, hundreds of his countrymen were listening, also far from home. In the camps in the bush of southern Tanzania, hundreds of guerrilla fighters for FRELIMO—the newly formed liberation movement for Mozambique—crowded around the radio. One of them was founder member and future president Joaquim Chissano.
“We were divided. Some of us felt Coluna was bringing glory to our country, Mozambique. Others thought he was bringing glory to our colonizers, Portugal,” says Chissano at his Maputo home, the day after Coluna died.
“He was a true leader, he was always more concerned how the team was playing rather than how he was playing. When he retired, he brought his skills back to Mozambique to help build the game here. He was truly a great man.”
Coluna played for Benfica from 1954 to 1970 and when he retired Lev Yashin, Bobby Moore, the World Cup winning captain of England, Bobby Charlton, Uwe Seeler, George Best and Denis Law played at his testimonial in Lisbon.
Coluna was born in Maputo to a Mozambique mother and Portuguese father. His father was a goalkeeper and football fanatic, who died in the stands of a heart attack while watching the club he helped to found, now known as Desportivo de Maputo. Coluna’s precocious talent shone at Desportivo and Benfica scouts spotted him and flew him to Lisbon. He played 677 times, scoring 150 goals, for Benfica. In 1966, he captained one of the greatest sides ever to play for Portugal. They called them the Magricos—the magicians—and among them were four players from Mozambique: Coluna; Eusebio; Vicente and Hilario. This talented team should have been world champions, but suffered when the semi-final was switched, at the last minute, from Liverpool to London. The Portuguese emerged exhausted from an overnight train journey and lost 2-1 to England, the eventual winners.
I was in Maputo the night the great man died. It was almost five years to the day since I was privileged to be invited into his quiet Maputo home for an interview. He was looking frail then, but I was struck by the sure-footed confidence of an athlete. I was also struck by his gentlemanly demeanor and piercing blue eyes that would smile and then flash a steely glint; just to let you know that if you faced him on a football field you wouldn’t stand a chance.
Coluna told me he played football when men were men and referees were lenient. He rolled up his trouser leg to show me an ugly criss-cross scar—a painful souvenir of a crunching tackle in Rome in the 1960s that hastened the end of his career. The defender didn’t even get a caution.
Even though they drew the crowds, the players then were paid a pittance. Coluna, a handsome gentleman, who always wore a debonair pencil moustache, would these days have made a fortune from modeling clothes.
The top players of today earn more in a month than Coluna earned in his entire career. Coluna eked out his final years on a Benfica pension, but was never bitter.
“If players are making money for the football clubs, by getting fans through the turnstiles, why shouldn’t they get good money?” Coluna asked me on that hot February afternoon in Maputo.
Money was never the spur for Coluna. In 1975, when many of his talented generation, like Pele and Franz Beckenbauer, headed to New York for the riches of the new National American Soccer League, Coluna went home. He coached Text Chimoio, a club in a small town near the border with Zimbabwe, to the first football championship of an independent Mozambique. Years later, he ran a football academy, became the head of the country’s football association as well as an MP. At the age of 74, Coluna was campaigning for Portugal to prepare in Mozambique for the 2010 World Cup over the border in South Africa, arguing that the countries shared climate and language.
Portugal ignored Coluna’s pleas and sadly the football world, to an extent, ignored his legacy and talent. I think it is a crime that the name Coluna is often forgotten in world lit by a mere mention of the name Eusebio. Both players carried the banner for African football in Europe; only one returned.
Even sadder is that, in the space of a month, both African legends have gone. Television money and the globalized game mean we will see the like of their talent again, but few African geniuses will shine so brightly and labor so hard, for so little. When African footballers everywhere lace up their boots they should think of two names for inspiration: Coluna and Eusebio, two legends, who dared to dream, from Maputo, Mozambique.

Tag: April 2014

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