When you first meet him, you wonder how a Peruvian, who struggles with his English, can get his message across to his squad of players. When he is out on the field in training, all you can make out is the exaggerated gestures and loud, booming voice. To the observer, it seems like a man under pressure, with a fiery temper, who is not quite sure what he is doing.
Think again. There is one thing Augusto Palacios is fluent in and that is football.
His first language is football and he turned around a team in turmoil to become the champions of the South African Premier Soccer League.
When Palacios took over the reins at (South African football club) Orlando Pirates it was after the sacking of Júlio César Leal in March, as the defending league champions began to languish four points behind a strong Mamelodi Sundowns team. Despite a 3-0 thumping at the hands of a lowly Santos side, in his first game in charge, plus a 2-1 home defeat to Free State Stars 10 days later, Palacios systematically worked his way to the top of the table.
The 60-year-old former striker began his career as a coach in 1981 and moved to South Africa to take charge of the Witbank Black Aces in 1983. Nearly three decades later, the technical director of development at the Buccaneers stepped up to lead the Orlando Pirates team to the title.
“Coming in, in the middle of the season and entrusted with the task of defending the league at all costs, was a task that I had to undertake knowing that I could not afford to make it go wrong,” says Palacios.
“Coaching Orlando Pirates last season, under the circumstances the team was in, was with no shadow of a doubt to me the highest point of my professional coaching career. Since my arrival in the country and after I decided to get into coaching, the first thing I endeavored to do was to understand how local players think. It might seem simple, but players in every part of the world think differently.”
Palacios also offers great insight into the South African game like few others can, added to his typical short and to-the-point assessments.
“People are wrong about South African footballers; they think they don’t have skill. Normally, it’s the right combination of skill and technique… I tell the players in training, ‘no lose the ball, no lose the ball—pass to the player who is closest to you and play it safe.’ Something I don’t understand and I always correlate to the players; how it is possible you can lose the ball when there’s no life in the ball. It’s immaterial—I don’t understand how you can make the wrong pass. You are human beings who have brains, you train for this but then you make the wrong pass.”
His strong words have an effect on his charges, but to the crowd, he was not always hailed a hero this season.
Under Leal, Pirates supporters would bay for substitutions and the-then coach would often succumb to the will of the spectators. Palacios, however, adopts a contrasting approach.
“I think from when I came to South Africa I know the habits of the supporters. The supporters can’t make changes for me. The supporters can’t make substitutes for me—never. One thing I cannot do is to let the supporters coach. The supporters don’t make me make the substitutions, but they are not stupid—they can see if a player is missing chances and they see it as a habit.”
Pirate’s fans thought Palacios was merely a good caretaker coach, but have been won over by the successful championship defense.
“I heard Palacios [talking to] Robert Marawa on radio on the last Thursday of the season. They asked him about his coaching tactics and he said after he lost to Santos and to Free State Stars, the average coach would have taken the players back to more physical training, but he took them far away from football and they had fun. When they came back to training they were told they could have any position in the team for that session. So Benni McCarthy went from striker to goalkeeper and the two center backs went [on] to be strikers. Voila, on the last day of the season the people who changed positions all scored to win us the title… That’s genius,” says Toto ‘AngelHeart’ Mothopeng, who has supported the Pirates since 1986.
One of the Peruvian’s old assistants, former Bafana Bafana captain, Steve Komphela, has worked with Pirates tactician for years.
“Augusto introduced me to captaincy in the national team. Augusto molded me as a center back. We used to have our moments of fighting and all that and I’m very close to his family. To me it is more than standing next to the master, or someone who taught you the trade; it’s more like standing next to your mentor and your father,” says Komphela.
The wily Palacios was confirmed by the club at the end of May as coach on a one-year contract.
“Football is my passion and I cannot see myself doing something else away from this game. I remember the first game I sat on the bench against Santos, I met some of my former players and friends, who are now coaching in the Premiership. Those were emotional moments for me—every time we would play a certain team, I would always meet a former player, whom I coached before or played against.”
Palacios has made a rapid transformation, from the under-the-radar youth director, to the guiding spirit of the Soweto giant—one of the biggest clubs in Africa. In this uncertain world where clubs are turfing out coaches on a whim, Pirates would best be advised to hang on to Palacios as long as they can.

The Pirate King

<h4> Cricket</h4>
The gentle Jamaican drawl is one of the lesser-heard accents in Harare. But, in the first week of December, it could be heard in conversation with English inflections, South African slang and Australian twangs.
The source of the Caribbean crooning was the world’s most expensive and sought after twenty-over cricketer, Chris Gayle; the other voices belonged to the many internationals who had signed up to compete in the Stanbic Bank 20 Series, a domestic cricket competition in Zimbabwe.
In a massive coup, Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) managed to lure Gayle and 19 other internationals to play in the tournament, all of them for minimal amounts. ZC achieved it through shrewd planning—the event would only last 10 days compared to others like it which go on for weeks—and careful spending of their steadily growing resources. The tournament underlined ZC’s success as the best thing to happen to sport in the country in the last decade.
<div id="attachment_1066" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1066" class="size-large wp-image-1066" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par7042135-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="356" />Zimbabwe&#8217;s Dynamos FC Partson Jaure (L) vies Esperance de Tunis forward Karim Awadhi (R) during their African Champions League football match at Rades Olympic stadium near Tunis on April 28, 2012. AFP PHOTO / SALAH HABIBI</div>
Like other sectors of Zimbabwean life, such as industry and agriculture, cricket has stuttered through post-independence plights and been crippled by them. Unlike those things, it has found a way to stand up again and thrive. Interest from sponsors has sparked, the national team are the sweethearts of the world stage after they made their return to the elite form of the game—Test cricket—last August; and administration, while not perfect, is functioning.
Ten years ago that was not the case. ZC groped through its darkest period in the early 2000s as it tried to change the image of the sport from a colonial, white man’s game, to a game for the people. They introduced a program of aggressive transformation and were met with supreme resistance that culminated in a walkout by 13 white players in 2004, leaving the cricketing core stripped of experience.
As a solution, promising, young black players were flung onto the international stage and managed to steal the occasional win. Eventually, the mountain of losses was too big and Zimbabwe voluntarily withdrew from Test cricket. They were also forced to cancel all domestic competition as hyperinflation dried up their coffers. By 2008, cricket in Zimbabwe—like almost everything else—was dead.
It took a small collection of determined men to breathe some life back into it. Ozias Bvute, the managing director of ZC, who was blamed for the collapse of the game, played a leading role in its regeneration. He secured sponsors, Stanbic Bank, Croco Motors and Delta Beverages, and pushed for a franchise system with five teams spread across the country. Bvute argued that this would professionalize domestic cricket and allow for greater development. Slowly, funds dripped in and within two years, the system was declared fruitful.
<div id="attachment_1067" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1067" class="size-large wp-image-1067" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/TL_820893-1-1024x738.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="342" />KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; OCTOBER 10, Shingarai Masakadza of Zimbabwe celebrates the wicket of David Miller of South Africa fro 25 runs during the 2nd Pro20 International match between South Africa and Zimbabwe at De Beers Diamond Oval on October 10, 2010 in Kimberley, South Africa Photo by Duif du Toit / Gallo Images</div>
The real roots of its success came from the behind-the-scenes work. Many of the players who had walked away were persuaded back into the fold. Former opening batsmen, Grant Flower, returned as batting coach to the national team, former captains Heath Streak and Alistair Campbell joined as bowling coach and chairman on the cricket committee respectively. Players who had left, such as Gavin Ewing, came home to play in the new franchise system.
Zimbabwe also secured foreign assistance. Englishman, Alan Butcher, was named head coach; former Australian fast-bowler, Jason Gillespie, signed on to coach one of the franchises; the Mid-West Rhinos, New Zealand all-rounder Chris Harris, was put in charge of the under-19s and stints from South Africa’s Allan Donald and Lance Klusener also added to the knowledge base. Talent emerged from regions that were previously unexplored such as, Masvingo, where left-arm fast bowler Brian Vitori was found.
Bvute and his staff also invited Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to send their A teams to play a series in Zimbabwe in a bid to ready them for a Test return. All of them agreed and although Zimbabwe did not win many matches, they competed. The practice games also allowed them to compile a squad of their best players, led by Brendan Taylor, the only white player who had not joined the rebels. Taylor, who was 17 at the time, did not want to let politics influence his sporting choices. His decision earned him the respect of his peers and countrymen, who rallied behind him as they made their Test comeback in August against Bangladesh.
In the seven months since then, Zimbabwe has hosted three incoming tours: Bangladesh, Pakistan and New Zealand and won the first one. They also visited New Zealand. Despite heavy defeats, their potential was evident and they have hope of growing as money and interest flow in. Interest from influential people like Chris Gayle has helped.
“You can see Zimbabwe have improved, they are more competitive, and their development programs are coming together,” he said, in that same drawl that, for one week in December, was the most popular voice in Harare.
&nbsp;
Football
One word sums up the beautiful game in Zimbabwe over the last five years and it’s not a very complimentary one—Asiagate. The saga has just about come full circle after it first emerged that matches played by a parks team masquerading as the Zimbabwean national team between 2007 and 2009, were fixed in favor of gamblers in Asian countries, which included Thailand and Malaysia. Eighty players have since been suspended for their role in colluding with Asian betting syndicates and Henrietta Rushwaya, former Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) chief executive, has been arrested on allegations of bribery and match fixing.
The stains of this scandal will taint the game for years to come. Although ZIFA has undergone a stringent clean-up, it still faces a FIFA investigation, which could see the suspended players and administrators banned for life and would leave the game grappling for relevance as it enters qualifying events for the World Cup and the African Nations’ Cup (AFCON). The country’s sports minister, David Coltart, has described football as being “riddled with corruption,” and admitted that the “structure of the professional game has declined.”
One of the reasons for the downward trend was that Zimbabwe football was highly politicized. President Robert Mugabe’s nephew, Leo, presided over ZIFA for three terms and is thought to be responsible for its deterioration. He is said to have removed administrations which were aligned with the opposition—the Movement for Democratic Change—and replaced them with officials sympathetic to the Mugabe regime, with little or no experience of running a national sport.
Under him, most local clubs were running losses and at national level funds had been exhausted. ZIFA currently operates out of a small, rundown house on Livingstone Street in Harare, where the curtains droop from the windows and the equipment inside is rundown. Zimbabwe is likely one of the few African countries where football is not the most popular sport. In a place as impoverished looking as this, it’s easy to see how players and administrators could be lured into corruption and may agree to be co-opted, even if it will worsen the image of the sport and the nation.
The country’s premier league is not televised by the national broadcaster because it is too expensive for them to do so. Cricket has overtaken it, in financial terms, with corporates preferring to put their money into a sport that gets wider exposure. Even smaller disciplines like hockey attract greater publicity than events on the football pitch.
In September, Zimbabwe hosted the African hockey championships in a newly renovated stadium in Bulawayo to public acclaim. A month earlier, their national football team played a friendly match against current Africa Cup of Nations Champions, Zambia. The event was so low key that the visiting team did not even have proper arrangements for their pre-match training session. ZIFA’s offices had a total of two employees manning the front desk the day before the match and neither had information about where Zambia could train; whether tickets were still available and at what price and where the new chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, who had agreed to have an interview with an international media organization, was to be found.
The lack of activity around the match served as an indication of the dwindling interest in football in the country, from all spheres. While public interest is not especially high, player participation is also starting to dwindle and Shingirai Masakadza is an example of that. A tall, athletic young man who could make his name in almost any sport, Masakadza was part of the generation of black school-going kids that cricket left behind. Unlike his brother, Hamilton, he was not offered a scholarship to a prestigious, formerly white school and instead made his name kicking a football in a high-density area.
Masakadza was contracted as a professional footballer with one of the country’s “two big” clubs: Dynamos and Highlanders of Bulawayo, but struggled to hold down his place. In that time, he was contacted by a former school coach, who offered him the chance to join one of Zimbabwe’s cricket franchises. Masakadza was told that if he just ran in a little quicker and hit the deck a little harder, he could develop into a genuine fast bowler and may represent the country.
He duly swapped his football for a cricket ball and has no regrets about his decision. “Cricket offered me better opportunities than football. Right now I am in a position that most people would only dream of,” he said, after he was picked for the 2011 Cricket World Cup squad. Masakadza is living proof that cricket— not football—is being seen as the path to success in Zimbabwe. For a country that was on the verge of FIFA World Cup qualification in 1993, that is sad.

A Tale Of Two Sports

Every four years, when the Olympics Games are held, it brings back great memories of the 1988 Seoul Games where Zambia made worldwide headlines.
We beat the Italian professionals 4-0. Believe it or not, this is still a defeat they have not forgotten. This is the same score as their recent Euro final defeat against Spain. Yet, I think the shock effect during the 1988 Games was more drastic and maybe more spectacular.
The Italians were totally stunned, they had never even heard of Zambia—from the ‘dark’ continent—let alone a certain 25-year-old who weaved magic with the mastery of his left boot; one who found a chink in the armor of the back line, or the catenaccio of the Azzurri, to score a hat-trick—Kalusha Bwalya.
Our journey started with a tough African zone qualification. First, we had to prevail over Uganda, 6-2 on aggregate, before going on to the final round of qualification against the dreaded Black Stars of Ghana. We lost the first leg of the final qualifier 0-1 and had to better that result at Independence Stadium in Lusaka. We did just that. We beat Ghana 2-0 to book our place at the Seoul Games. It was a fantastic feeling and moment for all of us and the whole country.
The whole country was buzzing with the qualification. There were mixed feelings about the draw and the teams we were drawn to play. I remember how the sports back pages were filled with our black-and-white photos; the opinions of who we would be playing and what we could achieve against great opposition.
When we got to Seoul, I remember we stayed at the same hotel as the Italians. All the players were in awe of the style and fashion that exuded from the fancied Azzurri. They were stylish; they were confident and&#8230; all that hair! I remember my teammates and I couldn’t believe it. In our plain green tracksuits, we were scared to enter the same elevator as them, so much was the respect. That respect however did not extend to the 90 minutes of the game. Besides Charles Musonda, Stone Nyirenda and I, who played in Belgium, and Johnson Bwalya who plied his trade in Switzerland, all the other players were based in Zambia—an enigma to most Europeans.
What a talent generation of footballers we had!
I still recall the goalkeeping and the cat-like agility of Efford Chabala. He was a great goal custodian. I can still recall the entire first 11 as if it were yesterday. Sir Samuel Zoom Ndlovu, our coach and mentor, named his squad: from Chabala in the goals to Manfred Chabinga, Pearson Mwanza and Edmond Mumba, solid at the back; together with Ashious Melu standing tall and ready for any challenge. We had Derby Mankinka and Bwalya—we called him ‘one man commando’ for his solo and determined moves—Charles Musonda in the center together with Samuel Chomba from the deep, and upfront with me were Wisdom Chansa and Stone Nyirenda.
Unfortunately, we lost six members of this team in the 1993 Gabon plane crash which killed 18 of Zambia’s national team players. We lost Eston Mulenga, Wisdom Chansa, Derby Mankinka, Efford Chabala, Samuel Chomba and Richard Mwanza, Chabala’s understudy.
Against the Azzurri, a constellation of stars, we were closely knit and determined that any off-field fears and admiration we had were never carried onto the pitch. I still remember how confident Italian goalkeeper, Stefano Tacconi, had been. At the back, I recall the tussles with Roberto Cravero and Mauro Tassotti.
Against all the odds, we fought on to a famous victory—a pivotal moment in the realization that African football could actually compete at the highest level. The confidence gained by this victory gave African footballers the self-belief that they could compete at the highest level with the best the game could throw at them. We heralded a new era of African football.
Our victory was one that was celebrated across the continent, even though the Olympic Games are not seen as the ultimate footballing prize.
The lessons and experiences of that championship are still valuable to the young players of this era who dream of making a trip to the Games; for Zambians it is still a warming football fairy tale. It may be decades since that victory against Italy, but it remains the single most important of any Chipolopolo triumph. Many use the victory in Seoul as a yardstick.
Since 1988, young players have dreamt of Zambia’s return to the Games. Such is the interest in the Olympic Games, that even though the football team is not going to compete in London, millions will watch the football and comparisons with our exploits in Seoul will be passionately debated.
Ultimately, it is the determination; the sacrifice of the personal athlete; the discipline and belief to do even what our inner heart may fear and the spirit of the champion, that matters most. The most important thing in the Olympics is not to win, but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. I wish all the Olympians well for the 2012 London Olympics. May they ‘fight’ well and get as much satisfaction out of them as I did in 1988.

Zambia 4 Italy 0: We Believed It, The Italians Couldn’t!

Brenda Howden wears her eminence and her gold medal lightly.
“I don’t blow my own trumpet. A lot of children here do not know I have won an Olympic gold medal,” she smiles.
Howden is a picture of fitness and understatement, on this cool winter’s afternoon at Auckland Park Preparatory School in Johannesburg, where she is headmistress. As well as her eminence, she also wears lightly her blue 1980 Olympics jacket. It fits like a glove and you can easily imagine she could still tear down the wing, hockey stick in hand.
It is ironic that, 32 years ago, Howden, then known as Brenda Phillips, was considered too weak to make the grade at the Olympics. She was one of the Bulawayo contingent, which included striker Pat McKillop, goalkeeper Sarah English and Helen Volk.
Howden, then 22, was teaching at her old school in Bulawayo, Townsend High School, when the call to Moscow came. The excitement was tempered by doubt over whether she was strong enough.
“For the next six weeks I had to get up at 4am and got for weightlifting in the gym. Then I had to go to school to teach and during break time I would practise goal shooting. Then, after school, I would go over the road to the nearby race track and run until 9pm at night,” she says.
Howden made it to Moscow and was surprised by what she found. The streets were drab, the shop windows were empty and there were queues for food.
“It seemed that everything was in black, white or grey. We could go into our cafeteria at the Olympic village and order whatever we wanted, but outside people were suffering,” she says.
Security was tight at the Games, but for the team, who were all very young, it was a golden excursion, as well as a sporting event. Howden kept a scrapbook that tells the story of the entire trip; from the good luck cards before they went; to a program from the ballet; pictures of the Kremlin and even a photograph of Britain’s Steve Ovett on his victory lap, after winning his only Olympic gold medal in the 800 meters.
“We even bunked one night to go and see the Moscow underground. It is beautiful and the stations had chandeliers in them,”she says.
There was a huge crowd when the team touched down in Harare. Drum majorettes were on the tarmac and people packed the airport. In the crowd was 11-year-old Lindsey Carlisle on her father’s shoulders.
“The plane was late, but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. When they came out we were all looking for the gold medals around their necks,” says Carlisle.
“The arrivals hall was full. I remember seeing the captain Ann Grant and we moved closer so I could touch her medal and I knew then what I wanted to do with my life. I turned to my dad and said I want one of those one day. He said I had better start working towards it.”
True to her word, Carlisle, who grew up in Zimbabwe, but was born in Johannesburg, became captain of the South African hockey team. She went to two Olympics, Sydney and Athens, but brought back no medals and could have been forgiven for being disappointed.
“I never really thought of it that way. Just going to the Olympics and being regarded as one of the best athletes in the world is good enough for me.”
Howden flew home to Bulawayo where schoolchildren had been bussed in from miles around to clap her through arrivals. In the months that followed, she replied to fan mail and autograph hunters from around the world and attended numerous functions and speaking engagements. In 1984, she moved from Bulawayo to South Africa, where she is married with two sons, and where she trains youngsters in hockey.
“I would like to go back to Moscow one day, just to see what it looks like. I am told it has changed,” she says.
“I have no regrets. The Olympics stood me in good stead and it taught me how to fight to the top and never give up.”
Golden words from a golden girl.

The Quiet Olympian

It is one of those crisp winter days that Zimbabwe is famous for. There is not a cloud in the sky, the ground is hard and the grass brown under the thunder of hockey boots. On the touchline, Trish Davies is knee deep in the sport she loves. Here, at Watershed College—a private school in Marondera, 60 kilometers from Harare—Davies barks instructions to her team, Chisipite Girls, as her charges battle to draw.
It has been more than 30 African winters since Davies and her teammates tasted sweet triumph against the odds in Moscow in one of the world’s great sporting stories. They called them the Golden Girls—the team that won glory for their fledgling country and partied in the Kremlin afterwards.
As the slick London Olympics unfolded on television, 55-year-old Davies watched with warm and fond memories of another Olympics in a far off world.
It was May 1980; Zimbabwe was just weeks old and the Russians were in Harare looking for a favor. Most of the country’s hockey players laughed when they heard Russia wanted to fly them to take part in the Olympics—surely not?
For the Russians it was no joke. Their Olympics in Moscow was in disarray. Most of the world boycotted the Games in protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians had toured the world, looking for replacements and wanted Zimbabwe to send a team to make up the numbers in the first ever women’s field hockey event.
“Like any other sport, politics interferes. Whoever is in power is there because he deserves to be there,” says Davies.
“Russia was a top side, England didn’t come, there were quite a few countries that didn’t come, even the USA, that’s their tough luck.”
In a matter of weeks, Zimbabwe trained a 15-strong team to travel to take on hockey teams which had been training for years. In the context of the time, it was even more remarkable; on April 18, just weeks before, Bob Marley sang at Rufaro Stadium in Harare of revolutionaries and Africans liberating Zimbabwe, to a sea of clenched fists, as the union flag came down on colonial rule. Now, here was an all-white team, playing a game with colonial roots as deep as an oak tree, representing the new nation.
On July 8, less than two weeks before the Olympics, the team boarded a World War II Dakota cargo plane at Manyame Air Force base in Harare. The plane stank because it had been used to transport meat.
“We boarded a cargo aircraft together with four members of the Zimbabwe under-23 soccer team who had been invited to the Games. Team spirit started at the airport, where we shared everything we had, including drinking water from the same bottle. The football players including, Shepherd Murape, turned out to be our best supporters,” player-coach, Anthea Stewart remembers.
“It was the first time I had boarded a Dakota, we sat opposite each other,” Davies laughs.
The plane touched down in Zambia where a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane flew the team to a sunny Olympics in Moscow.
“It was quite frightening, all the cabin crew were dressed in khaki and no-one smiled,” says Brenda Howden, who played right half.
Once there, the Zimbabweans heard they were to play on a new surface called astroturf.
“When we left we didn’t know how to play on astroturf. We were just honored to be there playing for the country&#8230;For a start, it was the first time hockey had ever been played at the Olympics, two, Zimbabwe was in it. Everyone of our sportsmen came to see us… it was such an amazing feeling,” says Davies.
The team had to rush out to buy new boots, for a new surface, before the first game against Poland in the round robin tournament.
“That first match was very nerve-wracking because we had not played on that kind of turf, we didn’t know how the opposition was going to play. We had a different style of hockey to the overseas teams. We had very much possession style of hockey. They were a lot quicker than us. With us playing that kind of hockey, that’s how we eventually managed to win gold,” says Davies.
Zimbabwe thrashed Poland 4-0 and in the next game was held 2-2 by Czechoslovakia; then, the hosts, Russia, one of the favorites for the gold. Zimbabwe won 2-0.
“We beat Russia, that was the biggest thing because they had been training for four years and we had been training for just three months,” says Davies
There was a draw against India, then the last game against one of the strongest teams in the tournament. Back home, in Zimbabwe, people took radios to work so they could listen to the game.
“We played Austria in the final match; we had to win to get gold. If we had drawn, we would have silver. By half time we were up 3-0, we sort of knew then that it was ours. During the second half we were smiling a lot, but playing a bit of defensive hockey. We weren’t gonna let them come near us,” she says.
Pat McKillop, who later became a golfer for Matabeleland, scored twice in the final. Overall, the housewife from Bulawayo, who had just turned 24, scored half of Zimbabwe’s 12 goals.
“Pat was a short corner specialist and used to ram them into the back of the net. She had such composure on the field and was a huge role model for me,” says Howden.
The final whistle went and Zimbabwe had won 4-1. The team danced around the pitch with tears streaming down their faces as supporters and fellow Olympians in the stands chanted: “Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe!”
“It was amazing, absolutely amazing, you couldn’t believe it,” says Davies.
Even more amazing was that the referee sprinted off the pitch, after blowing the final whistle, and returned with a bottle of champagne that she popped and passed around the winning team. You could imagine the Olympic committee would take a very dim view of this in 2012.
News agencies reported that some of the members from the victorious team, between gulps of champagne, shouted: “Pamberi ne Jongwe.” It means ‘forward the cockerel’—the symbol of the ruling party, ZANU PF—in ChiShona which is the majority language in Zimbabwe. This report drew a ripple of laughter when Parliament, back in Harare, paused to announce the victory over Austria. This was indeed another world.
The fairy tale was complete as the captain Ann Grant, the 25-year-old bookkeeper from Harare, led her team to the podium to collect the gold medal. Before they left Moscow, the team rubbed shoulders with fellow gold medallists, including Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson, at a party at the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin.
They flew home to a crowd of family and friends at Harare Airport. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who had been in charge of Zimbabwe for less than two months, saw the surprise win as fillip for the spirit of his new nation.
“We went to his house, it was an afternoon event, he [Mugabe] put on a lovely show for us. It was an honor for the country, we weren’t expecting anything, nothing, none of us were professionals, and we had done it for the country. Sportsmen, that’s how they see it.”
A cheerful Davies, who works in accounts in Harare, says she was thin when she played in Moscow and claims anyone who saw her then wouldn’t recognise her now. Davies is one of a handful of the team of 1980 to remain in Zimbabwe—the rest are scattered from Durban to Dubai.
“Tell you what; I am just coming back to hockey now. I’m not a professional, I have been doing bowling of late,” she says.
“I’m quite happy to come back, it was quite pleasing to come back and help people to play the game.”
As Zimbabwe went into economic meltdown all sports suffered, including hockey. The country is now rebuilding its showcase, Khumalo Hockey Stadium, in Bulawayo, in the hope of staging more tournaments.
“It is getting better now. Hockey is getting back. There was a stage where it had gone right down, especially in the schools, from the schools I think it can now grow,” says Davies.
The Olympic event itself has grown out of proportion. Davies and her team played purely for the love of the game; athletes these days play for money as well as glory. While there was a United States boycott in 1980 over Afghanistan—there has been no such talk in 2012, despite the US, Britain and a dozen other countries which still have troops in the country. It is funny how times change.

You Couldn’t Believe It

The death of president Bingu wa Mutharika, in early April, was sudden; but it was welcomed by the majority of Malawians. Malawi’s economy under Mutharika was on the verge of oblivion—the result of poor governance and incoherent macroeconomic policies.
Malawi’s growth plummeted from an annual average of 8.3% between 2007 and 2010 to a mere 4.5% in 2011. The economy—choked by a lethal dose of chronic fuel and foreign exchange shortages, as well as persistent power outages—had nearly seized to function. The lack of social cohesion and an exodus of donors added to the crisis.
Some members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) unsuccessfully tried to prevent the vice president, Joyce Banda, from assuming office as stated in the constitution, in the event of the president being incapacitated. Fortunately enough, a couple of days later, Banda was sworn in as the Republic’s fourth head of state and its first female president.
Despite the fact that Malawians would have welcomed anyone as the next president, I believe it was particularly important that it was a woman; and a woman who, castigated by the Mutharika regime, had felt first-hand the plight of ordinary Malawians.
A huge part of Malawi’s social and economic ills were likely driven by pure male ego. The late president failed to heed any advice—political, economic or otherwise—contrary to his views. Such was his arrogance that Malawi veered off course the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) program provided for by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This disengagement with the IMF led international donors to withdraw their aid commitments to the detriment of Malawi’s economy. Donations make up 40% of Malawi’s development budget.
Donor withdrawal led to the introduction of a disastrous zero deficit budget. The ambitious budget aimed to finance all recurrent expenditure through meager domestic resources. This was in the name of ‘nationalism and pan-Africanism’ and Mutharika’s way of defying the West and proving that Malawi was self-sufficient.
Since Banda assumed office, she has had the unenviable task of rebuilding the economy. A recovery program has been billed at $1 billion: an astronomical figure in these economic times. The president’s government has re-engaged the IMF and negotiated a new three-year ECF program worth $157 million. The IMF facility will ensure a return of prudent macroeconomic policies to promote price stability and growth. The international lender has also written letters of assurance to the country’s donors to release funds in support of Malawi’s recovery plan and to curtail the dwindling foreign exchange reserves.
In addition, donors and investors alike will be further assured of good governance following the repealing of several restrictive laws including the repressive media and anti-gay legislations. Other restrictive laws, enacted under the Mutharika regime, are expected to be repealed in due course. This is likely to rebuild the social cohesion which was destroyed.
Banda has also introduced a sense of accountability among public servants which had all but evaporated. Since Mutharika’s death, several revelations of looting, by him and other public officials, have surfaced. Furthermore, it has emerged that key government institutions, the Ministry of Finance and the Malawi Revenue Authority, flouted public finance regulations in a bid to cover up the deteriorating economy.
In my humble opinion, in the three months that Banda has been in office, she has steered Malawi back on course. However, it’s by no means out of the woods. Along with saving the economy, Banda has demonstrated true leadership qualities, which the country so desperately needed. She has said she’s not a ruler but a leader, which is in stark contrast to her predecessor.
Banda’s banishment from the DPP is her greatest asset. She has seen first-hand how autocratic rule can destroy a nation. With this in mind, she will probably desist from any dictatorial tendencies and maintain her consultative and pragmatic approach to leadership. This is likely to be the case at least until 2014 given the state of the economy and, more importantly, the fact that her party has no seats in parliament.
The true test will be whether she can maintain this standard beyond the 2014 election which, as the incumbent, she is likely to win.

A Welcome Woman’s  Touch At The Helm

When Kenya decided to go to war against the Somali offshoot of al-Qaeda terrorist group, al-Shabaab, it looked like a straightforward affair: go in with powerful hardware, smoke out these little irritants all the way to their port base of Kismayo and get back by Christmas. That was October. A month later, the Economist lamented that the Kenyans had spent more time tweeting than fighting.
Take for instance Afmadow, which fell to the joint force of the African Union and the Kenya Defence Forces in late May. This southern Somali town—al-Shabaab’s stronghold—should have been captured just days into the offensive: “Our troops are heading to Afmadow now, and we expect to capture it either today or tomorrow,” the head of a Somali militia collaborating with the Kenyan army told Britain’s Guardian on October, 18.
Just three days before al-Shabaab rebels abandoned Afmadow, allowing the African Union team a walkover, another stinging reminder of the cost of war hit Kenya. Police blamed the Islamist militant group for a blast in downtown Nairobi that killed at least one and left 35 injured. International news agencies reported on the blast with typical breathlessness and urgency. Both Mount Kenya University, the building next to the blast site, and Moi Avenue, where it happened, were trending worldwide on Twitter within minutes. For the outside world, more evidence that Kenya was unsafe, had just presented itself.
Britian’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the US Department of State both keep helpful guides on travelling around the world with updated travel warnings. “The US Department of State warns US citizens of the risks of travel to Kenya. US citizens in Kenya, and those considering travel to Kenya, should evaluate their personal security situation in light of continuing and recently heightened threats from terrorism…” stated the official website.
Kenya’s former colonial master, Britain, also advises “…against all but essential travel to within 60km of the Somali border (including Kiwayu and coastal areas north of Pate Island), to Garissa district…” on the FCO website. All the reconstruction work done by hard working Kenyan entrepreneurs and the government are rubbished within a single mouse click.
The country had little choice but to take al-Shabaab head on. In the months leading up to October, the militant group was responsible for a sequence of kidnappings and attacks in coastal areas of the country. When two Spanish aid workers were abducted, it was time for decisive action.
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Screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t
In 2011, Kenya earned about Ksh98 billion ($1.1 billion) from one of its largest foreign exchange sources—tourism. The notable take-away from this was that the increase from Ksh74 billion ($863.5 million) in 2010, was mainly because of improved arrivals from high spending Emiratis, Chinese and Indians. The traditional source markets of Europe and America were slowing down as the constant fear mongering by their governments took effect. Not that bureaucrats in Washington, London, Paris or Zurich are to blame, they are merely doing their job. The same way the Kenyan government is doing its best to secure homeland security.
Al-Shabaab has threatened to carry out more retaliatory attacks in Kenya’s highly populated urban centers within the next six months. The American ‘private contractor working for intelligence agencies’ warned, in a report in early June, that a huge attack against Kenya was imminent because of the increased Kenyan activity in Somalia.
What Kenya has on its hands is a perfect storm. Al-Shabaab continues to cause fear at home with their spontaneous attacks, the international community is afraid to visit or invest in the country because of the security concerns and everybody is on edge. If it were to pull out of Somalia before conquering the militant group’s Kismayo headquarters, there is no telling what harm they could do. If it continues advancing to the port town, just 115 kilometers from Kismayo, its people remain targets for retaliatory attacks. Either way, tourism suffers, investor confidence dampens and the economy slows. Just how costly is a march to Somalia?

Kenya’s Long, Painful  March To Somalia

Like many 21-year-olds, Chibundu Onuzo is nervous about her exam results. The Nigerian-born-and-bred Onuzo has just finished her final year of a history degree at King’s College, London. Her favorite place? The British Library in London.
The sense is, though, that she is not just killing time before fighting her way into the scrum of graduate jobs because Onuzo has already been recognized as one of the brightest literary talents to emerge from Africa in recent years. Her début novel, the Spider King’s Daughter, is a love story that sees the privileged, fenced-off world of Nigeria’s wealthy collide with poverty, as the teenage daughter of a rich family enters into a romance with a street hawker. In many ways it a well-worn love story, albeit one with a unique flavor.
“It’s the setting that gives every love story a context. I don’t think that can be taken away from the story. The background shapes their relationship,” says Onuzo.
That background is the teeming, sweaty, lunatic megalopolis of Lagos. Nigeria’s commercial capital, home to 20 million souls, who seem to live at a pace and density unlike anywhere else in the world. Every inch of the city, which sprawls across damp islands, heaves with life. It rises into skyscrapers and dives into battered, corrugated iron shacks. It is a place that has a unique intensity of detail, clogged with traffic and the fumes of thousands of diesel generators that take the place of a national grid.
“What I like about Lagos is the chaos,” Onuzo says. “[State Governor] Fashola would not be pleased. There’s a creativity. You just feel people are&#8230; I don’t know&#8230; You just feel people are expressing themselves.”
Onuzo has lived in Britain for the last seven years. The distance from the exhausting grind of Lagos has given Onuzo a sharper focus on her hometown.
“My Lagos is a very specific Lagos. I’m writing from memory. I went back while I was writing it but I wasn’t living there. The things I was looking for were very specific. I was writing about hawkers and that was where my eyes were trained on. It’s a specific Lagos, a slice of what I’ve seen,” she says.
The protagonist’s role, as one of the young men and women who dart between cars in the city’s gridlock to sell water, ice-creams, belts, ties and cheap plastic goods straight out of cargo containers from China, was cemented by an early experience.
As a child, Onuzo was encouraged to enter an essay competition by her mother and went to visit a young hawker.
“She was a child, 16 or 17. What struck me was that she didn’t seem to have any more prospects. She could look forward to the next five or 10 years of her life, that was what she could see herself doing. It just felt like a total waste, someone who is so young. It stayed somewhere in my mind,” says Onuzo.
Lagos’ socioeconomic inequalities form the backdrop to the romance, the great divisions between the rich and the poor—and the politics of inequity—are central to the narrative. Onuzo did not set out to write a political novel, but politics in Nigeria is unavoidable for those with education and a voice.
“Oh yeah, because politics is why you don’t have lights. It’s why you don’t have working water. I mean, here [in London] you have your basic commodities or whatever you need. When you wake up [in Nigeria] there is a constant reminder that the political system has failed you in everything you see. So that’s why it’s very close to the skin,” she says.
“I know there are a lot of other African writers who have reacted against the pressure to be the political voices of their time, like the greats—Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, they were involved in their writing. They were engaged every day in writing polemics about Nigeria. There is a new generation of African writers who say ‘look, we want to write about other things&#8230;’ For me, I think it’s hard to avoid writing about Nigeria without talking about politics.”
Achebe and Soyinka, both defining voices of their generation and great political authors, cast long shadows on Nigerian and African literature. The pair are the yardstick by which other writers are measured, even though the context that they worked in is no longer the Africa that the current generation recognizes. The tyrannies of colonial rule, then the civil strife and military coups of the post-colonial era have given way to new disappointments and new hopes. However, the overriding pessimism and despair, that is a feature of the Nobel laureates’ canon, is hard to escape.
“They had such dreams, such high hopes after independence. You had the civil war and everybody said ‘what is this?’ Coup after coup. And then, you can understand why they just kind of give up,” Onuzo says.
“I’m 21, I’ve only been politically conscious for what— four years? And some of my peers have already given up hope in Nigeria. I can understand Achebe. After 40 years you can kind of cut him some slack for going: ‘This country!’ But yes, they were all optimistic at [the dawn of] independence in 1960. Every generation starts off with hope.”
2010 saw Nigeria celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence with a fanfare and promises of its future greatness. The significance is muted for this young generation.
“I’ve not been alive for 50 years. “The Nigeria I know has been worse than it is now&#8230; People from my generation might be more hopeful. They are not seeing Nigeria from a 50-year period. They are seeing a 12-year period [since the transition to democratic rule in 1999]. There was a time in Lagos where there were strikes. I tell people I didn’t grow up in a war zone but I saw dead bodies on the side of the road when I was a child. Things have gotten better, slowly, and certainly not fast enough, but they have,” Onuzo says.
“There’s a different bad guy now,” she adds. “The military guys are gone, or at least they’re all wearing civilian clothes now. So you know, it’s a different fight.”
Politics, though, is her personal interest. Onuzo insists that she feels no pressure to write polemic, or to be worthy. She understands, she says, that being African, a woman and a writer means that she will become known as an ‘African female writer’—that typecasting is a necessary evil of getting published and shifting copies.
African contemporary literature does not, as a genre, have the same level of global recognition as, for example, writing from the Indian subcontinent, but that is changing as more stories from the continent become told, according to the Zimbabwean-born publisher and deputy editor of Granta Magazine, Ellah Allfrey. Much like Indian and Pakistani writing, which burst into bookshops in the West, becoming “less foreign” for consumers. The worthier, more literary authors blazed a trail for others, which allowed others to find markets for more commercial work or genre fiction.
“If you have more writers from Africa or the diaspora being published, you are going to get more stories,” Allfrey says. “You can’t solve the problem with any kind of prescriptive way. You can’t say you can’t write about child soldiers, because actually Africa has child soldiers. We have poverty. We also have these other stories. What I always say is that I’m waiting for the African sex and shopping novel because then I know that we’ve arrived. Because then we’ve moved away from that quite, highbrow literary style.”
“Publishers and editors have a large role to play,” she adds. “It means publishers being braver, and trusting the fact that the readers are smart and want more, and the readers wanting more of these stories, having access to more of these stories. But also the writers themselves saying ‘this is what I want to write, so here you are’.”
International agents are, she says, starting to recognize the potential market for African literature and are “hovering up” writers.
For the time being, the success of writers like Onuzo is an important marker.
“She was just spotted as this amazing talent and that was because nobody had read this love story set in Lagos before,” Allfrey says. “That’s the great advantage that African writers have, that there are a whole bunch of stories that readers in the English language haven’t read and so agents and publishers want to pick those up.”
Onuzo’s next book begins in the troubled Niger Delta, with its protagonists moving, of course, to Lagos—“just because Lagos is Lagos. There’s definitely enough to keep me in stories for at least five books,” she says.
For the time being, she is trying to avoid the sense of having made it as a writer.
“It sounds so terrible. I’ve made it at 21. What am I supposed to do next? I’ve written a book, and by no means a perfect book. A very first novel book. There are a lot of flaws in it. I’m just starting out.”
In the meantime, there are exam results to collect.

Young, Gifted And Angry

If you want to blend with the people, you’d better learn the word ‘Lah’. I mean it-lah. ‘Lah’ is the backbone of Malaysian slang, while the suffix has no standard meaning it’s used colloquially to express emphasis.
You can get to Palau—meaning ‘island’ in Malay—Penang, off the north-western coast of the peninsula by airplane, ferry or bus, over Malaysia’s longest bridge. It is not your typical tropical island. Yet it is home to Georgetown: a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the historical capital of Penang.
<div id="attachment_1045" style="width: 458px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1045" class="size-full wp-image-1045" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_2702.jpg" alt="" width="448" height="298" />Trishaw Drivers outside Stadyhuys in Melaka</div>
Along the neighborhood’s streets you’ll find quaint cafés, antique stores and narrow alleys which lead to hidden Buddhist temples; yet the highlight is Khoo Kongsi. This walled-off Chinese district was home to the powerful Khoo clan. By the 19th century they were a self-governing community with their own education, financial, welfare and social organizations.
With short distances between the historical landmarks of the colonial district—Fort Cornwallis, City Hall and Victoria Memorial Clock Tower—it is best explored on foot.
The indigo blue Cheong Fatt Tze mansion, which was built in the 1880s and restored more than 100 years later, provides a glimpse into the lifestyle of the Chinese businessman by the same name. You can call this heritage hotel your home during your stay, otherwise take a daily tour.
Take a break from sightseeing by having Cendol for dessert. The green, jelly noodles, made from rice flour, swim in coconut milk and are topped with shaved ice and palm sugar. And for dinner try some Nyonya cuisine, for which the island is well-known: a combination of Chinese ingredients fused with Southeast Asian spices like lemon grass, turmeric, chillies and, of course, coconut milk.
On your way south, go on an eco-tourism jungle trek in the tropical rainforests of the Cameron Highlands, in search of the world’s largest flower, the Rafflesia. Nestled in Pahang province, it’s the ideal retreat for avid hikers, tea-lovers and those who prefer cooler climes.
The capital, Kuala Lumpur (KL), is synonymous with the Petronas Towers, which balance on Kuala Lumpur City Center Mall. If you arrive early, you might get a free, limited ticket for skybridge—on the 41st floor, 170 meters above ground—but expect to wait in line. Kuala Lumpur Tower offers splendid views of the Petronas Towers.
A typical feature of Malaysian colonial cities is an open playing field surrounded by public buildings. Kuala Lumpur is no exception. Merdeka Square, which used to be a cricket field, is where Malaysia’s independence from Britain was announced on August 31, 1957.
<div id="attachment_1044" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1044" class="size-large wp-image-1044" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_7773-1024x680.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Penang City Hall</div>
Getting around by train can be mind boggling because the train systems are like a labyrinth. Once you decipher the metal maze of the KL Monorail, KLIA Ekspres and transit, Light Rail Transit and KTM Komuter trains, you’ll be on your way.
Further north from the capital are the Hindu temples in the Batu Caves, located in a limestone hill. You’ll have to climb 272 stairs to reach them, although the greatest attraction is the world’s largest statue—42 meters high—of Murugan, a Hindu deity, which is painted gold. And just south of the city, on the banks of Putrajaya Lake, is Putra Mosque, near the prime minister’s offices.
You can’t afford to miss out on visiting Melaka, on the southern coast: my personal favorite. The colonial history of Southeast Asia’s greatest trading port is visible at every corner. Take a trishaw—decorated with plastic flowers, Barbie dolls, rainbow-colored fans—trip around the most important historical and cultural landmarks from the red Stadthuys (town square), through Chinatown and Little India to Jonker Walk, where the night life and shopping can be found. The government employed artists to rejuvenate the buildings along the canal.
The Perhentian islands, on the north-eastern coast, are celebrated by tourists for their azure waters and palm-fringed white beaches. Scuba diving by the coral reefs, snorkeling and swimming are the best ways to spend your days. You can do some turtle or shark watching too, but the best thing to do here is, well…nothing. This is a place for the beach and a book. High season is from May to September, the islands are closed during monsoon season, from mid-November to mid-February.
<div id="attachment_1046" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1046" class="wp-image-1046 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_0297-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />The Petronas Towers in Kulula Lumpur</div>
Download e-travel guides for the entire country at www.tourism.gov.my.

Multicultural Mainland Malaysia

Trying to interview Asa took all of eight months. In that time, the French-born Nigerian singer has been practically everywhere. Confident, charismatic and self-effacing, the husky-voiced woman is adored by young and old for her eclectic Afrocentric music and her intelligent commentary on musical and socio-political issues.
At one time MTV’s ambassador for South Africa, Asa, received the 2008 Prix Constantin award and the 2011 Victoires de la Musique nomination for Female Artist of the Year.
No mean feat for someone who crashed out of a talent hunt contest in her homeland a few years ago and was turned down by her local church choir.
<div id="attachment_1036" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1036" class="wp-image-1036 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/40_Asa-1024x680.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Asa at Arts Alive, Johannesburg</div>
“They said my voice was bad, too raspy, they just thought my voice was too low, they needed a high-pitched voice; they said I could play the tambourine,” she told FORBES AFRICA coyly.
Asa speaks the way she sings—poetically, poignantly, but to the point. I met her about 10 years ago. She was a shy, soft-spoken student struggling to find meaning, unsure of what the future held. So much has happened in a decade: the homegrown Asa (‘hawk’ in Yoruba) has transformed herself into a world-famous brand.
Singing in English, Yoruba and French, she has found her musical space as Nigeria’s most famous female singer with her unique blend of music which incorporates elements of soul, folk, reggae, funk, jazz, fuji and hip-hop.
In April, Asa took a break from her whirlwind schedule to “rest for a few days, think, write, practice in my studio and recuperate” after headlining the 2012 Africa Music Academy Awards in Lagos.
I caught up with her in her tastefully furnished Lagos home one warm Tuesday evening. Interviewing her was an interesting expedition into the mind of this no longer timid woman of soulful sounds. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview.
<h4>How would you describe your childhood?</h4>
I grew up in Festac Town and I am the only girl among three boys. Growing up was a lot of training—to become a woman, a mother, take care of the house—I took care of my three-month-old baby brother because my mum had to work. I’ve always loved music even though my father could not afford to buy us musical instruments—his priority was to send us all to school.
<h4>Was there music in the house?</h4>
Oh yes, my father had so many records. He studied cinematography, so whenever he was editing, he would use music. He had lots of records from American jazz and disco to the evergreen sounds of Ebenezer Obey, Fela Kuti, King Sunny Adé, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Manu Dibango and Osibisa.
<h4>When did you know it would be music or nothing else for you?</h4>
I’ve always known. I was influenced by global pop culture on television. Michael Jackson was one of my early influences; so was Fela. My parents and their friends would gather in the evenings to discuss what Fela said; and Bob Marley—there was something mystical about him. I just thought to myself, ‘Hey, he looks like a leader and people are listening’.
<h4>Can you describe the transformation from dutiful daughter to musician?</h4>
One day, I think I must have been 18; I started to think about my life. I said to myself—I don’t want to do what everybody is doing; I don’t want to go to university and then marry because that was the training we had, I had spent most of my childhood training for that, you know, to become a wife.
I was old enough to go about alone, I was of age; I was just being kept in the house to clean, wash and become a wife. I couldn’t stand it anymore. It wasn’t my life, it wasn’t the future. That wasn’t what I’d dreamt about for myself.
I saw an advert on television saying: “Can you sing? Can you dance?” So I told myself that if I didn’t do this, I’d never forgive myself.
With a bit of help from my grandma, I found my way to this audition. I didn’t sing because I was very shy, I thought they were going to laugh and make fun of me as usual so I danced and I mimicked other people. That was easy for me because I had always danced. After that, people started coming up to me to ask me to dance for them, and I said, “No way, I’m not dancing for anybody. I am only going to dance for myself.”
<h4>Your career has been kind of rapid. I know it wasn’t always smooth.</h4>
Yes, I was at LASU (Lagos State University) studying Theater Arts. I was still unsure about going into music because my parents, especially my father, didn’t like the idea of me doing music full-time then. I think I understand his point of view—he was just being protective and concerned about many things. But I wanted to stay close to the music department, we shared the same faculty. So after two years of not doing anything—because we were not doing anything, there was no originality—there was too much politics, people were just showing off, and the lecturers, oh my God!
I actually met one of them yesterday. At varsity, he was terrible to me, and yesterday he came up to me and said, ‘Do you remember me?’ and I said, ‘Oh yes I do, you were my lecturer’ and he was remorseful and said to me, ‘You know, my only regret is that I didn’t see you through’.
<h4>Hmmm, he said that?</h4>
Yes. I mean, he pushed me away! He pushed me to my success. It was so frustrating, I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to leave. And I had to find Peter King before I left. I didn’t just want to leave and do nothing. I knew I had to learn, I knew I needed to develop, I needed to learn music, so I went to Peter King’s School of Music. It was the perfect environment—tranquility, peace, away from the abuse of the city and class study.
<h4>How long did that last?</h4>
I stayed for six months. By then, my father had stopped paying my tuition fees; I needed to be on the road to start doing my thing, to start earning money… but that was good training for me.
<h4>So what happened after Peter King’s?</h4>
Well, during my time at Peter King’s, I met Yinka Davies and she was very helpful. Whenever she had concerts and had space for me, I would open for her. Gradually I started going out and became confident on stage.
<h4>You’ve had so many positive and unintended influences but who inspires you now professionally?</h4>
Angelique Kidjo. I’ve met her. I was with her in Bahrain last week. She’s just an amazing person. She’s like a mother. I always feel enriched when I meet her. Just sitting down listening to her, her experiences and what she’s been through, is so inspiring.
Right now, I listen to all kinds of music. When I want to write or record a song, I ask myself, ‘What would Fela do in these circumstances?’ or ‘What would Bob Marley do?’
<h4>How well is African music perceived internationally?</h4>
It’s a small place for African music out there. It comes bundled, under the ‘World Music’ category. I think the place where African music needs to be celebrated is in Africa.
So, what’s missing? Our musicians are celebrated more outside than on the continent. But then, we need to push these people out there. I mean, how much can the West do? They have their own baggage, their own problems. We need to develop our own economies so that we can support our own people.
The other problems limiting African music in Africa are mediocrity, logistics, planning and management. We need to work on these things. We need to encourage talent.
<h4>How do global audiences react to your music?</h4>
It’s amazing! It’s always surprising that they want us to play our stuff; they call us because they’ve heard the music. Everywhere we go we’ve been met with love, openness, it’s very flattering to see people who don’t even know what I’m singing in Yoruba, they’re not from where I come from, total strangers, it’s amazing.
I get emails from everywhere. I got one very touching one: on his deathbed, an Australian said he wanted one of my songs played at his funeral. His wife wrote me.
I was in South Africa as well and the reception was amazing.
<h4>When are you at your happiest?</h4>
Wow, that’s a hard one. I don’t know.
<h4>What are your fears?</h4>
I never want to stop doing what I love doing most, which is music.
<h4>Your music tends to be deeply entrenched in Yoruba folklore. Why do you sing in Yoruba?</h4>
Yoruba is a beautiful language.
<h4>How did you come to sing in Yoruba?</h4>
One of the mistakes my parents made was not to let us speak Yoruba at home. When I grew up, I thought it was fun at first, but then I was faced with reality—I had to go to the market, I had to bargain, and I was laughed at. I felt that a Frenchman would never leave his French! His children, of course, they had to speak French. So Yoruba was my identity. Who was I fooling? Who was I trying to satisfy?
I had to teach myself Yoruba. It wasn’t a strategy in the beginning, not even now. When I compose, it starts with the melody, the first chords that come out of me, and then the words, and if they’re Yoruba, I just go with it. If it comes out in English, it’s a different melody. I just go with the flow.

From Housekeeper  To Life And Soul Of The Party

Nigeria’s Niger Delta region is renowned for its rich deposits of crude oil, simmering tensions and resident activism, but is now developing into a tranquil country getaway following an amnesty granted by the government in 2009.
From Edo State in central southern Nigeria—which is home to the legendary city of Benin—to Cross River State on the southern border with the Cameroon, an estimated 38 billion barrels of oil lies beneath this tropical nation. Oil has been the dominant source of revenue to the country’s economy since its discovery in the 1950s. From the 1980s until the past year, it is estimated that over $400 billion has been accrued to Nigeria’s government and the international oil companies that are its joint venture partners.
<div id="attachment_1032" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1032" class="wp-image-1032 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_0097-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Abraka Turf and Country Club in the Niger Delta</div>
Delta State’s economy is largely built around the oil industry but in the town of Abraka, a few miles away from the Escravos River where the global giant Chevron has its main production facility, a veteran entrepreneur is banking on developing the tourism industry in this beautiful, but scarred area of Nigeria.
Polo enthusiast and optimist Albert Esiri has invested in developing the Abraka Turf and Country Club. Nestled on the banks of the fabled Ethiope River, which is reputed to have the clearest waters in West Africa, the club offers a tranquil country getaway from the bustling activities of the towns and cities in Africa’s most populous country.
Surrounded by rich tropical rain forests, the club was developed to project the natural beauty of the region, while offering a range of leisure and luxury activities such as horseback riding, quad biking, massage and spa treatments, golf, squash, swimming and even a rainforest trek.
A man-made lake, which was dredged from the Ethiope River, lets tourists enjoy canoeing and kayaking, among several other activities. Given the relative quietness of Abraka, a town that is a far cry from the boisterous commercial cities and towns, Esiri appears to have taken a major gamble by developing a facility for the more affluent in a little-known town in Nigeria’s countryside. To him, this is precisely what makes the club special.
“Abraka is a beautiful place, the climate is tropical with a combination of mild and heavy rains in the wet season and warm summer days in the dry season; the vegetation is green and fertile, providing a spectacular backdrop over the land, and the town is peaceful and easy going, which makes it all the more relaxing and enjoyable.
“These combine to make our club a unique proposition and one that is unrivalled by any of the resorts in Lagos or elsewhere,” says Esiri.
A lover of arts and a painter himself, Esiri had an art gallery installed and often hosts viewing sessions for art enthusiasts. The club also encourages budding artists by allowing them to stay for free for a period every year so that they can draw inspiration from the natural surroundings. Several artefacts by local artists, including a distinctive sculptured horse that is housed in the courtyard by the stables, are strewn around the club—which has over 30 chalets, duplexes and bungalows.
A key highlight of the resort is the equestrian activities, which are inspired by Esiri’s love for polo. Having developed an affinity for the game in his youth, he decided to incorporate polo into the activities at the club and has been hosting an annual international polo tournament over Easter weekend for a number of years.
The stables house over 30 horses, some of which were bred there. Esiri notes that he had been warned that it was not possible to breed horses in Abraka.
“When I mentioned my plans about breeding horses down here back when I was starting to develop the place, I was told that it wasn’t possible to breed ponies because of the tsetse fly, which is said to carry a virus that could fatally infect the horses. I went ahead, nonetheless, based on my instincts, and today I’ve bred a number of horses here, in addition to those which were brought in from abroad.”
Esiri believes that the club is a reflection of the potential for tourism in Nigeria.
“We’ve got all the ingredients in this country to make it a tourist haven. Although we lack a few things such as a proper service culture, which is perhaps the most vital ingredient in terms of tourism, I believe that with just a bit of commitment from the stakeholders something significant can be made out of the resources and potential that we possess.”
He says that the government has not done much to encourage entrepreneurs like him, who do not require funding, and that basic infrastructure needs to be put in place. But despite the odds, he is determined to continue to champion the cause of tourism. When asked how he has been able to overcome the obstacles, he shrugs and responds with a smile saying, “I enjoy swimming against the tide.”

Taking A Chance On Tourism In The Niger Delta

Unlike the more glorified test of man and machine (such as Formula One), rally racing has for decades been relegated to an inferior position in the hierarchy of tests of endurance. Yet this demanding sport actually predates F1; finding its roots in 1894 when horseless cart races dominated the city of Paris. Monte Carlo was the scene for the first official rally in 1911 and soon, city-to-city road races sprang up across France and Europe.
These races gave birth to those elements we still enjoy in modern rallying, such as time trials and the use of road books and route notes. Drivers had to weave between pedestrians and animals while covering distances as great as 1,178km—sometimes without any rest periods in between. Safety naturally became an issue, as the clunky vehicles got increasingly faster along those inhospitable tracks. The sport was banned in France for a brief period but soon, purpose-built tracks were developed and the sport came into its own.
A name we now associate with two-wheeled competitions, the Tour de France, began originally for rally drivers and kicked off in 1899. The most famous of all rallying competitions began decades later in 1977. Thierry Sabine was travelling through the Libyan desert on his motorbike when he got lost. Struck by the austerity and beauty of the landscape, he vowed to share his discovery with as many people as possible when he finally made it back to France.
Sabine mapped out a 10,000km route from Europe into Algiers, across Agadez and finishing in Dakar. To mark the birth of the Paris-Dakar rally, he coined the following motto: “A challenge for those who go. A dream for those who stay behind.”  But this competition became a nightmare for 58 competitors who, since the inception of the challenge, lost their lives in pursuit of glory. One of South Africa’s most renowned Paris-Dakar competitors, Alfie Cox (who’d made the transition from bikes to cars), narrowly escaped death in January this year when his Volvo XC60 suffered power-steering failure. The car burst into flames and both Cox and his co-driver, Jürgen Schröder, had to be airlifted from the scene. Unforgiving terrain and mechanical difficulties are not the only threats to competitor safety. The rally had to be cancelled in 2008 due to security issues in Mauritania and the competition shifted to South America in 2009. It has stayed there ever since.
Thanks to its challenging conditions, Africa has hosted some other, perhaps lesser-known events, such as the FIA African Rally Championships (which takes place in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Madagascar), the Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic, and the colloquially-termed Put Foot Rally.
Legend has it that the East African Safari Classic grew out of a conversation motorsport enthusiast Neil Vincent had with his cousin Eric Cecil. Vincent is attributed with saying: “I can imagine nothing more boring than driving round and round the same piece of track. But if you will organize an event where we can get into our cars, slam the door, go halfway across Africa and back, and the first car home is a winner, I’ll be in it.” In 1953, the competition took off under the guise of a tribute to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Put Foot Rally, unlike all the rest, emphasizes the social element rather than competition. It is aimed at bringing attention to tourism in South Africa and an appreciation for the wildlife and natural beauty that make up this fair land. But ultimately, rallying is about rivalry and economics—it’s a proving ground where manufacturers test their latest technology (which we as consumers benefit from). These competitions also generate financial rewards for the local areas hosting them.
Take the Toyota Kalahari Botswana 1000 Desert Race for example, which takes place on June 22-24 every year. Since 1975, this has been considered the ‘Comrades Marathon’ of all off-road events. At the launch of this year’s race, Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, Botswana’s minister for environment, wildlife and tourism, mentioned that the rally contributed “millions of pula” to their country’s economy with the bulk of the money being spent on food, transport, accommodation, entertainment and petrol. Businesses in the vicinity of the race route also mentioned increased sales during the annual event.
The technology required to build a car that’s capable of taking on extreme terrain is simply astonishing and begins with a frame that’s not only lightweight but capable of withstanding severe punishment. The frame doubles up as a roll cage and, according to FIA regulations, needs to be able to withstand up to 16.9 tons for a defined area. Driver and passenger safety of road-going cars has enjoyed many benefits, all as a direct result of the conditions experienced in rally (and other forms of) racing.
Keeping these cars in contact with the roads—where there is one—is the job of the suspension, yet this needs to allow enough ground clearance (spring travel is limited to 250mm) while still maintaining stability. Production cars make use of these developments, but naturally the emphasis here isn’t only on performance but also on ensuring comfort levels as well.
Four-wheel drive is crucial in rallying, yet the Paris-Dakar regulations stipulate that any form of electronic control is prohibited. As a result, manufacturers often opt for viscous locking for the car’s three differentials. One might think that, as these cars can’t travel as fast as their road-going counterparts, aerodynamics wouldn’t be a major factor—it actually is. A rally vehicle’s drag coefficient enjoys the highest priority in the design phase (which is obviously of great importance for road-going cars; ensuring high levels of fuel efficiency), all the while taking into account the need for short overhangs that allow easy entry angles when climbing over hills or obstructions.
Creating downforce, unlike in Formula One, is not a necessity as sand has high rolling resistance. In terms of bodywork, the carbon fiber shell on the 2012 Volkswagen Race Touareg for example, weighs in at a measly 50kg. Carbon fiber has now been extensively used in production cars where performance is key and many modern vehicles now make use of engines machined from lightweight yet durable aluminum.
Weight distribution in terrain that can easily flip a car demands serious attention. Typically, an equal weight distribution is placed over the front and rear axles and fuel tanks are placed very low to assist with an optimal center of gravity. While packing components in as compact a manner as possible, mechanics need to have ease of access to exchange parts or service the cars quickly. Support teams also need to carry as few spares as possible so they can be mobile and efficient.
Tire development goes hand-in-hand with racing and again, translates directly into the types of compounds available for production vehicles. Tires need to be capable of handling rough terrain, while offering resistance to wear-and-tear.
Stopping a standard 4&#215;4 has become easier thanks to the testing that goes on in rally races, which is why disc brakes have become an industry standard rather than the antiquated drum configuration. Thanks to these brave drivers and manufacturers, road-going cars have become exponentially safer and far more capable and will continue to do so in the future.

Pushing The Limits  Of Endurance

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

A Seed Feeding Hope

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

Power Entrepreneur Shatters  The Glass Ceiling

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

Tag: August 2012

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Pirate King

A Tale Of Two Sports

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The Quiet Olympian

You Couldn’t Believe It

A Welcome Woman’s Touch At The Helm

Kenya’s Long, Painful March To Somalia

Young, Gifted And Angry

Multicultural Mainland Malaysia

From Housekeeper To Life And Soul Of The Party

Taking A Chance On Tourism In The Niger Delta

Pushing The Limits Of Endurance

A Seed Feeding Hope

Power Entrepreneur Shatters The Glass Ceiling

He Came, He Trembled, He Conquered