When she was nine, Zuriel Oduwole, who lived in Los Angeles, entered into a history competition that challenged students to make a short documentary on a revolution. As the youngest participant, Oduwole proved that age is nothing but a number.
This was more than just a competition for Oduwole. Of Nigerian-American heritage, she was born in Los Angeles in the summer of 2002, and had lived in Paris and Hong-Kong with her parents. She has been fascinated by Africa for as long as she can remember. This project was an opportunity to educate herself further and show why the continent had fascinated her so.
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While Oduwole’s sixth grade classmates planned projects that looked at California or the United States, she wanted to go further. With her parents’ support, she chose Ghana as a country with a well-documented revolution. She traveled to the West African nation, where she interviewed two men who had ruled the country for many years—Presidents John Rawlings and John Kufuor.
Oduwole’s documentary was given plaudits for originality.
Following the success of the project, a year later, the 10-year-old Oduwole started to make documentaries about African political and business leaders, who are making a difference in their countries.
She now has an impressive CV, which features interviews with some of Africa’s most prominent figures—President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, business magnate Aliko Dangote and a few more.
“I like to do many things, like interview people to find out how they see things, especially presidents of countries, to find out what they are doing to help their citizens. I was excited to interview President Uhuru Kenyatta in May, because he is the newest elected African leader. I asked him questions like how he plans to bring his country together after a tough election, and how it feels being elected to a position his father [held] many years ago,” says Oduwole.
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Interviewing President Sirleaf was particularly meaningful to her, because she was the first female president in Africa.
“She encouraged me to study hard and to pursue my dreams, [she said] that I can be anything I want to be. President Joyce Banda of Malawi told me the same thing too, when I interviewed her last year.”
She also enjoyed speaking to the president of Nigeria.
“His interview was unique because he laughed when I asked him how much good luck his name has brought to Nigeria, but he answered in detail, so that was very nice. He is really cool too, and I like his hat.”
While it proved to be an exciting time for her, Oduwole’s trips to Africa opened her eyes to many harsh realities, it spurred her interest to get more involved. She decided to cast her net wider by championing a program called “Dream Up! Speak Up! Stand Up!” with the help of the prestigious Lagos Business School and the US Consulate in Lagos, earlier this year.
“I am very interested in the girl child and the things they face in Africa. As you know, the girl child always gets [fewer] resources in Africa compared to the boy child and that is not fair. I spoke to students in some schools in Lagos about the need for the girls to dream big and speak loudly on important issues. I also wanted them to know that the girl child can do the same as the boy child, if she is given the opportunity to try. Girls are just as creative as boys,” she says.
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Oduwole has ambitions of becoming an athlete and competing at the Olympics. She has a flair for literature and would like to write children’s adventure books. Unlike most girls her age, she has an interest in robotics.
“But when I get older, I want to be the president of the United States. When I say this, people say ‘Why don’t you want to be the president of an African country, where you are from?’ Well, I tell them that I have to think smart. If I am the president of an African country, I might be able to affect my country, or maybe two countries. But if I am the president of the United States, I am going to be able to affect the United States, and many other countries in the world, especially in Africa. I have to [make] policies that help Africa and the United States too.”
Oduwole, the oldest of four children, was home-schooled by her mother and other home-school teachers. She belongs to a private schooling system that enables students to attend events and projects outside of school, while preserving a traditional classroom interface. At 10 years old, she is in the seventh grade—two grades ahead of the average 10-year-old child in the United States.
She has visited more than a dozen countries and is fluent in English and Mandarin. She’s currently working on developing her Nigerian languages, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. Oduwole believes her travels and lessons provide an opportunity to represent Africa to her peers in the United States.
“I always tell my friends in school back in California that Africa is not bad at all, and there are some nice things there. Sometimes, they don’t believe me when I say there are malls in Africa. So, with my documentaries, I hope to rebrand Africa by showing the rest of the world positive things about Africa,” she says.
With all her activities on the continent, there is a bigger picture for Oduwole. She would like to see the children of Africa going to school rather than selling wares on the streets.
“They need an education so they can have good jobs when they get older, especially the girl child. I am really hoping that with the interviews I do with presidents, they would see that an African girl child like me is doing things that girls in their countries can do also.”
Oduwole is doing her part and hopes that with her mission, she can be a big voice of change on the continent.

Little Big Voice

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

Young, Gifted  And Firing Back

The diamond, beautiful and rare, must first endure searing temperatures, immense pressure and the cut before it is polished to shine. For Jenna Clifford this sounds like her life.
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<h4>The Diamond Is Pressurized</h4>
Clifford was born in a time when patriarchy was first and women second. She was an only child who endured great pressure from her father, who often told her that if she wasn’t number one she was a failure.
“My father was really the guy that might have broken me as a child but it stood me in very good stead for the pain that business can bring.”
Her father was inspired by South African golfing champion Gary Player who borrowed the saying: “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” from American producer Samuel Goldwyn.
Her father pushed her into the deep end and hoped it would teach her discipline.
“For anyone, getting to the top of any field or any faculty, sport [allows one] to get their head and physicality into dedication, drive and sticking at it even when you cry… Business is the sport of the mind. Sport is the business of the body.”
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<h4>The Diamond Is Chiseled</h4>
Despite this, at 19, a naive Clifford fell prey to the so called ‘Cinderella Complex’—all she wanted was to find a prince charming, who would love and look after her. After two failed marriages, she found that a fairy tale can often be grim.
“In my lifetime, I’ve had three unions. The first one I was just under 20 and then again I got married in 1987, then again in 1993, which has been about a 23-year relationship.”
Clifford’s struggles with men were not limited to her personal life.
“When you rise as a female, you will be challenged by your male counterparts. They can’t challenge your acumen and your efficiency in what you do, but they can challenge your being, as a woman, and hit your emotional bodies to get control or compliance, which is a very subtle way of getting compliance. Other women get violent compliance… it doesn’t just happen to women who are necessarily rural and un-educated, it happens in the highest order of society.”
Along the way, Clifford has learnt from the enemy.
“I just find that I fit in better with the male counterpart from a head space point of view. I love the way men focus. They don’t pick 16 things to do, they pick one and the number two will normally be their lifestyle sport or car racing or rugby…”
Another major problem is that women tend to find it harder to support each other.
“When you keep women weak, meaning break them one by one, they can’t stand as a collective. It’s as simple as that. Women are scared to stand as a collective… and it usually takes someone like me, that’s had men shape their life destructively and possibly turned it into a positive thing.”
One of Clifford’s inspirations is Nelson Mandela, who left a lasting impression on her.
“The humility, the kindness… Color is nothing that he sees, he sees the individual… He stuck to a dream irrespective to the punishment. It’s the same principal of greatness; he just had to go through 29 years of hell to get there.”
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<h4>The Diamond Is Polished</h4>
Clifford has made peace with her past, and acknowledges its role in shaping her life. With a successful jewelry company that has international clients—including Celine Dion and Debra Messing—three loving daughters and a husband, life could not be better. As for getting on with her father’s generation?
“With strong patriarchs, my age group to my father’s age group, I get along with them exceptionally well now, because they don’t treat me like a woman. They think of me as a different being. So, I’m now okay for them because, in their minds, I’ve achieved success.”
Dedicated to the empowerment of women, Clifford will be collaborating with Doctor Dorianne Cara Weil, Professor Shirley Zinn, Dion Chang and Doctor Marko Saravanja, in a new venture called Inner Genius. The project will allow women to interact with these mentors, who will advise them on how to succeed in their personal and professional lives.
Surely, it is worth listening to Clifford, a cut in polished
diamond.

A Glint Of Feminist Fire

President Joyce Banda took, what many call, the worst and hardest job in Africa, at a time when Malawians needed a savior. Malawi was on the brink of economic collapse after months of petrol shortages, price rises and unrest.
Discontent lingers, but the economy is improving. Despite jubilation on political podiums; the technocrats are more cautious. Expectations remain high, but much needs to be done if there is to be an economic turn-around.
Banda inherited Malawi’s deteriorating economy from late President Bingu wa Mutharika. Aid dried up when Malawi failed to secure an Extended Credit Facility (ECF) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after disagreements over political and economic governance. In 2011 and 2012, problems with foreign exchange meant problems with petrol. It led to rationing and queues. Production fell as key firms left the country.
“Malawi is still teetering on the edge of an economic abyss. It is obviously not out of the woods economically yet [&#8230;],” says Dalitso Kubalasa, an executive director at the Malawi Economic Justice Network.
The administration in Malawi has taken bold steps to turn around the economy. This has been far from the dangerous economic trajectory the economy was destined for, particularly with the infamous Zero-Deficit Budget (ZDB) of 2011/12 fiscal year. The ZDB stance hindered the economy more than helped it; punitive tax measures were introduced, invoking a huge outcry.
The ZDB framework was supported by around MK30 billions ($87.9 million) of printed money printing, with MWK20 billion ($58.6 million) domestic borrowing and around MWK72 billion ($211.1 million) in arrears to private sector and banks, according to the quarterly expenditure reports from Malawi’s central bank.
“The Malawi economy was virtually collapsing a year ago. The economy is heavily import-dependent in production. Imports account for about 42% of GDP, among the highest in the world, and yet 60% of exports earnings are accounted for by one commodity: tobacco, which is not only a primary commodity but also has endangered demand. The gap between imports bills and export earnings has been widening at an alarming rate and we had been relying on external aid payment arrears to fill this. Malawi relies on external aid to cover 40% of government expenditure, which is again very high. Poor tobacco prices and a drying up of aid automatically results in an inability to pay for imports, hence accumulation of arrears and loss in credit ratings,” says Ben Kaluwa, an economist at the University of Malawi.
Banda’s decision to devalue the Malawian kwacha, to stabilize the economy, was hailed by the IMF, but led to protests, including a nationwide strike by civil servants in February.
“The biggest challenge has been living up to the people’s expectations of dealing with all the challenges as fast as possible; including the issue of dealing with the negative impact of the economic reforms through some cushioning programs and interventions,” says Kubalasa.
Banda, established a controversial employment scheme in July, attempting to decrease the country’s 50% unemployment rate. One hundred thousand migrant workers will be sent to South Korea, Dubai and Kuwait as unskilled agricultural workers or to work in the hospitality sector. Critics worry that the scheme may result in modern day slavery. Around 40% of Malawians live on less than $1 a day, those who will work in South Korea could earn up to $1,000 a month.
Other key measures undertaken include: the scrapping of the zero-deficit budget; the restoration of fiscal incentives, the absence of which had made the business environment unbearable for new investors; the removal of subsidies by liberalizing the prices of strategic goods.
“Liberalization of the exchange rate and fuel prices were meant to obviate rationed access in favor of market-priced allocation. The liberalization of the utility tariffs was meant to incentivize the utilities to invest and also make the sectors attractive to new private sector investors, including public-private partnerships (PPP). Queues for both forex and fuel have been eliminated and there is expressed interest by the private sector to invest in utilities. Manufacturing firms—which had been operating with excess capacity because of imports and fuel shortages—are now believed to be operating close to capacity,” says Kaluwa.
More governmental measures came in May 2012. They included loosening the executive grip on monetary policy, thereby giving a good measure of decision-making authority and independence to the central bank, which is the requisite authority. This resulted in the adoption of a market-led foreign exchange rate regime. These two moves attempt to reconcile huge macro-economic imbalances, due to the overvalued currency that was further crippling the economy.
When the kwacha depreciated by around 50%, an immediate flotation of the exchange rate followed. It aimed to rein in on the huge disparities between the official and parallel forex market and to free up the forex that was being hoarded. The restrictions on forex transactions by banks and forex bureaus, an increased bank rate and a tight monetary policy helped to monitor the progress.
“Beyond the pre-economic reforms it is therefore a fact that we are still a long way off, from comprehensively dealing with the whole list. All of the challenges are structural in nature and quite huge and terminal to the economy, let alone to any efforts, in need of real and meaningful policy consistency for urgent and sustainable consolidation of the gains being realized at restructuring of the economy,” says Kubalasa.
There was support from fiscal policy side, aimed at austerity and recovery. Civil servants demanded a pay rise of more than 65%, saying that the devaluation has caused inflation, which had eroded their salaries.
“On the down side, because of import-dependence in production, production costs have gone up since the devaluation and domestic prices have followed. The cost of living has risen and this has affected all Malawi Kwacha earners and this will be the case for time, until the economy attracts sufficient investment transformation and import-substitution and export diversification,” says Kubalasa.
Banda was ranked 47th on FORBES’ ‘The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’ 2013 list and was also one of five short-listed contenders for the FORBES AFRICA Person of the Year award in 2012. She is expected to seek re-election in May.
Stakeholders expect economic progress to be mirrored in public service delivery, as well as through the lowering of commodity prices.
A source of discontent is the dislike of austerity, across the board by government. The president has been traveling extensively; most trips are not in tandem with the austerity measures.
Civil society has called for balanced programs; they want extra-budgetary funded interventions to be integrated into other already established programs.
“These include those such as the Green Belt Initiative, the One Village One Product (OVOP) [movement] that needed to be fully sustained and supported by operationalizing the National Export Strategy; if we are to sustain the promise for maximum potential gains they seem to have if properly harmonized and rationalized,” says Kubalasa.
It seems that Malawi and its first woman president have a long way to go.

Banda On The Abyss, In Africa’s Toughest Job

The number of millionaires in Africa is rising faster than anywhere else in the world. Thanks to fast-growing economies and a thriving oil industry, the continent’s wealth is forecast to remain on the up. But where do Africa’s nouveau riche spend their money? For now, most jet to London, New York or Singapore to buy the latest fashion.
Hanneli Rupert wants to change this. She is the 28-year-old daughter of billionaire Johann Rupert, the CEO of Richemont, the Switzerland-based group behind top brands like Cartier, Dunhill and Montblanc. With her luxury brand store, Merchants on Long, she brings Africa’s top labels to South Africa, for most this is their debut.
“A lot of African high-end designers export directly without ever selling in their home countries or on the continent,” says Rupert.
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Housed in a double storey Art Nouveau building on Cape Town’s famous shopping mile, Long Street, the store delivers a true Cape-to-Cairo experience. Merchants is stocked with merchandise from Ethiopia to Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Senegal and Ghana, most of which is 100% handmade. Luxurious fashion items hang next to antique shelves filled with exquisite jewelry, bags, perfumes and homewares, while works of contemporary African artists and photographers grace the walls.
Rupert, who divides her time between Cape Town and the United Kingdom, says she modeled Merchants on London’s famous Dover Street Market, an über-trendy, multi-designer store with a glamorous feel.
“We fit into the idea of the aspiring, new Africa,” she says, while sipping a cappuccino.
Merchants’ in-house coffee bar only serves ethically-produced coffee grown on the continent, that can be drunk from crockery custom-designed for Merchants, by South African ceramicist Michael Chandler.
The store attracts a diverse mix of customers, ranging from European and American tourists to African business travelers and South Africans.
Before Rupert opened Merchants in late 2010, she spent close to a year traveling across the continent to pick and choose the designers she wanted to work with. She was looking for creatives who didn’t imitate European design but had developed a personal style linked to their African heritage.
“I want to grow an African aesthetic. I want Africa to be known as a hub for exotics and manufacturing, not only as an export haven for raw materials,” she says.
Since then, Rupert has worked tirelessly to put African designers on the global map. The Merchants pop-up store she opened in London last May, which received much praise, was the first step towards putting a global spotlight on African luxury goods.
“There is such a desire to see contemporary African design internationally. I am absolutely certain Africa is going to be the next booming art and design market. It’s already slowly happening,” says Rupert.
On the continent, too, the rich and trendy have taken note. In March, Rupert represented some of her designers at the annual Arise Magazine Fashion Week in Lagos, Nigeria; the labels were applauded for their style and quality.
“I want to showcase the manufacturing capabilities of the continent. People have a lot of misconceptions. When they think of design in Africa, they think of beading, not of sustainable trade. I wanted to give people a different perspective,” she says.
Rupert puts the new interest in African high-end fashion and design down to a wave of brain regain—a reversal of the brain drain of the 1990s, when thousands left the continent to pursue job opportunities overseas.
“There is a new trend of patriotism on the continent,” she says.
Rupert is part of that trend. She trained as a fine artist and painter and returned to South Africa, after a four-year stint in London and Athens, to start Okapi—a line of luxury leather handbags that feature springbok horns as talismans. She planned to launch an Okapi flagship store in Cape Town, but her father suggested that she open a multi-brand store first, to increase marketability.
“Merchants would never have happened without his advice,” she says.
Johann Rupert knows what he is talking about. He runs the world’s third largest luxury goods company, which he inherited from his father, Anton, one of South Africa’s most successful business tycoons. With £10 in his pocket in 1941, Anton Rupert started a multi-million dollar conglomerate that today spans luxury goods, finance, tobacco and mining interests, and encompasses hundreds of companies in 35 countries across six continents. The business later split into Remgro and Richemont. FORBES estimates the family’s net worth at $6.6 billion.
Two generations later, the luxury business is almost an inherent part of Hanneli’s genes.
“It’s having the access and growing up in an environment where you learn about business on a day-to-day basis. I learnt simple but important things from my father, like not underestimating your customer, and customer service being hugely important. I also learned to rely on my instincts,” says Rupert.
And her instincts tell her that there’s an increasing demand for authentic, ethically-manufactured African goods. She made this the overarching concept behind her Okapi label and Merchants on Long.
“There is a shift towards buying locally. People want traceability when it comes to what they eat. They want to know where it comes from. People start to want the same thing for clothes and design,” she says.
With entrepreneurship in her veins and an eye for opportunity, Rupert is set to make her mark as her family’s next generation of luxury business owners.

The Billionaire’s  Apprentice

The French-speaking country, perched on the western tip of the continent, boasts one of the best developed tourist industries in Africa, with six major game parks and reserves. Senegal is home to nearly 13 million people and has remained stable even as neighbors Mali and Guinea and nearby Côte d’Ivoire suffered military coups and political upheavals.
But Senegal had its share of political violence in January 2012. Dakar burnt when the constitutional court allowed incumbent Abdoulaye Wade to seek a third term in office. The 85-year-old’s decision violated the country’s constitution; protestors set fire to large parts of the city. In the end, Wade was defeated by Macky Sall.
In June, on his first official visit to Sub-Saharan Africa, United States President, Barack Obama, visited Senegal to strengthen business relations and encourage investment. Obama’s visit recognized the United States’ commitment to democracy, in a region where dictators and civil strife are common.
A few weeks later, in July, rating agency, Standard and Poor’s (S&amp;P) revised Senegal’s sovereign credit rating outlook to stable from negative. S&amp;P believes the Senegalese government will succeed in cutting its fiscal deficit and carrying out reforms that will lead to faster economic growth. Moody’s Investor Services rated the West African nation B1, before its planned sale of $500 million of Eurobonds in 2011. Moody’s rating is equal to the B+ rating by S&amp;P, along with Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe to name a few.
Senegal earns most of its foreign exchange from fish, groundnuts, phosphates, tourism and services. The phosphate industry has struggled for two years to secure capital and its reduced output has hurt GDP.
In 2007, Senegal signed agreements with foreign companies for new mining concessions for iron, zircon and gold. Various foreign investors have agreed to modernize Dakar’s port and create a new special economic zone.
Its agricultural sector is subject to rainfall and changes in world commodity prices. Following droughts that cut agricultural output in 2011, the West African nation’s economic growth is expected to accelerate this year. According to a Reuters poll, Senegal’s GDP should expand to 4.4%; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hopes the completion of infrastructure projects, recovery in its agricultural sector and mining projects will boost it further.
The IMF also expects Senegal’s current account deficit to decline, but remains fearful it could go high because of imports associated with investments in the energy and mining sectors. In September, the IMF urged the Senegalese government to maintain its budget deficit target—expected to be reduced to less than 5% of GDP this year—in order to ensure fiscal sustainability.
Senegal relies heavily on donor assistance and foreign direct investment, which in 2000 represented around 32% of overall government spending. Under the IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries debt relief program, Senegal will benefit from eradication of two-thirds of its bilateral, multilateral and private sector debt.
The country rose from the ashes through an economic reform program following its economy’s contraction by 2.1% in 1993. A year later, with the help of the international donor community, Senegal began a 50% devaluation of the country’s currency; government price controls and subsidies were steadily dismantled. It made for a real turnaround with a real GDP averaging over 5% annually over a decade. Annual inflation was pushed down to low single digits.
Following the country’s 2012 growth at an estimated 3.7%. The African Development Bank (AfDB) believes that growth will accelerate this year and is projected at 5.1% in 2014. AfDB says the growth projections are calculated in the hope that the government’s socio-economic program will be implemented along with the continuation of a toll motorway, the construction of Blaise Diagne International Airport, which is expected to handle around 10 million passengers by 2020, and other infrastructure projects.
Dakar, the melting pot capital city, is one of the busiest cruise ship ports in Africa and is home to around 1.5 million people. It’s impossible to miss the imposing Monument of the African Renaissance statue, when in the capital. As the tallest statue on the continent it stands at 49 meters on one of the twin hills, known as Collines des Mamelles.
Just off of Dakar’s coast is Ile de Gorée—the small island is a big tourist attraction because of its history as a slave trading port.
Dakar also lends its name to the Paris-Dakar rally, which was established after Thierry Sabine got lost on his motorbike in the Tenere Desert during the Abidjan-Nice Rally, in 1977. He came up with a new route starting in Europe through Algiers, in Algeria, crossing Agadez, in Niger, before finishing in Dakar. Most rallies took this route, until security threats in Mauritania forced organizers to cancel the 2008 rally. The following year it moved to South America and has stayed there.
As a member of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, Senegal is working towards greater regional integration with a unified external tariff and a more stable monetary policy.
The economy continues to suffer from an unreliable power supply, with widespread blackouts in 2006, 2007 and 2011, which led to public protests and unemployment. The government is working hard to solve the problem. High unemployment forces many to flee the country in search of jobs.
The country is one of the few on the continent to have issued a Eurobond, that is debt issued in a currency other than the that of the country or market in which it is issued. Eurobonds are attractive to investors because of their small par values and high liquidity. Senegal issued a $500 million 10-year Eurobond in May 2011 at a coupon of 8.75%, to raise funds to improve infrastructure.
In June, Reuters said the country is likely to issue another $500 million 10-year Eurobond this year at an interest rate of around 6%. The IMF said the bond would help the country close its financing gap and reduce its reliance on costly short-term financing from the regional market.

Ashes To Eurobond

There she was, wearing a woven two-piece suit, with earrings hanging like chandeliers, flanked by empty chairs on either side.
This was at the United Nations (UN) in New York on July 16, 1963. In parts of the United States, a black person couldn’t even sit down at restaurants freely. Yet, here was an African singer from the beer halls of Sophiatown and Soweto sitting confidently before the most powerful leaders in the world, telling them of the ills of apartheid South Africa.
“I ask you and all the leaders of the world, would you act differently, would you keep silent and do nothing if you were in our place? Would you not resist if you were allowed no right in your own country because the color of your skin was different from the color of the rulers, and if you were punished for even asking for equality? I appeal to you, and to all the countries of the world, to do everything you can to stop the coming tragedy. I appeal to you to save the lives of our leaders, to empty the prisons of all those who should never have been there,” said Miriam Makeba calmly.
At the time, 31-year-old Makeba was a revered singer and activist. She was among the first female African singers to achieve international success and used this to become a powerful voice in the anti-apartheid movement.
Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg, who faced the death penalty with Nelson Mandela, had been arrested just five days before Makeba’s speech.
“The talent of a black musician made South Africa sit up and take notice. During apartheid, it was rare to see such an outstanding woman like Miriam Makeba,” says Goldberg.
She left the country when the apartheid government banned black musicians from performing in halls and theaters, and paid a terrible price.
It was in 1960, when Makeba tried to return to South Africa for her mother’s funeral, that she was told her passport had been revoked. This was punishment for her appearance in the documentary Come Back, Africa that exposed the inequities of living under the rule of the nation’s oppressive government. She lived in exile for three decades.
When she spoke at the UN, her citizenship was taken away all together.
In 1964, Makeba spoke again at the UN. This time before the decolonization committee, where she pleaded for the release of female political prisoners in South Africa. In an interview with Bomb magazine from the United States, in 2000, she says it was the African National Congress (ANC) who asked her to use her popularity for the cause.
Makeba remained in exile until the end of apartheid in the early 1990s. During Mandela’s tenure as the country’s president, she was a member of Parliament between 1994 and 1999. She became the first African woman to win a Grammy Award, sharing the musical honor for best folk recording, with Harry Belafonte for their anti-apartheid album, in 1965. Belafonte had helped Makeba settle in the United States, where she had a successful singing career.
Makeba died of a cardiac arrest in November 2008 after a concert near the town of Caserta, in southern Italy. Her final performance was to campaign for journalist Roberto Saviano, who had received death threats for writing about organized crime.
To the end, Mama Africa, as she was affectionately known, sang in the cause of those under the heel of oppression. Millions remember her unique tongue-clicking music, sung in her mother language of Xhosa; songs such as Qongqothwane, popularly known as the The Click Song, Pata Pata and Malaika. She also made appearances in musicals King Kong and Wait a Minim!.
But maybe millions more will remember her for her brave words on a summer’s day in 1963.

The Song Bird Who Changed The World

Matsatsi Diale woke up on a winter morning with fire and trepidation in her heart. By nightfall, she would be in a prison cell and have a criminal record.
The year was 1956. For months, Diale, a domestic worker, had been preparing with scores of women to protest the pass laws of apartheid South Africa, that restricted the movement of non-white South Africans. If you were caught without one: prison.
Sitting on a green couch, in her family home in Rustenburg, in the North West province, Diale closes her eyes and remembers.  Eight thousand women—mothers, wives and daughters—marched from Sophiatown, in western Johannesburg, downtown to Marshall Square,  with clenched fists, singing Mayibuya iAfrica, which means ‘let Africa come back’ in Zulu.
Friends warned Diale not to march against armed police, but she knew what she was fighting for.
“It was for us, for our people, for our children. I wanted to see them lead a better life and an easier life than we had.”
They didn’t get far before the police barred their way.
“Just when we reached Newtown police trucks came and opened their doors and we jumped in and sang ‘we’re going to kill Strijdom’ [South Africa’s prime minister at the time]. The police were happy, they yelled back ‘sing nog’ [sing again].”
To this day Diale doesn’t know if the police’s encouragement was in support or if they were being vindictive.
There was no violence between the women and the police. When the police opened the doors of the vans, the women filed in. The idea of the anti-pass campaign was to fill the prisons and paralyze the justice system.
That night, thousands of women crowded into a prison called Number Four—now known as Constitutional Hill, which is the home of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. They were hungry, but refused to eat because they were angry. The women received support from the Black Sash, a non-violent white women’s resistance organization, who ensured that the women had blankets and a measure of protection.
The next day they were transported to Marshall Square for questioning. En route, Diale caught a glimpse of one of the protesters giving birth to a baby boy on the street.
As Diale sat in the cell under the courthouse in Marshall Square, she had no idea what her fate would be. In groups of 30, the women were called into the courtroom to be prosecuted for violating the Passes and Coordination of Documents Act of 1952. Diale prayed that she would not go to prison because she had two children and a husband waiting at home. When her turn came she climbed slowly, step by step. At the top she looked up and saw a face of hope. Nelson Mandela, the future president of South Africa, who was a lawyer at the time, greeted her with a warm handshake and a smile, as he did with each woman.
The atmosphere in the court was somber. The women were quiet.
“It was not out of fear, because we were really not scared, but out of respect. We didn’t feel we had done anything wrong.”
Mandela won the case and the women walked free. As they walked down the street, people were in their backyards celebrating the return of their loved ones.
“It was the same air after a soccer match when the masses celebrate. Sophiatown was abuzz.”
Back in Diale’s home, in Rustenburg, the room goes quiet. She pauses, draws a deep breath and takes a moment to compose herself. The memories of the past have left scars that time may never heal. She looks down at her hands, exhales and carries on.
“Talking about all of this just took me back to a time I wanted to forget. Don’t let me talk too much about that, it wasn’t nice.”
Although the women never reached Marshall Square during their protest, they knew they were part of something greater.
Their march sparked protests around the country and led to one of the largest demonstrations in South Africa’s history on August 9, 1959. It saw 20,000 women of all races march to Pretoria&#8217;s Union Buildings, the seat of government, in protest of the pass laws. Today, Women’s Day is celebrated on August 9 in South Africa.
Diale smiles as she remembers the day the pass laws were abolished. On July 23, 1986, due to great international pressure, the South African government ditched passbooks—almost 30 years to the day of the march.
“I heard the news on the radio, everything spread very quickly… You would walk down the street and there were people celebrating everywhere in their backyard. We were all just happy.”
Less than eight years later came the day that will forever be known as Freedom Day. April 27, 1994 saw the country’s first democratic election. Diale, along with other elderly people, voted the day before.
“It was nice. You could vote for anyone. Like you have 10 fingers you could vote for that many people&#8230; It was unbelievable.”
In hindsight, although Diale was not fond of the apartheid government, the one thing she feels they managed to do right was build houses.
“Even now those houses are still standing. They are better than those RDP houses [Reconstruction and Development Program houses—an ANC policy to build houses for those who cannot afford them].”
It has been over 50 years since the march. Diale, now in her eighties, has lived through times of trial and believes the present government has a long way to go.
“I’d like South Africa to be more free. I’d like to see better educated kids. Education is the best thing for all these kids. You can be poor but once you are educated you can make something of yourself.”
As for who Diale will vote for in the 2014 election?
“I don’t know. Who is there?” she asks.

Hell Hath No Fury  Like A Woman Imprisoned

On a clear winter’s evening at Liliesleaf in Rivonia, Johannesburg, Denis Goldberg and Bob Hepple walked towards each other.
“Long time,” says Goldberg holding out his hand.
The two men embraced near the spot where they were chained together by police, left to the mercy of a snapping dog nearly half a century before. The two anti-apartheid activists were in Johannesburg with another survivor of the Rivonia Raid, which occurred on July 11, 1963, Ahmed Kathrada. They were there to celebrate the raids 50th anniversary—when police drove hidden in the back of a delivery van to arrest the entire leadership of the South African underground including: Walter Sisulu; Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. The decisive raid paralyzed dissent for nearly a decade and saw the trial that sent Nelson Mandela to prison.
In the wake of the trial, Goldberg served 22 years in prison before being deported into exile. Hepple, who suffered under interrogation, was freed by the prosecution in the hope that he would turn state witness. He skipped the country to England, where he became a professor at Cambridge University and a knight.
At the time, Goldberg, now retired in Hout Bay near Cape Town, feared Hepple may give information about his comrades in the dock.
“That’s a long time ago, I am always happy to greet another comrade,” says Goldberg after the brief reunion.
Hepple, who will retire in England, retains his sense of humor about South Africa and his exile from the land of his birth.
“It was very difficult to talk to people about Nelson Mandela in the early days. Margaret Thatcher used to call him a terrorist.  Now, he is very popular and a hero, it is a lot easier,” says Hepple with a chuckle.

Healing The Rift

Until he was 14 years old Jabu Mofomo had no idea how important his neighbor was. To Mofomo, the man next door merely spent hours writing on his porch and would jump the fence to gather up his son Magkatho after a day’s play. It was only when he jumped the fence in desperation one night that it dawned—his neighbor was Nelson Mandela.
Every day, Mandela would arrive home in his 1952 Morris. It was the talk of the street as he was the only one to own a car. He was always immaculately dressed, in an English suit and waistcoat. Mofomo would wave to Mandela from his home next door on Vilakazi Street, Soweto. Mandela always took time to greet his neighbors, he says.
Madiba, as Mandela is known by his clan name, also took time to organize the children in his street into a football club.
“He called us to his house, there were about sixty of us. We were able to squeeze into his place. He told us that he wanted to start a football club. To suggest names for a football club, we brought about 60 names. He wanted everyone to contribute. After an hour, he came out and said ‘Guys, I don’t like your names, you’re too Eurocentric. I would like football to have a different name.’ Mandela suggested the name of a wise Xhosa chief, Mochochonono, we all laughed. Any club that was named with an African name, at that time, would have been very strange,” he says.
But troubled political times overtook football.
“He promised to come back after two weeks. But that was the beginning of the end of us seeing Mandela. He was already in Libya. Things had intensified.”
In 1960, South African police gunned down 69 people in what was to become known as the Sharpeville Massacre. Mandela stood outside Mofomo’s house burning his passbook in protest against the deaths.
Mofomo says police raids increased, from this day, at the Mandela home.
“The police didn’t suspect anything about us. Even though, we lived right next door. I still recall some of the inspections at Mandela’s house, of what was happening around us, but I was too young to understand what was going on,” says Mofomo.
One night the raids were too close for comfort. Mandela jumped the fence with an armful of books telling Mofomo’s mother to hide them. They hid them in their house for two years and then, in fear, buried them in 1962.
For more than half a century, secret political documents remain buried in Vilakazi Street. In that time, Mofomo married and South Africa became a democracy. When the time came to dig up the books, no one could remember where they had been buried.
The last time anyone saw the books; they were covered in plastic, thrown into a sack and buried in the ground, so there is a chance that they are still intact. Mofomo says his mother couldn’t read and he was too young, so they never knew what was written in them.
The man who used to wash Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s car now makes a living out of words. Inspired by his illustrious neighbor, he worked as an investigative journalist for six years. Mofomo says he joined the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, where he helped smuggle money to underground political organizations, especially the African National Congress.
In the late 1980s, Mofomo suffered police scrutiny; he went underground and worked for Liberty Life, a wealth management group, pushing paper.
“At the time, I was a prominent journalist. Things were not good then. I was doing a lot of investigative journalism stories about households that had been taken over by superintendents; evictions under the apartheid laws. I was exposing a lot of those kinds of things. You are either under surveillance, or else you were detained. But I was never detained,” he says.
These days, Mofomo enjoys his retirement supporting Soweto football giants Orlando Pirates and the Stormers, a Cape Town rugby team. Along with discarding the name Charlie, which he was given in apartheid days, he still visits the old house on Vilakazi Street number 8067/4, where his grandchildren live. It’s the only street to be home to two Nobel Peace Winners: Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The house looks very different from the days of his childhood, he says. It was rebuilt after a gas explosion rocked its foundations two years ago.  To this day, half a century later the books have yet to surface; most likely, he says, they’re under at least two inches of cement. A piece of African history that may be lost, but not forgotten.

Mandela’s  Buried Secrets

Ever woken up with a great idea that would make you lots of money? Then, assuming that it’s not the right time, you push it aside and before you know it, someone else beats you to it. This was almost the case with Maya Whitehead’s Cash Cloud.
Whitehead was born in Bulgaria and lived in 22 countries before she moved to South Africa. She was frustrated that she couldn’t open a bank account, and her unexpected divorce made things much harder.
“I have been here for 16 years and for the first 10 I didn’t have anything—no bank accounts and no ID book, so it was very hard… You can’t even get a job because people don’t want to pay you cash.”
Whitehead thought about leaving the country, but instead of running away from the problem she found a solution. There were many others who struggled to secure a bank account; among them the blacklisted, foreigners and those who were turned away from the banks.
“People will have an alternative because the system is very strict. I mean, you make one small mistake and that’s it, it’s over for you. You can’t take out a cellphone [contract], you can’t open an account, you can’t do anything. And it takes you years to clear that up and it’s always against your name, it’s like you’ve been to jail.”
With an idea in mind, the next step was how. Then the smartphone application Instagram came into the picture—Whitehead was intrigued and confused.
“I was talking to my brother and said maybe it’s a way they will allow us to move money faster. We were shocked. Someone had stolen my idea and we had to go check it out.”
Whitehead was relieved to find that Instagram was not an inexpensive banking business but a photography and video sharing website and smartphone app.
“I thought, ‘Oh Instagram, maybe somebody made something where you instantly move money’. Because I was thinking of MoneyGram&#8230; that’s what I was using the entire time,” laughs Whitehead.
It was a moment that turned her dream into reality. Along the way she encountered a few doubting Thomases, along with legislation and red tape.
“The problem with me is when someone tells me that no there’s no way, then I have to go prove them wrong.”
With a background in the food industry, Whitehead knew she didn’t have the skills to execute the business and that’s when she called on her professional contacts.
Cash Cloud launched in April and with backing from Absa, Visa and Nedbank. It set out to give the banking giants a run for their money, with a particular focus on those who have never received a letter that started with “Dear Valued Customer”.
With no formal marketing strategy, the company makes use of Facebook and local agents.
“The strategy is to be close to the people and utilize relations. Our field agents live where they sell… We targeted the township areas and medium businesses with existing relations. It was very important for the agents to communicate to the customers in their language.”
Cash Cloud’s clients range from a biscuit factory in Soweto, to a limousine company in Sandton and a vegetable shop in Fourways.
With its corporate package, the company is a major benefit to industries where employers pay employees cash in hand. For many people it is a risk to carry cash. The corporate package allows the employer to pay its employees through Cash Cloud.
Whitehead often has to explain to her clients how to operate an ATM.
“Some people haven’t had bank cards before and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Our business is 80% education and 20% the rest, because people need to know what they are paying for.”
Whitehead believes that this banking system was a long time coming. She feels that she got lucky because she was at the right place at the right time, which was combined with the frustration she experienced in not having an account.
“I haven’t been conditioned to the point which other people have been, in believing that such things are impossible. I was exposed to outside influences, saw similar processes in Europe. And through asking questions I realized that this was possible.”
With the first phase of Cash Cloud—the debit card—underway, the second phase—an online banking and mobile application—launched at the end of July. Whitehead is most excited about the third phase of the company—the money transfer system—which will be in full swing by the end of the year.
The lucrative money transfer system will operate in six countries: Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Botswana and South Africa.
Whitehead hopes to go into car finance, lending solutions and cellphone contracts, based on the same principle and by targeting the same customers.
At the time of writing, Cash Cloud had sold 26,000 cards.
Not bad for a company that has only been in operation since April.
Whitehead often finds it hard to believe how she even got here. She thought that she was going to be a doctor, then dabbled in the hospitality industry and has a range of health foods, called Skinny Foods.
When she is not busy with Cash Cloud you will find Whitehead sitting under an umbrella in the sun with a big smile on her face at one of her five restaurants. As the cloud appears, blocking the sun’s rays, she smiles. Then comes the rain and a tumble of cash.

Send Your Blacklisted  And Foreigners

It is a hot day in Lagos when we talk and yet you can feel the chill when Eryca Freemantle tells you of her worst day that left her body crushed and mind shattered. It was very cold on that day; December 14, 1990, in Brixton, London. A raw wind gnawed into Freemantle’s cheek as she tried to keep warm at the pay window of a busy petrol station. She knew how cold the streets of the capital could be as she was born in London of parents who emigrated from Jamaica in the 1950s.
“I was putting petrol in my car. I walked over to the kiosk to pay for the petrol and a lady came in with a Volvo Estate car and instead of putting her foot on the brake, she put her foot on the accelerator and made me into a human sandwich between the kiosk and her car,” says Freemantle.
“The glass from the kiosk shattered across my face. My body went into shock, my hair fell out there and then and my left leg was broken in five places.”
By cruel, or as it turned out, fortuitous coincidence, Freemantle’s father was near where his daughter lay in agony.
“My dad happened to be across the road in the pub, the Angel in Brixton, having a pint and he came out because there was a crowd around me. Someone had said to him: ‘A woman has just got run over at the petrol station. He had turned around to say: ‘Stupid. How can anyone get run over at a petrol station?’ At the same time, his left leg started twitching, he told me later.”
When the cold realization set in, Freemantle senior was beside himself with grief.
“He went over to have a look and saw me lying on the ground. He went into shock and started screaming. Everyone kept on saying ‘She’s dead, she’s dead!’ And he said: ‘God, why have you taken my only daughter?’ and in my semiconscious state, I could hear him. My father and I were very close and I remember thinking I don’t want to upset daddy, I have to get through this.”
Within minutes the ambulance came to take Freemantle away.
“My hair was on the ground and my dad had picked it up and put it in his pocket. He followed the ambulance to the hospital in my car. I was taken to the King’s College Hospital in South London, where they informed my mother. She was told they’d have to amputate my left leg. My dad said: ‘No way, before you amputate her leg, you will have to cut mine off.”
Freemantle spent months in hospital, luckily the surgeons did not amputate and she was left to heal. On release, she underwent physiotherapy every day for two years as she learned to walk again.
“I was also told I would also have a crooked walk,” she says.
Doctors told Freemantle her hair would never grow back again. For a while, the scars meant she had to cover her face. It was then that the demons of her traumatic childhood, at a tough London school, crawled from her subconscious and bared their teeth.
“I had been called ugly while I was at school and had always been teased about my looks. So, when this accident happened to me later, I took that as confirmation of all the things I had been called by the bullies at school,” she says.
Freemantle’s parents could not get her out of the house for nearly two years. Her scars held her prisoner.
“Now, this was the early 1990s, when there was no make-up for women of color and what was available was Derma-blend. I however went out and got some mud which I mixed with some water and put all over my face to cover my scars—that was my first ever encounter with make-up. Of course, that only lasts for so long but that gave me a bit of confidence, even if it was only for five minutes,” she says.
“My parents noticed  my new interest and thought it might be a good idea to send me to a make-up school, which was an idea that was frowned upon back then, in the West Indian culture, as you’d rather become a doctor or an accountant.”
Freemantle went to college to learn the trade and passed with distinction. She completed teachers’ training and the next thing she knew she was writing make-up classes for London College of Fashion. Her courses were endorsed by the British Association of Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology.
One day, the newly qualified Freemantle was invited by a friend, who was a model, on one of her photo shoots.
“When I got there, I immediately knew I could do a better job than the person who was working on her. I ended up doing her make-up and there was someone there from Island Records, who engaged me on the strength of my work at the shoot. Before I knew it, in a week’s time, I was doing celebrity make-up for names like Seal and Soul to Soul, Loose Ends. Whitney Houston would come into London a lot and I assisted her make-up artist,” says Freemantle.
“Seal was lovely, he used to wear his hair on his face because he used to have locks. He’s a very intelligent man, who was ahead of his time. I understood why they asked me to do his make-up, as he also had some scarring on his face.”
A pharmaceutical company, which had heard Freemantle’s story, approached her to create a make-up range. She said she would get involved only if it was a range for women of color. That is how Keromask was born.
Nearly a quarter of a century after the crushing accident that changed her life, Freemantle is in Lagos setting her sights on the world’s great emerging markets in Africa.
“There are many brands that are afraid to enter the market as they don’t know anyone on the ground… Africa is huge and many brands are looking to come in here presently. I see the biggest markets for make-up in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa,” she says.
“Training is the way forward. In Lagos there are 500,000 make-up artists. A high proportion of them are not trained or are self- trained. So, there is scope for certification and international recognition.”
Anyone with the courage to claw their way back from being a shattered heap on the cold stone floor of a London petrol station is surely worth listening to.

Bloodied, Scarred And Unbowed

They both live in Cape Town, but are poles apart. Wendy Ackerman is on everyone’s rich list; Rapelang Rabana wants to be, but for now is content with being on the FORBES ‘30 Under 30: Africa’s Best Young Entrepreneurs’ list.
Ackerman is polished, prim and proper; Rabana is young, spunky and bright. Both have struggled against what the business world thinks women should be. Between them, they weave a fascinating story of how women can become successful entrepreneurs.
Be warned, anyone who refers to Ackerman as the chairman’s wife. Legend has it that she once received a lunch invitation bearing the words “wife of Pick ‘n Pay mogul”. This did not go down well.
“This makes me cross. Don’t introduce me as the chairman’s wife. I have had to work very hard. I want to be recognized as a person in my own right,” she told Independent on Saturday.
Decades in business have made her a force to be reckoned with and a source of great knowledge, opinions and advice for up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Ackerman attended convent schools during the Second World War. Despite being destined for the retail industry, she majored in history of art, English and psychology at the University of Cape Town (UCT). In her second year at university, she married future retail magnate Raymond Ackerman and moved to Johannesburg, where she lived for 12 years and completed her degree. Taking care of three children at home frustrated her.
In 1964, the year Nelson Mandela went to prison for life and amidst the biggest political crack down in the country’s history, Ackerman was part of the team that put on a Shakespeare festival in South Africa’s townships, with actors from the University of Cambridge. This led to Ackerman giving English lessons in the townships.
When it came to learning economics at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Ackerman dropped out because she didn’t understand the “airy fairy” subject. Outside the classroom, her husband became her teacher and she picked up her business knowledge through osmosis, when they attended business lectures. The couple went to the United States to study supermarketing and worked at supermarkets together—the business that was to make their fortune.
Ackerman says working with her husband has been good, as he’s an understanding person. Their biggest fights were about company policy. They fought over the building of a hypermarket in picturesque Constantia, Cape Town.
She walked into his office, wearing a pinstripe suit, to hand in her resignation letter. She would stay until the day the company broke ground in Constantia. Ackerman says many of the company executives tried to change her mind, warning her that it could be detrimental to her marriage. As far as she was concerned, this was all business and had nothing to do with her marriage. The hypermarket was not built—the pinstripe suit had won.
The journey that led to South African supermarket chain Pick ‘n Pay (PnP) began in 1966 when Checkers, still a grocery store at the time, fired Raymond Ackerman.
“I’ve always had enormous faith in my husband; I was delighted when he was fired,” says Ackerman, adding that he hadn’t been happy at work for a long time.
When the Ackermans moved back to Cape Town to establish PnP, Raymond would call her, whenever he was snowed under, to do anything from human resources to balancing the books and building homes for black managers. The housing project was one of the ways they took a stance against apartheid and says she was never worried she’d push too far.
“It never occurred to him that I might not be able to do something. So I did it. It didn’t occur to me to think that I couldn’t do it,” says Ackerman.
Equally ready for the fight is Rabana. Born in Botswana and called Africa’s Marissa Mayer—the CEO and president of Yahoo—Rabana is the co-founding CEO of Yeigo Communications. The daughter of an architect and electrical engineer, both of whom had moved out of corporate to start their own architectural firm, she spent her first eight to 10 years in Gaborone and left to board at Roedean School—a private school in Johannesburg.
Rabana wasn’t keen on university, but her strict African parents would have none of that. Unsure of what to study, she asked her brother to pick something for her, as long as it wasn’t accounting or actuarial science. She was so uninterested that she only realized she had been enrolled for a business and computer science degree, when she attended the first lecture at UCT. Her brother defended his choice by saying that she needed a challenge.
In an interview last year with Ventures Africa, Rabana said: “Most of us will be familiar with the Chinese proverb about teaching a man to fish as opposed to giving him a fish. My proposition is: teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime. Expose a man to the internet and he will change his life.”
It led to a Bachelor of Business Science in computer science and finance. Rabana was faced with the question that plagues most graduates: “What now?”
She was tired of starting at the bottom of the food chain. Entrepreneurship was a way for her to make her own way.  Her parents took some convincing—they felt that going into an established company was the way.
Rabana and two of her classmates wanted a solution to the high cost of communication. They spent months prototyping and by September 2006 had a working demo. Lungisa Matshoba was chief technology officer, while Andrew Snowden was head of engineering. The pair ran the development side of the business, while Rabana focused on financing and a business plan. She gave up on banks and went looking for mentors and connections.
“Everything we were doing was cutting edge,” says Rabana.
Yeigo launched in February 2007, promising Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which had just been made available in South Africa. Two other foreign companies released the same program at around the same time. As far as Rabana is concerned, people need to conquer the fear of someone stealing their ideas to become the next Mark Zuckerberg.
The partnership with Tellfree began with the Swiss company licensing software from Yeigo. Tellfree bought a majority stake in 2008 and provided the young start-up with the infrastructure it needed. In return, Rabana become Tellfree’s global head of research. Prior to this there was a multi-million-dollar investment deal with American company, Quality One Wireless, a mobile handset distribution firm. It fell through after the preliminary agreement.
Rabana says that things were very bad for a long time and that the industry still has a long way to go. The problem seems to be a risk culture that scares most from venturing out on their own in a country where joining a corporate is considered safe. There is also a shortage of accessible networks, and a lack of financing from traditional institutions that think this business is too risky.
It seems that more can be done on this front. Rabana has joined the advisory board for Grindstone Accelerator to assist high-growth technology SMEs. She says that South Africa has lost its competitive edge on the continent, in communications and technology, because of delayed responses to regulatory issues. She cites Kenya’s success as the result of having technology and communications ministers that are in tune with the industry.
Take Israel. In 1993, venture capitalism was kick started by the launch of a prototype government-owned fund called Yozma. In three years, 10 drop-down funds were established and each given $20 million. The country now has 70 venture capital funds, raising around $607 million last year.
Rabana doesn’t feel that she lived under a glass ceiling as she skirted the corporate world. Both hope that women in business will soon find their rightful place. Ackerman has traveled the longest road as her parents didn’t even want her to work.
“They didn’t understand the hunger in me to work,” says Ackerman.
Ackerman once asked her female staff members if they wanted careers or jobs—around 80% said that they wanted a job. She believes that this is because of the many responsibilities these women have at home.
For years, Ackerman didn’t draw a salary, but has always considered her financial independence extremely important.
As for her role in the company, Ackerman says she does the jobs that no one else wants. She recalls how she once went away and handed over some of her work to her daughter, Suzanne Ackerman-Berman. When she got back Ackerman-Berman walked into her office, threw the files on the table and said: “You have a shit job.”
If Ackerman were 20 years younger, she would do it all again and doesn’t believe that it’s easier to start a business today than it was for PnP in the 1960s.
“You’ve got to eat, sleep and drink it 24/7,” she warns.
According to the rising star, Rabana, having a bright idea is not good enough because success is more about execution than anything else.
“Entrepreneurship is a much more personal journey than it is a business journey,” says Rabana.
“Entitlement is a disease in South Africa. I say nobody is entitled to anything. I’m afraid there are no short cuts, you’ve just jolly well got to work—that’s all there is to it,” says Ackerman.
Ackerman says BEE—South Africa’s affirmative action policy—is rubbish and that she didn’t have a glass ceiling to break through, but a glass box, as she even had to fight her husband. She wanted recognition in the company for what she had offered and not just to be the chairman’s wife. It took her 15 years to become a director at PnP.
Although Rabana feels that policies such as BEE have a role in achieving some balance, she too has a problem with entitlement.
“The culture of entitlement fostered by policies like BEE has also undermined the drive of young black professionals and this will cost South Africa dearly,” according to Rabana.
Then there is discrimination. Both women agree that double standards exist. They say, in business, if a man is being kind and gentle he’s complimented, but if a woman does it she’s just being a typical woman.
A born teacher, Ackerman saw the lack in her country’s schools. In 1973, she set up the Ackerman Family Education Trust with the 2% of PnP shares her husband gave her. The trust gives bursaries, worth $353,000 a year, to deserving individuals and has more than 800 graduates.
“I’m not a name at the bottom of a check,” she says.
One of the recipients is Isaac Motaung, the company’s human resources director, who started at PnP as a trolley pusher. He received a bursary to study through the University of South Africa.
Rabana is the chairperson of Ubuntu Africa, a children’s HIV/Aids NGO that provides healthcare and support services to HIV positive youth in Khayelitsha, a township in the Western Cape.
Ackerman, who was recognized as one of 60 women on the 2013 Women, Inspiration and Enterprise Network ‘Africa Power Influencer’ list, once said that retirement was not in her and her husband’s DNA. She still feels that way.
At the other end of the life scale, seven years after the start of Yeigo, Rabana is just beginning.
“Our hearts remain in start-up mode… I don’t imagine I’m anywhere near my peak,” she says.
Rabana sees herself starting a number of businesses in different industries, but still linked to technology. Her latest ventures are a web and mobile entertainment platform for the American market and a local technology-driven education company called Rekindle Learning. The start-up provides a mobile learning application aimed at schools and corporates. The KnowledgePulse uses micro-learning to make the content easier to retain.
With a number of achievements under their belts these women prove that making it in business has nothing to do with your background, generation or environment in 21st century Africa. It’s all about knowing what you want and getting it.

Tag: August 2013

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