My seven-year old nephew recently asked me a sticky question: “Uncle Musky, where do chocolates come from?”
“Chocolates?” I quipped, scanning my mental box for a passable answer. “Yes, chocolates,” he repeated, licking choc-soiled fingers. “Where do they come from?”
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Chocolates come from the cocoa tree, I said, wondering if he would buy the truth. “Cocoa tree?” he bellowed. “Where do cocoa trees grow, do we have cocoa trees in Nigeria?” I rolled my eyes: “How can we not have cocoa trees?!” Time for a quick geography lesson, I muttered to myself. We spent the next 10 minutes discussing the origins and uses of cocoa; cultivated in the tropics, its produce consumed in a variety of forms globally.
When my informed ignorance of the bitter-sweet bean began to wane, I grabbed an encyclopaedia (thank goodness for a good, old fashioned home library; and by the way, how many people still read hardcover tomes these days?) and, together, we searched for ‘chocolate’ which referenced the word ‘cocoa’ or ‘cacao tree’, the last term being a tree that produces an ovoid-shaped pod (fruit) containing cacao seeds or beans; the trees growing naturally in the South American jungle, thousands of years ago, well before processed cacao products began to go mainstream slightly over 100 years ago. Its scientific name: theobroma cacao, the Latin word ‘theobroma’ literally meaning “food of the gods” in English and ‘cacao’ being an Aztec word.
We read that it was the Spanish conquistadors (where didn’t they go?) that introduced cacao to the rest of the world (and I was thinking aloud, “but how can that be? Is it possible that they sold cacao beans to their trading partners in Africa, who then began to cultivate them?”). By now, my positively pesky one was staring suspiciously at my ugly face.
His mind was gyrating. “Aztec, Spanish sailors, America, Asia, Africa, where is Africa, is Africa in Nigeria?”, “Latin&#8230;What is Latin?”, “Food of the gods, who are gods?”, “Does God eat chocolates too?” I could see a litany of questions welling up in his eyes, so, smart lazy adult that I was, I swerved the conversation into a cul-de-sac.
Here was I, face-to-face with honest ignorance, confronting the classic heuristic dilemma of urban kids growing up in today’s Nigeria—let’s call them ‘Generation Y+’.
Born and bred in the early years of the 21st century, they will never grasp the agronomical world of their forbearers. Try telling the Y+ clan that rice (especially the American long grain type) was, not too long ago, an uncommon, foreign delicacy. Try informing them that the chocolates they now consume in various forms was once so rare, and so expensive only the elite and wannabe bourgeoisie could be seen enjoying them. These days, we all gobble up chocolate bars, chocolate sweets, chocolate-coated biscuits, a pantheon of chocolate cakes, and chocolate-flavoured cereals almost recklessly. Nigeria now has a confusing assortment of chocolate beverages, chocolate-flavoured yoghurts, chocolate-choked confectionaries and chocolate ice-creams to choose from.
The hot, humid climate also helps. Try drinking cold chocolate in steamy 35oC weather—or a warm cup on a cold, wet morning. I have not seen one person who has said anything bad about chocolates, except that too much of it may ruin your digestive borders, if you get my drift. A chocolate drink is a breakfast staple in most Nigerian homes, and for many, especially young, folks, saying “I want to drink tea” actually means “can I have a chocolate drink?”
So, now let us talk about Nigeria’s choc-revolution. The global obsession for ‘nice and sweet’ edibles has crept into Nigerian society like the subtle haze of a misty morning. Our choc-trajectory has been a long and trickling, subliminal evolution of our culinary culture. This was a land once famous for its cocoa plantations. The story of theobroma cacao in Naija (as most Nigerian youths call their country) chronicles the gastro-agrarian history of Chinua Achebe’s homeland. Once a grand and scenic symbol of Nigeria’s agricultural fecundity, the “Groundnut Pyramids” of northern Nigeria were the envy of the world, the nutty equivalents of the pyramids of Mount Sinai in Egypt, supplying the world with its stock of peanuts and vegetable oils (as recorded in Nigeria’s N200 bill).
Today, the peanut pyramids have been levelled, replaced by a plethora of urban jungles and conurbations; and the forests of the future continue to disappear as peanut fields, maize, cashew, oil palm and cocoa plantations struggle for space and economic relevance with religious institutions and property developers. This was how Nigeria lost its once prominent position in the global comity of cocoa growers, and thanks to ‘new age, modern’ realities (meaning global trade, cyberspace and the Anglo-Saxon influence), Nigerians now consume more cocoa and cocoa-based products than they produce. “My fridge is a haven of chocolate bars…especially white chocolate, I love them,” Ms. Uduak Johnson, a Lagos-based retailer told FORBES AFRICA.
With close to six million farmers producing an estimated three million tons of cocoa annually, about 50 million people worldwide depend on the crop for their livelihood, according to the World Cocoa Foundation. A glut of family-owned farms in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana produce 70% of this global output.
A significant share of these West African produce ends up in Africa’s largest population patch, as Nigerian and foreign companies in the food and beverages, pharmaceutical, personal care sectors buy up raw and semi-processed bean stock from farmers and trading companies, and the rest, as they say, is yum yum…chocolate bars, cakes, biscuits, toffees, and cocoa-based beverages.
So, the question, “where do chocolates come from?” deserves another answer. Chocolates do not come from cocoa trees. “They come from choc-factories in Austria, Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, the United Kingdom, America, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey, Switzerland, Ghana, even China and all those other places that Nigerians like to buy their sweets from,” says Mr Alan Akinkunle-Baker, a Nigerian-born, UK-based management consultant. “Our chocolate habit is really an imported culture.”
I disagree. Cacao consumption was a universal routine in previous millennia, well before ‘globalization’ arrived. The Spanish and South Americans must agree to share the credit for introducing cocoa to the rest of the world with their West African cousins. We need a Pan-African conference on the origins of theobroma cacao.

The Food of The Gods

As the sun beat down on the roof of a community center in the tiny Togolese village of Wome, the staffers of SunPower Afrique rushed to put on sunscreen. The rays were a reminder that their latest project—the system of solar panels being nailed to the building’s roof—is hot in more ways than one.
<div id="attachment_271" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-271" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-271" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Herman-shoot-and-Togo-095-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Solar panels power a building in Kpalime</div>
The area around Kpalime, Togo’s second-largest city, is hardly the obvious site for a solar energy revolution. SunPower’s business technique—matching solar customers with small microfinance lenders is taking root. The city, tucked into a verdant corner of Togo, is becoming a model for a new energy infrastructure in a country known for its frustrating power shortages.
“Togo has a really strong microfinance community,” says Kira Costanza, SunPower’s founder. “It has more microfinance institutions than other countries. The largest obstacle to solar is the high initial cost”—which can run into the thousands of dollars for just a few panels— “and being able to get a loan.”
The 27-year-old Kira Costanza, the American daughter of a solar engineer, started SunPower in 2007 after living in Kpalime and watching the city and its surrounding villages live with energy shortages. Cuts in the city can stretch from 15 to 24 hours.
War in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, an energy provider, has also cut Togo’s supply. FECECAV, the Kpalime area’s largest microfinance co-op, was struggling to carry on its business as it dealt with power shortages.
Nearly 80% of Togo’s energy currently comes from biomass, the charcoal and wood burning that destroys forests, and 16% from petroleum products. Existing fuel shortages made Costanza realize that solar power was a competitive and environmentally-sound alternative to gasoline-powered generators.
But how to fund it?
“I worked at FECECAV, and I witnessed first-hand the problem of not having electricity,” Costanza says. “So I decided to start there. I hope it’s something that becomes important to the community.” The problem was finding the financial source needed to begin widespread installation.
Inspiration struck when Costanza began linking schools and homes needing power with the small microfinance institutions, including FECECAV, which dotted the area. The unique alliance—a first for the underdeveloped region—provided both business for the lenders and energy for their clients.
The loans are necessary in a city like Kpalime. The bill for three of SunPower’s rooftop projects in the city totaled $25,000 for panels that could power smaller items like laptop computers and light bulbs.
“For a house, it can hit $10,000, including import and export fees,” she says. “That’s out of reach for most people.”
The test project at FECECAV’s headquarters cost $50,000, with importing, exporting and logistics taking the lion’s share of the cost. (It took nearly a month, and $2,000, to get a recent batch of panels from the US through the Togolese port.)
Costanza and her team are trying to minimize costs so that hospitals, schools, community centers and individual homes will have an easier time taking out loans.
The SunPower team is also working on building solar power systems in a box, which come complete with panels that will be easy to install—and have a cheaper initial cost than the current larger installations.
Besides micro loans, another necessity in Kpalime’s solar evolution has been education.
“In one village, there was no power. We set it up so they could run two laptops and three bulbs at a given time. Then someone wanted to plug in a fridge, which would have fried the system. They don’t understand.”
On the roof in Wome, Koffi Dzodsi, a local resident who serves as the project’s chief technician, worked alongside Dave Staller, an engineer visiting from the US. Together they worked to drill a foundation for panels that were delayed, tied up at the port.
“People here knew about it, but before this they didn’t have financial access to it,” Dzodsi said of the solar technology. “Projects have been going here since 1992 but now there’s a boom because there’s [less] problems with money. There’s a lot of interest.”
SunPower and its success in Kpalime is at the forefront of a solar movement that is quickly growing across Togo and the rest of West Africa.
In 2010, James Gbeho, president of the region’s ECOWAS Commission, said the demand for power across Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Ghana and their neighbors would reach 22,000 megawatts per year in 2020, up from just 6,500 in 2003.
As demand for power grows, governments are struggling to implement renewable energy sources while often working without advanced technology and trying to skirt red tape, namely high importing fees and delays for arriving solar panels. Even when energy is available, it can be too expensive for residents of a city like Kpalime to afford.
Businesses like Costanza’s, which have partnered with local microfinance chapters, have the greatest chance of reaching citizens on the ground level. And the ripple effects of her alternative energy micro-projects are spreading to the highest offices in West Africa. In November, Bukun-Olu Onemola, the Nigerian deputy United Nations envoy, said that nuclear-powered electricity would be a key focus for the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, and his “transformation agenda”.
An hour’s Vespa ride from the Kpalime offices of FECECAV, tucked at the base of forested mountains, sits an innocuous village—small and pretty and lacking electricity, like many others in the area.
But look closer; off its dirt roads, a revolution is underway. A hospital, a wealthier two-story home—both have sets of solar panels tucked away, small reminders of the march of Togo’s sun power.

Power To The People As A Bright Idea Shines

Rwanda’s post-genocide recovery has gone through many hands, but there is one big hand to reckon with—that of entrepreneur Said Sekoko Hatari.
Hatari may not be the richest man in Rwanda, but he is among Kigali’s cash kings. Born to a poor family, he grew up in Uganda as a refugee. One of the bitter legacies of Rwanda’s troubled past is that many of its people grew up sheltering outside the country.
Exile was where Hatari started in business, at the tender age of 20, as a truck driver working for Somalis. He was transporting construction materials from Kisumu in Kenya to missionaries living nearby. He quit the job to trade spare parts and coffee. He made mistakes along the way, including losing $1 million in the coffee business.
More than 30 years on, Hatari, who also served in the Rwandan army, is the king of hospitality and construction in Kigali with a number of business partnerships at his elbow.
“In partnerships, people come with their own money and borrowing connections. When you are alone, you get exhausted,” he says.
Hatari is the executive director of Doyelcy Ltd, founded in 2006, one of the largest firms in Rwanda and under valuation by Ernst &amp; Young. The company may list on the Rwanda Stock Exchange or issue a corporate bond to raise capital for investment in its core businesses of hospitality, property, insurance, renewable energy and agriculture.
Doyelcy is co-investing in hospitality and construction projects in Rwanda along with Dubai World, Chinese investors and Sudhir Ruparelia, one of the richest men in Uganda.
The prime project is the Kigali City Tower, which will be the tallest building in Rwanda and a potent symbol of reconstruction less than two decades after dead bodies littered the streets.
The 1994 genocide took more than 800,000 lives in 100 days. It shattered the country’s infrastructure, as well as its soul. From roads to government offices, private businesses and homes, to water pipes and electric poles—the country needed huge investment to build afresh; money that the government did not have.
Seventeen years later, Rwanda is one of the world’s success stories, with an annual average growth rate of about 8%. It was ranked the top global business reformer in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report in 2010. This was the first time a country from sub-Saharan Africa—the region with the highest poverty levels in the world—won such an accolade.
The tower of Kigali is a bold manifestation of this surge of confidence. It will bring scarce high-end office and retail space to Rwanda as the country plans to position itself as the business-friendly Switzerland of East Africa. Tenants are signing up for 20 floors; they include Rwanda’s plush coffee shop, Bourbon Street; Apple; Kenya’s Nakumatt; and South Africa’s Mr Price.
Ernst &amp; Young valued the tower at $33 million, which also makes it the most expensive landmark in Rwanda.
In another project, costing at least $200 million, Doyelcy is also co-investing with Ruparelia in a modern tax park and commercial buildings in Kigali. Then there is a $60 million five-star hotel with Chinese investors. The 254-room Kigali Marriot will be the largest hotel in Rwanda.
This year, the Central Bank says the economy may grow by more than 7.5%,  with strong recovery in the agriculture and service sectors, in a land where it takes one day to register a business. Inflation is easing and the financial sector grows stronger as more regional banks set up shop in Kigali.
This year, Rwanda expects investments to grow to $550 million, from more than $300 million last year.
Construction and hospitality are the fastest growing sectors in the country. In the first six months of 2011, construction rose by 54.6% compared to 28.7% for the same period last year.
“I believe that the future of this economy is mainly its expansion, going beyond borders as it reduces trade obstacles and introduces new markets,” says Hatari.
Although the construction sector is growing, Hatari says it faces setbacks from a lack of skilled labour and construction materials like cement. There is also a question over long-term finance from the banks.
“Finance is still a challenge and I think it will remain a challenge,” he says.
The good news is that Rwanda relishes a challenge.

From A Truck Driver To  A King Of Kigali

There is no point in speculating as to what Russell Loubser, the outgoing Johannesburg Stock Exchange chief executive officer, will be doing next year—because Loubser himself does not know. He could take the route of a hands-on CEO position at a financial institution, as did previous JSE president, Roy Andersen, at Liberty Life. There is also the option of several independent non-executive directorships, for a quieter life after many years of revolutionizing Africa’s biggest exchange. Another possibility is—corporate governance and Companies Act requirements permitting—to perhaps sit on the exchange board itself as a non-executive director or eventually as chairman.
<div id="attachment_262" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-262" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-262" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CTX7294-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" />Russell Loubser and Nicky Newton &#8211; King</div>
“I am not entertaining any thoughts as to what comes after life at the JSE,” says Loubser, who originally comes from Slurry, near Mafikeng.
“Until the end of this year, I remain completely focused on my work at the exchange. To prematurely assess opportunities could give rise to conflicts of interest. People are approaching me and my response is to come back at the end of the year, if still interested. Nothing is going to distract me in these last few months.”
A few things are certain for Loubser, regarding life after the JSE. As a member of the South African Airways board, the link will continue. So, too, will his three-year ministerial appointment as a member of the Takeover Regulation Panel, previously the Securities Regulation Panel. But as for the rest of it, Loubser says there is genuinely nothing definitive. “It’s not as if I have something planned and will reveal it at the last moment.”
An initial five-year contract, starting early 1997, ended up being 15 years of leadership. When Loubser joined the JSE, trading volumes in that first year were 17,854 billion shares, and 2,3 million deals. For 2010, volumes were 71,252 billion shares from 23,8 million deals.
Loubser always credits his team: “It has been an absolute pleasure to work with people who have been so dedicated to improving the exchange and developing themselves. The early days were extremely difficult. The press was relentlessly critical, the exchange at that time was wholly owned by the stockbrokers, it was not offering value, and was viewed as a necessity in order to trade equities. At that time, no one could imagine demutualisation, listing and creating value for the financial community. With this committed team, we proved our critics wrong.”
Loubser’s management style is to surround himself with smart people and give them lots of space. “You then get the best out of them.”
When Loubser took over, the JSE had an extremely poor reputation at home and abroad. Despite being the largest emerging market at that time, and surprisingly highly ranked by size in world terms, it was seen as an inefficient boys’ club plagued by insider trading and front running. Roy Andersen had made a start with transformation, such as implementing new software and trading systems, and the Big Bang deregulation which included allowing corporate membership of the exchange.
“The criticism we received in those initial years was fair and completely justifiable,” says Loubser. “But even when we started demonstrating our progress, the taint persisted. We had a difficult audience to win over and the first few years were very testing.”
With the JSE clearly demonstrating its ability and achievements, and cleverly diversifying its income stream, attitudes started to change and criticisms became compliments. However, brokers would still like to see lower trading prices. “We are fully conscious of this,” says Loubser, “and are benchmarked against other exchanges by independent parties to see how competitive our pricing is. Trading revenues are a simple function of volumes and pricing, and if volumes grow, there is certainly scope to reduce pricing.”
Despite having accomplished so much at the JSE, there is one huge task that Loubser regrets he will not be able to see through to the end—the complete overhaul of the bond market, which the JSE acquired in 2009. This particular market comes in for much criticism regarding its antiquated telephonic trading, selective pricing, and operating on a foundation of personal connections and relationships. The wish list for this market is a digital, visible, transparent central order book that promotes price discovery and improves liquidity, especially for languishing corporate and municipal bonds.
“My trading career started in the fixed income market, so I would have liked to have been on the ground and involved when the JSE cleans up the bond market, as it did with the equity market,” says Loubser, who represented the banking sector during the formation of the Bond Market Association, now the Bond Exchange of South Africa. He has no doubt that incoming CEO Nicky Newton-King will be able to achieve this. “It will be quite a challenge for her, but she has a fantastic executive committee on which she can rely, and she will need their talents. Severe changes as to how the bond market works are imperative and will be good for South African financial markets.”
One disappointment—despite much effort—is that other exchanges in Africa have not taken up offers to use the JSE’s technology and platforms in order to make their own markets more efficient. When Loubser took over at the JSE, he looked to exchanges in countries such as Australia and Singapore. “We were shocked by our glaringly obvious poor services and huge inefficiencies, and this kicked us into action. Exchanges in the rest of Africa should go through this same self-examination and take a good look at themselves and the potential they have to play in transforming their markets and economies. As yet, they are not seeing the urgency and benefits of an innovative exchange. A good exchange is a strategic national asset.”
Unlike many CEOs in South Africa, Loubser is not afraid to make political comment when appropriate. He has addressed issues such as government spokesperson Jimmy Manyi’s accusations that blacks do not own enough of the companies listed on the JSE board, and he supported Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s Minister in the Presidency in charge of the National Planning Commission, for taking Manyi to task on racism. “At present, South Africa does ‘work’. But this does not mean our leaders can simply stop at this point. It can be so much better and we should not settle for mediocrity,” says Loubser. His frankness also extends to the tragedy of Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime.
As the JSE grows increasingly more attractive as a takeover target, Loubser says this type of decision would be for the shareholders. “But my recommendation at this point in time would be to wait a few more years. The exchange is presently working on many things that would add value. At a later stage, a tie-up with an appropriate party would be beneficial to shareholders, and would help take the exchange to the next level.”
Loubser says that despite persuasive efforts from his staff to throw him a huge goodbye party, that would not be his style and he prefers a quiet exit. “I would rather get all my staff together in the auditorium a few days before I leave to say my farewells and thanks.” Leaving the JSE after an incredible 15 years will no doubt be heart-rending for Loubser.
“I will miss the JSE a lot. Let’s just say it will be a very difficult and emotional time for me.”
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New JSE CEO—more than well prepared for the role
Nicky Newton-King has been the JSE’s deputy CEO since 2002, joining the exchange in 1996. Her professional qualifications and experience are legal, whereas Loubser is a chartered accountant with a merchant banking and trading background. Prior to this, Newton-King was a partner at legal firm Webber Wentzel, specialising in the securities and financial services industry, with the JSE as a client.
As the JSE is regarded as one of the best regulated exchanges in the world, Newton-King feels strongly about the development of financial markets across the rest of the continent.
“It is time for African exchanges to stand up and make some brave choices if they want to harness emerging market appetite and attract significant international investment. They run the risk of missing out on the emerging market story if they do not focus on building large and sustainable exchanges.”
African stock markets are now at a point of critical inflection, as was the JSE in the early 1990s. “The JSE has been through its much-needed development, and has the battle scars to show for it,” says Newton-King. “It is now by far the largest exchange in Africa and internationally respected. African exchanges need to similarly decide on their strategies for the future. Are they going to stand alone and individually compete for business, or will they work together to leapfrog stock exchange development in Africa?”
Newton-King says that African stock markets must realize that no one owes them a living. “They are not there to serve themselves. If they do not provide offerings of an appropriate and international quality to investors and issuers, they will be bypassed.”
One route would be to regionally harmonize the rules in African capital markets, as seen in the European Union. However, Newton-King highlights the problem of which markets would be willing to concede to the rules of others. Another possibility for African exchanges is to promote cross-listings, in which a company is listed in more than one country, as dual-listings generally increase trade in the home country. Newton-King says that ideally, the dual-listed companies should come to the JSE for their secondary listing—rather than go offshore to London or other such markets. “African companies should preferably stay on the continent.”
Yet another possibility is to create African technology hubs that allow execution in multiple venues through a single channel of access. Newton-King notes that exchanges must then be willing to collaborate and resolve issues such as hub ownership and operational responsibility. A fourth route would be to establish Pan African stock exchanges, by collapsing existing individual exchanges into regional ones. However, Newton-King again highlights the potential problems of ownership and location, and believes this way is more suited to environments which are starting from nothing and have no legacy exchanges to deal with.
Newton-King recommends a combination of cross-listings and technology hubs to promote African stock exchange development. “This would lead to meaningful and accelerated change which would best serve the interests of issuers and investors. African stock exchanges should not go it alone. They should have the courage to work together to create robust capital markets across the continent.”
Looking to the JSE, Newton-King says one important strategy for the exchange in the near term is to decide on a trading model for the bond market. “We have now owned this market for two years and are focused on determining a model which promotes transparency and hence liquidity.”
She anticipates an exciting future for the JSE. “This environment is constantly changing. New regulations, technological developments and innovative products keep us motivated in our aim of linking South Africa to global markets and maintaining our position as a world-class exchange.”
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Farewell The King Of The Exchange… Long Live The Newton-King!

Alfonso Ippolito wakes up in another hotel room in Johannesburg; his Italian home is eight hours away by plane. He checks his email anxiously for updates and prepares for another day of meetings and frustration. A double-breasted suit, tie, shiny shoes and he’s on his way.
At the same time, in another part of Johannesburg, Mosheen Moosa is gearing up for another sparkling day surrounded by diamonds and African jewelry. No tie around his neck. This man is as laid-back as he is passionate about his business.
<div id="attachment_258" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-258" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-258" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/1-5-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Alfonso Ippolito</div>
One Italian, the other South African; both at either end of the long investment chain in Gauteng—South Africa’s place of gold, as the name says. The former has money to invest—the latter needs it like a shot in the arm.
Ippolito—the provider—has been traveling in Africa since 1982. He is the president of Convivium Africa, a non-profit organization carrying out social impact projects in Africa. South Africa’s Gauteng province wants this kind of investment to build the infrastructure and skills to attract more.
“Gauteng contributes a minimum 25% to South Africa’s gross domestic product; if it were a country, it would be the fifth-largest economy on the continent,” says Ebrahim Patel, South Africa’s Minister of Economic Development.
Gauteng competes with countries like Nigeria, Brazil, India and Ghana for this precious foreign investment. Size doesn’t always matter. Gauteng needs a high growth rate, ease of doing business and good infrastructure to have any hope of winning.
This is where Ippolito comes in. In 2004, he was invited by the South African ambassador in Italy to attend a session on investment opportunities in Gauteng. He took on the job of selling the province to European companies. It wasn’t easy.
“We tried many projects but didn’t succeed,” says Ippolito.
In 2009, he hit the jackpot. Italgest SpA, an Italian company specializing in renewable energy, took a keen interest and set up Italgest Energy in South Africa. The proposed project is a $520.5 million photovoltaic plant in Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng. Italgest has spent at least $2.6 million over two years on the project that fits into South Africa’s target to reduce its carbon emissions by 34% by 2020.
<div id="attachment_259" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-259" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-259" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mohseen-sorting-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />Mosheen Moosa</div>
Italgest’s plan is simple enough. The land in Bronkhorstspruit will have 1.3 million solar panels placed 1-1.5 meters from the ground. The panels will be manufactured by Sharp in Italy and shipped to South Africa.
The proposed 18-month project has run into numerous road blocks. The constant change in rules and requirements are making Italgest’s project that much harder to see through. A 75 megawatt cap has been placed on the plant’s capacity. The former 150MW project has had to be split in two, forcing the costly set-up of a second company.
Despite chasing a moving target for the past two years, Italgest is still interested in the project and connecting it to the power grid. The construction could create 1,000 jobs, plus the 120 needed to run the plants.
The company projects returns of 17-21%, but this will depend on the electricity tariff and the bank’s rate for the project financing.
Ippolito’s only problem with investment in Gauteng is the bureaucracy. Despite help from the Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA), he feels that there is a lack of co-operation between provincial and national governments.
“More facilitation and help are needed on a national level; even more, the bank system is slow and conservative,” he says.
Ippolito says one of South Africa’s top four banks sent an email approving the financing for the project on a Friday; by the Monday morning, a second email arrived pulling the financing.
Italgest missed the November 4 deadline to submit its final bid for the two photovoltaic projects because it did not receive the documents on time.
Another sign of bureacracy that may lead to a squandered opportunity. Italgest hopes to return in March and try again.
While Italian Ippolito is investing in the province of Gauteng, South Africa’s Mosheen Moosa needs investment for his business, African Romance.
Moosa is a lawyer. He was a young activist during South Africa’s apartheid era, with a law degree from the University of Witwatersrand. He is a human rights lawyer who joined Parliament after the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. In his five years as a senator, he chaired the Justice Committee that drew up the Bill of Rights and the Courts and Administration of Justice of South Africa’s Constitution.
Moosa left all of this to set up African Romance, which cuts and polishes diamonds.
It is a rare business in Africa—most diamonds are exported to the likes of Cartier, Chopard and Tiffany &amp; Co for cutting.
“Exporting raw materials is exporting jobs,” says Patel.
According to the Kimberley Process statistics, Russia was the top producer of rough diamonds globally in terms of volume, 32.86 million carats, and Botswana the top producer by value, $2.59 billion. The 2011 global rough diamond production rose 39% by value and approximately 7% by volume to 133.12 million carats.
A total of 13.67 million carats valued at $1.8 billion were produced in South Africa in 2010, ranking the country fourth by value. Most of Africa’s diamonds are exported for cutting and polishing. The top global importers in 2010 were Europe, India, Israel, Dubai and China.
African Romance stands against this tide. The South African company is bent on beneficiation at home and this needs investment to do so.
African Romance was launched in 2007, after two years of preparation. Moosa and his team started with an investment of around $6.5 million, followed by
$10.6 million in 2008-2009. The capital went into factories, equipment and rough diamonds.
African Romance buys its rough diamonds in South Africa. These are cut and polished by South Africans, adding further value before export. Some 50% of the diamonds are exported.
The diamond industry is a very closed one; the barriers to entry are high and it takes years to break in.
In buying South African diamonds, African Romance competes with international buyers that are paying as little as 2% interest rates, giving them an advantage over the 11% rate that the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) demands from Moosa.
The company has retail stores in Johannesburg’s Rosebank Mall, Sandton and OR Tambo International Airport. “We want people to know that Africa is more than just masks and baskets,” says Moosa.
In the last three months of 2008, African Romance brought in approximately $650,745, followed by
$4.5 million in 2009 and $11.7 million in 2010.
WakeHold is the holding company for WakeGem, which owns the African Romance brand. The shareholders are the WakeGem Workers Trust, 5%, and the Gauteng Department of Economic Development, 30%. The stakeholders are GEDA and the IDC.
African Romance needs $13 to $19 million in investment in the next three years. This will go towards increasing its exports and setting up more stores in the continent and further afield.
African Romance has come a long way in development funding and will need deep pockets for its dream of listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) by 2015.
Doors and cheque books have not opened easily for Moosa and his vision. South African banks have not been a part of African Romance’s story. “South African banks are not builders… they are spoilt, want easy money and are not creative enough,” says Moosa.
It all comes down to investment. Is Africa’s richest province selling itself well enough?
The institution responsible for selling Gauteng to investors is GEDA. According to its acting CEO, Siphiwe Ngwenya, its financial system, large and industrialized economy, transport, infrastructure, natural resources and stability make it an ideal investment destination.
GEDA, which held the Gauteng Investor Conference in Johannesburg, in October, stands against the storm. In 2010, $247.2 million in investments flowed into South Africa’s Gauteng province. The target for 2011 is $260.3 million.
In these difficult times, it is going to take a lot of nerve and skill for Africa to lure a lot more Ippolitos from Europe to a hotel room in Gauteng.
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<h3>Cheer Up In 2012— It Is Going To Get Better</h3>
Political economist Paul Laudicina, the CEO of global management consultants AT Kearney, has worked on Capitol Hill in Washington—as Joe Biden’s chief of staff—and in Africa in the oil business. He believes the economic outlook for Africa in the new year may be brighter than expected.
<div id="attachment_257" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-257" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-257" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/7-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" />Paul Laudicina</div>
The idea of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is no stranger to Paul Laudicina. His ancestors stepped off the boat in New York in the 1920s, penniless and tired after a long journey from Palermo in Sicily. The immigrant family has spent most of the last century concentrating on education, climbing the economic ladder and acceptance.
“My parents wanted us to be more American than Micky Mantle (the New York Yankees baseball legend). We didn’t speak Italian in the house,” he chuckles.
Laudicina is upbeat about the prospect of Africa pulling itself up by its bootstraps.
“Eight out of 10 of the world’s fastest-growing economies are in Africa. Africa’s population will overtake that of China by 2025 and overtake India by 2050. In terms of population and resources, Africa is the last frontier and has great potential. You get Indian technology, Chinese manufacturing, Middle East capital and energy, plus African human and natural resources; put them all together and you have more economic power and more growth than any other part of the world,” he says.
Laudicina believes South Africa, which accounts for 18% of regional investment, is likely to strengthen its position when it comes to investment. He believes that when the new foreign direct investment rankings are published by his company at the end of the year, South Africa will improve on its 18th standing in the world.
“South Africa has the most hopeful and economic structures in the continent,” he says.
On the other side of the investment coin ?
“Business here is not going to come flocking unless people are prepared to take the human resources and train them into productive, income-earning, consuming people instead of protestors on the streets baying about income disparity.”

Selling The Place Of Gold

Manu Chandaria is no spring chicken, but he has a spring in his step. The 82-year-old chairman of the Comcraft Group has been on the regional economic radar screen for 10 years through his unflinching support for the East African Community—a common market with a combined population of more than 130 million and a GDP of $75 billion. He
<div id="attachment_240" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-240" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-240" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Manu1-4-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Manu Chandaria, Chairman of Comcraft Group</div>
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reasons—like free trade proponents—that pooling populations, skills, expertize and production can create the economies of scale and the huge markets that business craves. There’s even talk of the fledgling state, South Sudan, joining the EAC.
“Politics doesn’t put food on the table,” says Chandaria, touching the raw nerve that threatens the pace of EAC integration. Politics killed the first attempt in 1977, when Kenya’s then president, Jomo Kenyatta, fell out with his Tanzanian counterpart, Julius Nyerere, over whether to adopt capitalist or socialist policies. Chandaria has no such doubts.
“We need to help our people to better their lives. That can only be done if businesses have enough space to grow and expand. That’s how jobs are created, incomes improved and GDPs grown,” he says.
The business community views a robust regional economy as a trigger for productivity, economies of scale and competitiveness. It is a wonder why some Kenyan bureaucrats, legend has it, toasted the collapse of the idea with champagne more than 40 years ago.
The 21st century version of the EAC is fashioned along the lines of the European Union, which has monetary union of 27 member countries and one central bank. The EU is currently battling debt troubles among its key economies, like Greece, Italy and Spain, pushing analysts to speculate that EAC monetary union may mean more of the same trouble in Africa.
Richard Sezibera, the Rwanda-based secretary general of the EAC, says uncertainties created by the financial crisis in the EU—the biggest financier of the protocol in terms of funds and technical assistance—won’t affect the EAC.
“Although the East African Monetary Union (EAMU) has been patterned on the Euro Monetary Union, lessons drawn from the ongoing crisis and also the 2008 world financial crisis will ultimately shape it,” he says.
Chandaria, like Sezibera, is stubbornly optimistic, even if the dream of union remains about as elusive as democracy in some of the East African states.
“We are finding it very difficult,” he says with zeal. “Will it really work? That’s the question we were discussing at our regional forums. People are still Kenyan, Tanzanian or Ugandan. It can’t work like that. We need to get to a level where we are East African first, East African second, East African third and the rest can follow… You have to know your business and how to tackle the differences… Otherwise, you will be killed.”
There are plenty of flies in the ointment. Chandaria says Tanzania wants to be in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and EAC at the same time, while Uganda is fiercely protective of its markets against bigger and ferocious business rivals from Kenya. Kenya and Uganda are in COMESA, from which Tanzania pulled out a few years ago. Not so good for a budding economic bloc.
“It is not working the way we wanted. We are just creating unnecessary jobs for so many people instead of building institutions and teaching the people to get the best out of it, so we can get better GDP,” says Chandaria.
The EAC aims to improve earnings for member countries, but every country differs—politically, legally and culturally—making it hard for companies to operate cross-border businesses.
Even the EAC secretariat acknowledges this. “Following the completion of the ratification of the protocol on the common market, the complex and long march towards transforming the EAC region into a common or single market begins with resolve and fervor,” said EAC secretary general Juma Mwapachu during the launch on July 1, 2010. “It is important to underline the words ‘complex and long march’.”
The process is complex in terms of what is required to be undertaken at the levels of the partner states and in certain respects, at the level of the EAC itself. All five countries have a common external tariff; an identical tax applied to imports from outside the bloc, and they allow duty-free regional trade with the exception of Kenya, the largest and most advanced economy of the five. The common market aims to build on this and enable the free movement of people, capital and services, and abolish import duties.
The EAC’s ambitions go beyond pure economics. The plan is for the common currency in 2012 to set up the groundwork for a political federation by 2020. Yet the other member states worry that Kenya, which is the economic powerhouse of the five, could end up being the dominant player.
It’s easy to understand why Chandaria, the son of a former shop attendant who built the business empire, is so passionate about integration. A Kenyan-born entrepreneur who returned from studies abroad to take charge of the family business, Chandaria has worked in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. In the past 50 years, the Chandaria family has transformed a scrappy medium-ranked business into a major global player with some of the most coveted brands, including roofing iron sheets, electronics, software, kitchenware, pots and pans. He won’t give figures about the net worth—the businesses are jealously private—but simple calculation points to a conglomerate worth millions of dollars.
Comcraft has invested in steel rolling, aluminizing, galvanizing, color coating and profiling. The companies include Mabati Rolling Mills Ltd in Kenya, Aluminium Africa Ltd (Alaf Ltd) in Tanzania, Uganda Baati, Safintra Steel in Zambia, Safintra Steel in Mozambique and Safintra Steel in Malawi. The others are Safintra Johannesburg, Safintra Durban, Safintra Cape Town, Safal Steel in Cato Ridge near Durban and Midget Steel in Nigeria. The group also has a presence in the pipe and section manufacturing division in Insteel Ltd in Kenya, Alaf Ltd Tanzania, Uganda Baati and Hoech Pipe in Nigeria.
Chandaria, who steered Mabati Rolling Mills to one of the most successful companies in the Comcraft stable, says success has taken a concerted effort of family, understanding, higher education and vision in entrepreneurship. “It’s basically the principle of joint family,” he says, sipping herbal tea at his palatial home. “Zero multiplied by zero is zero, one multiplied by one is one; until you reach two, where two times two is four, which gives you a base for linear multiplicity of four times four to get sixteen and so on. We decided we want multiplicity.”
That’s his mathematical way of explaining how his family teamed, with his in-laws, to build a business empire—from the pots and pans to iron sheets to manufacturing, electronics and software. Not very many people manage such a feat. This Indian family from Savrashtra, Gurjarat, has proved that blood relations can also build a strong bond for business.
This is a big lesson for African entrepreneurs who often go it alone in business and fizzle out, or at best, start small and remain so. In Kenya, the Indian community dominates businesses: in retail, think Nakumatt Holdings owned by the Atul Shah family; in manufacturing, think edible oil maker Bidco, owned by Vimal Shah, who controls virtually the whole of Kenya’s industrial area portfolio in Nairobi and major towns.
When Manu Chandaria’s illiterate father came to Kenya 96 years ago, he had a simple mission: to earn 4,000 rupees and return to Gurjarat.
<div id="attachment_241" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-241" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-241" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Manu1-23-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Chandaria with Aruna, his wife of 56 years</div>
But after a period of super-high growth, almost all the low-hanging fruit is gone. Now the group is left with expanding its existing business lines and scouting for opportunities in emerging sectors like ICT.
Chandaria joined Kaluworks in 1951, alongside his brother, a food technologist, and two other siblings—a civil engineer and campus graduate. Then Kaluworks had 40 workers and a grocery supply business. “We decided that everybody was going to work hard, from Monday to Saturday, and if there was maintenance on Sunday, we worked on Sunday. From 40 people, in five years’ time, we had 500 people. That cooperation planted the seeds of partnership that expanded the workforce to 800 people by 1960.”
Chandaria was sent to Uganda, the only country that was known to be rich in those days. There was a joke in town that Uganda would earn, and Kenya would spend, by selling them products. So he opened an office there and undercut the competition.
The dawn of independence in the early sixties opened new investment opportunities in newly autonomous states, and Comcraft went on a spree. It ventured its iron sheet business in Tanzania (Mabati Ltd), Zambia (Galco), Uganda (Bati Ltd) and Ethiopia (Ethiopian Steel), making it a pan-African business in just five years. “What we knew we duplicated, triplicated, four times, five times…” he says.
The group’s strength is in teamwork and building multiple plants in various markets. This is then boosted by Chandaria’s shrewdness in creating strong and loyal management teams. But he admits the group’s leadership is not always able to attend to difficult situations in time, leading to losses or lost opportunities. The company has also been slow in training enough numbers of management teams for existing and future expansion.
In 1953, Chandaria proposed a charity foundation, but his father initially rejected the idea. “You lived too much in America; we are not Ford Foundation or Chrysler,” said his father.
Today, Chandaria’s foundation is easily the biggest and one of the oldest charity organizations in the country. Some of its notable contributions in Kenya include Chandaria School of Business at United States International University (USIU); Chandaria Business Innovation and Incubation Centre, recently launched at Kenyatta University; and the Chandaria Emergency Centre at Nairobi Hospital, to mention but three. The foundation has done lots in helping the poor, in rebuilding houses and schools of those displaced in the post-election violence, and in educating bright children from poor families.
Philanthropy is the in-thing for the super-rich these days, with US investment guru Warren Buffet urging fellow billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charity. In most of Africa, it is manifested mainly in corporate social responsibility—planting a tree here or donating a cheque there.
“If you can’t give what you have—experience, knowledge, philosophy,” Chandaria says, “I don’t know what else you can give. I can make a swimming pool of whisky, but I don’t drink. I have compassion for others. I have no hobbies because my game is to serve. I walk in slums and children come to play in my compound.”
As politicians struggle to fit their interests in the East African frame, it is clear that to achieve integration, and urgently so, the region could need more Chandarias.

Hope Springs Eternal For The EU Of East Africa

It was a Friday afternoon, June 4 2010, just a few days before one of the biggest days in African history. Flags were on the streets and the mood was festive in the countdown to the 2010 World Cup—the first time the greatest tournament on earth had kicked off on Africa’s red soil.
Mandla Sibeko strolled, in a mellow mood, towards Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, happy in the knowledge that by the opening ceremony on June 11 his job would be done—the end of years of struggle with the rigorous rules of the soccer governing body, FIFA. An angry phone call shattered this mellow mood and ushered in Sibeko’s worst day.
<div id="attachment_235" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-235" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-235" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/282-18_1-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" />Mandla Sibeko thinking about his worst day</div>
Sibeko was used to struggle. He was born in Johannesburg, the youngest of six children, and grew up in poverty near Nelspruit in South Africa’s north-eastern Mpumalanga province; his first school lesson was held under a tree in the village of Kwaggafontein and the floors of the classrooms were made of cow dung, for want of concrete.
“Whenever I smell cattle dung, I think of those early school days,” says Sibeko.
Luckily for Sibeko, his mother was a domestic worker for a wealthy white family in Johannesburg and they offered to pay for his education.
“They have moved to Australia and I sent them an email the other day saying that decision changed my life. They wrote back to say they were proud to do so. It is amazing how one decision can change your life,” says Sibeko with a smile.
From the age of eight, Sibeko went to the elite St Martin’s School in Johannesburg, followed by a degree in law at Wits University. By the age of 24 he had set up his own business, making TV programs for the SABC. In  2007, he became the first person to open a Pick n Pay supermarket—once a preserve of the suburbs—in Soweto.
“In all these businesses I fell and got up many times. Soweto business is the hardest money you will ever earn, the customers are so demanding. I was working from 5am to midnight every day. We wanted to prove you could do business in the townships and we doubled our turnover in the first year.”
Sibeko became a shareholder in Identity and Tone Digital signage companies and then, while still in his late 20s, came the offer of a key job in the staging of the first ever World Cup in Africa. In 2008, British company Icon, which had helped to stage three World Cups, made Sibeko the CEO, along with a 40% stake, of their South African subsidiary. The job was to oversee the signage for the entire tournament. It was a huge job and Sibeko also saw it as a way to strike a blow for Africa.
“In my work I wanted to tackle this Afro pessimism—we dealt with people who doubted us. People were asking us: “do you really know what you are doing?”
The job entailed making sure all was correct on the flags, buses, hotels, signposts and banners at the country’s 10 World Cup stadiums.
“It was painful because you have to think for people. Everyone has an opinion, the Local Organizing Committee has an opinion, FIFA has an opinion; no one is right or wrong. Signage alone is a problem. Sometimes it arrives and is the wrong size and you have to send it back to Bloemfontien on a truck. Print quality can be poor, colors wrong and the position of the logo can be wrong. FIFA is very fussy—it’s their way or no way. They want it to be done better than the last World Cup.”
So Sibeko oversaw a rigorous system of checks. There was a long list of checks before the signs got to the printers; at the printers there was another check; then the signs were checked again before they were loaded onto trucks and yet again at their destination.
All this counted for nothing at 2pm on June 4 2010 when a top FIFA official screamed down the phone at Sibeko, just hours before an inspection team was due to tour Green Point Stadium.
“She was furious. There was no kindness about it, it was: ‘you guys have messed it up!’
The terrible truth was the misspelt word: “Welcme” hanging over the main entrance to the stadium. It wasn’t a welcoming sight for Sibeko.
“I don’t know what happened. It was 20 to 30 meters tall. This was a huge mistake. The A team of the World Cup was coming to inspect and what we had promised was not ready. We freaked out. I felt cold. We all expected this day. This was our do or die moment, we had worked for nearly four years and now we were going to mess it up because of a missing ‘o’.”
The crisis could have been costly. From this moment on, in the balance was a multimillion-dollar contract. Sibeko had to act fast.
“I called all the stadiums to check out if they had the same problem. It was difficult to find people quickly. At that point I was very anxious, I wanted to know whether we had made more mistakes along the way. I started to think about whether flags were facing the right way up when Sepp Blatter drives past. I froze, I didn’t know what to do. I am normally a very calm person, but on that day my staff said they had never seen me like that.”
The next step was to call a printer in Cape Town to make a new sign. It wasn’t easy as many World Cup service providers had lots of work, so it was easy for them to say no. Otherwise, Sibeko would have had to rope in a Johannesburg printer to get a new bulky banner flown down to Cape Town. For the first time in the day, lady luck smiled on Sibeko and a Cape Town printer agreed.
Then there was the problem of getting the huge banner up at the stadium before the inspectors arrived on the following day. It was already dark when the truck pulled up with the banner. So, by poor light, a team of 10 workers scaled ladders.
“They had problems because it was dark. They started at 8pm and
finished at midnight. We had another 10 people on the ground from my company and many of them were ready to walk because they were overstretched and felt they were not appreciated. Not everyone felt the importance of the biggest sporting event in the world. I said to them that I understood they were all under pressure. I talked about patriotism; this was their country, I told them, they had to keep going because they were doing this for their country. Maybe Mandela would have been proud of me!”
Crisis averted, thanks to elbow grease and a friendly Cape Town printer, but for Sibeko, his worst day put a damper on the greatest show on earth.
“That was the end of my torture, but then it became a difficult process because you had let down the client in the closing stages. When everyone was celebrating we were suffering. The opening I didn’t enjoy because I was wondering what else is going to go wrong. As much as the nation was celebrating, I was suffering, I was just wondering when it was all going to come to an end!”
Sibeko went to Brazil earlier this year to see how the country was preparing for the next World Cup.
“I just thought South Africans undervalue themselves. Brazil is so well marketed and yet it doesn’t deliver as much as South Africa does. I have to say we are too hard on ourselves. Stadiums are not going up at all and secondly, there was no sign of commitment from people, there was just a lot of talk. It will be interesting to see how fast they get up to speed.”
Mandla Sibeko offers his World Cup experience to the Brazilians. He hopes, by contrast to 2010, his experience will be as beautiful as the game itself. That would be welcme; sorry, welcome!

Welcme? To Err Is Human, To Leave Out An “O” Is A Disaster

<h3>Wangari Maathai</h3>
<div id="attachment_231" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-231" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-231 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Wanjira-011-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Wangari Maathai in Karura Forest which her mother helped save from bulldozer</div>
<h3>Kenyan Environmental and  Political Activist</h3>
It was Professor Wangari Maathai’s personality, anyway, to linger on the dark side, checking under every rock, determined to know the worst that may happen, so as not to be taken by surprise. This was largely instinctual, developed from years of battling the powerful and the mighty who dared disrespect the environment.
About a year before Wangari Maathai’s death in September 25, 2011 she was diagnosed with an aggressive strain of ovarian cancer, immediately put on medication and chemotherapy with the hope this combination could at least prolong her life. Her daughter, Wanjira Mathai, remembers the professor as a strong woman; a selfless person who was incapable of abandoning her passion, even as the energies of the day were abandoning her.
Speaking to Mathai, it turns out that the woman who convinced thousands to plant trees; blocked forest destruction and inspired millions of African girls to think big, worked during her cancer-ravaged final year as if it were another day at the office.
Chemotherapy would knock Maathai into misery, slow her down, but not deter her. The ecological warrior had a grand dream for the Green Belt Movement (GBM), a body she formed three decades ago to plant trees and help village women make a somewhat decent living.
“She slowed down deliberately because she had to take care of herself. There was an element of taking things a lot easier; resting a lot more and that was important,” says Mathai of her mother, her boss and her colleague at the GBM, where she is the head of international affairs.
Mathai, a holder of two masters degrees in public health and business administration from Emory University, and a close confidant of her mother, knows why she looked fit. Except for doctors, family and a few close friends, few knew she had cancer. Many where suprised when her death was announced on a chilly Monday morning.
“She was gifted,” says Mathai, explaining why her mother looked younger than a 71-year-old. “She had good genes. She was very active—a lot of people may not know that she exercised a lot; she walked a lot and she was very healthy—six in the morning, she was in a gymnasium almost every day.”
As early as April, Wangari Maathai approved a five-year-action-plan for GBM. Despite the cancer, she was very active in its initial implementation, according to GBM employees, who have now vowed to elevate GBM to new heights.
“Our singular plan is to implement that plan. That is what she endorsed; that is what she wanted us to do; and it is really clear it is very strong and basically it can be done by those of us who are there,” says Mathai, the second of the Wangari’s three children.
Since her death, she says: “There is a sense of loss and there also is a sense of resolve. People feel like we have to make her proud. And that we must.”
President Mwai Kibaki announced the plans to launch the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi in 2010.
Since the approval of the action plan, several co-workers said Maathai spent much time organizing meetings with various donor groups—her last international travel, Mathai says, was a trip they made to the French Development Agency conference in Paris.
“She was sick, but still she was fit enough to attend the conference,” Mathai explains in Karura Forest, a 1,400 hectare forest that her mother fought to protect from developers, who, with the government’s blessing, were about to take it.
“Her focus and her passion was the Green Belt Movement and the Wangari Maathai Institute. She spent a lot of time making sure that we had a complete strategic plan; we had a clear direction for the development of the institute. And as you know, in her wishes, she said she wanted the Wangari Maathai Institute to be her final resting place, so her ashes will be interred there when the institute is finished,” says the 40-year-old Mathai.
Millions across the world have come to respect Wangari Maathai and her boundless courage; through her daughter, I discovered a well of kindness and compassion; both for the environment and all those who inhabit it.
“Selflessness is such a rare thing. In leadership you need that; if you are going to make change you have to be selfless; it’s not about you,” ends Mathai.

“If you are going to make change you have to be selfless”

<h3>ALIKO DANGOTE</h3>
<div id="attachment_224" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-224" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-224" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_7510-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Aliko Dangote</div>
<h3>Founder and president of Dangote Group</h3>
As Africa’s richest man and business warrior, Aliko Dangote traverses the world leaving little time for interviews. He recently brought himself a $45 million Bombardier jet to save time. In May, Dangote was in China to sign a deal with Sinoma International Engineering Company. This deal means 10 new cement plants across the African continent, at an estimated cost of $3.9 billion, in just over three years’ time.
In this rare encounter, at the Transcor Hilton in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, he appeared relaxed, passionate about Africa, as well as pleased to be nominated as a Person of the Year by FORBES AFRICA.
“I feel great about it. I consider the recognition an honour and appreciation of what we are trying to do in the private sector. One thing people usually don’t understand is that what the Dangote Group is trying to achieve is something that our political leaders have failed to achieve in terms of reaching Africa economically. We are now in 14 African countries and wherever there’s an opportunity on the continent, we are very keen to explore it,” he says.
These are busy times for the Dangote Group, next year it plans to move into petrochemicals.
“It’s really a green area in Nigeria but we believe it’s an opportunity provided by the country’s endowment of gas,” he says.
“In our cement business, we are expanding massively on the continent, looking to raise our annual production capacity on the continent to about 60 million metric tons. Our target is to be number one in terms of profitability. In terms of agriculture, we have a sugar refinery where we process imported raw sugar, but we are looking at backward integration that will lead to the employment of 50,000 Nigerians. Going forward, from 2012 to 2015 we intend to invest $7 billion in Africa.”
It is the fruit of decades of risk taking that began with his cement plant back in Obajana, in Kogi State, 220km south west of where we are sitting. Dangote took the risk and invested in a five million tons plant – at a time when the entire Nigerian production was a mere 1.2 million tons.
“We saw the growth potential of the market and took the risk betting that the more we produce, the more the demand. I recall that my late friend and former CEO of Guarentee Trust Bank, Tayo Aderinokun, said that I was taking a big risk, but I believed that it will pay off. Today, Dangote Cement alone has a production capacity of 20 million tons and the rest of the market has eight million tons and we are starting another project to add a fresh 9 million tons in the next 60 days,” he says.
The impact of the Dangote Group has also been felt in the Lagos Stock Market. Last October, the group listed on an exchange erstwhile dominated by the banks. Dangote Cement is now one of the largest capitalized companies on the bourse, accounting for a quarter of the stock market.
Dangote believes passionately this is the time for Africa.
“I personally think there will be another recession because Europe will not be able to handle Greece and Italy at the same time. But Africa has the advantage of high growth rates on low debt. It’s the reverse in Europe. As a result, I think it’s only a matter of time for more investors to shift focus to Africa, which is more profitable. Money has no color and so investors will be attracted more to this continent because of its potential. If Lafarge of Blue Circle were more aggressive about investing in Africa in the past, Dangote would not have grown to this level because they could have blocked that opportunity with the cash and scale they have. Today, our Nigerian operation alone is a $14 billion business that we never dreamt would happen,” he says.
Dangote inspires many entrepreneurs in Africa, we ask whether there are many other investors like him in the continent.
“There are people that have cash but not heart and guts. They know the potential, but think of the headaches. But the truth is that nothing is easy in life. I think there can be even bigger companies than Dangote. It’s all about guts. Ten years ago, it was difficult to imagine our company achieving a valuation of $1 billion… I never in my wildest dreams at the beginning thought I would achieve 1% of what we’ve achieved. Nothing is impossible,” he says.
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If you want to be rich in Africa the time is now

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<h3>SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI</h3>
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-221" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/FA-2011-Dec-Jan-OFC-229x300.jpg" alt="" width="229" height="300" />
<h3>Governor of the Central Bank  of Nigeria</h3>
In a country plagued by corruption, fraud and money laundering, no-one had expected such a radical, and by his own admission, “sudden” and “very risky” move. A mere two months into the job of Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi fired, in one fell swoop, five CEOs of the country’s leading banks for mismanagement and corruption.
In a place where those who end the careers of others get theirs abruptly ended too, Sanusi, as some of his critics retorted at the time, had gone too far; he had overplayed his hand. His answer: “Well they should tell me exactly where I should have stopped. People have stolen money and run banks to the ground. Was I supposed to leave them?”
Considering the fact that he knew some of the executives personally, and the initial five institutions that were affected by his action accounted for a big chunk of the country’s bank deposits—his move was to be a litmus test for the resilience of Nigeria’s financial services industry, to say nothing of his own character and principles. But when further investigations revealed that at least a third of the country’s banks were being toyed with, he was given more reason to put public interest before his and “stand for those who couldn’t stand for themselves”—even if that meant “taking difficult decisions that were painful” to him personally.
Sanusi would later tell pan-African television network, CNBC Africa, that although the three weeks he spent arduously contemplating the axing of the bank executives was “the most difficult part of my life”, he was “pleasantly surprised” at the amount of support he subsequently got from the people of Nigeria, across the board and including the country’s politicians, many of whom are known to be weak-willed and dependent on business people to bankroll their lives.
But if politicians and Bretton Woods thought that because they had supported Sanusi, he was in their pockets, they were so wrong. In Sanusi’s book, it soon became apparent, there are no permanent friends.
The legislators discovered this some months ago when Sanusi told a public gathering that 25.4% of the nation’s overhead cost was spent on Parliament, something many surmised as a veiled criticism of the way the country’s budget was allocated. Furious with him for “deliberately inciting” the populace, the lawmakers summoned him to Parliament and after a lot of tongue-lashing asked him to apologize.  Sanusi stuck to his guns. He told the politicians: “If I do not believe that I am wrong, I do not apologize.”
A month later Sanusi butted heads, again. This time with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a suggestion that Nigeria should devalue its currency. He slated them for advice that was “simply not based on sound economic logic”.
When the FORBES AFRICA team informed Sanusi that he had been short listed for the Person of the Year, we asked him whether, after having stepped on so many toes in such a short space of time, there was ever a time he considered, well… er…taking it easy?
“No, I never did,” he said pointedly, “on the contrary—I sometimes thought I didn’t step on enough toes. I think that part of my responsibility as a Nigerian is to ask what are the things wrong in our society and that need to be changed and what can I do in my position to change it.”
Change has indeed come to Africa’s most populous nation—thanks, in no small measure, to Sanusi among others.
“His quick and firm actions likely prevented a systemic banking crisis,” the IMF notes in its latest report on Nigeria.
“The core function of a central bank is to provide financial system stability, exchange rate stability, and price stability. Therefore, to have been able to provide stability in the last two years when the rest of the global economy has been in turmoil has been the principal achievement,” Sanusi says.
“Everything we’ve done in terms of the recapitalization of the banks, mergers and acquisitions, governance reforms etc are all aimed at financial stability. We’ve been able to do that while achieving stability in the exchange rate and keeping inflation relatively under control. Obviously, we’ve had volatility in interest rates and exchange rates because you can’t have price, exchange rate and interest rate control at the same time. But I think we’ve achieved our core mandate.”
Business confidence has surged and Africa’s third-largest economy is expected to grow above trend, with favorable medium-term prospects. A 7% real GDP growth is relatively high, even though it is below the double-digit levels the country requires if it is to become one of the world’s top 20 economies.
“It’s just an arithmetic fact that at current growth rates we’ll take over from South Africa in terms of share size. But this is a country of 167 million people and growing and 7% growth at the moment does not improve the welfare of the people of Nigeria and we need a higher rate of growth than we have at the moment,” Sanusi says: “The focus should not be on GDP, but GDP per capita, human development indicators and the quality of life of the population. Inclusive growth is the challenge.
Double-digit growth will be a function of the right policies, he says: “We already have 7% growth without power and infrastructure. Growth that has come largely from telecoms, wholesale and retail trade and the good fortune of rainfall for agriculture. It’s a no brainer that if we begin to move, for instance, agriculture production towards global averages we can probably double growth in that sector and build manufacturing by fixing power and infrastructure, moving from 7% to 12 or 13%.”
Born on July 31, 1961, of a public servant father who headed the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1960s, Sanusi has BSc and MSc degrees.
Between 1983 and 1985 he taught economics at his alma mater, Ahmadu Bello University, before joining the private sector.
He was the CEO of First Bank when, some day in late February 2009, he received a call from the then Nigerian President, Umaru Yar’Adua.
“We spent about 15 minutes chatting about family,” Sanusi recalls. But it wasn’t until May 8 of the same year that Sanusi got another call, this time the head of state informing him of his wish to make him the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. It came as a big shock to Sanusi, who had never met his president before and thought you had to lobby to get such jobs.
Little did he know that two years on, he would have behind him such accolades as World Central Bank Governor of the Year 2011, Sub-Saharan Central Bank Governor of The Year 2011, African Central Bank Governor of The Year 2010 and People’s Person of The Year 2010.
He is most likely to arrive at the Forbes Africa Person of the Year awards ceremony in Lagos wearing a bow tie, for he refuses to wear a conventional tie. A bow tie, he says, is “cute” and speaks to his “instinctive sense of being different”. What else would you expect from a banker who never runs with the herd.

Tag: December 2011

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