Aluko &amp; Oyebode, Nigeria’s formidable commercial law firm, at No.1 Murtala Mohammed Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria, is unusually empty for a Saturday.
It gives one enough time to admire its plush interiors. Describing it would be taking a page out of a John Grisham novel.
The imposing building houses three floors of prime real estate in the heart of the city and on one of the most expensive strips in Lagos.
As you walk in, the blood-red walls are juxtaposed with grey metallic fixtures and fittings. The décor of the building is reminiscent of past cultures of various African countries.
Each floor is delightfully curated with Afro-centric artefacts and in the middle floor of the building is the firm’s seat of power, the office of its leader, Gbenga Oyebode.
For a sweltering Nigerian afternoon, Oyebode is dressed like no other in a 100-mile radius of the elite Victoria Island hub of Lagos: in a two-piece power suit, his signature outfit. Today, it is in black, accented by a deep blue tie.
Oyebode is cordial and pleasant with the team as he takes his position on the ground floor for the first set of pictures for the FORBES AFRICA cover.
He is the Chairman of Aluko &amp; Oyebode, one of the largest integrated law firms in Nigeria with over 70 lawyers and three offices in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. 
The firm provides a comprehensive range of specialist legal services to a highly diversified clientele including top-tier Nigerian, international and multinational clients. In his capacity as chairman, Oyebode coordinates the various practice areas of the firm.
Described as a consummate dealmaker who has received plaudits from clients and peers alike for his corporate acumen, Oyebode’s areas of expertise cover energy and natural resources, power projects, foreign investment and privatization, telecommunications and project finance. 
It is not just his formal dressing that is unusual.
Law firms in the country, family-owned by tradition, almost never run their firms like well-oiled machines providing solutions for several sectors at the same time. Oyebode was one of the pioneers of this concept. And it has not been an easy journey.
<blockquote>&#8220;It exposed me to these great minds I read about in the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and I said very quickly to myself that I wanted to be like them,”</blockquote>
The 59-year-old spent the early years of his life musing over the promises of life in the civil service, a path taken by his father. It was a stable and comfortable job and one had guaranteed employment as well as a good salary. But he was compelled to ponder the possibilities of a riskier career.
“In those days, being a civil servant was the dream of every young person due to the stability of the job. However, as I started reading law, it became clear to me that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and for a lawyer that means opening a law firm,” says Oyebode as he takes a break from the photoshoot to begin our interview.
And that is exactly what he did. But not just any law firm, he wanted to leave behind a dynasty of great lawyers whose work would carry on long after he was gone.
If he had worked for any Nigerian law firm, his future would not have been guaranteed.
<div id="attachment_36614" style="width: 855px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36614" class="wp-image-36614 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-845x1024.jpg" alt="" width="845" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-845x1024.jpg 845w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-300x364.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-600x727.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-247x300.jpg 247w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348-768x931.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8493-Edit-e1530521149348.jpg 1300w" sizes="(max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px" />Gbenga Oyebode is Nigeria&#8217;s formidable legal mastermind. Photos by Kelechi Amadi-Obi.</div>
“The history of Nigerian law firms in the early 80s and some of them today was that they were set up by great minds essentially to be kept in the family. Their children went to law school and even if you were a great lawyer who worked with them, they make it very clear that you shouldn’t be thinking about your future at the law firm, because they were going to hand over the business to their children. So I understood that it was not going to work for me,” says Oyebode.
At well over six feet, Oyebode has a towering presence in any room, yet his calm and cordial disposition immediately sets you at ease and makes you feel as though you are having a conversation with an old friend.
Sitting in the conference room of his eponymous firm, Oyebode recalls a series of events that shaped the course of his career.
Like the time he was going to university and struggled to get guidance from mentors who would have advised him on the best path to take to become a successful legal entrepreneur.
The prominent Nigerian lawyers at the time were not strictly lawyers who worked at the firm but were mostly also involved in other professions.
According to Oyebode, the earliest nationalists of Nigerian politics were all lawyers, who used the law that they had learned abroad to change the system in Nigeria to gain independence and push the envelope against colonialism.
That would later become the real motivation for Oyebode to become a lawyer. For him, the ability to use law to change the political system with democracy or creating value was a calling he wanted to be a part of.
After graduating from the University of Ife in 1979, he immediately went to the Nigerian Law School and thereafter, completed his postgraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the United States (US).
“What UPenn did for me was show me that there was a different way to do things and that the world was bigger than the opportunities I had in Nigeria. One of the most significant things about going to an Ivy League institution is how they draw from great minds around. So we went to conferences where great minds in the capital markets were and it was a game-changer. It exposed me to these great minds I read about in the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and I said very quickly to myself that I wanted to be like them,” recalls Oyebode.
His journey is a textbook case study on how to systematically build a business step by step. He eschews convention. From the minute he finished primary school, his father signed up to a subscription of Reader’s Digest that was to become his monthly diet.
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“He thought that it was important for us to read. He said it was important for us to understand what happened around the world. So one of the things that I do continually even today is I read the Reader’s Digest every month. It shaped my view of the world and created for me a situation where I learned more about the things that were happening around me and I was not limited to Nigeria,” says Oyebode.
His tenure as an associate at White &amp; Case, one of the world’s leading law firms, helped him visualize the type of law firm he wanted to build of his own.
“American law firms were the type of law firms I thought we could replicate in Nigeria. Their vision for building big partnerships and for those partnerships to survive named partners was impressive. So it was very clear where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I worked with White &amp; Case for a year and I said to myself it was time to come back home,” says Oyebode.
Home had changed a whole lot while he was away. Nigeria had returned to democracy after years of military rule. The business environment was growing and there was a need for competent people to push the envelope and help with the development of law and business.
Furthermore, there were less than 10,000 lawyers admitted to practice law and Oyebode decided he would rather be one of 10,000 in Nigeria than one of a million in the US.
Soon after making that decision, disaster struck. No sooner had he returned to Nigeria did the crude oil market collapse and the Nigerian economy took a dip for the worse. The democratic government that had motivated Oyebode to come back was very quickly removed in a coup d&#8217;état in 1983.
“Before we knew it, the [Muhammadu] Buhari government was in power. To make matters worse, the naira had collapsed and the country was looking at a structural adjustment program with the World Bank. So contrary to my plans, things changed very quickly. I couldn’t go back to the US and I had to make do with things in Nigeria,” says Oyebode.
But where there are clouds, there is also a silver lining. Oyebode chose to keep faith and stick it out. He applied to work for the Gulf Oil Company, which later merged with Chevron, and spent two years learning about the oil and gas industry.
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“That was very instructive because it gave me an opportunity to work in an industry, which was Nigeria’s biggest foreign exchange earner. I essentially cut my teeth working in Nigeria’s oil industry. I saw through the merger of Gulf and Chevron and then decided it was time to go out and do my own thing.”
In 1985, Oyebode went into partnership with friends and started his first law firm 
Ajumogobia, Okeke, Oyebode &amp; Aluko. After eight years of success, the firm was dissolved due to internal challenges. The string of such incidents, be it the country’s economic downturn or disagreements with partners, have all contributed to the success story Oyebode is today.
“What is impressive about Oyebode is his calmness and composure in times of crisis. He has the ability to look beyond that problem and says ‘how do we move on from this and get to the solution’,” says Tunde Folawiyo, Managing Director of Yinka Folawiyo Group in Nigeria.
That steadfastness has been an invaluable trait for Oyebode over the years.
He went on to establish Aluko &amp; Oyebode with his other partner. Perpetual wins translated into mammoth personal gains for the legal mastermind.
Oyebode’s is also the story of a smart entrepreneur who, spurred by the increase in the proliferation of Western companies in Nigeria, spotted an opportunity in corporate law and has methodically worked to cash in on it.
He is currently advising on the Brass LNG Project, a joint venture between NNPC, TOTAL, Conoco Philips and Agip for the construction of a $3.5 billion Liquefied Natural Gas plant. He has also advised on key transactions like the $1.275 billion financing of the Exxon Mobil Natural Gas Liquid II Project, the $1.06 billion financing of trains four and five of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Plant Expansion Project and the $3.5 billion financing of the NNPC and Mobil Producing Unlimited Satellite Oil Field Project. He sits on the boards of MTN Nigeria, Nestle Nigeria and CFAO, among many others.
“Corporate law was something I was good at. It’s something that is dependent on your network and it is something that comes naturally to me. At White &amp; Case and at Gulf Oil, that was my forte. I had invested a significant amount of my time around that so I was able to very quickly develop as a good oil and gas lawyer,” says Oyebode.
His wife, Aisha, attests to this. “What I admire most about Gbenga is he is very kind and warm and he is a people’s person. I do not know anybody that doesn’t like Gbenga.”
It was what Oyebode did next that distinguished him from his peers.
“One of the people that I studied a lot was Chief Chris Ogunbanjo. He ran the biggest law firms in town and was a lawyer who represented all the multinationals and was a lawyer who got involved in the businesses he represented. So when I came back [to Nigeria], I saw his model as one that I could emulate. I saw that he was able to achieve his objective, which was essentially run a significant law firm and become the advisor of the biggest corporates in the market as well as the repository of knowledge of what it means to work in Nigeria,” says Oyebode.
And that was to become Oyebode’s operating style over the next two decades. His modus operandi was simple.
Find opportunities, which he could maximize, and provide professional services and legal advice to top-tier corporate clients and where there was an opportunity, take a chunk of the business.
“One of the things as an entrepreneur that you tend to look at is opportunities around you, so long as those opportunities don’t divert your from your chosen path. If you ask me what I want to be known as, I would say a lawyer first, then an investor,” he says.
Oyebode sits on boards of companies that he has invested in as well as boards that he has been invited to join due to his significant expertise in corporate Nigeria.
<div id="attachment_36622" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36622" class="wp-image-36622 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-1024x684.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="684" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/DSC8532-Edit.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Photo by Kelechi Amadi-Obi</div>
The last two decades have seen a veritable boom in the business. For Oyebode, the key is passion for what you do.
“I am driven to build a big firm. We have 85 associates in three offices. There are 16 partners in the firm across the different practice areas that you expect a full service law firm to have, from legislation to corporate law to intellectual property, to risk and governance. So these are all key sectors that are sectors for growth of the Nigerian economy. The rationale is building a legacy that is driven by return,” says Oyebode.
Ever the opportunist, Oyebode is also looking to capitalize on the growth in demand of global companies looking for local partners in the real estate sector. He has a two-hotel deal with the Fairmont Group to establish hotels in Lagos and Abuja. Given the size in the number of tourists and business people in the country, Oyebode believes there is tremendous growth opportunities in this sector.
“The view is that there is still a gap around the hospitality business in Lagos. I go to Accra and I see the Kempinski and Movenpick hotels and I know that if Accra can do it then Lagos certainly has significant scope to develop hotels. Abuja only has the Hilton.”
But it has not all been smooth sailing. No sooner had he started his second stint at a law firm that tragedy struck.
“Life is about tripping and falling and learning from mistakes, pulling your strengths and moving on. My partner, Bankole Aluko, had a mild illness and called in sick for a couple of days. I decided to pay him a visit after work and on my way there, I was told he had passed away suddenly. It was a big shock because we had built everything together and most of the lawyers that joined us did so because of our strength as a firm. I had the corporate law expertise and he was a litigation expert. I thought it was all over at the point,” says Oyebode.
It was dark times for Oyebode.
“In those days it was very difficult to get clients. They came to you because they knew you and your reputation so it was very personality-driven. Today, clients look at your brand and your track record. So losing Bankole both as a dear friend and a professional was devastating.”
He vowed to continue the legacy they had started together and leave his name on the business as a named partner, which still stands today. These days, Oyebode is more interested in giving back. He mentors the next generation and is finding ways to give back. He has also turned his attention from corporate boards to philanthropy boards and actively seeks out opportunities to contribute to the community.
On the issue of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC) fight to retrieve Nigeria’s stolen loot, which is estimated to be billions of dollars from state coffers, Oyebode offers some practical advice.
“My concern about Nigeria is not the lack of law or policy but always about execution. I think we have a robust legal system, we have laws and policies in place and we have a strong civil service. Do people obey the law around the world? Yes, and that is because they are afraid of sanctions. So if you do not obey the law or sanctions, then you pay the price. So our problem is a lack of execution of good policy, inconsistent application of the laws and sometimes, we have allowed federal character and the process of rotating positions to trump skill and expertise so therefore mediocrity is able to rise to the very top.”
But that is an ongoing fight, which Oyebode believes will not be solved overnight. Presently, his focus is on leveraging his expertise as one of the most formidable and accomplished legal minds to add value and give back to Nigeria.
His legal firm is a victim of its own success. And this is a happy problem to have.
&nbsp;
Herbert Wigwe, the CEO Access Bank, one of Nigeria’s top banking institutions, calls Oyebode one of the strongest legal minds, not just in Nigeria but also across the world.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-36617 size-thumbnail alignleft" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Herbert_big-e1530520980422-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Herbert_big-e1530520980422-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Herbert_big-e1530520980422-100x100.jpg 100w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
“And I say this because I have a strong personal relationship with him, apart from the fact that in Nigeria, he runs the strongest corporate law office. The existence of what is a modern Access Bank would never have happened but for people like Gbenga&#8230;.All of these attributes have led him to sit on most of the large corporate boards in the country…Saying Gbenga is the new face of business in Africa is not something that is far-fetched; it is something that he has proven over and over again in his career.”

DSC8546-Edit

The Tall Lawyer, Investor And Philanthropist In A Power Suit

On a cool April afternoon in Johannesburg, we are at 4th Avenue in Parkhurst – a charming suburb with stylish resto-bars, Afr0-chic boutiques and eateries spilling on to the streets – for a rather heady experience in the middle of the day.
Every tipple, every bit of trivia is crucial for this entrepreneur on the block. At the Bottega Café, which gets full on weekends and most weeknights, owner Saverio Cardillo is always present to offer customers a hands-on experience and bespoke tastings of whisky.
He pulls up a chair and gets talking animatedly about the bottles of the fermented beverage that imperviously fill the glass showcases lining all the walls of his café.
For starters, he says there are two ways to spell it – and that could be a conversation starter at any party. The Irish spell it ‘whiskey’ and the Scots ‘whisky’.
“I call it the heaven journey. It is a little point that no one knows about. Every single person that walks in here and does not know about it, they walk in and say ‘wow!’ because it is like a little onion, that you can just exfoliate all these layers,” says Cardillo.
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The restaurant is small and intimate but the umpteen bottles of whisky in every crevice and the cabinets behind you, make it akin to a distillery, minus the bulky barrels.
Cardillo’s love for whisky started only over eight years ago when he was first gifted a Glen Ord by one of his suppliers.
“I tasted it and it was phenomenal. That is how I got into single malts and started dabbling in all the Ireland malts&#8230;”
A South African with Italian heritage, Cardillo says he has a palate for Scottish whisky. And for this interview too, whisky-tasting is a prelude.
He gets us to taste the Pogues Irish Whiskey, which is very gentle, soft and easy. My colleague tasted the Jameson Distillery Edition with the orange, brown sugar, ginger, peach and salt taste.
As a first-time whisky-drinker, I understood that not all whisky tastes bad, thanks to Cardillo, who knows how to pick the right taste for different palates.
“This is what it’s all about. People come in, sit down and drink their whisky and they don’t get intimidated when they come to my restaurant,” he says.
The Bottega Whiskey Club, which he started in 2013, boasts of over 2,000 members, mostly from the financial sector, lured to the club through word of mouth.
“We have four types of clients – those that know nothing about whisky and we try and educate you and try and accommodate your palate. Then we get the guys that have been to Scotland and have been collecting for years and years and only buy limited editions. Then you get the guys who buy whisky to stock up their bars. Then you also get the collectors that will drink their whisky,” he says.
The restaurant has over 700 malts, which they use for their whisky-tasting events. They pair the whisky with cigars and sometimes come up with different food pairings.
Surprisingly, for a self-taught whisky expert, Cardillo says that he is not a collector.
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“I am not like that. I am the type that needs to know what is in that bottle. I would hate to die one day knowing that somebody is going to be drinking my collection not knowing what was in that bottle,” he says.
But for those that do like to collect their whisky as a form of investment, Cardillo believes they could earn significant returns.
“We have bottles that we bought for R500 ($40) or R600 ($49) and now they are worth a lot of money. The increase in value of the whisky depends on if the distillery closes down. If they are no longer making any more of it, then the demand for that bottle of whisky increases,” he says.
Currently, the Jameson Gold Reserve has been discontinued, so he advises whisky drinkers should buy as many as they can of it, as the value of the bottles are bound to increase by 10%-15%.
“It currently retails at R893 ($73)… So you could look at doubling your money in a couple of years. For example, the Compass Box, they made just over 5,680 bottles; I was retailing them at R2,000 ($163), but I see now three years down the line, they are auctioning them and selling them at R4,800 ($392) to R5,000 ($408),” he says.
However, a whisky club as a business is not as lucrative.
“We turn a lot of stock [from the business], but if I had to do it purely as a business, no, I would not make any money from it. Not when you consider the rentals and other expenses. The club is purely for coming to see what we have and tasting the different kinds of whisky,” says Cardillo.
There is no right or wrong way to drink whisky.
“What you like and what the next person likes are two different things. You can’t get intimidated. You are only supposed to drink the whisky with ice or you are not supposed to drink the whisky with the ice. There are so many rules that are just falling away now,” he says.
The best way to put this to the test is to pour a neat whisky in a glass and drink it. You will be able to taste all the different aromas. Thereafter, pour yourself another glass and pour a bit of water and you will be able to taste the barrel’s wood. It will become spicy as you see the whisky open up, as it becomes cloudy, and you will be able to see the oils release.
<div id="attachment_36577" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36577" class="wp-image-36577 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Saverio Cardillo. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
“This is why I say when people ask me ‘how are you supposed to drink your whisky’, I say ‘it depends entirely on your palate’,” says Cardillo.
“I once had a gentleman who walked in here the other night and he ordered a Johnnie Walker Blue Label and he drank it with cream soda. I didn’t even cringe.”
His is not limited to just tasting whisky, he also resells whisky for collectors hoping for returns on their long-held bottles.
“…[I] am a little bit sceptical about selling their collections. I sell on behalf of them, and I don’t put my name behind it and I don’t sell it using the name of Bottega. I let everyone know that it is somebody else’s collection,” he says. Cardillo receives the commission from the proceeds of the sale.
“If something goes wrong with the lid or counterfeiting in whisky or it leaks, that is my reputation at stake, and that is what I have to be careful about,” says Cardillo.
Cardillo took his hobby and turned it into a calling imparting knowledge to discerning drinkers, making him a limited edition among restaurateurs.

Saverio-663

The Whisky Whiz On How His Whisky Took Him Far

Godwin Gabriel has always had the gift of the gab. At 17, he closed the biggest deal in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, supplying food and beverages to a five-star luxury hotel overlooking the picturesque Indian Ocean.
As he recalls, it all happened in a flash: one minute he was a youngster looking for extra income and the next, he was sat across a table, suited and booted, having lunch with the food and beverages manager of the hotel and her team with only $55 in his pocket.
“I was scared I could not afford the bill. When the bill came, it was literally 55bucks. I remember sweating and I was literally getting ready to prepare to wash dishes, but it all worked out in the end and I got the deal,” he says of that meeting.
Then came the hard part. With no money to pay suppliers, Gabriel had to rely on his gab yet again to get the trust of suppliers to deliver on credit. His natural flair for business made his parents uneasy; fearing he would not return to school, they shipped him off to the United States (US) in an attempt to get him back to his books, but it was too late: Gabriel had already caught the entrepreneurial bug.
For the next three decades, that gift of the gab combined with grit, self-confidence, and perseverance would serve Gabriel well, driving him beyond personal and professional setbacks to create a business that would compete with giants like Uber and Lyft.
Gabriel is the founder of Moovn, an app that seeks to capture a piece of the billion-dollar ride-sharing market and that he hopes will eventually dethrone Uber, which, over the past few years, has experienced significant challenges. The company suffered several scandals and allegations which led to the #deleteuber campaign and the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick. In South Africa, Uber drivers have had several clashes with taxi drivers, some deadly, prompting the company to hire private security forces to protect them.
Despite these woes, Uber still has an imposing 74% of the ride-sharing market with operations in over 633 countries and a valuation of $72 billion. Regardless, Gabriel remains unperturbed.
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“We are in our own lane, and before the end of the year, we will be a complete threat to them. They are studying us, and they know who we are. We know this because in the search words or key words on Google, when someone types in Moovn, you get an Uber or Lyft ad and it is something that is in their metadata. So they must have put our company’s name in their metadata,” says Gabriel.
He believes the key to any ride-sharing service’s success is taking care of its drivers. To avoid the mistakes made by other ride-sharing apps, he has redesigned his app’s user experience to empathize with the driver, a trick he learned in his early days in the hospitality business.
Gabriel’s journey has been a natural evolution marred by a series of ill-timed events. Like the time he came close to fulfilling his childhood dream.
“When I was younger I dreamed of being a pilot; I was actually hired by American Airlines to become a junior in their flight-training program. Everything was lined up to make that dream happen but just before I reported to the job, 9/11 happened and that was a wrap. I went back into a different industry and never returned.”
Then there was the time he was working as an asset manager. Gabriel had spent a significant amount of time building his expertise in the hospitality industry, acquiring an enviable clientele that included Marriott and Starwood hotels. But just when it seemed like the world was Gabriel’s oyster, disaster struck.
“It was a very strong area for me, but it wasn’t until 2010 when the aftermath of the economic recession was really felt and a lot of these real estate portfolios went belly-up. It was a really tumultuous time in terms of most industries and I found myself constantly working long hours and getting burned out. So, by the time the last assets were taken off my hands, I wanted to change my career,” says Gabriel.
The US subprime mortgage crisis that sparked a nationwide banking emergency left most of Gabriel’s portfolios in receivership. Portfolios previously worth billions of dollars were now being sold for about $100 million, and with that, it was time for Gabriel to yet again look for a new industry and start all over again. But luckily, he had stumbled on an idea to provide a cab service to the guests of the hotels he managed.
“Back in 2006, I started a luxury car hire business with a chauffeur in Seattle for business executives, because I had already made access to these hotels. It was a little side hustle that turned into a big deal. I went from a couple of cars to 15 to 20 cars, and I had to outsource a large volume of demand to independent operators.”
“It was one of those things that I was always interested in, so when Uber came, and they were doing what we did back in the day with technology, I said to my partner what if we had that technology when we were doing our business back then?”
For Gabriel, an MBA from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business would prove instrumental in helping him to spot the potential of technology.
“Towards the end of my course, we did a consulting bid for Microsoft for an education software for two of the largest economies in the world, India and China, and I led that project. I was exposed to technology and I thought this was amazing. I had no tech background and never worked for a tech company before. I was just amazed at the margins and I thought this is the industry for me,” says Gabriel.
And that was how he began to look for opportunities in the tech space. He initially approached several developers to build an app for him, but getting people to buy into his vision proved difficult. So instead of giving up, he decided to build it himself. Hours of YouTube videos and discussions in chatrooms later, Gabriel developed a working prototype which he used to test the viability of his idea.
“We had the clientele; we had the relationships; and we had the drivers and so I sent out a little survey to some of them and the clients I had and asked ‘what if I created something like this, would you be interested?’ The response was overwhelming. At around the same time, It was also at the time that some of the drivers were complaining about being mistreated by some of these larger platforms, about not being able to earn a decent living and working long hours.”
That was when Gabriel decided that he would go the B2B route instead of chasing the consumer market that Uber was already dominant in. In addition to being the mastermind behind Moovn as well as its chief executive, Gabriel sees himself as an activist fighting to give the forgotten driver a voice.
Moovn differentiates itself by taking a 15% commission per ride instead of the 25% or more its competitors take. The rationale: if you take good care of your drivers, they will take good care of your customers.
<div id="attachment_36501" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36501" class="wp-image-36501 size-medium" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4327-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4327-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4327-600x450.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4327-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4327-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4327.jpg 1241w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Gabriel demonstrates how to use his app called Moovn.</div>
Gabriel began by targeting hotel partners who wanted to book rides for their guests, which helped to drive revenue and get the platform to where it is today. Another way Moovn set itself apart is through a strategic alliance with Vodacom in Africa, which helped offset the operational costs of launching the app. Lastly, there is Gabriel’s personal touch which he uses to recruit his drivers.
“I was in the airport parking with my laptop recruiting drivers, and sometimes I have lunch with our ambassadors too. So being able to connect with people and speak to them and find solutions to their issues is where I get most of my juice. You get to hear things firsthand. This is where we fly, and we are different from other platforms. We don’t have to wait to hear via email but hear it firsthand and that helps us. Whether it is via improvement in the app or improvement in our processes, it is easy to make decisions right there and then without the hierarchy.”
The company already has a presence in nine states in North America with the planned addition of three more states, and an employee count of 150 people across its various divisions. The company has also expanded into Africa with a presence in Tanzania, Johannesburg and Nairobi. It is also present in Dubai.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/30-under-30/2018/06/04/under-30-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Under 30 2018</a>
The ride-sharing market has been plagued in recent years by several challenges, mostly from local taxi drivers who meet the invasion of technology with animosity, often leading to violent clashes in some African countries. Gabriel, however, believes it’s a matter of negotiation.
“One of the things I often say is that taxi cabs have long existed in most countries. Taxis cannot fulfill the public demand on their own, however, and they depend on the informal sector to offset some of this demand.,” he says.
And with that, the old gift of the gab has managed to successfully bridge the gap between the two parties.
Next up, the Herculean task of getting the world Moovn.

IMG_5790

The Tanzanian Who Aims To Dethrone Uber

As a teenager it dawned on me that my undergraduate academic ambition was going to be threatened when my father lost his job. My dream to become a petroleum engineer was deflated in a matter of days. I was concerned about my future and afraid I would be tagged as a failure. During this unpleasant and frustrating experience, I questioned the rationale behind my dad’s choice of paid employment. If he had started a business, maybe things would have turned out differently. That was a tipping point for my search for success in life.
In 1999, I found a book that answered the question of how to be successful. The Success Journey, written by John C. Maxwell, sparked my hunger for knowledge, which led me to start visiting a public library built by the Catholic church in my town, in southwestern Nigeria. I made that decision because I had read in the book that knowledge is a prerequisite for success.
My need to be successful and influential was so strong that it birthed inspirational dissatisfaction in me. In the same manner, I have observed that many successful business owners often start with a burning desire and this desire takes up most of their time, most of their resources and almost all of their energy. I believe that is what counts for entrepreneurship.
On the other hand, I have also encountered many African start-up entrepreneurs who have ideas that lack that yearning. All they have is a wish that may or may not be achieved, and a template-guided business plan. Most of these plans remain on paper and are eventually buried. Some that succeed in starting their own business don’t get to live their dream beyond a few years.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/02/01/little-african-dream-gangsters-paradise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: A Little African Dream In Gangster’s Paradise</a>
Other than the fact that many African countries have a poor rating on the ease of doing business index, a core factor that accounts for a business’s inability to survive is the lack of a burning desire. Success is for the hungry and desire is the emotion that will see it come to fruition.
It is important that a target is clearly defined before commencing with a business plan and allocating responsibilities. This helps everyone to effectively focus on crucial matters. In the present business space, time is more essential than money. The rate at which business disruption happens is so fast that many business leaders are constantly on their toes to just remain in the game. With this in mind, attention should only be given to what is important – the key drivers of the desired result.
Obviously, entrepreneurs in Africa are finding it easier now than a decade ago to hire tools, and raise capital to produce products. But, realizing the ability to rent time is highly unlikely in the near future. Time is inelastic. Therefore, we must focus on what really matters to get the desirable business result.
To better manage time, an entrepreneur should focus on what they have control over. When you focus on concerns that you can’t control, you may lose sight of things within your control. 
Also, ensure your beliefs and values align with the desired business result because these influence your time and attention.
Setting goals, and planning for them, are instrumental to time management. This will help guide decisions as well as allowing you to delegate where necessary. 
I have accepted the simple paradigm that nothing makes one entrepreneur more successful than the other in an industry as much as what each person does with time. Time creates everybody’s chance, but not everybody creates a chance with the time they have.
&#8211; Victor Mamora

Building their success one touch at a time

It’s About Time For Success For Entrepreneurs In Africa

On a scorching hot day, we travel to the Zola area of Soweto, a township south of Johannesburg in South Africa.
Despite the soaring mercury, the trip is worth it.
Zola was known to be home to some of South Africa’s greatest musicians including Brenda Fassie, Mandoza and M’du, as well as soccer players John ‘Shoes’ Lesiba Moshoeu of Orlando Pirates and Mongezi Joel ‘Ace’ Mnini of Moroka Swallows.
Now, it’s also home to a promising fashion designer.
The small town, with a rough population of 44,000, is where self-taught South African designer Zamaswazi Nkosi crafts his creations for the city’s catwalks.
Nkosi greets us by the corrugated gates of the entrance to his compound dressed in a blue golf shirt featuring an African print pattern – the same shirt he showcased at the South African Fashion Week (SAFW) Spring/Summer 2017. His pants complement the look, along with blue loafers and a white fedora.
Ushering us in, he politely offers to carry some of our equipment. The genial, soft-spoken Nkosi then shows us around.
His workspace, which was once a garage, is attached to his bedroom. Clothes hang on a rack next to the door. Two sewing machines sit at the corner of the room with fabric, needles and thread neatly stacked beside them. Next to them is a table where he irons his garments. You can tell he is a one-man army.
The wall on the opposite side of the room is filled with a collage of photographs, newspaper clippings and awards. A headline from The Citizen reads: “A daring designer”.
“My love for fashion started the day I had no clothes to wear,” Nkosi opens.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2015/04/01/new-kids-on-the-fashion-block/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: New Kids On The Fashion Block</a>
Growing up with a single mother and as one of six siblings, he was forced to improve his circumstances at home. He developed the art of restoration.
“It started with reviving the old to new. Sometimes I would take my sisters’ clothes and redo them so that I could have something to wear,” he says.
Little did he know at the time his innovations would one day be part of the fabric of high fashion in South Africa.
Nkosi began by sewing clothes using his mother’s old sewing machine. From there, he would piece together fabric lying around the house.
“I took my mother’s tablecloth, I stole it actually,” he admits.
Nkosi then crafted the tablecloth with a shirt of his to create an entirely new piece. He enjoyed reinventing things and it’s evident in the clothes he designs and puts together today.
However, Nkosi wasn’t always into fashion. On the wall with the photos, are also the trophies and medals he has won, not for fashion, but for football.
They all date back to the time Nkosi was into soccer. As a teenager, he was a midfielder.
“I was called ‘Teko’ from Teko Modise,” he says.
He imagined becoming a world-class football player in his 20s limbering up preparing for soccer war in the stadiums.
But that dream was shattered when an injury changed the course of his life forever.
This happened when he was 16, playing football in Soweto.
“I got tackled from behind. That was when my knee twisted,” he says.
He didn’t see a doctor, and continued to play. Only now does he regret not going for treatment.
“I thought that maybe if I felt better I could play. Only to find out that I was damaging it and it became worse. Then there was a point where I realized it was no longer working.”
Nkosi was devastated that he may never get the chance to play football again.
He was grieving the loss of his first love not knowing he would find something he would enjoy doing, again.
His sister consoled him and encouraged him to start something new. That’s when he did some serious soul-searching. After weighing his pros and cons, he started thinking of himself as a fashion designer.
“Being a fashion designer, it’s somewhat like a calling. Because I didn’t just wake up and decide to be one or be inspired by someone,” he says.
Fashion taking over his life came as some sort of divine intervention. He says he has never looked back since.
<div id="attachment_36175" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36175" class="size-medium wp-image-36175" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM-199x300.jpg 199w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM-600x903.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM-768x1156.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM-681x1024.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/291_KM.jpg 1361w" sizes="(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" />Zamaswazi Nkosi. Photograph by Karen Mwendera.</div>
He accepted this calling and hosted fashion shows within his community, in Zola. It seemed the needle – in more ways than one – was turning in his favor.
His first show had only 10 people attending, but that did not discourage him.
Nkosi then attended a SAFW event with the hope he could one day showcase his work on the platform. He watched closely the designs of one of his favorite South African designers, David Tlale, on the runway.
“I told myself ‘no man, I can do this’.”
There was just one hurdle. He had no academic qualifications for the job.
“On big platforms like SAFW they normally require fashion qualifications like a diploma or anything that relates to fashion. So, as Zamaswazi, I had nothing on paper. I only had skill,” he says.
After countless rejections, he one day garnered the courage to speak to the founder of SAFW, Lucilla Booyzen. A nervous but determined 24-year-old Nkosi walked up to her after one of the shows.
Booyzen told Nkosi to do what he had already done before. “Just apply,” she said.
But Nkosi was not having it. The young boy from the township was determined.
“I was like, ‘no if you need paper [qualifications] and I’m dressing my own clothes and it’s proper, why can’t you let me showcase’?”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/04/19/designs-africa-michelle-obama/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Designs For Africa, And Michelle Obama</a>
She then told him to come to her office and talk about opportunities. And the rest was history.
He had to prepare a proposal and showcase his work to a number of top fashionistas. It included creating a fashion portfolio, storyboard and designs of his pieces.
“It took me two weeks to even know what ‘portfolio’ is. That’s how I learned,” says Nkosi.
He was then shortlisted for the ‘scouting menswear collection’ in association with GQ magazine in 2015.
The platform brought his designs to life and Nkosi got his first break at SAFW.
Nkosi has showcased his designs at SAFW events, designing clothes for men that are modern with an African twist. His signature is the hemmed-in African print on to modern clothing. Much like the shirt he is wearing at this interview.
Nkosi relates this to his heritage and humble beginnings that forced him to merge different kinds of material into one. Unlike some of the other designers at sought-after fashion showcases such as SAFW, Nkosi says he designs and sews his clothes himself.
In his hometown Soweto, his friends and neighbors still can’t believe the boy who once played soccer swapped the ball for a sewing machine.
After the interview, he courteously helps us again to carry out our equipment.
Parked outside his house is his red vintage Beetle car with the word ‘Zamaswazi’ engraved on it. He bought the car last year.
Even though the engine doesn’t run he says he plans to work on it so he can do the six-hour drive to attend the annual Durban July.
The trendy man in the white fedora riding a red vintage car through the scenic green landscapes of South Africa to attend a premium horseracing event – it’s a pretty picture indeed.
<div id="attachment_36176" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36176" class="wp-image-36176 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/357_KM-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/357_KM-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/357_KM-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/357_KM-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/357_KM-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/357_KM.jpg 1902w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Zamaswazi Nkosi designs and sews his clothes himself. Photograph by Karen Mwendera.</div>

365_KM

From Football To Fashion

How do you make science fun? Just ask 36-year-old vodka entrepreneur Sibusiso Sibisi.
With an unquestionable flair for organizing events and parties – most of them in his backyard growing up – instead of studying event management, he went on to study analytical chemistry for his BSc degree. He then sanguinely mixed the two.
Today, he makes vodka that gets consumed at parties country-wide in South Africa.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2014/10/01/the-iron-lady-of-beer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Iron Lady Of Beer</a> 
Born and bred in Kagiso, a township not far from Krugersdorp, a mining town in the south of Johannesburg, South Africa, Sibisi launched his own brand, Distinkt Vodka, in 2016.
Keen to hear his story, I head to Kagiso to meet him. It takes me 30 minutes to locate his address, using maps on my phone and eventually realizing the need to update the GPS in my car, an exercise that would have saved me a lot of time and petrol.
Outside his home, a black delivery van is parked next to his swanky MINI Cooper. Sibisi, equally sleek, in a suit, emerges, welcomes me inside, and leading me to a bar in his garage, offers a shot of his Distinkt Vodka.
Sampling it with a dash of lemon and soda, it’s a good taste of the interview that is to follow.
Sibisi grew up in a large household with several family members. He didn’t have a privileged upbringing; the first time he got to sleep in his own bed was when he was 18 years old, after he moved with his mother to a new house in the same area within Kagiso.
After high school, he pursued a national diploma in analytical chemistry at the University of Johannesburg, a path he chose goaded on by college career counsellors who thought he had the right analytical abilities.
“To be honest, I hated analytical chemistry because it did not go with who I was,” says Sibisi.
His heart was elsewhere.
As a student, Sibisi enjoyed organizing and hosting events, in the same house I meet him for this interview. He was popular for his, although-humble, backyard parties and for simply, having fun.
When he told people he was studying chemistry, it always surprised them.
But as he pursued his studies, he realized he actually liked analytical chemistry; studying how things came to be, such as vodka or even a bar of soap.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2015/08/01/farmworker-multi-millionaire/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: From Farmworker To Multi millionaire</a>
But Sibisi still struggled to acquire the diploma, dropping out after four years, as he had lost interest and wasn’t sure if he really did want to study. He called his mother and told her he wanted to work instead. But that too was to be short-lived.
“I started working at a call center for a bank. [But] I realized I needed to graduate because it wasn’t nice saying the same things all day; that’s how I went back and graduated in 2008,” he says.
Soon after graduating, he worked as a laboratory technician, then supervisor and manager, going through all the motions of working in a lab. Sibisi worked hard and it was recognized by his employers.
“A lab is a place where you get to talk to yourself a lot because it is not active and vibrant like many industries. You are on your own and have to focus,” he says.
“All this time, I was thinking I had acquired so much knowledge in university, I’m acquiring knowledge now in the field, I know how most of these things come about. [But] what am I doing about it? That is how I went into the lab and started experimenting.”
This he accomplished, using the Chemin incubator program labs at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
He looked into the alcohol industry, researched the volume of alcohol consumed by people, especially the youth, on weekends, and the sales potential of such an opportunity.
He also realized that this could be a revenue-spinner for South Africa, a major importer of liquor.
Sibisi saw an opportunity in the vodka market and knew he had to target his own country, he says pointing his fingers to the ground.
The first beverage he developed was a beer prototype, then a brandy prototype, followed by a gin prototype. He developed the first vodka prototype in 2012 and decided on vodka, adding that it is one of the few quality products in the market.
“The liquor market is very saturated, even worse with the vodka market because there are many ways to make vodka, but there’s very few ways to make good vodka,” laughs Sibisi.
His knowledge of chemistry more than came in handy.
<div id="attachment_36010" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36010" class="wp-image-36010 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Vodka-182-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="682" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Vodka-182-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Vodka-182-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Vodka-182-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Vodka-182-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Vodka-182.jpg 1241w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Sibusiso Sibisi. Photograph by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
Distinkt is made using grain and potatoes, among other things. Sibisi buys the potatoes from a farmer in the North West province of South Africa, after which he mashes them, and then boils them at high temperatures. The liquid is strained from the potatoes, and fermented.
Soon after the fermentation process, it is distilled and filtered three times for purity. He takes what’s left of it, and tastes the alcohol content. If it is high, he uses purified water to dilute the alcohol, if it is low, it is redistilled to have the exact desired concentration of alcohol. It is then tested again. If there is an anomaly, the process is repeated before the vodka is bottled and packaged.
“This proudly South African vodka has reached most of Gauteng and other big towns in other provinces [in the country] and is selling at a faster rate than it was before,” beams Sibisi.
“We are currently in a few Pick n Pay liquor outlets and Ultra liquors across South Africa and in most township bottle stores, pubs and clubs.”
Distinkt is currently produced in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal and a plant in Germiston in Johannesburg.
I had downed a shot of vodka and had to drive back to the office, with the GPS for company. How I wished the interview had been on a Friday afternoon.

Vodka-188

The Party Animal In The Lab

As a boy, there was never any doubt what Adam Rosman would do when he was older.
“Aviation fascinated me. My friends and I used to build model rockets and fly them at the school fields. I then decided I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer,” he says.
Rosman studied aeronautical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. “When I finished, I always wanted to do rocketry, Elon Musk type of stuff.”
He worked at a South African rocket design firm but the company went under. “I think it was just the wrong time, they couldn’t get money,” says Rosman.
<div id="attachment_35983" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35983" class="wp-image-35983 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-600x899.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Drones-726-1.jpg 1241w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Adam Rosman. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
Back then may have been the wrong time to build rockets, but Rosman seemed to have perfect timing when he started Aerial Monitoring Solutions (AMS) in 2013. The company designs custom drones for the commercial market.
“These aren’t for hobbyists to play around with on the weekend,” he says.
AMS has two drone systems at the moment. One is a large, 2.5-meter, fixed-wing system called the Eagle Owl; the other is a small multicopter system, the Bumble Bee.
As they are customizable, Rosman’s drones have many uses. Farmers use them to inspect the health of their crops and to monitor their fences for security reasons. Game farms use them for fence monitoring, animal counting and anti-poaching. Land surveyors use them to get topographical maps while mining companies use them for ore vein exploration.
“My entire drive is to have something customizable because there’s no one-system-fits-all [solution]. We’ve made a platform that can carry payload, can carry a range of cameras, can do game counting, [and] guys are using it for agriculture.”
There are many drone technology companies emerging in South Africa but Rosman says AMS differs in that it is one of the few that develops hardware, plus it is affordable.
The basic fixed-wing system, with the launch rail, ground control station, antennas, basic day-time camera, and a laptop, will cost about R200,000 ($17,000).
“We found you could purchase systems from overseas that were high precision, but they were hundreds and thousands of US dollars. I felt like they were excluding Africa, or other poorer continents like South America, who can’t afford those systems except if you’re a government or a major company. Why shouldn’t a guy who has a farm and wants to be able to check his fences be able to buy a drone?” he says.
The feature, however, that Rosman takes the most pride in is the robustness of his drones.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2017/07/17/mind-blown-drone-160kmh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Mind Blown By Drone At 160km/h</a>
“From the start, we wanted something that is by Africa, for Africa. It’s got to be able to go into harsh terrain and operate. It’s got to be able to handle the rough handling – like be thrown into the back of a [pick-up truck], driven around on dirt roads, taken out, put together and expected to fly. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some of the demos where the high-end guys come from Europe or America and go to the Kruger National Park, turn on the system but because of the heat it can’t operate,” he says.
“We wanted to give something that could handle anything. If it ends up in a little village covered in dust, and gets dust storms blowing through it every day, it will still be able to operate there or if it’s flying above Kilimanjaro covered in snow.”
Rosman has reason to be proud. He started AMS with nothing but his parents’ garage and a few angel investors.
“I took over my parents’ garage; I kicked them out and said ‘I’m going to work in here’. I brought in equipment and started designing the aircraft in there during the night.”
After a few years, those designs started attracting shareholders.
“They’ve been amazingly supportive. In 2016, they came and saw potential and I’m lucky to have them.”
His parents’ support was just as valuable, even when he was young.
“When I was younger I used to build model aircraft with my dad and then we went on and got remote-controlled gliders and remote-controlled cars. I would build them and play with them for about a week. The next week I would take the entire thing apart because I wanted to see how it worked and then try and put it back together again. To this day, at my folks’ house there are still lots of bits and pieces of aircraft and toys.”
Rosman says drones can kickstart South Africa’s dwindling aviation industry.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2015/10/01/something-to-drone-about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Something To Drone About</a>
“A lot of jobs can be created in the drone space, from operators to maintenance to regulators. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. It’s estimated that from the time the industry started, government regulations have hindered 25,000 jobs from being created.”
As the Deputy Chairperson of the Commercial Unmanned Aircraft Association of South Africa (CUAASA), Rosman understands the industry better than most.
“The main hindrance to the entire drone industry is government regulations. They implemented drone regulations in June 2015 and they brought in some very good regulations, they still are very good. The problem is the implementation procedure has taken too long,” he says.
“Operation certificates are supposed to have a 30- to 90-day turnaround time. Realistically, it’s about a two-year turnaround time.”
A CUAASA study revealed that 99% of the drone industry in South Africa is operating illegally because of the time and cost involved in government regulations.
“Before you start making money, to operate legally, you’ve got to have five full-time safety officers, you have to have purchased your drones, and drone technology at the moment becomes obsolete within nine months, but only in possibly two years’ time can you operate.”
AMS also plans to do payload delivery, but needs to wait for the Civil Aviation Authority to legalize it. Another avenue Rosman is looking at is vehicle tracking.
“Why have helicopters in the air? Our systems fly on autopilot, so if you give it the GPS co-ordinates, it’ll go there… If the drone crashes, you only lose some money.”
With the Eagle Owl and Bumble Bee, money is unlikely to be a problem for Rosman.
&#8211; By Gareth Cotterell

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Drones By Africa, For Africa

The former CEO of First National Bank (FNB), Michael Jordaan, is launching a new app-driven bank early next year. He says Bank Zero will not inflict exorbitant fees on consumers.
“It is possible to create a mobile bank at a much lower cost than the traditional banks… If we can stimulate a savings culture in South Africa, as well as help individuals and businesses to waste less money on bank fees, it will help the economy grow,” he says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/11/01/banking-at-your-fingertips/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Banking At Your Fingertips</a>
Jordaan has worked in the banking sector for over 20 years and will need all his experience as he becomes a competitor of his former employers.
The idea came about three years ago, over a good bottle of wine with his co-founder Yatin Narsai, who is the former head of retail at FNB. The two were inspired by the app-driven businesses such as Uber and Airbnb.
<div id="attachment_35972" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35972" class="wp-image-35972 size-medium" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image001-1.jpg 1365w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Micheal Jordaan. Photo Provided.</div>
“We hope to solve many of the everyday problems that individuals and businesses still have when making payments or investments,” says Jordaan.
They spent the last year applying for a banking licence with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). This year, they are working on integrating the bank into the South African payments system.
In 2014, Jordaan launched MonteGray Capital to invest in disruptive start-ups. Now, his own business is set to shake up the banking industry.
“It has been an incredible privilege to start with a blank sheet of paper and develop a bank from first principles. We will have no legacy technology and no reliance on income streams that should not exist, like electronic banking fees. The functionality of the app will be far richer than any bank we have seen locally or abroad,” he says.
Though, like most banks, Bank Zero will have an app and a card, it will not have a branch.
“Branches are old-fashioned. If you could design a bank from scratch you would never think of doing it around paper and bricks and mortar. Just like WhatsApp and Facebook don’t have branches, the bank of the future will be mobile&#8230;” he says.
In addition to South Africa’s big four banks – FNB, Standard Bank, Absa and Nedbank – Adrian Gore’s Discovery is launching a bank later this year. Is there room in South Africa for another bank?
“South Africa has 33 banks and the sector is highly sophisticated and competitive. The fact that [South Africa’s] bank fees are high in international comparative terms means that there is still a lot of room to lift the competitive intensity,” says Jordaan.
To differentiate itself, Bank Zero will only cater to those with smartphones and tablets.
Jordaan is intent on making his bank technologically innovative. He learned this lesson the hard way when he was chairman of Mxit. The messaging app was blown out of the water by WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
“It is a powerful lesson why businesses must build for the future rather than hang on to the past. That is why Bank Zero will be built for smartphones and tablets, rather than for dumb phones.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/homepage/2017/06/27/cash-falling-fashion-will-disappear-forever/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Cash is falling out of fashion – will it disappear forever?</a>
“In a few years the only phones that will be sold will be smartphones. Today there are entry-level smartphones available for less than $40 but this could still halve in three years,” he says.
If Jordaan had his way, in the near future, brick-and-mortar banks will be as redundant as those dumb phones.

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Banking On Technology: New Mobile Bank Set To Launch

Born in Tanzania, living in South Africa, and dressing the world, Anissa Mpungwe, is difficult to pin down.
In the end, we manage to do it online.
I look for her on Google Maps, and set out to seek her home address, with nothing but the online search tool. I travel with FORBES WOMAN AFRICA’s layout artist Lucy Nkosi. Luckily for us, just outside her home, which we eventually locate, we bump into one of Mpungwe’s two sisters, a student of architecture, leaving for her classes.
She helps us get in touch with the designer and set up an appointment with her at her Kyalami studio in Midrand, north of Johannesburg.
Around Mpungwe is a melange of color and couture, as she shares her story.
<div id="attachment_35909" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35909" class="wp-image-35909 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2691-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2691-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2691-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2691-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2691-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2691.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Anissa Mpungwe. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
Mpungwe has been in South Africa since she was 10, attending junior school, high school and university in the Rainbow Nation. Until the age of 19, she was just another foreigner in South Africa. 
But her career took off after that.
“After graduating in South Africa, getting my degree in fashion and marketing, I went to do my post- graduation in London. They have a good network there, so you get to work with different spaces and [get enough] work experience for you to know what you want to do; and I didn’t know which part of the fashion industry I wanted to be in. So I had to do all those different [types of] work experiences to know I definitely didn’t want to work for a magazine, [and] definitely not in a factory,” says Mpungwe.
Her career kick-started in South Africa in 2008 after winning the Elle New Talent competition, when she had the opportunity to work with fashion retailer Mr Price (MRP). Thereafter, she showcased her creations at fashion weeks in South Africa; however the biggest jump was in 2010 when she showcased at the prestigious New York Fashion Week in the United States.
“For me, it was an odd jump,” she says.
From being a student overseas, coming back home to South Africa trying to figure out where her career was going, to winning a competition, working with MRP to have her range out and then off to another country representing her home country, Tanzania.
That was in 2010 in New York City that she believes was the year that launched her career and the Loin Cloth &amp; Ashes brand.
Her first store opened in 2012 in Maboneng Precinct, a trendy art hub outside Johannesburg’s Central Business District.
Visitors to her store have included international musicians such as Swedish singer-songwriter Yukimi Nagano from Little Dragon, and American singer-songwriter Amel Larrieux.
She has over the years also had the opportunity to dress American singer-model-actress Solange Knowles for the cover of Elle as well as local South African stars such as Lira, Anele Mdoda, Bridget Masinga, and Simphiwe Dana amongst a slew of other celebrities.
In 2013, Mpungwe won Emerging Designer of the Year Africa awarded by African Fashion International.
She worked with MRP producing ranges reaching countries from Nigeria to Namibia, Botswana and stores across South Africa.
Mpungwe was also chosen to gift one of her designs to former American First Lady Michelle Obama during her visit to South Africa in 2015.
<div id="attachment_35910" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35910" class="wp-image-35910 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TLH_2450.jpg 1366w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Mpungwe dresses a model with one of her designs. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
“That for me was a very proud moment because of who she is, how she operates as a female. I [received] a little letter from her to frame to put next to the accolades. As much as those things excite me, to be honest with you, I think it is the everyday people that make me feel good about what I do,” she says.
Over the last few years, she has worked with corporate brands such as Maserati, Converse and Nestle among others.
Mpungwe operates out of two studios in South Africa and one in Tanzania employing 17 people.
“It has been great, a good learning curve. I’ve learned a lot, in such a short period. I’ve learned the business of fashion and the construction of clothing, the product itself,” says J K Khoza, one of her fashion interns.
Mpungwe is now sharing her experiences and showcasing her creations in the hope of seeing more young Africans traverse the globe spreading the beauty and bounties of African fashion.

Anissa_2066

Designs For Africa, And Michelle Obama

Reabetswe Ngwane has come a long way from Rustenburg, and she has covered the journey on recycled tyres – literally.
The bubbly and ambitious Ngwane, raised in Mogwase, a township in Rustenburg in the North West Province of South Africa, recycles tyre tubes for a living, and has been able to turn waste to wealth.
When we meet her in the affluent suburb of Sandton in Johannesburg, she is late, having driven in from Rustenburg after another meeting. Dressed formally in black, she settles to talk about where it all began.
Ngwane’s entrepreneurial journey unraveled when she relocated from the township to the city in Rustenburg where she started her first business with a friend. They recycled plastic bags, turning them into school bags with solar lanterns, provided to kids in underprivileged areas.
Unfortunately, that partnership did not last.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2016/02/01/roll-sleeves-walk-past-handbag/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves, Walk Past That Handbag’</a>
“Then we parted ways respectively in business and generally. That’s when I started the tyre business with my sister [Katlego],” says Ngwane.
The business picked up. They were approached by REDISA (Recycling and Economic Development Initiative In South Africa) who offered to handle their Rustenburg tyre depot.
Ngwane wanted to learn and research more about all the elements that went into the tyre business.
So she did what most wouldn’t think of – she consulted with the people pushing trolleys on the side of road recycling scrap.
“They work extensively at the mine fields; in a nutshell, they are industry experts. We went to them, consulted with them. [About an] alternative to plastic, because that’s all I knew. I asked them ‘what else I could use as a resource to make up products’ and they advised on the tyre tubes and it became a business,” she says.
The business’ main focus is recycling tyre tubes to make fashionable bags.
The whole process begins by transporting the tyre tubes to one of their work sites where they wash, clean and refurbish them. They are then taken to a production factory where they are cut into respective patterns depending on orders.
Ngwane has her products in a store, Mememe, in Cape Town in the Western Cape, and another in South African capital Pretoria, called In Bloom. She also takes orders online. Her bags range from R500 ($43) to R1,400 ($120).
She not only recycles tyre tubes to create trendy bags, but also makes products for the mining and construction industries.
These orders differ from the retail industry.
<div id="attachment_35904" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35904" class="wp-image-35904 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Reabetswe-101.jpg 1366w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Reabetswe Ngwane. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
“The retail industry is not as mass-orientated as the mining and construction industry. With the retail industry, it depends on how many orders of these we get, how many orders of backpacks we make, and then the patterns are made and then the bags. With regards to mining and construction, there are three sets of products we provide to them,” she says.
For the mines, Ngwane makes first-aid kit bags used by the workers underground and over the ground. The material mostly used for this previously was canvas, which is not durable, she says.
Ngwane also makes respiratory bags or masks used by the workers. The biggest orders she gets from the mines are however for seat protectors.
“It’s like a shield that covers your bum, you strap it on your waist, strap it on your legs, as the guys drilling underground [are] scooting backwards and forwards; because they [are] scooting, they damage their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and bump into hard surfaces like rocks, and corrosive liquids whatever the case may be; [the seat protector] is used to protect them,” she says.
Ngwane is the first to break into this kind of market, she says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2014/06/01/woman-toughest-job/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Woman With the toughest job</a>
She recalls the days she had to knock on several doors to get her business going. Her research involved ongoing conversations with users in the mines asking them about the durability of canvas.
Ngwane is contracted to an entity that supplies a lot of the mines in the North West of South Africa with PPE. With her sister Katlego, their company, KreamFields, has been in operation for the last two years, and their fortune is growing.
Their work also has social significance as recycling waste means helping the environment rid itself of rubber scrap.
Ngwane seems to have literally reinvented the wheel turning tyre tubes to tote bags.

Reabetswe-074

On A Roll With Used Tyres

It’s early evening at a five-star hotel in Accra in Ghana, where a group of delegates from the European Union and Ghanaian government are meeting to discuss bilateral trade agreements. In the elegant lobby, an attendant mans the helpdesk, trying to resolve the queries of agitated guests who seem unimpressed with the long queues.
At one end of the room, a group of camera-toting journalists saunter aimlessly waiting for an opportunity to snap Ghana’s economic power brokers as they arrive.
Shortly after 7.30PM, the vice president of Ghana strolls in with his security detail and in one stroke, the lobby is bustling, flashes pop like corn and requests for sound bites are hurled in the air.
As the frenzy reaches a feverish pitch, we leave the commotion and make our way past an impressive art piece of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, part of the collection of over 1,500 pieces of art in the hotel. Our destination is the fifth floor where we meet Bozoma Saint John, Silicon Valley darling and Uber’s Chief Brand Officer since last year.
Hired to turn Uber back into a brand people love, Saint John has a daunting task ahead. The company has been hit with a number of scandals and allegations which led to the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick last year, and the #deleteuber campaign.
In South Africa, Uber drivers have had several clashes with taxi drivers prompting the company to hire private security forces to protect them.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2017/08/29/ubers-ceo-pick-adds-pressure-resolve-boardroom-brawl/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ: Uber’s CEO Pick Adds Pressure To Resolve Boardroom Brawl</a>
On meeting her, thoughts of Saint John’s herculean task are replaced with impressions of her imposing yet warm personality. Towering at five foot eleven, even without her pink stilettoes, which she teams with a silver jumpsuit, braids and earrings made of Ghanaian Adinkra symbols, her presence is hard to ignore in any room, which can surely be an advantage in the male-dominated corporate space.
“So a good friend of mine called me to come to the Consumer Electronics Summit in Vegas saying they were having a cool kids’ dinner and he needed me to be there. So I stroll into the dinner and Arianna Huffington is sitting there. She looked at me and she said you are the most interesting person in the room right now, what is your name? She told the CEO of JP Morgan Chase who sat next to me to get up and she sat down and said tell me everything about yourself and that is how our friendship started,” says Saint John.
That conversation with Huffington (a founder of The Huffington Post) led to an introduction to Kalanick in Huffington’s home in Los Angeles.
“At the time Uber was going through a lot of challenges and she was on the board and she asked me what would I do. I told her about my experiences taking Ubers and she said you should meet Travis Kalanick. She invited us to her house and what was supposed to be a meet and greet turned out to be a whole day of conversation and brain-storming ideas.”
And the rest is history. Saint John’s list of qualifications, which includes the former head of Music and Entertainment Marketing at PepsiCo and head of marketing for Apple Music, made her the woman for the job. She is one of the few black women to land a senior position at a billion-dollar company. For Saint John, that comes with both positives and negatives.
“If you want to shine like a diamond, you have to be willing to get cut and there has been lots of cuts along the way, in small ways and in big ways. The small ways are about the micro aggression, the comments people make about you and the doubts about your talent; the assertion that your greatness is by accident. It takes a toll on you and your spirit and your self-confidence.
“So having to constantly remind yourself that I am actually talented at this and I do this better than anyone else. In the beginning, people will often remark like, ‘you celebrate yourself so much on Instagram’, but I’m like who else is going to do it? Then all of a sudden, other people start joining the bandwagon and praising the work I do and I’m like ‘I told you I was great’,” says Saint John.
The big cuts along the way have been the most life-changing for Saint John; like losing her husband to cancer in December 2013, four days before his 44th birthday.
“I had never considered that we could die early. It was only six months between his diagnosis and his death so it was not enough time to prepare. Our daughter was only four years old. After his death it really shook me. I was afraid because I did not know if there was ever going to be a recovery in my confidence. Not confidence in work because I knew I could do the job but confidence in life.”
But she turned what was her worst day into her best asset and developed a new philosophy in life.
<div id="attachment_35873" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35873" class="wp-image-35873 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bozoma-3.jpg 1211w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Bozoma Saint John. Photo supplied.</div>
“It absolutely lit a fire in me to say that, we don’t know how much time we have and I am going to be great today. I am not waiting for 10 years or 15 years to be great; I am going to be great right now. All the dreams have to happen today, not tomorrow!”
It is that philosophy that Saint John brings to her daunting role at Uber while challenging the world via her Instagram page to #watchmework.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2015/10/01/young-over-qualified-and-a-woman/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Young, Over Qualified And A Woman!’</a>
“Uber is facing several challenges but I think the addition of Bozoma who happens to be black, a woman and an immigrant is a very strategic move by the brand to help fight some of the negative publicity the company faced last year and that worked. Obviously it helps that Bozoma is an accomplished marketing professional who has a solid track record with some of the world’s prestigious brands,” says John Tawiah, an economist in Ghana.
For Saint John, this is more than a job. It’s about sending a very clear message to three distinct audiences.
“The first is my daughter who I really want to embody for her, what a role model can be. I hope she is going to see the things that I do and that become The Normal for her and she will do better than I have. The second audience is African women and black women. That we can show up as ourselves and still succeed. We don’t need to be like anybody else and I can show up in cornrows, weaves and still be able to let my work speak for itself.
“We talk about cultural appropriation all the time so I find it important to send that message. We need to see each other and know it is ok. The third audience is to show the world that there is an inner intelligence beneath this exterior that we have and you are in charge of your own success.”
Saint John is no stranger to hard work and breaking boundaries. Her innovative ideas at PepsiCo led to the company’s foray into the music festivals and big deals with powerhouse celebrities like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. In spite of the media buzz and speculation about Uber’s future, the lady who calls herself “superexecumummy” is ready to roll up her sleeves and show the world just how great she is, today.

bozama

Uber’s Chief Brand Officer – ‘I Am Going To Be Great Right Now”

John Rabie is the entrepreneur who transformed the way South Africans build houses. With humble beginnings, he is now known as the man who took 1.25 million square meters of marshy wasteland on the outskirts of Cape Town and turned it into the $1.95-billion Century City.
It’s hard to believe that this co-founder of the Rabie Property Group is the same humble man who was painting buildings in Sea Point 40 years ago, along with his longtime business partner, Leon Cohen.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2016/02/01/inside-house-future/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Inside The House Of The Future</a>
&#8220;I started as painter with Leon. We formed a painting business. We said to ourselves, ‘hang on a second, let&#8217;s start building’. In those days, there was plenty of land in the southern suburbs in Constantia,” says Rabie.
From his office in Cape Town’s foreshore, filled with memorabilia of his property developments and school photographs, you can see why Rabie has stood at the test of time.
“It took me 40 years. There is no instant gratification to wealth. Property development is not a one-day game, it’s a five-day game,” says Rabie, using cricket analogy. “It’s taking a view for the future. Because we build buildings not for five years but because we want to live in them for 10 or 20 years.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2014/05/01/selling-beer-rubbing-shoulders-richard-branson/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: From Selling Beer To Rubbing Shoulders With Richard Branson</a>
Along with Century City, Rabie has been involved in other developments around Cape Town, including Marconi Beam, Westlake Estate, Royal Ascot and Big Bay.
Rabie is also responsible for cluster house developments. This started when Rabie didn&#8217;t have the capital to build the houses from scratch. Instead he came up with the idea of plot and plan, which allowed house hunters to pay a deposit on a plot of land for cheap and wait for Rabie to build it.
&#8220;In those days people bought their own little plots and then they built their houses. So we said ‘ok, we can build these houses on your plot for cheaper’. Then we said ‘hang on a minute, let’s take it to the next level’. We acquired five plots on Constantia, I think we paid R10,000 ($850) for a stand at the time – can you believe that, in Constantia of all places? We said ‘let&#8217;s build a house, finish it and furnish it and landscape it’.&#8221;
The idea took off in the 1980s and Rabie&#8217;s team was building five houses a month.  Soon it was building villages, over vast areas of Cape Town&#8217;s southern suburbs. It then moved on to show houses, giving buyers an idea of what the house would look like, right down to the kitchen sink.
&#8220;You know, what people struggle with is the design. How the house is going to look when the building is done, the vision. We had a beautiful brochure with eight or 10 designs, because the individual owned the plot we could sign a building contract and build that house that they chose.&#8221;
Back in his office, Rabie admits to being a hoarder. He has dozens of books with newspaper clippings and advertisements. It is a personal archive of 40 years of developing property. His proudest moment came in 2004, when he bought into a project that wanted to turn a marshy wasteland of 1.25 million square meters into a mini city.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2013/12/01/property-industry-shows-green-shoots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Property industry shows some green shoots</a>
&#8220;The biggest boom to hit this country was in 2001 to 2007 – the world exploded. That was the biggest property boom we&#8217;d ever seen,&#8221; he says.
&#8220;It changed Rabie Property Group, because we now had a city.&#8221;
Fourteen years and an investment of more than $1.95 billion later, Century City has taken shape. These days it is a city-within-a-city; a place where one can work, live, shop and relax. The precinct hosts more than 500 businesses, 4,000 residential homes and is known for its clean and safe environment.
<div id="attachment_35845" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35845" class="wp-image-35845 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City.jpg 1154w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />The Apex forms the focal point of the new Century City Square in Cape Town. Photo supplied</div>
&#8220;The great thing about Century City is it&#8217;s like a jigsaw puzzle, as the markets change you can change it to have a bit more commercial, a bit more residential areas. When I go inside the conference center or along the canals, I have to pinch myself,&#8221; says Rabie.
One of the latest developments in Century City has been the introduction of a Marriott hotel, the signature brand of the world’s largest hotel group, Marriott International. This brand was ushered in through the recent conversion of the African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel to the Cape Town Marriott Hotel Crystal Towers.
“It’s extremely positive for Century City to showcase a global giant like Marriott. The credibility of the brand internationally adds gravitas to our tenant directory, and we will no doubt see many more visitors from around the world coming to Century City because of the presence of a hotel under this brand,” says Cohen.
By 2010, Rabie had thought he had done all he could do in property. He was traveling abroad when he noticed a trend of inner-city revival. He saw major cities, like Sydney, were rejuvenating derelict buildings in city centers and repurposing them for residential living.
He immediately thought Cape Town could do the same. So, he embarked on co-founding Signatura, the private label property company, to do just that.
&#8220;No one was thinking of inner-city revival at that time. It was going to be very important for Cape Town to have hospitality linked to residential – in other words, intertwined. Our first project was the Radisson. We converted the office into the hotel and put 175 apartments on top, but the apartments have the use of the hotel facilities, the gym etc. That was hugely successful,&#8221; says Rabie.
<div id="attachment_35846" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35846" class="size-medium wp-image-35846" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-300x212.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="212" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-300x212.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-600x424.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-768x543.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-1024x724.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Rabies ambitious Radisson development in Cape Town. Photo supplied.</div>
Signatura recently completed the upscaling of central city landmark, the Safmarine building. It was transformed into an ambitious $100-million residential and hotel development known as The Radisson Blu Hotel and Residence.
It caters to South Africa&#8217;s growing upper middle class who are eager for luxury living close to the city and the ocean. What stands out for Rabie is the way in which social media has changed the way people buy property.
&#8220;We used to have to put flags up on Sunday at 10 o&#8217;clock. We&#8217;d get dressed up in our work clothes. That’s how we did it. If you didn’t get people into show houses on a Sunday, you didn’t sell. With social media, it changed dramatically. You hardly see us advertising in the press anymore because social media is so incredibly strong. We get 10 to 15 leads every day from people on the internet wanting to know about our developments.&#8221;
In five years, Signatura has rejuvenated more than 20 buildings in and around Cape Town – achieving over $500 million in sales.
It seems Rabie made the right decision to give up painting houses to build them instead.

John-Rabie-online

From Painting Houses To Building A $1.95-Billion Development

Move over, Lagos and Johannesburg, Accra too has a burgeoning media and entertainment sector. A 2016 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) predicts the sector in Ghana could be worth more than $1 billion in 2019.
Proving this are events such as the Exclusive Men of The Year (EMY) Africa Awards, which last year brought together 1,000 people including some of Ghana’s top CEOs, founders and achievers. Held on Father’s Day the last two years, it spotlights businessmen who are also role models at home, a campaign Daniel Kojo Soboh, Executive Director of EMY Africa, is hoping will transform the role of men in societies across Africa.
“We did a lot of research and realized there were homes that had no positive male role models young children could look up to. We know that the father’s role is very key, so it’s very important we project some of these men who are doing so great with their family, their work and their business,” says Soboh.
The event is dedicated to celebrating men in Ghana and Soboh is looking to expand his footprint in other African countries as well.
Those awarded include previous FORBES AFRICA covers, Papa Kwesi Nduom and Joseph Siaw Agyepong, for their impact as leading business magnates and inspirational role models.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/09/01/father-ghanaian-theater/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Father Of Ghanaian Theater</a>
“We select people from across various industries, people whose work is impacting society positively. We wanted to present them to young people who learn about them and who can read their stories and be inspired…,” says Soboh.
His own experiences growing up in a mining area in the Western Region of Ghana with a father he looked up to helped shape his outlook.
“My father encouraged us to be anything we wanted to be so long as it was 100% legal,” he reminisces as we sit down in his office in downtown Dzorwulu, Accra.
Soboh’s dream was to become a pilot. He opted for computer science at university instead until he stumbled into the entertainment sector.
“Two years into my course, I wanted to quit because I realized it was not something I wanted to pursue. I fell in love with entertainment… I organized a lot of events so everything pointed to the fact that I was an entertainment person. I loved putting stuff together and putting smiles on people’s faces and I also loved organizing and giving people a good time.”
Soboh joined Imajin Advertising, an events company in Ghana, where he was part of organizing some of Ghana’s most successful events such as the Legends and Legacy Ball, The Stand Up GH concert, and The Ghana Stands In Worship concert. The time was right.
According to the PWC report, Ghana’s entertainment and media sector generated revenues of $685 million in 2016, representing a year-on-year- growth above 25% from its $214 million mark in 2012.
Soboh decided he wanted a chunk of this lucrative market.
<div id="attachment_35818" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35818" class="size-medium wp-image-35818" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IMG_9360-1.jpg 1365w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Daniel Kojo Soboh. Photo supplied.</div>
“I started my own agency called Carbon AD to partake in opportunities in this growing sector. I partnered with Exclusive Men’s Magazine as a managing partner and together we created the EMY Africa Awards… The event has grown very quickly and become a household name&#8230;”
Ghana’s entertainment industry has seen significant changes over the past decade, and it has become imperative for companies like Soboh’s to continue to innovate. This relies on sponsorships, and that has not been an easy task for Soboh.
“We strive to raise the bar in terms of events in Ghana&#8230; I mean other people are doing it in Nigeria and Kenya, where they are producing state-of-the-art events and these things come at a cost,” says the man promoting exclusive men in Africa. Are they listening?

kojo

From Accra To Africa

Telecom magnate Strive Masiyiwa, who chairs the Econet Group, is on the 2018 FORBES list of African billionaires as Zimbabwe’s first billionaire. FORBES estimates Masiyiwa’s net worth at $1.7 billion. In this interview with CNBC Africa, on the day he launched Pathways For Prosperity as a co-chair with Melinda Gates in Nairobi, he says Africa needs to harness technology to drive inclusive growth.
Africa needs to utilize technology and create jobs. How do we strike the right balance?
It’s not a question of striking a balance; it’s a question of building momentum. Jobs come from enterprise. We don’t need jobs from public service, public service is good, but public service can’t create jobs. What creates jobs is entrepreneurship. We need to believe in our own entrepreneurs. There is no difference between the entrepreneurs who started Google and the entrepreneur who started Ushahidi. They probably went to school together. So we have extraordinary young people with entrepreneurial ideas. What we need is to build an ecosystem to support them. The reason Mark Zuckerberg could create a business that quickly is because there was an ecosystem there that could provide capital, support, expertise, and highly-skilled people to join his organization; that’s the only difference. And it begins with the right policies, it begins with supportive governments who believe that if we nurture these guys, and support them until they list on the Kenyan Stock Exchange, until they hire people, that’s the only place jobs are going to come from.
We are a continent where growth is happening but we have a huge challenge of the population not being touched by some of this growth; how do we use technology to make it work for everyone?
Those are the very questions that have let us sit and create this commission [Pathways for Prosperity], because we are saying, ‘wait a minute, we are seeing GDP growth, but we’re not seeing employment growth, we are not seeing the levels of poverty in Africa coming down as they are in Southeast Asia’. We need to sit down and have conversations about this and look for pathways to prosperity, as we clearly haven’t created them for a major part of our population and there is a lot of frustration and disappointment. We can’t all just shout and scream at governments; we all have to come together and try and see how we can go forward.
We have seen a lot of talk of blockchain and bitcoin… In Africa, are regulators up to speed?
I won’t comment on blockchain and cryptocurrency; that requires another day and another conversation, but the way regulators in Africa will have to approach these new technologies has to be different from the way they have done in the past, because for a start, the new technologies coming through are more profound than anything we have ever seen. If you think computers or mobile phones were extraordinary technologies, you have got to see what’s coming through from areas like biotech, AI, sharing economies, even energy. The combustion engine car we have known for 100 years will be gone before that beard of yours turns white (laughs). By 2040, you will not be allowed to drive, you won’t have anywhere to buy petrol in Europe, and maybe even India. If the people who manufacture the cars have stopped manufacturing, we will have electric cars.
It’s going to be incredibly disruptive but it’s not a cause for concern because new businesses emerge from that. What’s important is our entrepreneurs have to be skilled and supported quick enough to take advantage of opportunities as they emerge so we are not turned into consumers of other people’s technologies. It will be disruptive right through. The teachers must think differently to prepare kids differently; the regulators must see things differently; so it’s going to be much more inclusive; that’s why we are creating a platform for that kind of conversation. – Interviewed by Charles Gitonga

Strive-Masiyiwa4-hires

‘Believe In Our Own Entrepreneurs’

On the day FORBES AFRICA meets Gavin Mkhabela, the sun is shining as bright as he had hoped his future in business would be when he resigned from the banking sector. He thought he would be the person that would clean every working space across Africa, but little did he know that it would be his bank account that would be cleaned out.
At a business park in Midrand, 30kms north of Johannesburg, Mkhabela is energetic and full of life, unlike six years ago when he was broke and depressed.
“All I did was to wake up, eat and sleep again,” he says.
It started in the basement of his work place, where he had spent four hours in his car contemplating his hasty resignation.
“I like to believe that I am a very creative person and the corporate industry tends to be stagnant at times. There are certain ideas which you may not implement because they are just not ready for them. My lifestyle was also inflated but not in accordance with my income at the time,” he says.
Soon after his resignation in 2011, Mkhabela received his pension payout which he used to start his cleaning company GavCare.
“I was excited; it was my first business. I used my provident fund to start the business,” he says.
Mkhabela  used his credit cards to finance the new business.
“My fiancé and I bought everything new. We even bought a new carpet machine that was being phased out. We were just spending,” he says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/28/slaves-debt-oh-owe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Slaves To Debt: Oh, What We Owe!</a>
Things started well for the young entrepreneur after he received contracts with corporate giants, such as Standard Bank and Nampak, and a few local law firms.
In 2012, he sold 40% of his business. Then, in 2013, he was chosen for a business mentorship program in Germany, which was in partnership with the government’s National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).
“When I came back from the month-long mentorship program in Germany, everyone was celebrating me. They would say ‘you have made it in life’,” he says.
But his worst days were lurking around the corner.
“Out of excitement, I called my business partner to tell her that my mentor had decided to inject R2 million ($169,000) into our business, and he would donate equipment for our business.”
Soon after, his elation turned to despair.
On a cold Friday morning his business partner pulled out.
“We were at our detergent store in Tembisa when she proposed that she would like to pull out of the business… I still ran everything via my credit card and had overdrafts,” he says.
To make matters worse, GavCare was in a cash flow crisis.
“Our company’s financial controls were a mess, there was money coming into the business but more money went out. We also had more people working for us than we actually needed. Our operational costs far outweighed our income,” says Mkhabela.
He was also living beyond his means.
“My biggest mistake was to continue living a lifestyle that I lived when I was working in the corporate world. Most of my provident fund payout went to buying the company’s equipment and keeping the business afloat. I started skipping my monthly repayments, but even worse started avoiding calls from creditors,” he says.
“I got a lot of judgements under my name and was eventually blacklisted by creditors. We took business loans and I extended my credit facilities on my personal capacity in an effort to keep the business going for two years. I also went to loan sharks, an even more [costly] mistake that almost put my life at risk. It was all in an effort to survive and help my financial situation every month the loan amounts from the loan sharks will increase as I couldn’t settle them.”
He then fell into depression.
“One by one, I kept losing things and getting more in the red. I got depressed&#8230; My relationship with my fiancé also started to suffer, because I had no financial contribution to the relationship. You know when the man loses the ability and the power to provide, you drive your woman away,” he says.
Mkhabela then got the dreaded call.
“All I did for months was to sleep, wake, eat and sleep again. Then the repossessor called me,” he says. “They took my [VW Golf] GTI, my furniture and every other thing I had worked so hard for. Luckily my house was paid up,” he says.
“It was at that point that I realized that I needed to get up and do something,” he says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/12/08/south-african-billionaires-fortune-plunges-2-billion-day-amid-accounting-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: South African Billionaire&#8217;s Fortune Plunges More Than $2 Billion In A Day Amid Accounting Scandal</a>
Even though he was down, he was not out of ideas.
“I bounced back in 2014, when I decided to become a financial advisor so that I could save others from being in the same situation as me,” he says.
Mkhabela says he now has over a thousand clients. In 2016, he published his book, Financial Planning 4 What? The book addresses the problems experienced by many regarding personal finance.
“I wrote the book on financial planning and started developing an interest in educating people about financial management from a personal and business finance point of view. It stems from my whole experience because all that was needed was proper financial controls and proper planning,” says Mkhabela.
Looking back, he wishes he did things differently with his business and his business partner.
“I did a lot of introspection in the manner in which I ran things, because I studied a business course,” says Mkhabela.
Mkhabela’s worst day was a lesson that can’t be taught in lecture halls. It is also a lesson he’ll never forget.

Tag: Entrepreneur

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