He may be one of the richest men in Ghana, employing 250,000 of his countrymen, but it all began in struggle. Joseph Agyepong Siaw holds his lean, early years in abhorrence. Reason: the serial entrepreneur and founder of the Jospong Group of Companies had the odds stacked against him from the day he was born.
“My mother told me that when it was time to give birth to me, she had to move to the village because my father had three wives and traditionally, in the Ghanaian culture, when you are in that situation you have to go to your parents to deliver your baby. So when she was walking in a farm, she went into labor and started crying for help. At the time there was no hospital so we had to call on the village prophetess to come and assist in my delivery,” says Agyepong as he talks to FORBES AFRICA of his humble past in the conference room of his Adjiriganor office, in the country’s capital Accra.
The walls of the room say it all; they are covered with trappings of wealth and numerous entrepreneurship awards.
Agyepong is an enigma in corporate Ghana. He shies away from interviews and public appearances – very little has been documented about the serial entrepreneur who has made a fortune through revolutionizing solid waste disposal in the West African country. He is assertive and confident with a demeanor that commands attention without being arrogant. His personality is warm and engaging. What was to be a 30-minute conversation went on for three hours.
Agyepong finally settles down to recount his journey, one that began with the wrong name.
“My mother named me Felix because my father was not there during the time of my birth. So I used the name Felix from kindergarten to primary school two. It was then that my father saw my name and said to me ‘your name is not Felix; it is Joseph.’ So my name was changed to Joseph.”
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As one of 17 mouths to feed, and with little income from his father’s dwindling business as a photographer, Agyepong had to rely on his wits and brawn for survival.
“In the village, life was very challenging and difficult. I was schooling barefooted, going to the farm to work before going to school. I had no money. I could not afford body lotion after bathing so I would chew palm nut and use the extracts to cream myself. I slept in mud houses without electricity. You had to be a laborer and work before you got food. My palms are hardened because I had to use cutlasses to weed. I had to walk between 20 to 30 kilometers to different places to go and look for work.”
<div id="attachment_32964" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32964" class=" wp-image-32964" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FORBES-JUNE-1724-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="390" />Joseph Siaw Agyepong (Picture supplied)</div>
The difficult upbringing only strengthened Agyepong’s resolve to succeed. With the help of his elder brother Daniel, Agyepong and his siblings were relocated from the village to Accra. Agyepong had dreams of becoming either a pilot or a marine engineer but fate left him in the street.
“I started an electrical engineering course and in 1990 I completed the course and my father said he no longer had the money to contribute to my education so I had to go into business. He suggested I should go and assist my mother who had a little shop where she was squatting in front of somebody’s business. I started helping her like a petty trader selling exercise books on the streets,” says Agyepong.
That was the first step on a journey that has led to one of the most diversified holding companies in Ghana. Agyepong is today responsible for the strategic vision of the Jospong Group of Companies, with operations in Africa as well as Asia and the Middle East. The company has business interests in many sectors of the economy with its biggest operations in waste management, ICT, and banking. Agyepong’s strategy is slightly unorthodox. He believes he is guided by a higher power with the right direction at the right time.
“When I had to sell exercise books, I was crying because I felt my destiny had been destroyed. After a while I put myself back together. What really helped me to overcome that situation was one day I was praying and God’s message came to me. The word said ‘obey thy father and mother and you shall be successful’. So I took that message and I started to move. I stopped schooling and started assisting my mother.”
At the age of 22, Agyepong would go early in the morning to his mother’s little shop and pack exercise books in boxes and walk off with them on his head to sell through the busy streets of Accra. His persistence paid off and very soon Agyepong was selling enough books that he could invest in other businesses.
“I tried every business. When it was the Christmas season, I would put the books aside and go to the local market and buy jewelry and shirts and take them round to people and try and sell them. I was doing each business on a seasonal basis and when the demand changed, I switched my products,” he says.
Soon it was time to expand. Agyepong saw an opportunity to start his own printing business and asked his mother to support him with GHC3 ($0.70) as start-up capital.
“My mission was to supply schools with my products. Because I didn’t have money and equipment, I would go to schools and talk to them as a marketer and then when I got an order I would go to a printing press with the orders and process the orders and take my commission on that order. I started building up my clientele like this until I could afford to buy a small machine and I started printing the books myself.”
That ushered in the birth of Jospong Printing Press in 1995.
The following year, Agyepong stumbled on an opportunity in construction. A client was looking for a contractor and the resourceful entrepreneur pitched and delivered the contract by outsourcing the various building activities to local tradesmen and in the process Agyepong established his construction business, Extended Builders. In 1998, during the Ghana elections, he saw yet another opportunity to print t-shirts for the election campaign and Appointed Time Screen Printing was born. Since then, the company has established a holding company with subsidiaries in oil and gas, logistics, quarry and mining, manufacturing as well as agro-business.
“I made friends with people in banks and financial institutions because they have test cases of people who have tried to start several businesses and knew what the shortfalls were. I would go to them and say ‘I want to do this business so can you give me comparable cases of businesses who have done this before and how they coped?’”
In 2006, there were difficulties in managing solid waste in Ghana. It became an issue of great concern to Ghana’s citizens, mainly due to its environmental health implications. The United Nations Conference on Human Settlement report stated that between 33% and 50% of solid waste generated within most cities in low and middle income countries are not collected. Instead it is illegally dumped on streets and open spaces. Furthermore, a 2002 report by the African Development Bank stipulates that Ghana generated about 3.6 million tons of solid waste per year, made up of predominantly organic compost, such as food, plastic and wood waste. These critical challenges presented yet another opportunity the serial entrepreneur could not ignore, one that would prove to be Agyepong’s most lucrative business to date.
To make his next business venture a success, Agyepong knew he had to overcome certain stereotypes associated with waste management.
“In 2006, whenever you asked someone to come into the waste management space, they would not do it because they thought that it was a filthy job and it was a low-grade job. So I thought of bringing in a dignified way of doing it.”
His eureka moment happened on a visit to China.
“I first visited China and saw people using tricycles, so I bought one in a container and brought it back to Ghana and I asked people to try it. I then built an assembly plant in Ghana and started assembling the tricycles myself. I started with the tricycles because I said I needed more people to help collect the waste and if we relied on a truck and the truck breaks down then we would be in trouble,” says Agyepong.
Next was convincing local government districts to adopt his innovative idea.
“I went to each district and spoke to the mayors or district executives and gave them 25 tricycles and told them to try it. They didn’t want to pay for it so I gave it to them as a pilot.”
Soon, demand for his tricycles increased and Agyepong was faced with cash flow problems. Due to the lack of profitability of the venture, he had to think outside the box to raise funds.
“I went to the bank and asked them for money to expand my printing business. I lobbied them with my printing business for money to buy a printing press and when I got the money I went to buy tricycles and I used the tricycles to develop the business all over the districts and then Zoomlion emerged.”
With a bank loan of GHC30,000 ($6,800), Zoomlion began its expansion. From starting with 1,000 tricycles, the company currently has 15,000 and 30,000 motorized and manual tricycles respectively, with a fleet of waste management trucks as well. The company also has a combined core staff of 3,000 and manages over 85,000 workers under various forms of Public Private Partnerships (PPP). Zoomlion currently has operations in Togo, Angola, Zambia and Equatorial Guinea and Liberia.
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Agyepong also established The Africa Institute of Sanitation and Waste Management (AISWAM), in partnership with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), to help meet the technological and human resource needs of the waste management industry. AISWAM gives people the required skills for efficient waste management using modern technology.
For Agyepong it is not so much about the money but building an organization that can stand the test of time.
“I am passionate about getting good concepts that have longevity and I like industrialization. So, all the things that I was doing, I was looking at what businesses will succeed in the future. Waste is generated everyday. So I thought if I got into it early, and do it right, I would last. I was not looking at it in terms of how much money I could make today. No matter what happened with the economy we would always need waste management, so I decided if I just move into it and establish the base well, I will thrive.”
<div id="attachment_32966" style="width: 429px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32966" class=" wp-image-32966" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FORBES-JUNE-1566-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="419" height="279" />Joseph Siaw Agyepong (Photo supplied)</div>
There were, however, some roadblocks along the way. In 2013 the World Bank debarred Zoomlion Ghana and Zoomlion Liberia for two years. Zoomlion was accused of fraud and paying bribes to secure contracts.
“In 2008, we went into Liberia where we secured a World Bank contract and one of our staff, during the contract proceedings, committed certain errors, which were an infraction. The contract was for the construction of a landfill,” says Agyepong.
“During the auditing processes of the bid, certain things were not recorded correctly and there were certain errors that were made by our staff. This was the first international contract we had as a company moving into the international field. We delivered on the project and got paid but during the auditing process, the World Bank saw that some recordings were not done properly and we got blacklisted for two years. It was a very big blow.”
It was a wake-up call for Agyepong. He immediately set out to strengthen corporate governance throughout the Jospong Group of Companies. In 2015, the company was removed from the World Bank’s list of sanctioned companies.
Creating jobs has always been key for Agyepong, which resonates with the government.
“From Zoomlion we started creating jobs and we have more than 250,000 people working in our organization and this is a jackpot because there are huge employment opportunities. I saw the need for government to find employment opportunities but they did not know how to go about it. In the waste management business your best customer is government. You have to work with the ministry of local government and policymakers of government to achieve your goal.”
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Since the establishment of Zoomlion, Agyepong has created two to three companies every year. Investment and diversification is more important to him than comfort.
“One thing I did was I invested in my business. Every amount was put back into the business. I stayed with my wife and three children in a single room, built 10 companies before I built my house. I don’t limit myself to one business. So every year I kept moving into different businesses. My passion is employment generation so I am not looking at how do you manage the business but rather just get the right people and pay them well to manage each business.”
“The growth of the company has been phenomenal since its inception as a printing press, with operations in diverse sectors at the moment. This is hugely attributed to Siaw&#8217;s leadership style as well as his focus on quality service delivery at a competitive price. The core philosophy of the business is to identify opportunities and provide solutions, roll out innovative business models, build capacities to provide value and nurture them to become market leaders,” says Chris Koney, a journalist for the Business and Financial Times in Ghana.
Agyepong is obsessed about finding solutions to everyday problems.
“Wherever there is a problem, I like finding out how to solve it. At that time, everybody was talking about how much of a problem we had with waste management so I moved to solve the problem,” he says.
Currently, Agyepong is looking for a solution to curtail the numerous fires in Ghana. Given his proclivity for out-of-the-box thinking – and the skill to spot the potential of a tricycle in China – the flames could soon be doused.

FORBES-JUNE-1620b

A Dirty Job That Made A Poor Man Filthy Rich

A handful of spices and condiments can whet a person’s appetite for business and keep the cash registers ringing, as Ghanaian food entrepreneur Essie Bartels has proven.
For as long as the New Jersey-based Bartels can remember, she has lived a life around food. From an early age, she was the only one of her five siblings tasked with cooking for the entire family.
“I started cooking around the age of seven. I am the first daughter so my mother wouldn’t let me out of her sight when she was cooking. At the time I hated it because when you are that young you don’t want to be in the kitchen, you want to be playing with your friends but that was what she wanted me to do at the time so that is what I did,” says Bartels.
Those early culinary lessons would eventually prepare her to launch Essie Spice, a flavorful journey that has led to a whole foods brand featured in TIME magazine and now stocked in over 13 stores across the United States and Africa. Her love affair with spices was ignited in Ghana.
“My mum used to travel to London and buy spice racks which were very pretty but she would only use like five or six spices out of a rack of 15, so all the other spices would be left unused because they were not traditional spices and as a result they would go bad and be thrown away. So I would take them and figure out what to use all those spices for and I would come up with ideas.”
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Her childhood dream was to become the CEO of a large corporate organization; but her first passion was science. That helped as, in a way, food is science.
Bartels went on to graduate cum laude from Marywood University in Pennsylvania where she studied international business and management with a minor in French.
“So for a semester I lived in the south of France and that also spurred my whole travel bug, which has played a huge part in my products. It is easy to travel in Europe so we would go away to all these different places for the weekend.”
<div id="attachment_32920" style="width: 299px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32920" class=" wp-image-32920" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/030-copy-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="289" height="434" />Essie Bartels (Photo supplied)</div>
Bartels graduated in 2008 at the height of the global financial meltdown and spent six months unemployed surviving only on odd jobs before landing her first job in procurement at Hitachi. The economic downturn got worse and soon Bartels was out of a job again.
“I spent another five months at home and then got another job at Panasonic. I went from a procurement assistant to a procurement specialist. I was there for two years and then got a job at Unilever, which was eight minutes from my home. I negotiated deals between Unilever and our research partners,” says Bartels.
While at Unilever, the idea for Essie Spice was still simmering in her head, with Bartels spending half her pay-cheque on funding her dream. It was not until she quit Unilever for a job she hated that she decided to take her spice dream more seriously.
“This was a very pivotal time for Essie Spice and I decided to give it six months of my undivided attention. I told God if nothing happens with the brand in six months I am going back to the corporate world. At the time I was getting offers from L’Oreal and other big brands. It is during that time that I got into Shoprite, Whole Foods and I got features in TIME magazine and Cooking Light magazine. It is crazy because it was at the very end of that six-month period and I said God is really funny.”
Essie Spice’s unique selling point lies in the brand’s ability to marry the flavors of West Africa where Bartels got her culinary start, with her experiences and travels all bottled in a jar. In just over three years the brand has expanded into the competitive whole foods market with a steady flow of about 1,000 repeat customers on their website each year.
That journey has not been without its challenges though.
“I had my formulas but they needed to go through FDA testing to make sure people would not fall sick when they ate them. So I had to send it to the lab for them to test and make recommendations of things I needed to change to be able to make it safe to consume by other people. That was very challenging because it takes a lot of money.
“The other challenge was regulatory, paying taxes and licenses and there was so many of them that you need to comply with. The other challenge was finding a place to make the sauce. By law in the United States if you are making a liquid product you have to make it in a commercial kitchen and I didn’t have a commercial kitchen so I needed to find one, which was an issue. I had to pay them by the hour and get people to work with you as well as pay for insurance which is all a huge capital expense,” says Bartels.
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In three years, the company has sold over 5,500 jars; her best-seller is the Mango Chili Medley, a mouth-watering profusion of flavors.
Playing with unique exotic spices has helped Bartels&#8217; bottom line. Through experimentation and an inquisitive mind, she has created an amalgamation of flavors bottled in a jar taking customers with an insatiable appetite for exotic flavors on an aromatic journey that keeps them coming back for more, and more.

Going Down The Spice Route

It&#8217;s a strange sight. Four men wearing Virtual Reality (VR) goggles with heads bowed and moving up and down and from side to side. They call it a Stevie Wonder – the humor is a bit rough in this business – but this is the modus operandi of a drone racer.
All four sit in a stand at the rugby field at the Cape Academy for Maths, Science and Technology, in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. The drones buzz like a swarm of bees over the rugby field.  With the help of VR, all four have the view from the cockpit of their small drones as they race through hoops, weave through S-bends and barrel roll though low hanging gates at 160 kilometers an hour.
&#8220;The first time you fly it’s one of those eye-opening experiences. It&#8217;s like you are floating outside your own body, especially if it’s FPV (first-person view)&#8230;When you are using goggles, you are fully immersed in virtual reality. It&#8217;s as if you are looking at yourself while flying. You still experience all the vertigo of being up in the air and you feel that on the ground. When you get up you feel dizzy after the flight, it blows your mind,&#8221; says six-year veteran drone racer Alan Ball.
This experience captured the imagination of Ball. Four years ago, after he got tired of waiting for parts from overseas, he converted his garage into a thriving drone business.
&#8220;I said whatever it costs I&#8217;m in. That&#8217;s how I started… I was working from my garage at night while doing my day job. I would come home from work and work another eight hours until one in the morning, then go to bed, then it was the same thing again the next day.&#8221;
Five months later, Ball quit his job as an iOS game developer at Naspers, Africa&#8217;s $74.5-billion media group. With R50,000 ($3,900) out of his own pocket he opened the first drone shop in South Africa, Flying Robot.
&#8220;Two years later… I am in this massive 200-meter-square warehouse and shipping drones around the country 24/7. We&#8217;re now four staff, shipping 15 to 20 drones daily,&#8221; he says.
Ball is one of hundreds of Africans waking up to this up-and-coming sport. You can make big money at the top if you are prepared to spend money. A professional will spend as much as R35,000 ($2,700) on one drone.
A pilot’s license can cost up to R30,000 ($2,300). Thereafter you still need to be part of a company that has a Remote Operating Certificate (ROC), of which there are only 11 ROCs in South Africa, says Ball.
<div id="attachment_32817" style="width: 512px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32817" class=" wp-image-32817" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Drone_Alan-Ball_JC-7-2-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="502" height="283" />Photo by Jay Caboz</div>
Drone prize pools can run into the millions. At the 2016 World Drone Prix, in Dubai, from a $1-million prize pool, 15-year-old Luke Bannister walked away with $250,000 after placing first at its inaugural event.
The sport&#8217;s popularity is growing as fast as eSports – professional online gaming –which has taken off in countries like South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, as well as South Africa.
A sign of the times in 2016, The Drone Racing League (DRL), which was broadcast live on US sports channel ESPN and Sky. It raised $8 million from Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins who is worth $7.4 billion.
Thirty two competitors face off in heats until they are whittled down to a final four. Obstacles can range anywhere from stadium hallways to two-meter-square gates.
&#8220;Your tracks become three dimensional. It&#8217;s no longer just an on-the-ground two dimensional track. You can now start exploring verticals and doing maneuvers like a Split-S, to get the quad down and then back again,&#8221; says Ball.
In Cape Town, the numbers are growing. Ball says the biggest turnout he&#8217;s seen was a crowd of 200 at the South African FPV Racing Club in 2016.
&#8220;A lot of guys practice by going through kids’ jungle gyms. The tighter the gap the more the challenge and showing the skill and the precision,&#8221; says Ball.
Back at the rugby field in Cape Town, with the four Stevie Wonders, there is a ragtag collection of dads, sons, hobbyists and professionals. Each pilot brings a bag of wires, batteries and spare parts. If a drone smashes into a flag, they can repair it on the spot. In this sport, a handyman is as good as a dashing racer.
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&#8220;The pioneers in the scene seven years ago were taking components they could find that were everyday – CCTV cameras or everyday transmission video systems. They would then figure out how to put that on a plane or a quad and start flying it,&#8221; says Ball.
&#8220;It was a cool time to do it. I was building my own flight controllers from old gyros from helicopters, and assembling that. Some racers would use Sony cinematography goggles, what you would sit on the couch and watch TV with. They put those into snowboard goggles and hacked them together themselves.&#8221;
Ball&#8217;s first drone was a hack job – a three bladed Tricopter. With soldering iron and an open mind, he built it using a plan he downloaded from the internet, a cut out mainframe from copper PC board and 10mmx10mm meranti wood for arms.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a great platform to learn about technology and electronics. We are using it today at the Cape Academy for Maths, Science and Technology’s workshops, teaching [students] about remote control and how things work in flight,&#8221; says Ball.
Ball&#8217;s hack jobs are a far cry from what he builds now. In May, he launched his own drone, called the EchoQuad-X. Ball says in the racing scene everyone is now building their own.
&#8220;The X-range is almost like Meccano. [Drone racing] is a very DIY hobby; you build your own drone, you fix your own drone when you are sitting at your work bench at night. We thought let&#8217;s give people options to build it their way and inspire creativity to come up with their own configuration that suits them and how they want to be,&#8221; says Ball.
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Clearly drones are how Ball wants to be as an entrepreneur. His other ventures didn&#8217;t work out. The first shot at entrepreneurism was importing cement, which didn&#8217;t kick off. He then tried selling video jukeboxes to music stores. He also took a shot at developing app games, which brought in some cash when he started working with Naspers. It was the business of his heart that proved a winner.
&#8220;I was always taking things apart and putting them back together again. Maybe they didn&#8217;t work when I put them back together again. When I was a kid I was building my own computer. I built model airplanes and full-sized gliders. I was drawn to the thrill of flight.&#8221;
Drones are also tearing through social media faster than they rip through the skies. Drone racers share their movies and experiences online. YouTube is often the glue that binds the small band of racers in Africa.
&#8220;People are coming up with new tricks all the time. The only way to see it is on YouTube. Every time there is a new model that comes into the community it&#8217;s all shared and distributed through YouTube.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s accelerated everything that&#8217;s related to the hobby. Initially it was online forums for online pilots. I think things have moved out of the forums and into the technical celeb space where you have your YouTube channels. We learn from them.&#8221;
There is no denying that drones and their ability to fly cheaply have made themselves indispensable to entrepreneurs looking for an innovative edge. Drones have been used to map mines, deliver pizza and photograph weddings. Once, a bunch of drones flew together to make a hovercraft.
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But, Ball warns, there are pitfalls.
&#8220;You are not allowed to fly a drone higher than 50 meters. You are not allowed fly 50 meters near roads or buildings, which means you are not necessarily allowed to fly in your backyard. Privacy is obviously a big thing.&#8221;
&#8220;Now with the drones being so easy to fly, it makes it easier to take a photo of their house, but what they don&#8217;t realize is there is someone else in their back garden that could lead to other things happening.&#8221;
In Australia, in 2014, a property company used a drone photograph to advertise a house on sale on a large billboard. The company didn&#8217;t realize that, at the time, the neighbor, Mandy Lingard, was tanning topless next door.
&#8220;It went through all these checks and only when it was on the billboard did the lady who owned the house notice that she was tanning in her back garden. It led to a large lawsuit,&#8221; says Ball.
There is also the rising fear of drone hacking.
&#8220;Yes, it’s true. A hacker that is a Remote Control [RC] enthusiast hacked a known protocol that drives the drone, the radio control, and took over the drone. He proved it was very easy to take over control of any RC plane or drone.&#8221;
Fear or not, the buzz of the drone is likely to get louder over the skies of Africa in the next decade.

Mind Blown By Drone At 160km/h

Thobo Kerekang and Donald Nnoto, a dynamic duo from Botswana, believe that ‘whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve’. They have proved this with their designer label KeNo Custom Suits.
Kerekang and Nnoto say image is everything and people are addressed according to how they look. The designers believe style should match ambition and for this reason they ensure their clients are dressed for success.
KeNo Custom Suits, a name derived from the entrepreneurs’ last names, started three years ago and its success has managed to surpass even their own expectations.
It started as a dream when Kerekang and Nnoto were childhood friends; it is now a reality and referred to as a promising label in the fashion industry.
They set up the business to address the shortcomings of other tailors, such as product quality, time management, service and delivery.
<blockquote>“Many times we were not satisfied with the kind of suits we used to find in shops, they somehow failed to make us stand out. So this drove us to take matters into our own hands,” he says.</blockquote>
KeNo custom designed suits are nothing like the ones sold in stores, says Nnoto.
“They are customized suits that totally bring a new twist to suave with stylish designs and materials. The trendy suits, whose stylish designs quickly enhance one’s image, are made from different materials,” he says.
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The suits scream style while also personifying ambition. Their clothing has caught on in Botswana.
The duo’s success is even more remarkable since neither had much experience in fashion design.  Kerekang and Nnoto yearn to be the best bespoke tailors in Africa.
“We wanted to change the way people look and appear because the respect one gets anywhere is based on their appearance. Another thing is that if you look good, you feel good, thus increased confidence,” says Kerekang.
Kerekang explains that style is an individual’s identity and thus differs from person to person.
“When a group of men stand together wearing suits, ours should be easily identifiable; the cut, fabric and design and we believe a good suit can brighten anyone’s mood and day,” he says.
They want to revolutionize the way people dress.
<blockquote>“Before you say anything  to anyone, your appearance has to say it all. It can either say good things or bad things, thus people need to be cautious when choosing their clothes,” says Kerekang.</blockquote>
KeNo offers suits for all occasions, but, whether their designs are formal or casual, they must create a lasting impression.
“We embody the desires of the client through involving them as part of the suit-making process to deliver a product that is not only good in appearance, but is also a part of them. It is not just the suit we sell, we sell the experience,” says Nnoto.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/07/06/cool-idea-turned-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A Cool Idea That Turned A Million</a>
Through perseverance, KeNo Custom Suits has continued to grow since its launch. But Kerekang and Nnoto are not going to wallow in their success; they aim to spread their brand to the rest of Africa.
KeNo Custom suits has connections across Africa and has recently partnered with businesses in Zambia.
“We are in the process of establishing more partnerships beyond our borders and growing the brand. Our plan is Africa, the world is next. We are here to create wealth but most importantly a legacy,” says Kerekang.
With demand high and many women feeling sidelined, the pair introduced a ladies line.
“We now cater for every individual that takes their appearance seriously and in the future we are going further than suits – shoes, shirts, watches even glasses,” says Kerekang.
The entrepreneurs’ determination is striking.
“We are inspired by many successful businessmen and women who have made it in life but come from humble beginnings,” they both say.
Soon, others could be inspired by them. &#8211; Written by Kgomotso Molelekeng

First Africa, Then The World

Jokate Mwegelo has more followers than AKA and Bonang Matheba put together. She inspires girls from Angola to Zimbabwe without even trying. For an entrepreneur in a Tanzanian town, she has a celeb-style social media following.
“You are such a down-to-earth and inspirational queen. Your hard work and humility have shown me that there is hope for me no matter what life throws at me,” writes one of her 2.5 million followers on Instagram.
It’s been a long road to here for 30-year-old Mwegelo. Her journey began in 2006 when taking a gap year after high school.
To pass time, Mwagelo volunteered for the United Nations and entered the Miss Tanzania contest.
“I was extremely shy and didn’t want to wear short things but was very confident in my ability to speak in public which kind of propelled me to the finals,” says Mwegelo.
She wasn’t crowned queen, but left an impression, which ushered in opportunities for acting; her debut was a role in a movie called Fake Pastors. The movie’s success was genuine.
“This was at a time when the movie industry was becoming more commercialized in Tanzania. So it was among the first movies to do very well commercially and the promotion was huge, although the pay for us actors was little.”
It paved way for more roles and earned her two awards at the Zanzibar International Film Festival and a stint as a musician collaborating with the likes of Nigerian multiple award-winning hip-hop star Ice Prince.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/06/15/powerhouse-changing-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Priyanka Chopra: The Powerhouse Changing The World</a>
Although supportive of her extra-curricular achievements, her family encouraged her to stick to the plan and to go to university after the gap year.
“My parents were civil servants and very strict and valued education. In primary school, I remember my dad would forget to pick me up. Sometimes I would be the last child to leave school and even walk four to five kilometers home after 6PM,” she says.
In the end, Mwegelo listened to her parents’ advice. She graduated in Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Dar es Salaam. It wasn’t enough to fulfil the deep void she felt, six months into her post-graduation studies. Something was seriously amiss.
“As a former beauty queen, actress, media personality and fashion enthusiast, I felt I could do so much more with my image and for the industry… I hated that in entertainment, sometimes you are at the mercy of the people who may give you a job…&#8221;
<blockquote>&#8220;I felt like we needed a female billionaire. Many industries are male-dominated yet females are the main users. I want to be a billionaire.”</blockquote>
It took soul-searching, research and endless hours at a business incubating program. Her interest in fashion was heightened and her successful stints in the entertainment industry earned her precious contacts. She saw a ripe opportunity to start a business.
Five years ago, Mwegelo used her savings to found Kidoti Company, a lifestyle brand.
“I have a mole or beauty spot on my face and some people call it kidoti so that’s how I came up with the name of the company.”
She started designing clothes for popular artists, and then received a soft loan from Africa’s youngest billionaire, Tanzanian <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/people/mohammed-dewji/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mohamed Dewji</a>. It changed everything. He gave her items from his company to sell from which she bought her first van.
“When we rolled out our first line of products which were hair extensions, we had such a successful media run and penetration in the market. A lady from an advertising firm called me saying my brand was the most innovative in the market at that time and she wanted to know how I did it. I was ecstatic,” she says.
Kidoti designs and manufactures synthetic hair extensions, sandals and bags.
“So far we have managed to roll out around 60,000 hair pieces in the market with prospects of doing tenfold better once we establish our own factory in the region,” she says.
To realize this, they partnered with China’s Rainbow Shell Craft.
“We were simply looking for someone to help produce our goods… No one in Tanzania was ready to invest in us and our dream. So we had to go to the source of all these factories… Partnering with the Chinese is hectic, language and cultural barriers were [business threatening]. However, it was such an amazing time. We learned a lot from each other especially about values that are vital to sustaining an international bilateral agreement,” says Mwegelo.
The company promises to be a big success but for Mwegelo, it doesn’t end here. She says giving back is a key part of her life.
She launched ‘Be Kidotified’, a campaign which empowers young girls by building sports facilities in public schools, and through education and entrepreneurship. She also launched ‘Msusi Wao’, translated ‘their hairstylist’, which connects hair dressers, financiers and customers.
Africa certainly needs more female billionaires. Given her feisty zeal, hopefully, Mwegelo will one day be among the many to make it.
– <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/people30/jokate-mwegelo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mwegelo is one of the 30 under 30 class of 2017 in the June edition of </a>FORBES AFRICA.

Millions Online And In Her Designer Pockets

<div id="attachment_27742" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27742" class="size-large wp-image-27742" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-471769854-1024x760.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="760" />Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, with a Powerpack unit the background unveils suit of batteries for homes, businesses, and utilities at Tesla Design Studio April 30, 2015 in Hawthorne, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)</div>
On May 31 Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a statement that he was getting serious about factory safety. The statement sounded like a heartfelt appeal for everyone to improve safety at the state-of-the-art Tesla automobile factory in Fremont, California.  Unfortunately, the statement was issued after it was made public that Tesla’s safety rates from 2014 to 2016 were poor.
<a href="http://worksafe.typepad.com/files/worksafe_tesla5_24.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Worksafe</a> conducted a review based on federal OSHA reports required to be submitted by the Fremont Tesla factory from 2014 to 2016. Worksafe concluded that the rate of reportable injuries was 31% higher than industry standards. Worksafe’s report was issued 24 May, one week before the CEO’s statement.
Although some manufacturers voluntarily release this safety information, Tesla had not done so for the 2014-2016 period. Now, Tesla has voluntarily released data for the first quarter of 2017, showing an improvement in the safety record that is now better than industry average.
Tesla’s factory is the only major automobile manufacturing facility not unionized. The United Auto Workers prominently displayed Worksafe’s report on their website. The UAW are using the safety record as part of their campaign to encourage Tesla workers to unionize. The argument is that union factories are safer because union workers can speak up about safety violations without fear of losing their jobs.
There maybe something to that. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/opinion/2-years-31-dead-construction-workers-new-york-can-do-better.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reported</a> January 16, 2017, that there were 31 construction deaths in the city over the past two years. 29 deaths occurred at non-unionized construction sites, while only two occurred at unionized construction sites. The report cited the ability of union workers to speak up as a key differentiator.
Musk has big ambitions for Tesla, which is putting factory workers under considerable stress. Tesla delivered 80,000 cars in 2016 would like to deliver 500,000 cars in 2018.  Working conditions in the plant have been described as very difficult. It has been reported that ambulances showed up over 100 times in the past three years because of injuries or workers simply passing out on the job.
<a class="yoast-link-suggestion__value" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2015/10/01/teslas-secret-formula/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tesla’s secret formula</a>
But no statement was made about safety then, and only now, a week after the record goes public, does the CEO get serious. If Musk were truly interested in safety, he would not need to be provoked by the safety record going public.
In his statement, Musk says he requires a report on every injury. CEO’s receiving reports of on-the-job injuries is standard practice, not a significant commitment above and beyond. The statement also says he will visit each injured worker and perform the same task as the worker, presumably to understand in detail the nature of the work. This is a good practice but should not need to be done by the CEO. By proposing to do so, he is implying that only he can truly understand what is happening.
Safety is a complicated thing, resulting from cultural and organizational design decisions to create a safe working place. It does not get solved in any enduring way with slogans. It starts with the fundamental design of the factory and a culture where workers can speak up.
One way for managers to understand deteriorating conditions before an injury is to ask, at the end of the shift, a one question survey: ‘How safe was it today?’ It’s better to ask ‘How safe was it today’ than ‘Was today a safe day or not?’ This is because as workers begin to fatigue or sense priorities shifting to production over safety, it’s easier to change from a vote of 5/5 to 4/5 than to meet the threshold that would require someone to shift from ‘it is safe’ to ‘it is not safe.’
Sadly, highway deaths have trended up recently, surpassing 40,000 deaths in 2016. In Florida, where I live, angry, elderly, and inattentive drivers have pushed the rate 40% above the national average. A safer driving car would save lives. While a safer autopilot would save thousands of lives, it is hard to build a safe car in an unsafe factory.
Maybe we should start treating our employees as our first customers in the value creation chain.
For Forbes.com by David Marquet, CONTRIBUTOR

Tesla’s secret formula

Elon Musk Left Worker Safety On Autopilot Too Long

Remember Piet Kemp? It’s been more than three years since FORBES AFRICA featured him in its pages in October 2013. Kemp left South Africa for the Soviet republic of Georgia in search of greener pastures, he says he has found happiness and toil thousands of miles away from home. The 72-year- old Kemp claims to now be a Georgian citizen and vows to never come back to his homeland. He was one of 10 South African famers who left on the promise of free land.
<blockquote>I am really glad to be out of South Africa; it’s a dangerous place.</blockquote>
And the whole country belongs to colonialism,” says Kemp. He now has 30 laborers, who neither speak English nor Afrikaans, but Kemp says he is slowly learning the Georgian language. “Speaking the language was very difficult. My wife has been helping me learn it and I don’t need a translator anymore.” Kemp says spare parts are one of the big problems. “Sometimes when the tractor is broken, it takes a long time to get the tools to fix it. We have to import our tools and machines.” Before the age of 80, Kemp plans to retire.

Piet-Kemp

Greener Pastures For African Farmer

You might be the most charismatic entrepreneur since noodles were invented, but recruiting the best talent, and retaining it for at least seven years, is a complicated task in today’s world where professionals are hopping from one company to the next. For many millennials in particular, staying four years at one company for four years is not desirable.
Who you bring into your company, can make or break its reputation. It can either be a disaster or glorious journey.
Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, uses a bus to illustrate this. Before the bus starts driving, you need to find the right people, put them in the right seats, and only then can you decide where you want to go.
When the US government was breaking up John D. Rockefeller’s company, Standard Oil, he asked that he identify certain people he would like to retain. He did this because he knew he could put together another successful company with the right people.
Recruiting the same high-minded people, that share your ambitions, can be challenging. You end up with the scenario of leaders leading leaders, which can lead to friction.
I hear many entrepreneurs saying you should hire people more intelligent than you. This should be done with caution because you might find yourself in a position where your leadership is undermined. However, you also don’t want to be working with people that are incapable.
Some employees in your company may be entrepreneurial – they’re called intrapreneurs. They need to be enabled, rather than suppressed. Give them the freedom to come up with new ideas in your company, like Alphabet, which owns Google. This is a company that is innovative by nature and has a culture of enabling such restless souls – otherwise they will resign and start their own thing.
If you are, or ever have been, an entrepreneur, you will know that finding a right match for your company can be arduous. It is for this reason that numerous hedge fund companies, like Citadel and Bridgewater Associates, still interact with new candidates and recruits.
The conundrum we face is that we don’t always keep those recruits, no matter how much we value them. It has been found that, on average, only one out of 16 employees will remain for an extended period of time at a company.
Some companies, once they have shortlisted eligible candidates, try to talk them out of wanting to be employed there. They do this to ensure that they only hire people that are passionate about working for the company. The reason for this is that it is better, and more cost effective, to lose a candidate than an employee.
Goldman Sachs has one of the most vigorous recruiting processes. They will ask candidates to come at a certain time, then when they arrive, the senior personnel from Goldman Sachs won’t be there for the appointment, or will arrive late. The candidates who leave before the manager arrives will not go further in the process; those that remain are told the moral of the experience is to learn to wait for someone who is higher than you in business hierarchy.
In your company you have three groups of employees who roughly make up these percentages, the 20%, 60% and 20%. The first 20% are the unproductive people you wish to fire at the first chance you get; the second 60% are average employees, who are  and consistent, and who form the core of any company; the final 20% are your top-notch employees, who generally over-perform. The problem with this group is that everyone wants them; competitors are continuously trying to snatch them. For this reason, they tend not to stay long at a single company, instead moving to the highest bidder in the market.
That middle group – the 60% – is who you need to nurture. They will stick with you and their loyalty will produce the best results.

Hang on  to your stars

It was as tough as tough could be. From his early years, life loomed like a clenched fist in the face of Teboho Twala. These days he drives a Porsche and is a classy and elegant young entrepreneur a world away from his often tortured childhood.
At the age of 10, he was sleeping under a wheelbarrow in the yard and lived on the streets for more than a year. The reason – a troubled childhood through a mother who turned to drink and violence when Twala’s stepfather left her. His job became protecting his younger brothers and sister while dodging drunken rages by sleeping in the open in Qwaqwa, in South Africa’s Free State province, a 300-kilometer drive from Johannesburg.
Twala was left stranded without a plan, but someone was there to help him.
The first saviour was the mother of a friend, Masabata Sophie Mokome, known as ousie Sophie. She was the only one that stood up for Twala while other neighbors were scared, he says. Soon after, she told his son to fetch Twala to live with them.
“She ran a bath for me and the next day she took us to Edgars and bought us clothes,” he recalls.
Twala was adopted for over a year before moving back with his grandmother after she heard he was homeless.
Sadly, the grandmother died while young Twala was in secondary school. Fortunately, after living alone for a while, he was taken in by his aunt who is a domestic worker.
<div id="attachment_5525" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5525" class="size-medium wp-image-5525" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Teboho-012-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Teboho Twala</div>
He didn’t have an easy childhood, but the hardships steeled him into the man he is now. These days he has a trimmed beard, articulate speech, and is always on the phone.
He is a 35-year-old entrepreneur who makes a hangover drink, which also doubles as an energy drink for those who don’t drink alcohol. It is called Zzero Hangover.
It is a legacy of high school where his second saviour, his principal and biology teacher, believed in him like a father.
“Mr Ntsane; he looked after me. He may not have given me money but pushed me and I pushed myself,” he says.
Twala did so well in school that his fellow pupils collected money to pay his registration fees at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
“The whole school had to donate, R1, R2. Mr Ntsane and I had to go to taxi ranks and government buildings to donate and we raised R1,700 ($120),” he recalls.
Young Twala passed all his subjects and he bought himself a Pentium 1 computer for about R1,000 ($70). It was his first computer and had no idea how to operate it; he had to learn fast. He was doing his first year in a bachelor of science (BSc) degree and needed to do assignments.
Two years later, he dropped the BSc for chemical engineering; he passed and got a bursary with Gold Fields in Virginia, Free State where he was reunited with his land of birth.
Sadly, all didn’t go well. Gold Fields’ share price went down in 2004 and students had to go home. Twala was without registration fees, nor a job.
Stranded without a plan, in stepped another guardian angel.
“A friend of mine assisted me; he had just finished his master’s and started working. He paid for my registration at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). I did well there; I had seven subjects and got five distinctions,” he says.
Post-graduation, Twala worked for Impala Platinum and later got an offer to work for South African Breweries (SAB). Two years later, he got a better offer with a bigger responsibility from Impala Platinum, in Rustenburg, in the North West province. He went back and worked right through to 2011.
The blessings came in abundance. That same year, he got an opportunity to work for a German company looking for a process engineer. Through that, he got an opportunity to work in Nigeria and travel to Germany.
That is when his entrepreneurial interest developed. He was inspired by the young entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
“But also, I had a boss, Sir David Osunde that believed in me. He was an old man; he took me to big meetings. I could then do presentations to ministers. That’s the level I was at because of this man,” he says.
Twala and other engineers from other parts of the world lived in a camp in cluster houses; each owning one. Besides work, they had nothing else to do. So they would spend time at the bar.
One night, they went to a pub and had a little too much to drink. The morning after, one of the engineers had a heavy hangover and didn’t know how to get rid of it, says Twala.
He took that as an opportunity and researched what could kill a hangover.
A European at the camp told him there was a solution for that in their continent. It was in Slovakia, but it was a German product with their head office in Austria. It was confusing for the young man.
In 2013, Twala came back to South Africa for a holiday. He wanted to make the idea work and not go back to Nigeria. He contacted people from Europe and told him they have a person in South Africa with a franchise, he bought it. He started distributing the product.
“It was called Alcohol Kill, but now it’s dead,” he says.
After traveling to and from Europe, Twala lost the R1 million ($70,000) he had invested in the business.
He had to come back and rethink how he was going to make the hangover solution work. During that period, he met a neurologist who said she could make an energy drink.
“I wanted something unique; my mind was on a hangover solution,” he says.
They worked tirelessly together and got a formula after a year.
Before that, Twala’s entrepreneurial instinct had kicked in. He and a friend bought News Café; a cafe-bar and cocktail franchise restaurant founded in South Africa.
He used that as an opportunity for customers to taste his product at the bar. He was getting good responses and decided to start bottling, manufacturing and distributing the product.
Twala came across a company called Boxmore which specializes in packaging. He bought generic bottles and branded them. The next challenge was finding someone who could fill the bottles.
He was satisfied with Inhle Beverages in Heidelberg, south of Johannesburg, which filled for big companies like USN and Clover. Throughout the production phase, all the companies liked the brand and its uniqueness.
Zzero Hangover was now born and had a trial run in April 2016.
“We produced a few units and sent them to the shops. That’s when the story broke in the media which was good for us,” he says.
The product was launched in May. Today, it is found in big retail stores across southern Africa. Zzero Hangover is self-funded and directly employs 10 people and contracts about 300.
Twala went from sleeping under a wheelbarrow to driving a Porsche and looking like a hero in his childhood township in the Free State. The hangover from his tough childhood has gone.

A Tough Hangover

On a cool evening, Idrisu is gearing up for his daily workout. Today, he is doing a combination of squats, endurance exercises and boxing routines. He started this new regime a little over a month ago and so far the results have been life changing.
“I started at this gym because I needed to get fit very quickly and I was looking for a gym that could guarantee results at a moderate price,” says Idrisu.
The owner of the gym is entrepreneur Rehia Giwa-Osagie who is determined to get the nation fit again through boxing. Osagie is the founder of EliteBox, a speciality fitness and boxing gym designed to help clients like Idrisu, achieve remarkable health results. Today, Osagie, who doubles as a personal trainer, is working with Mark, who joined the gym last week.
“I have never been to a gym like this, the combination of fitness routines that Rehia designs is specific to your needs. I wanted to build muscles and see results quickly and in a week I can already see progress,” he says.
Mark and Idrisu are part of a new wave of fitness that is sweeping Nigeria. For Osagie, the journey began a decade ago due to injury.
“I used to play semi-professional football in England, then I injured my knee so that career was over. So, I changed sports about seven or eight years ago to boxing,” he says.
Born in London to a gynaecologist and a dentist, Osagie was destined for a career in medicine but he opted for crunching numbers instead. After completing his finance degree at Durham University in England, Osagie had a short stint as a salesman.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5320" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/InShot_20160902_133402-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" />
“My first job out of university was selling makeup door to door. That is the best way to integrate yourself into society. I used to walk around the city of London and sell Victoria Jackson makeup for £30 to £40. I was in the job for just a month and I quit. After that I went into advertising for an event company where we sold advertising and organized conferences all over the world,” he says.
Osagie was transferred to the Nigerian branch of the business two years ago, which inspired the start of his entrepreneurial journey.
“When I moved to Lagos, I realized that it didn’t have the things that I wanted to do. The whole entrepreneurial journey started because I needed to find a way to do things outside of going clubbing and going to the restaurant.”
At the time, Osagie had to drive far to get to his local gym. He decided to move his workout sessions closer to the where he lived and avoid the same mistake he made years ago by not following his passion.
“I am 29 years old. I was playing football from a young age to about 22. My biggest regret was that I never really took the gamble to quit my job and just go for trials and play for a team. I used to get a decent amount of money per match but I never had the courage to quit everything and pack one bag and relocate to another country to make it playing football, no matter what happened,” he says.
Osagie took the plunge. He quit his job and, with his life savings, began looking for a location for his new gym. He had a clear vision of what he wanted; it had to be safe, moderately priced and accessible. With an initial investment of $40,000, EliteBox was born.
“The long-term vision is to franchise this concept and make sure it also grows organically. I haven’t created this just to be another gym. There are very specific things about this gym that you will not find anywhere else, so, for me to keep that ambience, it has to grow organically.”
So far the gym has 100 members and the media attention is bringing in more members. Combining boxing and fitness is a hit with Osagie’s clients, but he wants to do more with his business.
“We are also looking to have boxing events and charity events. We work with a lot of kids at the moment and people come from the mainland to train; we are creating something here that is more than just a gym. We see ourselves as bridging the gap in the industry so we have the upper echelon in terms of clients and the working class as well. So we have a mix and match with males and females,” says Osagie.
If the feedback from Idrisu and Mark are anything to go by, then Osagie has found his calling. As the fitness craze gains popularity among Nigerians, EliteBox is punching its way to the top.

Punching His Way To The Top

South African entrepreneur Wendy Luhabe has 26 years of experience in the boardrooms of a variety of businesses. She is now adding the unlikely sport of rugby to that list.
In July, Luhabe started her stint as the first female director of the World Rugby board. Her seat on this board is surprising as rugby is a largely white male-dominated sport in South Africa.
“I’m not a rugby fan, surprise, surprise. But I’m a patriot. Over the years, I’ve watched all the Springboks’ World Cup games, but not because I’m a sports fan. Most women don’t have the luxury of watching sport because we tend to have much more important things to do,” she says. “[Like] making a home, looking after children. It’s time consuming.”
In addition to being a wife and mother, Luhabe is also the Chair and Founder of the Women Private Equity Fund and has held governance roles with Vodacom, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the International Marketing Council (IMC) and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
She was selected among 60 candidates from all over the world to help reform World Rugby, the international governing body of the sport. Luhabe was appointed alongside Mervin Davies, a former Welsh international rugby player and prominent businessman, as independent directors on the World Rugby board. Luhabe’s lack of experience in the oval-balled sport doesn’t bother her.
“We’re living in times where good governance is critical in any institution, not just sport… I think it’s more important to have business people because we are the ones that have the most governance experience than other sectors.”
Part of this governance is making the sport more popular in Africa.
“Rugby is not as well-known, or as well-entrenched, in the rest of the continent and that needs to be part of the agenda. It’s a continent of almost a billion people and there is no reason why we shouldn’t look at a strategy to make rugby as prevalent as soccer is around the continent.”
Luhabe says the sport is ideally suited to the natural athletic ability of Africans.
“Especially with Sevens [the shortened version of the game that rewards skill and pace]. I think that the African continent has a huge growth potential for rugby,” she says.
Despite rugby being one of the most brutal sports on earth, Luhabe wants to get more women playing.
“That’s where the future growth of rugby is, as surprising as it is that women play rugby.”
What about those that think rugby’s scrumming, tackling and mauling is too physical for women?
“I think that women must make the choices that they want to make; I don’t think that society should continue to make choices for women. I think that’s what’s remarkable about women playing rugby, as surprising as it is, it’s a choice they exercised and society must respect that. The women that were courageous enough to be the first to play, they are the trailblazers. In another 20 years, it will be normal.”
Being the first woman on the board of World Rugby makes Luhabe a trailblazer as well. She is part of a new group of women wrestling control of sports from the old men that have ruled for generations. In May, Senegal’s Fatma Samoura became the first female Secretary General at Fifa, football’s embattled governing body. Suddenly, sports bodies are trying very hard to get women involved.
“I suspect that they are looking for people that have the courage to challenge the status quo. In my experience, having served on male-dominated boards, you don’t find that among males. It’s only when you bring a woman into the board that the conversation changes and different questions are raised. I sense that they are really quite committed to the reforms they have agreed to and therefore they need to bring in an element that is really going to transform the leadership structures of these old and historic institutions.”
Samoura’s appointment was a surprise to many and some inside Fifa questioned her selection.
“I doubt that she would have come as far as she has if she had paid attention to those criticisms. I think women like her, and many others who break ground, women who believe in their capability and who are not as concerned about the criticism that other people have, because criticism is generally a reflection of a shift in society. When people are uncomfortable, they use criticism as a blunt instrument. I think women like her, and women like myself, are not concerned about criticism.”
Luhabe, the Founder of the Wendy Luhabe Foundation, is known for her philanthropy. Her social work will now extend to rugby.
“Sport in general has the capacity to build bridges, we saw during South Africa’s World Cup how Madiba changed our relationship with rugby, and again with the movie Invictus. We must use sport therefore to overcome social inequalities, and to level the unequal playing field and access to opportunities.”
In South Africa, rugby is criticized for its lack of transformation.
“It needs a commitment and an openness to bring in new voices and diverse people on their leadership structures. I’m not close to the dynamics of South African rugby to really know what the issues are. In the same way that World Rugby was comfortable to bring in a black woman, who has no knowledge of rugby, into their board, South African rugby needs the same openness.”
South African rugby could do with someone like Luhabe on its board – it’s unlikely to happen though.
“I think once you’ve played on the global stage, you don’t really go back, do you?”
A tough stance from a tough woman who is not going to be ruffled by any patriarchal system that rugby might have.

IMG_2349

The Tough  African  Woman  Tackling Rugby

It is sad how our minds have been conditioned a certain way towards debt. We are told that debt is bad, but there is good debt that can work for an entrepreneur.
There are cases for and against debt. It was the Holy Grail that allowed the automobile, housing, banking and furniture sectors to become successful; it was also the curse that ushered the world into the economic meltdown in 2008.
So, what is good debt and how has it benefited those who know how to play the game?
In real estate, people use debt in innovative ways, like going to the bank to apply for finance for a new house. Once the bank approves, a tenant is brought in and their monthly rental is used to repay the loan. Then they go back to the bank as they still qualify for another property as their income at the time of application still remains the same. This qualifies them for another property, and the model is replicated while tenants service the loan, and their balance sheet increases.
Property developers use this model with a cluster of residential buildings, apartment blocks, and major developments. Developers identify the land, get the correct approvals and compliant paperwork in order, then they hire architects to draw the building plans. Once this is done, the properties are sold off-plan and this money is used to construct the infrastructure.
Another sector where people use debt, with less risk, to become successful is franchising. Firstly, franchises have a proven business model with high probability to succeed. Secondly, banks are more willing to finance new sites or buy an existing branch if the franchise has an established brand. With good management, the debt will be settled.
As entrepreneurs in Africa, we need to be savvy in gearing debt to work for us, and understand the power of leverage.
The recession hit when the US economy was over leveraged in real estate asset class. This is the same asset that many entrepreneurs use as their capital base. They approach banks to take another bond on their house to start a business, or grow it, at the risk of losing their primary residence should things not go according to plan.
Leverage is crucial when you are dealing with financial institutions, particularly banks. However, there is another avenue where leverage is not necessarily a physical asset; there are venture capitalists that fund a company on the perceived current or future value of the company. Others go further by focusing on the team behind the company, credibility and successful track records.
Above all, entrepreneurs need to be careful not to over-leverage themselves. When under-leveraged, the risk is manageable.
Start-up entrepreneurs are famous for bootstrapping their companies, until they produce a viable prototype or penetrate the market. An example of this is Fuseware, a successful African tech company founded by Mike Wronski before he sold it to Ornico.
This presents a challenge between two funding models: debt versus equity financing. Well-structured debt is preferable, provided the company can service the debt in the short term. This is best option for expansion purposes.
Equity is best for start-ups and growth-stage businesses. In this regard, an investor buys a stake in the company and takes on the same risk as you. The downside is that that the entrepreneur loses some control the moment an investor comes into a company.
Sooner or later, it is going to be necessary to approach capital markets to raise money. The fundamental reason for listing on a stock exchange is to raise money. Today, there are other reasons, but raising capital is the main one. A company’s share price is based on perceived value that might be influenced by its income, assets or track record. At the end of the day, the company is worth what the market is prepared to pay for and what investors agree to sell shares for.
There are many times when an entrepreneur’s personal debt overlaps with his company’s debt, predominantly in small to medium sized companies. If able, entrepreneurs should only deal in debt held by the company, rather than their personal accounts.
While debt is not entirely encouraged, any company that is going to be of global significance needs to be familiar with it.

How To Make Debt  Work For You

If you have travelled across Africa, you will attest that there is a war between optimism and pessimism. If you look closely, there is a high level of pessimism on the continent. Africans are people who believe in fate; often subject to our situations, than our situations subject to us.
There needs to be a balance between optimism and pessimism, but not so that you only get realism. If this world only had realists, humanity would not have advanced. Realists base their judgments mainly on what has already been proven.
Optimists tend to have too much energy, particularly in the early stages of conceiving an idea, and overlook what could go south. The key here is to realize when your vision does not cost you anything; if so, you are day dreaming.
I will admit, this world was and is built mostly by optimists, the ones who saw something when everyone else saw nothing. This is important because if you can see the invisible, you can do the impossible.
Nevertheless, realists, despite sometimes being negative,  have anchored our society and are often our voice of reason.
As an entrepreneur, you will realize that potential investors are your voice of reason, particularly banks. When you, as an entrepreneur, approach investors excitedly about your business idea, they have a way of making you get in touch with reality by viewing your presentation with x-ray goggles.
I want to touch on the pessimistic bias among some African entrepreneurs, and how we can both confront it and conquer it. It is also important to mention that we have a large number of optimistic entrepreneurs on the continent, especially since Africa is the latest economic frontier for major growth, following on from China and India.
Some might ask whether this pessimistic behavior is part of the nature versus nurture debate. You might notice that a few African entrepreneurs settle for mediocracy, while our Asian, American and European counterparts strive to be the best.
Could it be that you cannot dream to rise above what you are exposed to? Entrepreneurs around the world may have more role models than we do, but we are as capable as any of them.
My concern is that the pessimism is blocking us; we need to stop it once and for all. Let’s follow the example set by some of the shining African stars in business, such as Folorunsho Alakija, Aliko Dangote, Elon Musk, and Mohammed Dewji, among others.
As we embrace optimism, we need to also be careful of blind optimism. You cannot only consider the upside without having counter measures to still succeed if your original plans do not work.
Therefore, a major dosage of optimism, mixed with a dash of realism, is necessary for any African entrepreneur. There is no place for pessimism.
There is a saying I am fond of: while the optimist was arguing that the glass was half full and the pessimist was saying it was half empty, the entrepreneur sold the glass.
So, what needs to be done? We must make sure we use the right metrics to measure our business. This will make it easier to achieve the desired results, not leaving anything to luck or fate. We need to be persistent and implement the right strategies until things start to happen.
Most importantly, African entrepreneurs need to understand that victories don’t come by accident.

mohammed-dewji

See The African Glass As Half Full

At 19, she shot down a helicopter, she married a general at 23, became the youngest female cabinet minister at 30 and rose to the country’s number two position, in 2004, next to President Robert Mugabe. This is the story of the rise, fall and possible recovery of Joice Mujuru: politician; entrepreneur; PhD holder; a woman also known by her nom-de-guerre, Teurai Ropa (spill the blood) who now wants to unseat her former comrades in arms.
“She adds excitement and momentum to an otherwise dull political terrain dominated by a ZANU-PF factionalism chaos on one side and many weak splinter comical groupings of opposition parties and pretenders on the other side,” says political economist Maxwell Saungweme.
Mujuru’s life began with rifle in hand. She went to the bush, after two years of secondary school, to train as a guerrilla fighter in Mozambique in 1973.
Mujuru, from Mount Darwin, 99 miles from Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, rose through the ranks of ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army), the military wing of liberation movement ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union). She became one of its first women commanders.
At independence, in 1980, Mugabe appointed her the youngest cabinet minister, responsible for sports, youth and recreation. He encouraged her to finish secondary school while she learned the ropes of government.
The next three decades were fulfilling and full of power. On her way to becoming the deputy president, she held a number of ministerial portfolios.
It was her time at the telecommunications portfolio that would cement her place among ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front) hardliners and make enemies with moderates like the late vice president Joshua Nkomo. She tried to deny millionaire Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwe’s richest man, an operating license for his mobile network Econet.
Many will never forgive her for questioning Nkomo’s mental faculties when he supported Masiyiwa. Masiyiwa’s Econet went on to win a court battle but it set back his company years. It left the government looking lumbering and out of touch.
There was talk of her becoming the first female president as she had the backing of her feared husband and kingmaker, General Solomon Mujuru. General Mujuru was killed in an inferno on August 15, 2011 at his Alamein Farm in Zimbabwe. Many believe he was a victim of ZANU-PF internal infighting.
It all turned sour in 2014 when Mugabe fired her. Comrades, who for years talked of her bringing down a helicopter with an AK-47 rifle, turned against her and the story. Mugabe’s wife, Grace, increasingly active in politics, called her a witch, thief, liar and undeserving of a place in ZANU-PF.
If anything, Mujuru is a fighter. She wants to unseat Mugabe with her new political party, Zimbabwe People First – the second PF party in the country. She believes someone should stop Mugabe’s quest to rule, in his own words, “until Jesus comes” and her party will seek to do just that. This move enraged Mugabe and his close associates who went on the attack.
Cabinet minister and propagandist, Professor Jonathan Moyo, who many call the loyal son Mugabe never had, has savaged Mujuru.
Moyo tweeted that, to call this ‘gamatox-trio’ (pseudonym given to the faction Mujuru allegedly led while in the ZANU-PF) a political party yet ZANU-PF expelled it in 2014 for factionalism is the joke of the year.
Mujuru was expelled with veterans Didymus Mutasa and Rugare Gumbo.
“Without the late General Mujuru’s name and without President Mugabe, Joice is politically nothing. She knows this as we do. The idea that Joice Mujuru can succeed where the inimitable Edgar Tekere [former liberation hero] failed is daydreaming,” says Moyo.
After 15 months of speculation and secret meetings, Mujuru confirmed her plans, launching a new political outfit in March.
“We confirm the existence of a viable home-grown inclusive political party. The unjust system that Zimbabwean masses fought against remains a noose around our necks as that [colonial] system. We are living under an unjust system. There is selective application of the law, one for the poor and the powerless, one for the rich and the powerful, one for opposition party supporters and one for ruling party supporters. Zimbabwe requires investor-friendly and market-driven policies to stimulate economic activity and in order to realize this to happen, one of the challenges that should be uprooted is corruption,” said Mujuru launching her party.
Saungweme concedes Mujuru represents change.
“She represents hope to many, and her seeming rebellion from ZANU-PF portrays her as a strong woman capable of changing things. However, an apple does not fall far from the tree. She is ZANU-PF at heart. Her veins have ZANU-PF blood. She is likely to act and behave in the manner ZANU-PF does.”
The country’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai, welcomed Mujuru to the opposition ranks.
“Our political adversary is the faction-ridden ZANU-PF party that has ruined Zimbabwe’s economy through decades of unparalleled misgovernance, thievery and rampant corruption,” says MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu.
Mujuru’s newfound human rights rhetoric doesn’t convince everyone, especially those who suffered on her watch. This might see her party struggling as Western donors might see her as a recycled ZANU-PF leader and spoiler.
Tafadzwa Musekiwa is one of the exiled former MDC legislators. He left Zimbabwe after his life came under threat from Mugabe’s regime. He believes Mujuru is no different to her former boss.
“This Mujuru praising nonsense must just stop. I witnessed the worst violence in Mt Darwin [a region where Mujuru comes from], the violence that completely changed how I view violence and violent people. For anyone to tell me Joice is their choice is exactly the same as saying ZANU-PF is their preferred party,” said Musekiwa on his Facebook wall.
Nqobani Ndlovu, a Zimbabwean journalist, says Mujuru’s 34 years in ZANU-PF is a stain that can’t be removed.
“Shaking off her ‘dark’ past with ZANU-PF and proving to the electorate that she truly is a social democrat will make or break her,” he says.
Whatever happens, Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections will be a thriller and will certainly make history. Mujuru could be Zimbabwe’s first female president; Tsvangirai could become the first Zimbabwean opposition leader to unseat Mugabe; and for the man himself, Mugabe, he could become the first 94-year-old to win an election.

ZIMBABWE-POLITICS-MUJURU

Will It Make  Or Break Her?

For entrepreneur, Oresti Patricios, it was a long and tiring climb to the top from the very bottom. He knew struggle. His father went bust when he was 16.
“My dad had a laundry business and when he went insolvent, I remember him trying to give his clients their clothes when the shop was being locked up by the authorities. Seeing the love he had for his customers and the pain he was going through because he couldn’t service them made me swear I would never be in that situation,” recalls Patricios.
It was so bad his mother had to go to work as a seamstress to put food on the table. Patricios even applied for a study loan just to make ends meet.
“My father taught me how to work hard and I learned a lot about business sitting around the dinner table with my Jewish friends and speaking about business,” he says.
It was 1978. While still at university, Patricios waited tables in his hometown of Johannesburg, and juggled odd jobs for extra money. His great-grandparents had moved to South Africa from Greece. Life didn’t promise to be the immigrants’ dream, until one day, a piece of good luck came along.
“My friend’s cousin had a camera he had bought for leisure. The three of us started using it for a wedding video business. As jobs and money came in, we started investing some money back into the business. Eventually we bought a top of the range camera and we tried to keep up with our competitors.”
They named the business Ornico – a mix of their names – and it grew to make corporate videos, where the big money was.
“Your network is your net worth. We used our network and began to have more and more clients,” says Patricios.
The other two partners left Ornico for new ventures. Patricios roped in his brother.
“At this time, the camera we were using broke. My dad cashed in his life insurance policy to pay for fixing the camera and to buy a new one. A friend got us a gig to freelance edit videos for another company. When we got there, I asked the managing director if we could also edit our videos there. He agreed and that month we made more money than we had ever made because we didn’t have to rent edit suites anymore.”
It meant the years between 1984 and 1988 were boom time. Patricios says they took their competitor’s clients rapidly. They also saw the hunger for information. Ornico grew into a media monitoring business and expanded into five divisions.
“The company was doing well. We had property, advertising, production, TV commercials and web development divisions in the Ornico Group.”
Money was pouring in. But, it didn’t last. A few years later, Patricios and Ornico hit rock bottom. He was thrown in that dark hole he swore he would never see. The same hole his father suffered in. He didn’t know it yet, but his past had returned to haunt him. It meant the worst day of his life. It sprang from his company’s books.
“I had hired my friend from university as an accountant. After a while of him managing my books, I had a gut feeling as the numbers were not feeling right. I found out he wasn’t giving me the right reports. He was giving me creative accounting. From a group perspective, it looked like we were doing well when in actual fact he was shifting expenses across the businesses. Some businesses were not doing as well as others but the books didn’t show that,” says Patricios.
The fear of running his business into the ground made him panic.
“I felt very frustrated with myself as I should have picked it up sooner but also felt I should have been a lot closer to the numbers. I panicked, as we were not sure how we would handle it. How do we provide funds to stabilize the business? Which business do we close? Which ones will be able to trade out of the mess?”
He politely asked the accountant to leave, who took a third of the staff with him.
“We had to close some of the businesses and retrench people. It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make. The most painful thing is that it wasn’t their error but mine,” he says.
It bruised his ego. In 1997, he sold Ornico and worked for the company that bought him out. It was four painful years.
“That was definitely the worst time of my life. Even my family life suffered as I was really very unhappy. My wife’s positivity could not pull me through some of those dark days. I did not believe that the company was moving in the right direction strategically, the reporting lines were blurred and as an entrepreneur I did not have the autonomy I needed. I felt I was powerless to make a difference, I felt hamstrung, frustrated and demotivated,” says Patricios.
Being an employee frustrated him. He had to get his company back.
“I needed autonomy and freedom. It was not the money that drove me. The best day was when we bought [the company] back at a lower price than I sold it into the listed organization. It showed that they had no clue about the business but now I could start again in a business I was very passionate about,” he says.
Today, from his sunny office in Sandton, the richest square mile of Africa, Patricios runs Ornico, the business he bought back. The media, advertising and brand intelligence company has departments in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. He employs 200 people. Capitec Bank, Hollard Insurance, Old Mutual, Revlon, South African Breweries and Wimpy are among his customers.
After two decades, he hasn’t forgotten his worst day. He might have fallen into a hole but he climbed out fitter, stronger and wiser.

Tag: Entrepreneur

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