As former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan observed in his Millennium Report, “New technology offers an unprecedented chance for developing countries to ‘leapfrog’ earlier stages of development. Everything must be done to maximize their peoples’ access to new information networks.” Information and communications technology (ICT) is considered an important tool for growth in developing economies.
Not only does ICT have immense benefits to an economy but some argue that, in an increasingly globalized economy, countries that fail to get connected will fall even further behind. One such proponent of this argument, and a man who is passionate about preventing Ghana from such a dismal fate, is Herman Chinery-Hesse, the founder and chairman of SOFTtribe, the largest indigenous software firm in Ghana.
Born to civil servant parents in Dublin, Ireland, Chinery-Hesse and his two siblings grew up in many African and European cities. This may have contributed to his restless desire to discover new things. He attended Westlake High School in Texas and then graduated from Texas State University with a degree in manufacturing and engineering technology. Chinery-Hesse then moved to London where he worked as a manufacturing engineer. It was here that he discovered his love for software.
“I was working for a company who were carrying out the computerization of the company and they selected me to be part of the team because I was schooled in the States, hence it was assumed I would be good at programming,” he says.
With some basic experience in robotics, Chinery-Hesse took up the challenge and learned everything he needed to know about the new computerization software. After a short period of time, he mastered the programming and was managing the company’s new production system.
This was when his love for programming was born.
“I liked programming more than engineering because you can see the results of your work straight away, with engineering you can spend your whole lifetime just building a bridge,” he says.
Chinery-Hesse already had a basic knowledge of programming. While in college, he and his roommate used software programming to generate call cards to make illegal calls. However, his skills were honed when he was in Britain. With his first paycheck he bought a computer and taught himself programming. His skills developed so well, he quit his engineering job and started programming and consulting from home.
Despite his success, Chinery-Hesse missed Ghana.
“The pan-Africanist in me never wanted to stay abroad, so I packed my stuff after a while, came back to Ghana for a holiday and never went back,” he says in his usual offhanded and matter-of-fact way.
On his return to the motherland, Chinery-Hesse had to decide whether to do manufacturing or programming. He originally chose manufacturing but realized there was one key barrier in his way.
“I didn’t have any money to set up a factory, but I had a computer and that was my factory.”
Chinery-Hesse set up his ‘factory’ in his bedroom with one computer and began programming. His company, SOFTtribe, grew organically with no major investment. Soon, Chinery-Hesse developed enough software programs to buy a second computer and then a third. His first client was a friend who, about 20 years ago, gave him a contract to computerize his farm for around $4,000. Without properly assessing how much work needed to be done, Chinery-Hesse accepted the challenge and began working. Other contracts, with clients such as Expertravel and Ghana Airways, soon followed.
At a time where information technology was almost non-existent in Africa, it was a risk to start his business.
“[President Kwame] Nkrumah told me there was nothing I could not do. If we want to build rockets, we can build rockets, it is just a matter of decision,” says Chinery-Hesse.
Following the dream of the man who led Ghana to independence, Chinery-Hesse was determined to prove that information technology was the way forward. There were challenges; in those days, a lot of clients had no idea what they needed and Ghana also has a culture of preferring not to pay for services.
Chinery-Hesse had to be innovative in his approach. He decided to package products, which provided key services, and sell it. SOFTtribe marketed and sold all its products to different sectors. Point of sale software was created for all the major multinationals, networking platforms developed for small businesses, as well as solutions for oil and gas, software products for the agriculture sector and consumer products for households.
SOFTtribe immediately made a turnover and doubled its growth each year until, at its peak, it had over 100 employees. Inevitably, the company had to move from Chinery-Hesse’s bedroom to its own office. Today, SOFTtribe is the most significant player in the software market in Ghana.
With growing competition from established brands, like Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, SOFTtribe is one of the last indigenous Ghanaian software firms still fighting the good fight.
Chinery-Hesse believes the government should do more to help local business win contracts and provide services that local business’ can utilize.
“When you help a foreign company set up in Ghana, they make money and transfer their money into dollars and ship it out of the country, which causes greater strain on the cedi,” says Chinery-Hesse.
Local business, like SOFTtribe, will keep the money within the Ghana’s borders and create more jobs for Ghanaians.
Chinery-Hesse believes Africans have the power to solve Africa’s problems. With SOFTtribe, he has proved this.

‘If We Want To Build Rockets, We Can Build Rockets’

It is like running in the Olympic Games with a limping leg, no matter the obstacles; you need to reach the finish line. This is an attitude portrayed by Kenya in the aftermath of the Westgate terror attack. An attack that got many wondering if Nairobi will stand tall to face this evil and, more importantly, resolutely look forward and never turn back, as echoed by the number one citizen, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Kenya is still licking its wounds after one of the deadliest terror attacks the world has ever witnessed in September, 2013. Just a few days before that, the country’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport became an inferno. It was not clear if this was an act of terror or arson until a month later when the investigation revealed an electrical fault started the fire.
That is when the Hakuna Matata aura kicked in; all that happened is history and life moves on. Millions of foreign visitors, on leisure and business trips, are landing at that very same airport and more shopping malls are springing up. The Kenyan government even promised to lend a hand in revamping the Westgate Mall.
Focus quickly shifted to mark Kenya’s 50th anniversary as an independent state. The year was coming to an end and there was a rush to wrap it up with a lot of festivities. On the night of December 2, FORBES AFRICA chose the country’s capital to celebrate its third Person of the Year, less than three kilometers away from the scene of terror that occurred at the mall. The recipient of the award, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, reminded all that East Africa, and Kenya in particular, is at the forefront of the continent’s ICT revolution.
During his acceptance speech, Adesina reiterated his mission to make millionaires from agriculture. He is using electronic wallets to enable farmers to receive vouchers for subsidized seeds and fertilizers. It is a system that traces its origin from Kenya, a land with no worries.
Exclusive resorts and the world’s top luxury hotels are setting up shop in Kenya. Africa’s first Billionaires Resort was opened in the tiny coastal town of Malindi, a three-hour drive north of Mombasa. Some of the resort’s investors cannot even point out the location on a map. All their trust is bestowed on their beloved friend and Italian businessman, Flavio Briatore, who operates the resort, bringing glamour, quality and uniqueness to the coast of Kenya. Some of the high-profile owners of apartments at the resort include Ferrari’s Spanish Formula One driver Fernando Alonso and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
It is once again time for the Hakuna Matata mojo.

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THE PAST IS THE PAST AS KENYA STANDS STRONG

Think back to the magic and memories of your favorite cartoons such as Tom &amp; Jerry and The Powerpuff Girls. How many of them had characters of different races or, at the very least, were in a language other than English?
Uganda-born entrepreneur Akaliza Gara, founder and managing director of ICT company Shaking Sun and Yambi Animation Studios, has been asking these questions for a long time. As an entrepreneur in Rwanda’s animation industry, she now hopes to use animation as a tool to tell African stories to the world and in turn, promote and preserve her continent’s rich culture.
From an early age, Gara has been exposed to a world that gave her the liberty to dream beyond conventional careers. Her mother was a teacher and her father, a lawyer, worked for the United Nations, various NGOs and government institutions.
“I had an unusual upbringing. My family moved to a new country, on average, every three years. By the time I was 21, I had lived in seven different countries,” she says.
Gara began her high school in Switzerland, spent two years in Kenya and completed her schooling in South Africa. After that, she moved to Canterbury, England, where she took a BSc in Multimedia Technology and Design. She was miles away from home but never felt out of place.
“Most of the Africans would hang out together. Sometimes I would be walking on the street and I would see another African, someone I had never met, and we would give each other a little nod of acknowledgement,” says Gara.
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In her final year of university, she applied for her dream job as an animator at Pixar Animation Studios, in the United States, known for blockbusters such as Toy Story, Monster’s Inc. and Finding Nemo.
Three months went by and Gara, anxiously waiting, hadn’t heard from them. She decided to call them.
“I managed to hack a website and get a phone number for a top person at the company. I gave him a call and asked for a job. He was, understandably, quite confused and angry that I had got his number. He told me to call human resources, said ‘good luck’ and hung up. I was very disappointed, for some reason, I expected him to be impressed with my initiative and offer me a job.” After graduation, Gara moved to Uganda’s capital Kampala. The rejection from Pixar sparked something in her that made her even more determined to prove her mettle.
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While looking for a job in Kampala, Gara’s uncle informed her of the fantastic opportunities in the ICT sector, for youth and women, in Rwanda. Having researched the country, Gara saw the many opportunities and relocated. One of her main challenges was overcoming the language barrier and speaking Kinyarwanda, the local language.
For the first two years, Gara worked as a private consultant and also started to save for a master’s degree in animation. However, she found her clients were more interested in her skills than her qualifications.
She shifted her focus and put RWF5 million ($7,500) of savings towards her company Shaking Sun. The company, launched in 2009, is a multimedia enterprise specializing in graphic design, animation and web development.
“The field is largely male-dominated and there are many challenges for women in the field shared by those of us in Africa and outside Africa. One is the lack of female role models. The stereotypical image of an ICT expert is a young white man, so many young girls grow up without even considering their field because they see ICT and technology in general as a boy’s thing.”
In 2013, Gara received the opportunity of a lifetime to be a part of the team that created Rwanda’s first animated series, The African Tales. The series was part of The Know Zone, a project focused on educating the youth through animation. The episodes were five minutes long and aired on national TV station, RTV, for 15 weeks.
The African Tales reignited Gara’s lifelong dream of becoming an animator and instead of seeking out a world-renowned animation studio to work for, she started her own company Yambi Animation Studios.
“When I was a kid, most of my favorite cartoon characters were male and usually white and almost always American. I want to create characters that represent my culture and values for the generation of African children growing up today.”
Gara is determined to educate young women about opportunities in the ICT field. She is part of a number of initiatives such as Girls in ICT Rwanda, a group of female ICT entrepreneurs and professionals encouraging teenage girls in Rwanda to consider ICT as a career as well as be part of the Microsoft 4Afrika Advisory Council, which seeks to help change the perception of women in ICT in East Africa.
Gara never got her dream job at Pixar but it drove her to become a frontrunner in African animation. Everything in life happens for a reason, and Gara firmly believes that to be true.

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What Do You Do If You Can’t Be At Pixar?

The morning sky was clearing as the first glimmer of the sun emerged when Charles Kimei, sipping hot black coffee as he read the daily papers, heard the frantic tapping of shoes against the concrete floor outside his office. It was too early for someone to be running, he thought.
What happened next was like a scene out of a movie. One of his managers stormed his office, panting and distraught. Kimei, the managing director of Tanzania’s CRDB Bank, instinctively glanced out of his fourth floor window. Everything looked calm outside.
“Then this guy came running in. I was scared; I thought he was coming to kill me. He shouted ‘Robbers!’”
Kimei recalls that day with the preciseness that comes with banking experience. There was no time to ask questions, and so began the worst day in his management career, on October 14, 2002.
Armed robbers disguised in staff uniform had quietly entered the bank in the morning and emptied the safes. In the process, they shot one of the customers, while a bank employee hurt himself as he tried to hide.
By the time Kimei reached the ground floor, where the bank operates its main branch, the robbers had sneaked into the safety of Dar es Salaam’s morning bustle. The robbery took between five and eight minutes, he says, and was so smooth that people outside and on other floors barely noticed anything. Only one gunshot was fired to scare staff and security guards.
“The first thing I did was to ensure that there were no serious casualties, I then called the police. And because we needed to know how much money was stolen, I called the auditor,” he says.
Initially, he thought it was a small amount. But the audit revealed that around $2 million had been taken. The bank had just imported a large amount of dollars to sell to forex bureaus and retail customers and had a stash of euros ready to be shipped out. The timing of the raid pointed to an inside job.
“We had just launched a smartcard, TemboCard, with purse capability, the first of its kind in Tanzania. Then I kind of provoked the robbers. At the launch ceremony I warned them that it would no longer be attractive for them to attack buses plying upcountry routes because passengers will not be carrying cash but smartcards,” says Kimei.
The following Monday, they hit.
“The problem is that our staff are probably shy of looking at each other’s face, otherwise they could have noticed the strangers. The robbers blended in and no one suspected. They ordered everyone to lie down and knew the whereabouts of everything in the branch, including the names of the safe custodians,” says Kimei, the father of three who turns 61 in August.
Back then, the bank was quite small, making a profit of $2.1 million. The pain of knowing that the robbers walked away with the equivalent of the bank’s earnings was excruciating.
CRDB, a product of financial reorganization and financial sector reforms in Tanzania in the early nineties, is now a well-established bank with assets worth $2.2 billion, more than 105 branches, 445 partner microfinance institutions, 350 ATMs and 500 agents across the country. Kimei joined the bank in 1998 and has been pursuing a recovery path, culminating in the listing on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) in 2009 and a rebrand to CRDB Bank Plc. From 100,000 customers in 1998, the bank now boasts 1.5 million and counting, riding on ICT and modern, customer-friendly branches.
A bank robbery tests the limits of management and business continuity. Decisions have to be made at the speed of a cash-counting machine. The urgency to resume business and the need to arrest suspects and recover the stolen money were competing for Kimei’s saturated attention.
The bank re-opened half an hour late, but early enough to avoid suspicion from its customers and the public.
“I did not want customers to know what had happened. If they panicked, they would think the bank had run out of money. The task was to ensure there was confidence outside the bank. We told staff to be calm and take business as usual. Later, I realized we underestimated the panic and trauma among staff, although they managed to render services,” says Kimei.
Around that period, there was a wave of bank robberies in Tanzania. So, the bank beefed up its security by bringing in additional police and boosting private security guards. On the fateful day, police officers were not on guard.
The biggest issue for Kimei was how to recover the money.
“There was a possibility of recovering the money. At some point, I felt if I was given a police uniform I would do a better job. I was getting phone calls on leads on where the money was but the police were slow. Few people were jailed, but the only money recovered was from the insurers.”
Kimei held a press conference to assure the public that everything was under control and the bank was safe.
“It was well received and most customers who had visited the branch did not even notice there was a robbery. The fact that I gave them the news myself gave them confidence,” he says.
The bank installed CCTV cameras, enhanced its diligence on staff and reviewed their profiles. After the vetting, some suspects were identified among the staff. The morning after, panic was still palpable and morale had not improved, but it was business as usual. Kimei visited the branch every morning to assure staff. This was not made easy by investigators who regularly questioned staff.
“The way we handled the matter was very professional. There is very little someone can do better, even with the benefit of hindsight. Robberies are unexpected and you cannot prepare for them. For example, the police officers were always on site before. We should have noticed the absence of police that morning,” he says.
The bank now has a business continuity plan. But Kimei says disruptive events are not always similar so a business manager must always be ready to use their own intuition alongside what is documented. Staff must know how to react to disasters. This is the mentality powering the bank’s operations, which has seen 30% growth each year.
But he notes that some things happen spontaneously, giving little time for the grab list.
“If something were to happen now, I will run to the drawer and grab my wallet. I won’t even remember there is a grab list,” he says jokingly.
Kimei has always been in decision making positions, both in school and the corporate world. Perhaps this has played a role in preparing him for critical moments.
“I was head prefect at Shinyanga High School which was the most cantankerous experience. People see me as very humble. But I have handled very complicated situations.”
This is why he enjoys games that exercise his mind.
“If you play chess you learn a lot of strategy and concentration. You can’t watch football alone; you must be in a crowd to enjoy it. Some of these games are good for relaxation, not building your mind. Chess, and even normal cards, gets you thinking, because you try to guess your rival’s strategy and you are always betting your fortunes.”
That’s the strategy he is using to grow the bank into an industry leader in Tanzania.

‘I Thought He Was Coming To Kill Me’

A consortium of Ghanaian and foreign firms look set to transform Ghana into a modern, tech-friendly, hub for innovation in Africa.
Multi-million dollar information communication technology (ICT) schemes in the investment pipeline include the Ghana Cyber City, Appolonia City, King City and Hope City projects.
The $40 million Ghana Cyber City, Appolonia and King City projects are being promoted by Gateway Innovations (Ghana), Xalles Limited (Washington), Ernst &amp; Young (now EY, New York), Technolopolis (Finland) and Russia-based investment bank, the Renaissance Group. However, the Hope City project—a $10 billion technology park with residential and office accommodation including the tallest buildings on the continent—is the grand vision of one man: Roland Agambire, founder, chairman and CEO of Ghana and Dubai-based AGAMS Holdings.
An incurable optimist, Agambire, 39, is no stranger to ambition.
“This is turning out to be my biggest and most exciting challenge yet. We have a three-year plan to finish building Hope City. Any investor who invests in Hope City will recoup his investments within the first five years, including also making a projected turnover of over 250%,” says Agambire.
Hope City is expected to provide office and residential space and facilities for more than 50,000 people.
“I am extremely passionate about transforming Ghana into a knowledge-driven economy. My ultimate desire is to create opportunity for every African… we must also begin to explore the issue of how Ghana can begin to export services and ICT to the rest of the world,” he says.
Hope City will be located in the Dokuna district a few miles north of Accra, the Ghanaian capital. Agambire is optimistic he will raise the cash from the local and international markets to make his grand idea a reality. He will also add $2 billion of his own funds to the project.
His unwavering efforts have already made him one of Ghana’s wealthiest businessmen.
For a man whose early years were spent in poverty, Agambire’s current cozy lifestyle is a far cry from his humble beginnings. He shies away from any reference to his personal net worth. He, however, tells FORBES AFRICA that through AGAMS Holdings. He employs more than 500 permanent staff and 10,000 casual workers with an annual turnover of about $2 billion. AGAMS Holdings has interests in oil, construction, computing and telecommunications, financial services and trading.
His story proves it is possible to be lonely in the middle of a crowd.
Born in Sirigu, a farming community in northern Ghana, his father reportedly had about 50 children and his mother is the sixth of his father’s 10 wives.
For most of the seventies and eighties, Ghana’s economy was in the doldrums and village life was all about subsistence farming, fishing and survival of the fittest. Success was defined by the number of wives and children a man could muster. Agambire recalls how 10 people would sleep on the same mat, like prisoners in a crowded jail, wake up in the morning and eat from the same bowl. He says his success came from this start in life.
“At that time, going to school was a struggle, all they wanted you to do was to grow into a shepherd boy, to be part of the domestic services, but I broke out of that.”
By the age of six, his survival instincts led him to picking up coins dropped by much older folks, drunk on liquor, in the open air drinking holes in the market.
“I was going from one pito bar to the other to pick up money. This was how I made money to feed myself,” he says.
One day, his granddad accused him of pilfering. He told the old man that revelers obviously had too much money to spare. Why else would they throw it away every day and who would be identified as the owner of the money if he were to take the ‘lost and found coins’ to the village chief? The old man had no reply.
Soon, a few older folks noticed and joined him in the coin gathering exercise, so he changed tactic by going earlier to pick the pennies.
Soon, Roland the teenager was selling kuli-kuli (a local snack made from peanuts) and ferrying much sought after cigarettes, kerosene and petrol across the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso.
Agambire worked his way through the Navrongo Secondary School. He would often travel down south to Accra, during vacations, to push trucks and wash dishes in bars to make money to pay his school fees.
By the mid-1990s, his trading activities had expanded and he had dabbled into cash crops exportation. He completed various courses in export and marketing with the Ghana Export Promotion Council, put himself through a regime of Business Administration courses at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) at the University of Ghana and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration.
A trip to Japan in 1999 opened his mind to the social impact and business potential of ICT. In 2000, he invested his first $200,000 into an internet café business in Accra; the dotcom age arrived and soon he was importing computers from the United States, and providing after sales support and computer networking services to Ghanaian businesses. He has never looked back since.
AGAMS’s leading subsidiary, RLG Communications, with offices in Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Dubai and China is helping to transform West Africa’s personal computing and mobile phone landscape. The firm has a technology training institute and a mobile phone assembly plant and will commission a $100 million facility, Ghana’s first PC and mobile device manufacturing center, in 2014.
The Ghana News Agency once described Agambire as “a personification of determination”. Having conquered poverty, he now wants to put West Africa’s second largest economy on to the global technology map, permanently.
Not bad for someone who used to pick up pennies.

Penny Picking On The Way  To $10 Billion

A new generation of African entrepreneurs and businesses is emerging. They are challenging the old way of doing business and driving cross-border growth.
Kenya’s ICT companies are investing in Rwanda and are now looking to enter Nigeria, while United Bank for Africa and other Nigerian banks are rapidly expanding into Africa. In 2009, South Africa invested $1.6 billion (FDI outflows) into other African countries. MTN, a South African mobile giant, operates in 21 African countries; and Glo, a Nigerian mobile operator, operates in the Republic of Benin, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Africa’s statistics speak of tremendous potential: the continent is the size of China, Mexico, Europe, India, the States and Japan combined. The population will soon surpass China, with a middle class as big as India’s. Africa has enjoyed more than a decade of sustained GDP growth, which has often outstripped many other parts of the world.
There is frustration in that Africans are not reaping the rewards of the current global investor confidence. The mass export of commodities doesn’t see wealth trickle down.
Home-grown investments, focused on value-adding industries, are the key to changing this dynamic.
Africans still seem to choose products and investments from outside the continent. They prefer to export outside Africa rather than to trade, manufacture and add value within. Many African countries continue to trade raw materials but they don’t have the capability to refine or process, so they import the finished products from outside of Africa.
We need to understand what is preventing Africa from being home to value-adding and value-creating businesses. Why, for example, is Africa’s agricultural richness not generating an integrated growing and processing industry as it has done in Brazil?
Africa requires an environment that facilitates investment and greater market integration. The current weaknesses—corruption, high start-up costs, poor infrastructure—are well-known. But our study will also shed light on the legal, social and cultural differences within Africa that restrict cross-border investments.
There need to be integrated regional production chains within Africa, where Africa’s raw materials are processed into finished goods to be traded. Regional trading blocs— including the Tripartite Free Trade Area, which encompasses the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community—would thus thrive, paving the way for a Continental Free Trade Area, that would produce and trade high value-added goods internally.
Greater market integration in Africa will lead to a significant reduction in the cost of doing business and alleviate some of the problems associated with securing work permits and labor mobility.
Over the long-term, Africa’s competitiveness will hinge to a great degree on how well we educate our young people. Often, the most talented Africans have sought educational advancement and careers overseas, but a combination of transformational educational technology, growing opportunities at home and the poor global economic climate could see this brain drain becoming a brain gain. Retaining talent, home-grown or otherwise, is critical. Policy that enables skilled Africans to work across our borders more easily will help achieve this goal.
Never have circumstances been more propitious for African business. A rise in disposable incomes, high rates of urbanization and a fast-growing working-age population speak of an emerging class of purchasers of consumer goods, financial services and infrastructure, as well as a potential source of manpower for industrialization and agricultural development.
Africans must explore ways to move beyond regional differences and competition to build Africa together from within, so that Africans at all levels become the primary beneficiaries of the continent’s growth.

Unite And Prosper

At the age of 20, Rob Stokes was sitting in his room at university, thinking of how he was going make pocket money. Then it came to him—why not follow in Mark Shuttleworth’s footsteps and start a business? Thirteen years later that company, called Quirk, has a $10 million turnover and an unusual name.
“I was literally lying on the couch, thinking I need to start a business… I looked over at my cat and her name was Quirk and I thought ‘That’s an unusual word, it’s short and I’ll probably get the domain name’ and off I went. So Quirk is actually named after my cat. I’d like to have something more fancy to tell you but that’s the reality,” says Stokes.
Stokes is an easy going roller. His backpack contains nectarines, apples and pumpkin seeds along with documents and magazines. He says it has nothing to do with being a health enthusiast; he just likes to eat on-the-go. A decade ago, when Quirk was still in its infancy, Stokes was so broke that all he had to eat were carrots.
“I once had nothing but carrots for two weeks, true story. I actually went yellow around my mouth, and I’m already orange so it was really weird… But hell if you’ve got no money, what choice do you have?”
For the first five to six years, he was so broke his parents paid his rent. The fact that his friends were earning fat salaries in the corporate world frustrated Stokes, at times, but his entrepreneurial spirit kept Quirk alive. He was inspired by a lecture given by South African entrepreneur and millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who was also the country’s first space tourist.
“…I didn’t get to meet him but he was massively inspiring… And I remember watching that lecture and I thought, ‘I can do that. I can be that guy’. I’m definitely not as smart as him, I definitely know that, but I’m entrepreneurial.
“I’d [also] been reading about a guy called Michael Dell, from Dell Computers. He started in his dorm room, he cut the door in half so he could sell computers over the counter, and I just thought, ‘That’s an awesome story’. So I was kind of inspired by those guys,” says Stokes.
Stokes is described as inspiring by one of South Africa’s respected journalists and ICT commentators, Arthur Goldstuck.
“Initially [Quirk] struck me as just another SEO, then I saw the book he wrote and realised he’d become one of the thought leaders in the online marketing environment and not just an SEO,” says Goldstuck.
The term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process that companies, such as Quirk, use to get a company’s name read more often by those searching on search engines such as Google and YouTube. The aim is to increase a website’s popularity by gaining more hits.
Quirk has branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town and London and employs 200 but in the early days things were different.
“I remember the first client who came to our offices; he was just blown away because it was the filthiest office in the world. Our ‘boardroom’ was about five chairs, none of which were the same, around a beer crate, with a tray on it… I think he appreciated that we were doing our best, so he gave us a piece of business…”
“There are many times when, if we hadn’t landed a piece of business within a week or two, we would have gone bankrupt,” says Stokes.
Stokes is also the chairman of the Silicon Cape Initiative, a private sector community movement founded by two South African hi-tech entrepreneurs, Vinny Lingham and Justin Stanford. The initiative wants a community of entrepreneurs, the best tech talent and foreign investment.
The Western Cape Province has produced some of the country’s brightest tech entrepreneurs including Stokes; Lingham—who lives in Silicon Valley in California; Herman Heunis—founder of MXit and Ludwick Marishane, who was recently named one of the 12 brightest young minds in the world in 2011, by Google.
Stokes thinks that more could be done.
“My biggest frustrations at Silicon Cape is actually how few university students start businesses… it creates an opportunity cost to become an entrepreneur because a [graduate] leaves UCT and suddenly Old Mutual pay him R40,000 ($5,000) a month. So now becoming an entrepreneur is not only about risking what you have, it’s about risking what you could have.”
It irritates Stokes that the tech business is not yielding more. An unreliable internet connection and bureaucracy are just a couple of problems that Stokes sees in the way.
“Internet connectivity [is a] huge issue. I mean, business would be much bigger and more successful now, on a global level, if there was better internet. So the more customers there are online, the more [our] kind of marketing is going to be of value.”
As for bureaucracy, when he registered his business in South Africa he filled his form out with a blue pen. The form stated black pen only, so what would’ve have taken him three months, took six.
“When I first registered the Quirk cc, it took me six months. When I first registered the limited company in London it took me 24 hours… Is it worth holding back a small business for three months because they used the wrong color of pen?”
What is his tip for upcoming tech entrepreneurs?
“Hitting the road and selling the stuff, that the best thing you can do when you’re young. Don’t wait.”
The thirty three-year-old’s next dream is not to be a space astronaut; in the next ten years he wants to open a cricket academy in the Transkei in the Eastern Cape.
“I want to be remembered for my cricket school, it’s going to be the greatest cricket school in the world”.
It seems like a quirky plan

Name The Business After Your Cat And Paws For Success

In 1983, Gerard Sina, who didn’t finish school, set about trying to make something of his life. He lived with his parents on a farm, in a small town called Nyirangarama, in Northern Rwanda. One day, it dawned on him that the travelers between Rwanda’s two biggest cities—the capital Kigali and Gisenyi in the West—had nowhere to stop for refreshments during their four hour journey. He set up a small stall of baked goods that he sold to tired and hungry travelers.
Sina used a simple, but effective, marketing method to entice patrons. He offered travelers free samples of his food. Unable to resist, they quickly become accustomed to a place to get second wind on their journey. Soon the roadside stall became a regular fixture on the well-traveled route.
Then Sina found a way to produce his baked goods at a more industrial level. His little roadside stall became a 24-hour pit stop. Now travelers were flocking in around the clock. Whatever Sina lacked in formal education, he made up for in raw business talent.
His second stroke of genius came in 1999, when he discovered the riches that lay within the belly of the passion fruit. He developed a new method to extract juice to make concentrated syrup that he bottled and sold in bulk. Today, Agashya, literally translated as ‘something new’, is the first of Sina’s iconic Rwandan brands.
The second creation was Akabanga. ‘The secret’ is an oil-based chilli sauce that has changed the way that Rwandans eat. Before Akabanga, Rwandese food was traditionally bland, seasoned only lightly with salt and some herbs, but today Akabanga is a fixture on the dinner tables of the country.
These products, which are also exported in small quantities to the rest of the East African Region, Europe and North America, have set him on the way to recognition. His mother company, Urwibutso Enterprise, won bronze for Best Exporter at the Rwanda Development Board Awards in 2009. The ceremony is held annually to pay homage to the best performing companies in the various Rwandan industries.
Sina has been the recipient of several other awards including; the Arch of Kigali in the gold category for technology and quality in 2006 in Frankfurt, the Legatum Pioneers of Prosperity Awards for Entrepreneurship in 2007 in Kigali, and more recently in 2011 in London at the Business Initiative Direction Award in the diamond category for business management, excellence, quality, technology, innovation and expansion.
Along with an eye for business, Sina has an inquisitive nature.
On a trip across Europe, Sina saw some farmers playing music to their pigs. Intrigued, he reasoned that music makes people happy and brightens even the dullest moments, so the same could be true for pigs. When he returned to Rwanda he set about experimenting with his own pigs. He went as far as having a control group of pigs that were not exposed to music during the experiment period.
He found that the pigs that were exposed to music were indeed happier at the end of the experiment; they ate more, grew faster and fell ill less often than the ones in the control group. Now, he plays music to his pigs every day.
On another trip to Europe, he visited a vineyard and an orchard, again intrigued; he decided to grow apples and grapes, fruits that are not found in Rwanda. He now makes red wine and supplies apples to stalls in the local produce market.
Another quintessential African solution that Sina has adapted from his many travels is to ensure that he always uses locally grown raw materials. Having lived the life of a small scale farmer himself, he knows the day-to-day hardships that they often face. The count of local farmers he employs is 3,000 and growing. He trains them and provides seeds and fertilizer and in return they sell their crops exclusively to him.
Gerard Sina shows his allegiance to Rwanda and to her culture in many ways, the most notable being the naming of his products—they all have Rwandese names. He wants people in the export destination countries to marvel at these exotic names and to ask “what language is that?” or “what does that mean?”, thus creating a mystical aura around Rwanda and her people.
All of this in a country that wants to develop its information and communications technology (ICT) sectors to become the Singapore of Africa, and move away from farming.
“Agriculture comes first, because the most successful countries are those where people can eat,” he says.
Sina’s journey through life and business has not always been easy. During the 1994 genocide his young business was completely destroyed, he lost everything but the land where he toiled. Since he has always believed that giving up is an act of cowardice, building his business back up from scratch was something that simply had to be done.
His advice for young people who are rebuilding Rwanda is to not be afraid to share ideas and add value to Africa’s raw materials. For Africa as a whole, Sina believes that the answer to prosperity on the continent lies in adding value to raw materials.
“Do not just grow strawberries to sell them at the market. Make jam, juice, yogurt and cosmetics. This way, more can be charged for the finished product and more profit can be made. This profit can then be used as additional capital for the business and to provide a better life for all involved,” he says.
This approach has contributed greatly to Urwibutso Enterprises, making profits around the million dollar mark in the past two, very difficult, post-recession years.
Sina is adamant that Africans should take a page out the West’s book. More emphasis should be put into becoming self-reliant, rather than relying on international aid. He would rather not give his fellow Africans fish, but teach them how to fish. That way they will never go hungry.

The Entrepreneur Who Saw Profit  In Making A Pig Do A Jig

Eleven years ago, a 25-year-old Indian from Gujarat came to Kenya seeking greener pastures. He found a job as an accounting clerk in an Indian-owned polythene manufacturing company for Ksh18,000 ($230) a month. In his spare time, he decided to write software for an extra buck; but his employer discovered his private project. The penalty was costly. He reported to work one morning and was handed a one-way air ticket back to India. His former employer drove him to his house, ordered him to pack, drove to the airport and made sure he boarded the plane. As the plane roared above the suburbs of Nairobi, Kamal Budhabhatti looked wistfully through the window and made a silent pledge. He came, he thought, had seen and he was going to conquer Kenya.
Eleven years later, Budhabhatti can claim to have conquered, as he is one of Kenya’s youngest multi-millionaires. He pioneered the business of software development in East Africa and plans to create a Silicon Valley in Africa. Budhabhatti runs one of East Africa’s fastest growing software development companies—Craft Silicon—with its head office in Nairobi.
Budhabhatti is a techie through and through. He graduated with a BSc degree in Physics and describes himself as a hands-on programmer who makes money out of what he enjoys. “Nobody in my family is a business person and it was not really in my cards to get into business. However, the only link I may have to entrepreneurship is that I come from a region in India that is considered very entrepreneurial,” he explains.
India’s Gujarat state is the home of famous entrepreneurs—among them, Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance Industries, that was ranked 134 in the 2011 Fortune 500 list.
Wealth is a far cry from Budhabhatti’s lean first days in Kenya in a clerical job.
“All I used to do was input invoices in the system. It was not what I had expected, and I developed a great dislike for the job. Every day I used to say I needed to do something better. I had a friend where I used to stay who was the IT manager of a local bank. He was looking for someone to come up with a system that would automate the check clearing system. I asked him if I could write something and he said, ‘why not?’”
Budhabhatti had landed his first job as an entrepreneur.
A decade ago, Kenya’s ICT sector was in its infancy. Internet and computers were a luxury few could afford. There was little investment or infrastructure and companies like mobile operator Safaricom were just setting up shop. When it came to technology, Africa was not taken seriously—the US, home of Microsoft, HP, IBM, Symantec and Oracle, largely ignored Africa.
Budhabhatti knew he was onto something.
“These problems that Africa has are the greatest opportunity because if you go to some of the developed economies, they have lesser problems. Because of all these problems that we have here, they present a lot of opportunities to come up with solutions. It’s like playing computer games: if there are no challenges in the game, then it becomes boring. Challenges push you to the limit in terms of thinking and innovation,” he says.
After his forced return to India, Budhabhatti spent 72 hours brooding at home before flying back to Kenya.
“I asked my sister to pay for my ticket back because I felt there was an opportunity here and just had to come back. I had Ksh23,000 ($295) in savings which I survived on for one-and-a-half years!”
Budhabhatti returned to where he was staying as a paying guest, explained his situation to the landlady and she allowed him to stay without paying rent. He says he survived on the good humour of his friends, who often paid for his meals.
“I went back to the bank, but the bank realized I was desperate and took advantage of me by renegotiating the price we had agreed on. Every time I went to follow up on the status, they would say come back tomorrow. I finished making the software after one-and-a-half years and was paid Ksh200,000 ($2,550).”
Budhabhatti used the money to settle his debts and set up Craft Silicon. From there, he embarked on an entrepreneurial journey that saw his company win $100,000 at the 2010 Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship.
Craft Silicon sells software to banks and micro-finance organisations in 40 countries around the world, including China and India.
“Banks talk to each other and since I was cheap, a lot of the small banks thought there was no point investing a lot of money in buying an expensive product.”
As word got round, banks like Equatorial Commercial Bank, KRep and Equity Bank asked Craft Silicon to develop software for them. That led to the making of Craft Silicon’s first solution—Bankers Realm—an automated banking operating system.
Like Steve Jobs at Apple, Budhabhatti rolls up his sleeves and gets his hands dirty. In 2011, he launched his brainchild, Elma, an online way to move cash and transact.
After a decade of doing business, Budhabhatti has created a multimillion-dollar empire.
“To calculate software valuation, you look at a company’s annual turnover in terms of how many licensed softwares you are selling, then multiply by 20,” he says.
In 2010, Craft Silicon’s turnover was $6 million, which translates to $120 million. Budhabhatti’s bet on technology has paid off.
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<h3>Kamal Budhabhatti’s Investment Tips</h3>
Planning to invest in a technology business in Kenya? This is what to keep in mind: 
• Understand the emerging economy, especially if you are coming from a developed economy, as you may not understand solutions required in these countries. Understand local solutions and provide them. 
• Keep in mind the governance structures, especially legislation about intellectual property (IP). These are things you will have to keep fighting every day. Laws here are still not strong in terms of IP. 
• Don’t expect a very high return. Most people think since they are investing in a high risk environment, they will get a high return—manage your expectations from day one. 
• Currency fluctuation is a major risk. Ensure you have a way to manage that.

He Came, He Saw,  He Got Thrown Out

From a distance, Kariuki Gathitu looks like just another kid you would pass on the street without blinking. He wears jeans, sneakers and a backpack; he sips milkshake and hangs with his friends. But in Gathitu’s backpack are big dreams and a business plan aimed at making him one of Kenya’s first tech billionaires within five years.
Gathitu, a 28-year-old systems architect, is one of East Africa’s new breed of technopreneurs—the hip ones with big ideas who make their fathers’ generation sit up and take notice. They are the whiz kids who command respect. Never before has it been this cool to be a geek. After the international success of Safaricom’s M-PESA, more and more technologists under 35 are mushrooming in Kenya’s large cities. Backed by government-sponsored training, these computer geeks are emerging by the score to build a sunrise industry in what is being called the Silicon Savannah.
<div id="attachment_68" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-68" class="size-large wp-image-68" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Kariuki-Gathitu-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />Kariuki Gathitu</div>
“The world has changed and so has technology. These youngsters see the world from a different perspective and they are constantly seeking ways to make life easier,” says Soud Hyder, an independent technologist based in Nairobi. The recent Pivot 25 conference saw the cream of the IT crop from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania come together for two days in Nairobi. Few delegates were over 30. Gathitu’s company, Zege Technologies (Zege Tech), was among them with its M-PAYER application. On the company’s first anniversary in July, it was raking in tens of thousands of Kenyan shillings and aims to increase its annual turnover to $2 million in the next five years. The company has prospered through a gap in the mobile money system. Often you have to wait up to 72 hours for money to reflect—a major cause of frustration when paying bills. M-PAYER, however, pays in real time. It took Zege Tech three months to come up with the application and another eight months to tailor it for the business market.
In a highly competitive market, Safaricom and Airtel, Kenya’s largest mobile networks, were quick to buy in. Zege Tech won Best Product in the Young Innovators category at the AITEC banking and technology conference in Nairobi in March and visits to the company’s website increased 400%. Gathitu is one of the few young geeks around the world to turn down a job at Google. “In June, I received a call from their office in Switzerland and was flattered as it has been my dream job for a long time. They said I could choose at which office in the world I would want to work. Unfortunately, I had to turn down the offer as there are still a few projects I am working on that will enable many young people to have an easier chance at doing business,” he says. Gathitu is as humble as he is influential. He has just returned from a trip to Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, where he addressed the heads of state at an African Union summit on youth leadership. “It was a great moment when I could speak to Africa’s big leaders. I wanted to give the older generation goose bumps through what the youth is doing. I hope I succeeded with that.
Afterwards I received many invitations to speak at conferences in Angola and Zambia and Mozambique… I’m starting to wonder when I will find time to work,” he laughs. Gathitu hoped to study aeronautical engineering in Britain, but ended up with a degree in Computer Science from the Kenyatta University in Nairobi. He has been fiddling with computers since he was seven. “It became my default career, but now it feels like a fit.” The mobile money transfer system, M-PESA, has put Kenya on the technology map. It allows the user to over come the headaches of sending money internationally, as well as pay bills and purchase goods and airtime through a mobile phone. It is made for Kenya, a country where fewer than 10 million people out of a population of 39 million have a bank account. According to Q2 2011 data released by the Communications Commission of Kenya, there are more than twice as many mobile subscribers—nearly 25 million— as there are bank account holders.
With the support of the government’s ICT Board andinnovation hubs in Nairobi like iHub, young innovators have a chance. It is part of Vision 2030, the Kenyan government’s plan to transform into a middle income country. Paul Kakubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board, calls the young techno warriors the Tandaa Generation (‘Tandaa’ is a Swahili word for ‘spread’). In one of his blogs Kakubo writes: “…the Tandaa Generation is what will deliver a lot of the goodies we are looking for as a country. They can create, they are intellectually curious, they are driven, very exposed thanks to technologically delivered media, they are non-tribal, they are good thinkers; they like to be independent. Technology provides them with the tools. What they now need is capital.” Gathitu is riding the wave. He is sharp and ambitious. His company is eyeing South Africa, Nigeria and French speaking West Africa. It hasn’t always been easy.
“One mistake I have made is to over-value a product based on its technological superiority as opposed to market traction. I now believe that a business needs customers more than cash flow,” he says. The time is ripe and the demand is high. Gathitu believes he is well on his way to becoming a tech billionaire before the age of 35. Like many, he trained hard in the years since the first M-PESA transaction in March 2007, and like the rest of the Tandaa Generation, he is ready to rumble.

Tag: ICT

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