At the age of 16, while his contemporaries were barely able to hit a football on target, Daniel Amokachi was already a fully-fledged international for Nigeria, and was competing against the best on the continent.
He began, like all African boys of his generation, by kicking an improvised ball in the streets of Kaduna in north-west Nigeria. Strong for his age, he stood out like a sore thumb. Before long, he was elevated to the youth sides of the city’s many territorial leagues.
He also featured for his secondary school team which won the state trophy and went on to play in the national championship, where, against overwhelming odds, they became champions.
In 1989, he was called up for a trial with his local Kaduna team, Ranchers Bees, who played in the top national league. The transition from playing in front of a few hundred students to suddenly finding himself displaying his skills in front of tens of thousands of Kaduna loyalists was a huge gulf but the confident 15-year-old was determined.
When Ranchers Bees faced Ivorian giants, ASEC Mimosas, in a regional tournament, he had no idea that the national team’s recently recruited Dutch coach, Clemens Westerhof, was present. Ranchers Bees won 3-1 with the effervescent Amokachi scoring twice. After the match, Westerhof sought him out.
“Do you know who I am?” the Dutchman asked.
“No,” replied Amokachi.
“I’m Clemens Westerhof, the national team coach, and I want you to play for the national team.”
Amokachi found himself at the 1990 Africa Cup of Nations in Algeria a few months later. Nigeria went all the way to the final where they fell to a solitary goal against the hosts. They had gone to the tournament with little expectation and it was the first step of a journey that would see their star rise over the next decade.
Amokachi’s outstanding performances led to a move to the top Belgian side, Club Brugge, where he initially struggled to adjust to the the unfamiliar environment. He lived with a Belgian couple, Magda and Willie, who became his ‘foster parents’ and made his transition less stressful.
There were some memorable moments.
“I saw the great Jan Ceulemans, Belgium’s World Cup star, carrying a bag of balls to the training session from the dressing room and in true African culture, since he was much older than me, I went to carry the bag for him. He said no and told me that this week it was his turn and that my turn would come, and offered to show me the timetable for players’ duties. It was a learning process for me because it showed that as a team we were all equal irrespective of age, experience or form,” says Amokachi.
He spent four successful seasons in Belgium and was prominent in the Nigerian team that won the Africa Cup of Nations for only the second time in 1994, and that went on to the World Cup in the United States (US) the same year. It was here that Nigeria showed their class by topping their group, beating Bulgaria 3-0, Greece 2-0 and narrowly losing to Argentina 2-1.
In the second round, Nigeria led Italy by a single goal and were two minutes away from reaching the quarterfinal when a defensive error allowed Roberto Baggio to equalize. Baggio went on to score again in extra time and Nigeria were out of the tournament but left an indelible mark. Amokachi believes they could have gone much further.
<div id="attachment_4566" style="width: 230px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4566" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-4566" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-102304017-220x300.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="300" />DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; JUNE 22: Lars Lagerback head coach of Nigeria speaks to Daniel Amokachi, assistant coach during the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Group B match between Nigeria and South Korea at Durban Stadium on June 22, 2010 in Durban, South Africa. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Lars Lagerback;Daniel Amokachi</div>
“It’s the mentality of an African team. We always think it’s over when it’s not over. We were celebrating like we had already won. We forgot that football is 90 minutes.”
Amokachi scored one of the goals of the tournament against Greece, a scorching volley from outside the box, and earned accolades for his strength and skill. Shortly after, Everton Football Club came calling and he became the club’s most expensive player when they paid £3 million for his services.
Moving from the Belgian league to English football was a culture shock and initially Amokachi struggled.
“It’s a totally different ball game. The toughness, the speed is a reality. My nickname was ‘The Bull’ and I had strength and speed but after the first game I knew I had to really work hard. We played Blackburn Rovers in the first game and I had three opportunities that under normal circumstances I would score but each time a defender took the ball away from me. It took me six months to adjust. It was only towards the end of the season that I found my rhythm.”
He won the hearts of the Everton fans when he came off the bench to score twice in the FA Cup semifinal against Tottenham Hotspur to take the team to Wembley for the final. His two goals in 10 minutes etched his name into the club’s history books. Everton went on to beat Manchester United 1-0 in the final, with Amokachi making a substitute appearance.
He made his second World Cup appearance at the 1998 tournament in France, and was hoping Nigeria would go further after their second round exit in 1994, but it turned out to be a torrid time for both him and the team. An errant tackle in training saw him limp off the field.
He missed the first game against Spain, lasted 70 minutes against Bulgaria, but in the third match against Paraguay he felt his knee give way as he warmed up.
“I just walked off, didn’t tell anyone and went to the dressing room and locked myself in the toilet, in tears.”
He had surgery and played for another year but could feel that something was not right and underwent a second operation. A long period of rehabilitation followed. After unsuccessful spells with the Colorado Rapids in the US and Besiktas in Turkey, he made one final attempt with Créteil in France but when his injury recurred during the trial, he informed the club that he wouldn’t be able to continue.
After a discussion with his wife, he decided to give up the game at the young age of 28. It was a heart-rending decision that opened his eyes to life’s realities.
“One day you are up there and then you are down here. All the people you thought were your friends disappear. But that helps you because you now see who your real friends are. It makes you become a man and know what the world is really about. Even in your family, you find out who is really your true family.”
When the dollars were flowing, Amokachi was known for living the highlife and he made choices that he regrets.
“When you are living in that world and you wake up every morning, every week your bank account is credited, whether there is training or not, whether you play or not, that account is credited and you have endorsements left, right and center. You’re making money. You have style, you have class and you want to show it. But, when you sit down and think about it, the reality hits you. It’s not just about making money. You go back to Nigeria at that age of 28, and you see how people suffer and are really struggling, and it makes you realize that the life you were living is a totally different ball game. You think about the money you waste,” he says.
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“Someone will come and tell you they need some working capital and they ask for less than $100. You ask them what they can expect to generate from less than $100 and they just want to have enough to make small cakes and sell on the street to survive. Meanwhile you take out $120,000 to buy a car, and park five cars that you don’t really need and maybe drive them once a month. What are those things for?… You then realize that you need to use money to impact people’s lives and that’s how I’ve been living my life since, helping where I can.”
After his playing days came to an end, Amokachi took up coaching and has served the Nigeria national team as assistant and caretaker coach. In almost a replication of his playing career, he was assistant coach when Nigeria won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 and reached the second round of the World Cup in 2014.
At the age of 42, the African game will definitely be hearing the roar from The Bull in the future.

Tears of a wouNded bull

It was never going to be a normal night. I remember my friend getting his South African rugby cap autographed by Springbok wing James Small just before our shift, among the bottles, glasses and bustle of a Johannesburg restaurant, started. A few hours earlier, South Africa won the Rugby World Cup for the first time, beating New Zealand’s All Blacks in the final and sparking a massive party around the country. The players were in a party mood as well and decided to have some drinks where I worked. It was a memorable night and something that was only possible before professionalism gripped rugby.
I was in my second year of studying graphic design, and paying it off by working as a waiter at one of the busiest restaurants in Johannesburg. Storyville was reputed for its Cajun cuisine, celebrities and a dance floor that often only died down when the kitchen started serving breakfast. I always wanted to be the barman because they earned around three times as much as the waiters.
The crowds poured in, most of them already drunk from celebrating the Springbok victory, making it difficult to navigate from the bar to the balcony.
I remember the piercing shrieks of the fans as Small and his Springbok teammate Kobus Wiese arrived at the club. They arrived with a handful of the All Black players they had just beaten, including Jonah Lomu, Zinzan Brooke and Sean Fitzpatrick. After some high fives and handshakes, they disappeared into the heaving mass of revellers.
Around a week before, I saw Lomu having lunch with a young blonde girl at a restaurant next door. I was told that he met a South African girl and fallen madly in love with her. I remember thinking it was quite rock ‘n roll of him. The New Zealander, then, seemed like a blissful giant with a delicate flower in his hands. But now Lomu was talking to another colossus, the two-meter-tall Wiese, at the end of the bar. It seemed like they were reliving the intense battle they shared hours before at Ellis Park, a 20-minute drive away.
The club was heaving, it was almost impossible to make your way towards the exit. I went through the kitchen to the back for a cigarette when one of the managers asked me to help behind the bar. Finally, I had my chance. I flicked my smoke away and ran in to help. Small decided he would help as well. He jumped behind the bar, took his shirt off and haphazardly served drinks to the ladies.
Behind the bar, the sludge from spilled drinks soaked my feet while broken glass was piling up in a corner. Smoke was thick in the air and the bar was bursting with thirsty customers.
I had a searing headache and was trying to think straight while looking at a slip that a waiter had given me. I felt like I was forgetting something but I was distracted by something in the corner of my eye. I looked across the bar – Fitzpatrick, the All Black captain, was dancing on a table to a Michael Jackson song, attracting the attention of all the ladies. I still, however, had a nagging feeling that I was forgetting something.
I decided to escape the chaos and made my way to the kitchen when a hand grabbed my shirt and dragged me back. I could feel the short, prickly hairs of his fingers on the back of my neck. I am a big guy, but the sheer strength of my assailant made me feel helpless. It was Brooke, the gigantic All Black, reaching from the corner of the bar.
I suddenly remembered him ordering a fruit juice a while ago. Still clutching my shirt, he brought his large head close to my ear and explained sternly that, although he was a patient man, he was concerned that he had to wait 20 minutes for a juice. The calmness on his face was more frightening than the wrath he was capable of unleashing. I wriggled out of his grasp and said that the orange juice was coming while slowly moving away from him. As I looked for a glass, he grabbed me again. “One mango juice, please,” he said from his unsmiling mouth.
That’s when I learned not to mess with an All Black, especially when thirsty after they’ve lost the most important match of their life.

Never Turn Your Back On A Thirsty All Black

My uncle died after drowning in the bathtub during one of his epileptic fits. Four high school students were crossing a river in a canoe on their way to school at the beginning of the year. The canoe tipped over and the children fell out. An elderly man nearby managed to save one, but the other three drowned. A day before, Mufaro Matemba, an 8-year-old boy, disappeared during their school break-time. The teachers searched the school desperately, but it was only much later when someone finally inspected the swimming pool when they realized what happened. On the edge of the pool was his little pile of clothes as his body lay motionless in the water. These are different stories with the same tragic outcomes. All could have been prevented.
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In 2014, the World Health Organization created the first-ever Global Report on Drowning dedicated exclusively to drowning. The statistics will shock you:
<ul>
<li>372,000 people die from drowning every year</li>
<li>there are approximately 42 drowning deaths every hour</li>
<li>the drowning death toll is almost two thirds that of malnutrition and well over half that of malaria</li>
<li>Drowning is one of the 10 leading causes of death for people between the ages of one and 24 in every region of the world</li>
<li>Globally, over half of all drowning deaths are among those under the age of 25</li>
<li>Males are twice as likely to drown as females</li>
<li>Drowning rates in low- and middle-income countries are over three times higher than in high-income countries</li>
<li>Alcohol use around water is an important risk factor for drowning in many countries, especially for adolescents and adults</li>
</ul>
According to the World Health Organization, the main risk factors are: the lack of physical barriers between people and water, a lack of (or inadequate) supervision of children, unprotected water crossings, lack of water-safety awareness and therefore risky behavior around water, overcrowding on water transportation and poor maintenance of vessels, and flood disasters.
These statistics are concerning, even more so because these numbers are only based on reported cases. In Zimbabwe, the drowning rates have increased year on year between 2010 and 2013. We set up the Kirsty Coventry Academy to address this drowning issue. With the support of the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation, we were able to provide swimming lessons to over 350 children in 2015 and more than 400 received water-safety instruction. Drowning prevention needs to involve all stakeholders, including government, schools, clinics, police, NGOs and the general public. The World Health Organization lists 10 actions we can take to prevent drowning:
<ol>
<li>Install barriers controlling access to water</li>
<li>Provide safe places away from water for pre-school children, with capable childcare</li>
<li>Teach school age children basic swimming, water safety and safe rescue skills</li>
<li>Train bystanders in safe rescue and resuscitation</li>
<li>Strengthen public awareness and highlight vulnerability of children</li>
<li>Set and enforce safe boating, shipping and ferry regulations</li>
<li>Build resilience and manage flood risks and other hazards locally and nationally</li>
<li>Coordinate drowning prevention efforts with those of other sectors and agendas</li>
<li>Develop a national water safety plan</li>
<li>Address priority research questions with well-designed studies</li>
</ol>
When my husband was two-years-old, he nearly drowned in a swimming pool at his home. His father was standing nearby talking to a friend while the rest of the family were playing in the garden. He slipped into the water without a sound and without anybody seeing. It was only when he was unconscious that his father saw him and pulled him out. Thankfully, his father knew CPR and Tyrone was resuscitated. Too many victims of drowning are not so lucky.
“Swimming is the only sport that can save a life,” says Prince William in a video about school swimming in Britain.
The Kirsty Coventry Academy will save lives, empower individuals and uplift communities through water-safety and drowning prevention programs, as well as other current health and education issues.
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Why must there BE deaths in  The Depths

It’s a question that had to be answered sooner or later, the silent question in most entrepreneurs’ minds. It’s a topic I have  discussed privately, but now it’s something I think should be explored publicly.
If you look at the tech capitals of the world – Silicon Valley, Seoul and Tel Aviv – you won’t find any globally renowned black technology entrepreneurs.
It concerns me that a black entrepreneur has not come up with a major breakthrough in technology and gained a personal net worth of over a billion dollars as a result. Bear in mind, I did not say millions as there are many around today who are worth that.
Money is not the defining criteria though. To get to the bottom of this question we need to look at innovation, an idea that took the world by storm like WhatsApp.
Being African is also not in question, the continent has entrepreneurs such as Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk who have delivered powerful tech innovations and have billions in their pocket to prove it.
In order to answer the question, we need to confront three issues, cronyism, racism and nepotism. Firstly, they exist; we can’t run away from them.
Nepotism is a global issue. Everyone supports who they know, even people of color. This means that the success of a previous generation cascades to the generation that follows. This continues any race’s probability of success.
Many believe that racism is preventing black Africans from rising to the top. This belief is wrong. Asians and Jews at one point suffered tremendous discrimination, but they succeeded despite that challenge. Today, those two ethnicities are leading the business world.
Another challenge faced by many tech companies started by black entrepreneurs is the moment they come up with an idea, they are immediately thinking of ways to monetize it. You have to make money because you have bills to pay and there is the pressure of friends and family members wanting to see the fruit of what you have been working on.
At the main goal of the most successful tech companies, like Google, Quora and LinkedIn, their main goal was to get  as many people to use their technology as possible. Once that was achieved, they started to figure out how to make money from them. WhatsApp and Quora are still trying to figure this out, but they have millions of users to work with.
Investors in the United States encourage that. You need to attract interest first, monetization will be figured out afterwards and together. The message is that they will give you money if you can show your users have an active interest. Unfortunately, this is not the case in all countries around the world.
I believe Africans are brilliant. We, however, need an ecosystem that can be supportive for all ethnicities on the continent, not just black people. Nairobi and Cape Town are beacons in Africa for the vibrant tech ecosystem they have enabled in their cities. These ecosystems were largely built by the entrepreneurs themselves.
There are two black entrepreneurs who started major technology companies that should be mentioned, David Steward from the United States and Mike Adenuga from Nigeria. Steward runs World Wide Technology, the largest black-owned company in America, with revenue of $7.4 billion in 2015. World Wide Technology is tech service based.
Adenuga, with a personal worth of $3.8 billion, runs telecommunication company Globacom, with over 30 million subscribers. It is not a global brand and it doesn’t have to be.
My point is Africans are created equally and have conquered almost every industry. Competing with the rest of the world should be a challenge, not a competition. Let’s collaborate, with each other and counterparts of all backgrounds, to advance this world technologically.

Where Is The Black Mark Zuckerberg?

Last month I suggested that the South African government is unsure of which route to follow to find a shared strategy with the private sector to deal with the infrastructure backlog preventing the region’s progress.
Has the ruthless march towards recession, higher unemployment, coupled with the prospect of credit ratings downgrades and potential changes in voter sentiment, finally struck home?
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s recent bellwether meeting with 60 CEOs reminds me of the Union Buildings meeting I attended after South Africa successfully hosted the 2010 World Cup. The President and most of the Cabinet met with business in high spirits to reinforce the need to harness the collaborative momentum that had delivered so well.
Will the economic crisis that has followed the inaction and ineptitude after that euphoric session finally galvanize government and business into action?
Economic revival will not be achieved without massive investment in infrastructure and it cannot be delivered effectively without collaboration between the public and private sectors at the highest level.
In many countries there is a close relationship between the government, the national agenda and the construction industry. Many have transparent cross shareholding and collective arrangements that make for quicker infrastructure expansion.
The key is harnessing private sector funding for public infrastructure through commercially viable PPPs and concessionary projects, where each party takes a share in the risk for reward. This relieves the fiscus of having to fund everything and can then direct scarce public funds towards infrastructure that will attract industrial investment and drive long-term economic growth.
My previous company has decades of experience with this in Africa and Eastern Europe, but political ideology in South Africa has bedeviled this opportunity.
After 2010, we had numerous discussions with Brazilian groups and learned of this collective mindset in Brazil ahead of their 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics programs.
France has a deep collaboration between government and construction. The United States infrastructure is now undergoing massive rebuilding, with a strong private sector participation in both funding and implementation.
Likewise for overseas work, our competitors come into our region with robust political and financial backing from their governments.
The French approach to business is founded upon national interest and long-term foreign relationships, which was evident in recent years with the prospects for a fleet of nuclear power plants for South Africa. For several years, I participated in the developing French strategy for this work that encompassed major technology groups, their suppliers looking to localize in South Africa, the French national power utility and their government representatives.
Likewise, the Russians and South Koreans have strongly developed public/private trade institutions and strategies and have engaged with targeted partnerships with local companies. The success of South Korean business in our market is remarkable. The Russians are now firm contenders for nuclear power.
In stark contrast, in my experience in working across Africa and the Middle East, South African business generally feels alone and has to fend for itself internationally.
South Africa’s tax-payer funded development finance institutions have been known to fund projects in other African countries without involving any South African content. Most competitor nations would have contractual requirements that their funding has a high content from the lending nation.
This further diminishes South Africa’ growth prospects, the tax base and the desired employment and regional cooperation. The lack of support, and the time lost, is eroding the commitment to South Africa as the bigger companies shed local jobs and continue to shift to new international markets.
The construction industry has been through hell but it’s ready to make a difference. To do this it needs a champion in government, that has until now been absent.
The industry has tabled robust investments and long-term plans that include significant additional training and skills program. It has also offered to assist distressed municipalities and undertake social projects.
There is also a suite of execution strategies that will deliver on the commitment to collaborate with, mentor and jointly execute large projects with black-owned business to ensure the next generation of large construction companies are created from a solid experience base.
Perhaps out of adversity, the need for radical change in ideology and policy from government and for business to deliver more jobs, demographic and economic transformation and black industrialization, Gordhan’s new approach will find traction.
The engineering and construction industry in this country cannot wait much longer.

Collaborate Or Else

11r the past few years, Kenya has witnessed considerable growth in Shariah-compliant products, a sign of the vast potential of Islamic finance in Kenya. The country now boasts two fully fledged Islamic banks, one fully fledged insurance provider (Takaful), one Islamic fund manager and one approved Collective Investment Scheme (CIS). For all this, as at December 2014, the Global Islamic Finance Report (GIFR), the developers and publishers of the Islamic Finance Country Index (IFCI), an indicator of developments in Islamic financial services, ranked Kenya 22nd globally and third in Africa behind Sudan and Egypt, but ahead of South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and the Gambia.
According to the IMF’s Islamic Finance: Opportunities, Challenges and Policy Options, Kenya is poised to see further contributions in at least three dimensions: greater financial inclusion, especially of large underserved Muslim populations; greater support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), due to its risk-sharing features; and the lowering of systemic risk, owing to its prohibition of speculation – a major risk for conventional finance. Clearly, the decision to amend the Central Bank Act, allowing the monetary authority to recognize the payment of profits based on income from underlying assets rather than interest on government securities, thereby opening up the spectrum of Sharia-compliant investments, was a sound one.
Kenya is now gearing up to issue its eagerly-awaited Sukuk (Islamic bond) in the 2016/2017 fiscal year, hoping to limit domestic borrowing and increase funding for mega infrastructure projects. The government appears to be following in the footsteps of Senegal and South Africa, both of which managed to raise $200 million and $500 million respectively through Sukuks. Countries and companies raise $100 billion globally every year through Sukuks, with African countries accounting for just 1% of the issues. The planned sovereign issue is also set to pave the way for the private sector and further development of Kenya’s capital markets.
From a sovereign perspective, through Islamic bonds, the Kenyan government will able to access a new investor base. According to a report by Standard &amp; Poor’s (S&amp;P), the Islamic Sukuk investor base is estimated to be over $500 billion, excluding sovereign wealth funds, official investors (central banks and multilateral organizations), and other conventional investors. Essentially, the move will tap into a vast pool of Persian wealth.
Sukuk bonds are known to offer more favorable repayment terms than conventional bonds and therefore attract infrastructure financing. It’s also worth noting that investors from the Middle East accounted for only 2% of Kenya’s debut Eurobond. The planned Shariah-compliant bond should see a ramp up in participation.
Individual investors in the country are also set to benefit immensely as Shariah-compliant products are not restricted to Muslims. What is also vital, perhaps due to its unique qualities, is that Islamic finance has become a good vehicle to diversify risk away from traditional asset classes. It is noted that Sukuk bonds and other financial instruments avoided many of the most severe consequences of the recent financial crisis because they were underpinned by equity, as opposed to debt. For instance, while the S&amp;P 500 dropped 64%, Shariah-compliant indices lost no more than 53% and showed lower volatility, according to KPMG’s report, Islamic finance: From niche to mainstream.
Although Islamic finance has already taken off, there are some challenges facing the niche market. In January, the first International Islamic Finance Conference of Africa was held in Nairobi. It highlighted issues around regulations, investor education, compliance, and the limited range of available products and services. Kenya needs to deal with these challenges to see a smooth increase in Islamic financial products in its financial markets.
As the country positions itself as a financial and investment hub to tap into the growing capital inflows into Africa, it is important to celebrate the milestones achieved so far while working to improve further. With Islamic finance set to grow to $3 trillion within the next decade, according to S&amp;P’s report: Islamic Finance To Still Grow In 2016 But With A Sag, rising popularity of Shariah-compliant products in Kenya will surely contribute to the country’s growth story.

Islamic Finance On  The Rise In Africa

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has often urged Africa’s business and political leaders to “stop thinking about development as something we do with external resources.”
The current managers of the Nigerian economy will do well to heed this advice. They will spend 2016 struggling to rebalance their economy and its tax system. They must save their nation from the spasms of the Dutch disease.
Nigeria entered 2016 with its lowest external reserve levels in 10 years.
Nigeria’s foreign reserves peaked at $63 billion in September 2008. By January 2016, it had dipped to around $29.3 billion, barely enough to cover four months of imports.
The price of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude was trading at $34 a barrel as this edition of FORBES AFRICA went to press. It has been dropping since September 2008 after attaining a record high of $147 in July that year. Prices for cocoa and iron ore have also been falling over the last two years.
Economists believe that the full effects of the resource curse may have finally caught up with Africa’s largest economy. For the third time in three decades, Nigeria’s economy is in serious wahala (Nigerian speak for trouble). Dwindling government revenue, foreign exchange pressure, institutionalized corruption and a massive infrastructure deficit confront the nation.
Like many resource-rich, mono-product economies, Nigeria faces the daunting challenge of curbing its appetite according to the size of its wallet. Embedded in Nigeria’s 2016 budget is a ginormous N6 trillion ($30 billion) revenue shortfall. The deficit financing will come from the domestic and international debts markets. But domestic resource-mobilization might be the key to fiscal and monetary efficiency.
Crude oil has defined Nigeria’s political economy for decades. It will continue to play a significant role, alongside commodities and Nigeria’s abundant natural gas reserves. Earnings from non-oil sectors, such as services, agriculture and entertainment, will continue to grow.
As Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, began talks with international finance institutions for external loans worth $3.5 billion to augment the 2016 budget, the local media was awash with two news reports – both revealing Nigeria’s scandalous administration of its tax regimes and import earnings under previous governments.
The first expose was a report published by ActionAid, an international NGO, which revealed how Nigeria had forfeited a staggering $3.3 billion in revenues through a three-part tax break granted to three of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, over a 10-year period. Apparently, and obviously unknown to many Nigerians outside the infamously opaque petroleum sector, the tax breaks for Shell, Total and Eni started in 1999.
In a country where millions live in extreme poverty, the social cost of the tax giveaways is huge. The amount is double Nigeria’s education budget for 2014; and the money could very well have given 70 million young Nigerians access to quality education, rebuild the university system and tackle entrenched problems in the health system, according to ActionAid.
“It is a striking example of how a global race to the bottom on tax is harming resource-rich countries,” the NGO’s report says.
Previous ActionAid research shows that tax breaks cost developing countries at least $138 billion every year.
The second matter was the revocation of all import waivers granted to several “favored” firms and politically-connected entrepreneurs by previous governments between 1999 and 2015. Excise duty revenues from the Nigeria Customs Service for 2016 is consequently expected to be significantly higher than previous years. Finance ministry sources say Nigeria lost N797.8 billion (around $4 billion), between 2011 and May 2014, to import waivers and tax holiday concessions.
Nigeria’s lax tax system is just one of several public sector development issues awaiting resolution by President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet. Figures from the Debt Management Office show that in one year, Nigeria’s debt burden grew by N1.31 trillion ($6.57 billion) to N12.6 trillion ($63.2 billion) as at the end of 2015.
Also during the 2015 financial period, the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation posted an operating loss of N267 billion ($1.34 billion). Its four refineries, with a combined installed capacity of 445,000bpd, continue to underperform.
Value Added Tax (VAT) and Company Income Tax (CIT) will account for 80% of the Federal Inland Revenue Service’s (FIRS) projected revenue haul in 2016.
Comparatively, Nigeria’s tax revenue performance is 7.4% of GDP compared with 27.4% in South Africa, 18.7% in Malawi and 19.5%, Kenya.

SERIOUS WAHALA AS THE RESOURCE CURSE BITES

You may not recognize her name, but you’ll know her photographs. Jodi Bieber won the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year, in 2010, for the photograph of a violated young woman in a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The picture captured the 19-year-old Bibi Aisha who was dragged by her angry in-laws to a mountain where her Taliban soldier husband cut off her nose and ears. She was left for dead as punishment for running from her marriage to escape years of abuse. Aisha survived and ended up in the refugee camp where Bieber found her in 2010.
“It took the photograph in a very plain room. When I created the picture I asked Bibi through an interpreter to close her eyes and think about her inner beauty and her inner power and look at me. She did that and I took the photo. That’s the photograph they used. But I was very worried because I took her very empowered photograph. I thought I had failed because TIME would want something more vulnerable. TIME said it was the most iconic photograph they had seen. And it went on to win the award,” says Bieber.
Bieber cut her teeth in the dangerous days leading up to South Africa’s first democratic elections on April 27, 1994. As a rookie photographer, she was sent to Ulundi, in KwaZulu–Natal, a warzone for the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party.
“I definitely knew I was not the war photographer because we witnessed quite a few violent situations in Ulundi. At one time we slept on the floor of our hotel, we thought we might be assassinated,” says Bieber, the then freelance photographer at The Star, in Johannesburg.
Bieber was born in 1966, in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. She grew up in a segregated South Africa and went to all-white schools. The system fostered rebellion in her soul.
“I don’t think art was embraced when I was growing up but I used to question things. I had a history teacher, who I am friends with now. He opened our eyes to what was happening in South Africa at the time. Remember, 1976 was when we first got television. It was a completely different time, but I remember seeing those yellow nyalas (a military vehicle), I knew something was not right in our society. So, I was very rebellious at high school. I had an opinion and I had voice, I was not just following the crowd,” she says.
“All my work deals with issues relating to broader society and a lot of it challenges the stereotypes that exist in the media,” says Bieber.
For two decades Bieber’s work changed lives around the world and she vows to document the injustices – her camera and her soul agree.

The soul behind the camera who captured inner beauty and power

No one can talk about photography legends without mentioning the world-renowned South African photographer Santu Mofokeng. Born in 1956, Mofokeng fought apartheid with his lens as part of the Afrapix collective.
An important critic of mainstream photojournalism, Mofokeng has inspired many photographers, young and old, including 26-year-old South African photographer, Lebohang Kganye.
“While I was studying photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, I was introduced to the black and white photographs of Santu Mofokeng. I remember being drawn to the series Chasing Shadows about spirituality. It spoke quite personally to me, this search for something greater, not just a higher being, but a ‘call’,” says Kganye.
Even though Mofokeng’s photographs record the performance of rituals, with an intangible, unearthly presence, Kganye says Mofokeng also explores fictional and poetic musings.
Kganye began her photography studies in 2009 and is currently studying Fine Arts at the University of Johannesburg.
“I first met Mofokeng in 2012, when I received the Tierney Fellowship award at the Market Photo Workshop. It was the beginning of winter and the two of us stood outside in the cold for hours talking about photography,” says Kganye.
After refusing to look at her photographs, Mofokeng insisted he needed to understand what informed Kganye’s work.
“I remember I just wanted him to critique my work and again he refused, saying I needed to realize my voice first and we carried on in conversation a few more hours,” says Kganye.
About a year later, Kganye revisited Mofokeng’s series The Black Photo Album/ Look at Me: 1890-1950, when she was working on her project Ke Lefa Laka. Similarly, Kganye was working on her family photo albums and she says she was fascinated with how Mofokeng’s work has tensions and overlaps between personal narratives, memory, collective history and the present.
“He helped me understand that family albums are a significant part of our family histories and the photographs are more than documentation of personal narratives. The family album is composed of a selection of what shall be remembered, what is not forgotten, therefore our histories become orchestrated fictions and imagined histories,” says Kganye.
She says Mofokeng’s work creates a space where the past and the present converge to create alternative versions of history and memory, often exposing the complexities of memory, the personal and collective.
“I find myself often paging through Mofokeng’s publications for a sentence or an image that could evoke something in me, his style and writings have inspired much of my work.”

Inspiration coming in from The cold

“I thought (the bullet) had gone through me. Nobody wanted to look. I wasn&#8217;t breathing properly because my lung had been punctured. And there were a couple of other wounds, rather embarrassingly, in my buttocks and in my hand,&#8221; recalls photojournalist Greg Marinovich.
This is one of the four times the 53-year-old has had to endure bullet wounds, three in his country, South Africa, and the last in Afghanistan in 1999.
Awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1991, Marinovich is one of four members of The Bang-Bang Club, famous for its brave coverage of a violent war that raged between 1990 and 1994 during South Africa’s transition from apartheid. As many journalists stayed away from the violence that broke out between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party, only these four photojournalists braved the worst and alerted the world of the gruesome rivalry between political parties.
Interestingly, Marinovich only fell in love with the camera in his early adulthood.
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“Growing up, I never had photographer or journalist role models, I had no ambition to do this work. Now, though, I look up to many of my colleagues, especially Gilles Peress, who is a great photographer and a great thinker,” says Marinovich.
The, now, US-based photojournalist co-authored the book The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War, together with the only other surviving member of the club, João Silva. Fellow Pulitzer Prize winner, Kevin Carter, took his own life; Ken Oosterbroek died from a stray bullet in street fighting in Johannesburg, East Rand.
After being dissatisfied with what their images alone told about the war, Marinovich and Silva decided to write a fuller account, what he describes as being deeper than the superficiality of conflict images. Marinovich is still a bit dissatisfied with the legacy The Bang-Bang Club has left.
“It seems to have left a legacy contrary to what we aimed to achieve. It seems that so many young photographers see the business as being glamorous and attractive, whereas we hate the glamorization of photojournalists, nor is it heroic,” says Marinovich.
On his own legacy, Marinovich is prouder.
“Perhaps I have left a passion of truth telling of people’s stories no matter how difficult that is. Of never faking stuff,” says Marinovich.
Testimony to this would be the Marikana investigations where Marinovich helped reveal that South African police had executed miners in a hidden area after the televised shooting, which resulted in the death of 34 mineworkers at the hands of the police in 2012.
Although Marinovich says that only a lotto ticket would make him stop being a photojournalist any time soon, he has ceased from doing conflict journalism, which cost his friend, Silva, both his legs when he stood on a landmine in Afghanistan.
“We are as close as ever, but I was horrified by the incident. He has suffered and still suffers greatly from the wounds,” says Marinovich.
Marinovich reckons the future of photojournalism in Africa is promising, mentioning: some “great” ones in Zanele Muholi; Andrew Esiebo; Tsepo Gumbi; and Boniface Mwangi.
“It’s very tough to make a living for the majority, but if you are consistently excellent you will succeed. Keep telling stories close to your hea

The bloody trail To The Truth

Sixty one years ago, Peter Magubane took his first picture. It was another world in 1954, most of Southern Africa wasn’t free. South Africa was under the heel of JG Strijdom and apartheid divided the country. This was the uncertain and unequal world 22-year-old Magubane was thrown into with a camera around his neck.
Magubane was born in Vrededorp and raised in the multicultural suburb of Sophiatown, Johannesburg. He worked for DRUM; the magazine in everyone’s home.
”I began to read DRUM magazine, who were writing about social issues that affected black people in South Africa, then I said this is a magazine I want to work for,” says Magubane.
He was employed as a driver and given a camera by DRUM editor Thomas Hopkinson. He worked alongside other greats, like photographer Bob Gosani and chief photographer Jurgen Schadeberg. He looked through the lens and never looked back.
Magubane recalls going outside the country and documenting poverty in Africa.
“Someone wanted to stop me and I said ‘no, I am here to document, this is the truth of what is happening. Let my camera eat, it is hungry,’” he says
Magubane told the story to his inheritors, more than 100 students, young professionals and media houses at the Market Photo Workshop gallery in downtown Johannesburg. It was tough in his day as a photojournalist. Police kept him in solitary confinement for 586 days for taking pictures and sending them out of South Africa.
“I was arrested for doing my job,” he says.
He was so passionate about photography he remembers saying to himself that when he got out, he was going out with his camera again. Soon after Magubane was released, he was banned for five years and couldn’t work as a photographer. That wasn’t going to stop him.
Magubane used to dodge through back doors to take pictures and return under the cover of darkness. One night he came back to find his house on fire. He recalls looking at his house and saying: “damn, they’re fighting back.”
Magubane was quick, he had to be. One day he was sent to Zeerust, a small town in the North West province, to cover a trial ringed by the police. He knew before he left Johannesburg that he wasn’t welcome.
“I went to the nearest shop and bought myself a half loaf of bread, I scooped the inside of the bread, I put my camera in there and I walked around eating my bread taking pictures. The police were so dumb that I had this bread the whole day, and when I was through with that I went and bought myself a pint of milk, I threw the milk out and put my camera inside and I continued taking pictures,” he says.
Magubane used a Leica M3 camera, small enough to hide inside a loaf of bread, a box of milk or a bible. One of his undercover assignments was to photograph mineworkers. He went in with a dust coat, the camera underneath.
“I walked in there, I saw what was going on. Men were stripped naked, being examined. There was no need for them to be stripped, whatsoever. And I took my pictures, I shocked the entire South Africa with those pictures, because no one had ever gone into the mines and taken those pictures, but this son of Magubane did, because I was not afraid.”
Magubane spent years photographing during apartheid, and got caught up in it: the Treason Trial, where he was arrested in 1956 and released after four days; the Women’s March in 1956 on the Union Building in Pretoria for the abolition of passes for women, the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 where 69 people were killed and over 200 injured, the 1976 Soweto Uprising, right up to the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990. Magubane became his personal photographer.
Post 1994, after all the blood and violence, Magubane took his camera to capture the beauty of South Africa, the colorful side that the world didn’t know.
He exhibited work internationally in the United States and Germany and also featured in National Geographic, The Times in London and LIFE magazine.
“My editor told me to never allow yourself to be told what to take and what not to take. And I was prepared to break the apartheid rules with all my might and I’m glad that I did. When I sit at home going through my pictures, I say ‘yes, son of Magubane, you have done justice to this country, you have done justice to yourself.’”

Fear, Truth And Daring In The Land Of Bread, milk  And CUNNING

It’s a rough, tough, brutal business for an entrepreneur; you risk your neck in places where no one wants to go to find stories that everyone wants to know; it’s months of tedium and travelling where one slip can mean death.
This is the news business in Africa that is the life of Kenyan Salim Amin; it is also the cruel business in which his father suffered on his way to an early grave.
Amin will never forget November 23, 1996, the day word came through. His father Mo Amin, a legendary photojournalist, had survived many dangers in more than 30 years on the road, including the loss of an arm in an explosion in the Ethiopian civil war. His life came to a tragic end in the Indian Ocean.
“I was at the gym when I got a call from mum asking me to come home immediately as something had happened to dad’s flight. I only believed it after I identified his body in the Comoros,” he says.
Mo was on an Air Ethiopia flight home to Nairobi when hijackers took the plane. He tried to rally passengers to fight back but the plane ran out of fuel and ditched in the sea, off the coast of the Comoros, killing all but 50 on board.
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“He was still on his feet when the plane crashed trying to get the hijackers off the pilot as he tried to land in the ocean. The hijackers claimed they had a grenade but no evidence of this was found. Mo was flying from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. He had gone to Addis for a meeting with Ethiopian Airlines as we produced the inflight magazine,” says Salim.
Mo died side-by-side with a friend and fellow journalist. Brian Tetley, who was 61, was a British-born, Nairobi-based, king of the keyboard and bon viveur.
“Brian worked with my father for over three decades and they were very close friends. Brian was often the writer while my dad photographed the major news stories, and they also co-authored/produced over two dozen books together. They were like brothers and travelled all over the world on assignments together,” says Salim.
The plane crash cost Salim his father and mentor; the man who remained a mystery right up to his tragic death, an oft told African story of father and son.
“We had a lot of love between us but I hardly saw him and didn’t really know him very well… we didn’t speak much about personal matters, more about work.”
Taking up the camera, for Salim, was bittersweet.
“I started taking pictures when I was eight years old… that’s when he gave me his first camera,” he says.
With this camera, Salim took a picture that appeared in TIME magazine, making him probably the only 10-year-old African to ever have a picture published in a global magazine.
“I was amazed when I saw it actually in print! If I had had any doubts about what I was going to do before that, then those went out of the window when I saw my work in print,” says Salim.
He started working for the media company his father founded – Camerapix.
“My first pay cheque was from Camerapix… he paid me Ksh5,000 for my first month at work in 1992 (then around $100).”
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Salim has no regrets in an unforgiving business.
“I don’t think I would want to ever do anything else… definitely I would want to be doing the same thing in another life.”
This is a trade where you can very easily die, unsung, chasing a story. Salim had his fair share.
“I remember being bombed by government forces in Sudan during the civil war, which was terrifying, the dangers of covering Somalia in the 1990s during Operation Restore Hope, the loss of my friends and colleagues Dan Eldon, Anthony Macharia and Hos Maina in Somalia in 1993, and the genocide in Rwanda which was the most disturbing and brutal story I had ever covered,” says Salim.
Eldon, an English-born Kenyan photojournalist, with Kenyans, Macharia and Maina, were killed by an angry mob in Mogadishu in 1993, in the days when occupying US forces struggled to keep order.
Another journalist who survived that violent day is Angus Shaw, who spent 40 years covering eight wars, from his base in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“We were at the hotel that morning when we heard an explosion five blocks away. We decided to go down and have a look,” recollects Shaw.
“The Camerapix crew drove ahead of us as we headed to the compound where the explosion took place and as we got there, we saw a swelling crowd. The crowd erupted into extreme anger after seeing the carnage and deaths after the bombings of that narrow street, they started throwing stones at our small press convoy yelling ‘Yankies go home’. Eldon had disappeared inside this angry crowd when they started throwing stones. Every photojournalist wanted the best picture so they hardly paid attention to the possible dangers.”
What followed will haunt Shaw forever.
“I saw a handful of people armed with AK-47 rifles firing shots and I saw a nice young man, Macharia, going down. He had been shot. We realized this was getting out of hand and we started driving away and at that point, they had started shooting at our car which was about 25 meters away.”
Days passed with no trace of the 23-year-old Eldon, last seen disappearing into the angry crowd.
“One morning we woke up to the sight of Dan’s bloody shoes at the doorstep of our hotel. This was a warning to us.”
Shaw says, as they were wrapping Eldon’s belongings, Mo reminded the press corps that covering atrocities was more than reporting numbers.
“When you start wrapping the belongings of your own, then you discover that that’s what people go through all over the world,” says Shaw.
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Salim wishes the continent that gave birth to many great journalists could spare a thought for their hardships.
“I wish Africans would celebrate journalists more… we are seen as ‘lowly’ people and in a corrupt profession by many around the continent, and unfortunately even African media organizations do not celebrate African journalists enough. My father was recognized and decorated more outside Africa than within. We should do more and maybe have a commemoration day each year for African journalists that is a celebration of their sacrifices and contributions.”
Salim found himself at the helm of his late father’s business at the age of 26.
“I had no experience at running a company; luckily my father was good at filing all his work so I had to study his documents and correspondences,” he says.
“The first day was chaotic. We had to re-register and restructure the company. We started by giving everybody their dues, close the company and re-employ them again under the new registered company with new shareholding. It never really struck me that I was now running the company, it just happened as there was no succession plan. I had no choice.”
Salim concedes he has to move with the times.
Media and development expert, Rashweat Mukundu, says the internet is changing the news business.
“Traditional models of doing business are being challenged, yet some traditional elements, that include the human touch, will remain necessary, yet more enhanced by ICTs. We are in an era of either business adapts or dies,” he says.
Bruce Mutsvairo, media professor at Northumbria University in Britain, says Africa should plough its own furrow.
“Our innovations should underscore, support and provide the basis for Africa’s cultural and economic needs. We have to come with our own innovations, even if they get rejected in the West.”
In Mo’s day, it was all about hard news, hotspots and wars. The news business these days is more about fashion and business, says Salim. With more than four million images of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and 8,000 hours of video footage, Camerapix Archive is the largest library in Africa.
“Our only asset is our archives. I am not so sure I would attach any monetary value on the company. It’s a family business that I would not dream of selling.”
Like many in the media industry, Salim struggles to make money as there is a lot of free content floating around.
“We are producing a lot of content; it’s not giving us much revenue as yet. So we have to sell our content to multiple broadcasters. There are more opportunities presented through mobile devices but expensive data remains the main impediment.”
Salim plans to ease himself out of the business to make way for the next generation.
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“We did the first private-public partnership with a local university where we are also helping develop their postgraduate degree. We have just moved into the Multimedia University where our production team is housed; in exchange we are helping them develop their master’s program.”
Another chapter for Africa – a great story that many journalists have paid with their lives to tell.

The Cruel Business Of Telling Stories And Bloody Shoes

It’s a warm day in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa. As we park, an empty can dances merrily down the street, leaving a sticky trail behind. The streets are packed with the ambitious, in the city of gold. Mpendulo Dlamini wants to leave a big mark with his little kingdom – Umbuso Lubricants.
“I love the name Umbuso because it is kingdom in siSwati and I want to create a kingdom for myself. It doesn’t matter where the business is, but people want to know where you are located because when you say you work from home, sometimes people don’t take you seriously,” says Dlamini.
The lubricants company is Dlamini’s hope of a multi-million-dollar empire.
“I got tired of reporting to a superior and I had to make a decision to be my own boss. I had always had a dream that one day I will start my own company. Entrepreneurship is what Africa needs because it creates more jobs and contributes positively to the economy.”
Dlamini quit his job as a banker at one of the world’s largest banks for this dream. It was a risk.
“It is very difficult when you start your own company and you don’t know how things will go. There is no longer the comfort of a monthly salary to pay the bills and take care of the family. It was tough but sometimes you have to stick with the business even though you have nothing. It takes time for anything to grow,” he says.
“When we started, we wanted to sell diesel and lubricants but diesel was a bit problematic and we have since stopped and are concentrating on lubricants alone.”
The lubricants market is segmented into different sectors, mainly automotive, industrial power and general industrial. Dlamini hopes to grow his business to be a major supplier to big companies.
“I have had an opportunity to supply a lot of products before. Someone wanted a lot of lubricants from me but I didn’t have enough money for stock and I lost him as a client. As a banker, I had a lawyer and a support system. I don’t have that now. Everything becomes a hustle because I have to do things myself but that is the beauty of business. You can be put down but you can always rise again and that keeps me going until you get to where you want to be.”
Like many who come to Johannesburg to make money, Dlamini might just make it as a king of oil.

From Investment Banker To Oil King?

It was a tragic moment. Strong and robust Cameroonian international football star, Marc-Vivien Foé, collapsed and died on the pitch. The cause of death – hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the thickening of the muscle wall of the heart, caused by a change in genes, which makes it harder to pump blood. The heart simply stopped.
It is this kind of sporting damage and danger that the growing DNA industry is trying to fight. South African entrepreneur, Avi Lasarow, claims his DNA testing company, DNAFit, can save sporting careers.
“DNAFit at this point do not test anything that is diagnostic or negative. Our mission is to provide positive information for better health,” says Lasarow.
The company uses a mouth swab to test 50 gene variants linked to a body’s ability to respond to training and nutrition. Key genes linked to sporting performance, such as power, endurance, speed of recovery, susceptibility to injury and tolerance to food, like carbohydrates or saturated fats, are also researched. DNAFit then provides detailed reports on how to alter diet and exercise to fit genetic make-up.
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“If you train to your genotype you can double your power and become better in what you do because you understand your body better. My vision is to work with African [sportsmen] to increase their medal count. I want to put Africa in a better position in terms of professional sport,” he says.
Although unaware of DNAFit, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Sports Scientist, Marc Booysen, says specific genes that regulate the structure of collagen (protein made up of amino acids) can be linked to an increased risk of injury, such as an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture.
“Genetics can also determine how one responds to training loads, responders versus non-responders, or how an individual handles the acute effects of hypoxia (a condition where body tissues are not oxygenated adequately) when ascending to altitude,” says Booysen.
Lasarow says many careers have been lost to wrong diet or training.
Take former South African cricketer, Mfuneko Ngam, one of the most promising players to emerge from the dusty Eastern Cape province in South Africa. His career was cut short by injury.
“I did all the wrong things that had a huge negative impact on my career. I would train five times a week on a tar road. Because of my disadvantaged background, I had never gone to the gym or had a proper training program. I had so much passion but I overworked myself, which got me injured,” says Ngam.
“If I had the opportunity, I would have used a product like [DNAFit]. It would have given [us] direction on how to handle my training.”
Ngam now works as a development coach for Cricket South Africa, at the University of Fort Hare.
“We are given programs to train the kids with and just hope that everyone will get the same results from it but that is not always the case,” he says.
According to Lasarow, there is no one-size-fits-all in fitness and sporting prowess. The secret, he says, lies in DNA.
“All these hyped up media diets do not always work. If you train to your genotype, with our algorithm, you can double your performance. This helps teams to put up measures in place to protect members who have higher injury scores, take longer to heal or need specialized support to maximize their potential. This makes not just the athlete stronger but the whole team because they have the knowledge,” says Lasarow.
Zimbabwean born, British heavyweight boxer, Dereck Chisora, is one of Lasarow’s customers. He had a 29-second win over Beqa Lobjanidze last year. This marked his return to the ring after an eight-month absence, following a defeat by current heavyweight champion, Tyson Fury, in 2013.
“I had tried so many things and different trainings but when I did the DNA test and started working out and eating according to my genes, I started seeing a difference. My strength has massively increased. I have more hand speed and more power than I used to,” says Chisora.
Many others subscribe to this philosophy. Lasarow works with players at football clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool and Fulham; as well as 800-meter athlete Jenny Meadows; Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford; 400-meter runner Andrew Steele and 100-meter sprinter Craig Pickering.
DNAFit is also being used in a pilot project to help obese people shed weight after studies revealed those who go on a diet matched to their genes can lose up to 33%.
“One lady came to us because she couldn’t lose weight. She would go to the gym, lose a bit of weight but then pick it up again. When we did the test, we found that she had 95% power. Based on that, we put her on a weights training programme which is a lot more power based and she lost weight and it stayed that way,” says Lasarow.
Johannesburg dietician, Nathalie Mat, sounds a note of caution.
“I do not feel that it is appropriate to test every person that wants to start working out. The untrained body will benefit from population guidelines with regard to exercise and diet – these are designed to be appropriate for most of the population of a country. There are some people that may require additional changes to their training and/or diets but this should only be explored when the conventional approach fails and should be done under medical supervision,” says Mat.
Wits University’s Centre for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Director, Demitri Constantinou, says DNAFit’s claims are overstated.
“Genes may be linked to muscles that are used for speed more than for endurance… So not all people with a ‘speed’ gene will be fast athletes, and not all athletes without it will be slow. We learn more as time goes on, and applying the true science of genetics is premature in predicting performance or as talent identification. Perhaps in time it will be one factor, among others, that will assist, but certainly not the one and be all,” says Constantinou.
Lasarow works in Greece, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, the UAE as well as South Africa.
According to Lasarow, sport is for entrepreneurs. He invested  around $430,000 into his company and in two years it has become $14 million.
Lasarow was the first South African to be inducted into the City of London’s esteemed Guild of Entrepreneurs; the youngest Honorary Consul for South Africa in the UK; has won the Innovation of the Year award at the 2015 Lloyds Bank National Business Awards. In 2014, he was awarded the African Entrepreneur of the Year award at the African Enterprise Awards.
No guts no glory; people say about sport. Lasarow believes it is all in the genes.

Could Your Son Be  A World Champion? Ask Me

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I recall from my first venture to the World Economic Forum in Davos, in 2014, the brightly colored scarves hanging from the necks of political leaders and captains of industry as they spoke on television. These scarves were in the colors of the national flags of two of Africa’s powerhouse economies – Nigeria and South Africa.
They performed two functions – much needed warmth and a sign that Africa was firmly on the international stage.  Africa was open for business; that was the message that rang clearly and loudly from the peaks of the snow-capped mountains.
Fast forward to January 2016; where the beautiful ski resort, nestled in the Alps, once more played host to more than 2,500 delegates from around the world as global markets saw a rickety start to the year.
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China was changing its growth model and posted a slowdown in GDP. The United States increased interest rates in December 2015, despite its marginal economic growth. Then there was the slump in commodity prices, with oil reaching 12 year lows. Gold, platinum, iron ore and copper were also weaker. Emerging and frontier markets bore the brunt with no end in sight.
How was Africa going to see increased investment in its economies when it was in the eye of a perfect storm? Well that’s where charity begins at home. This seen in the launch of a new deal on energy, focused on power, potential and partnership to secure universal access to electricity on the continent by 2025.
“More than a century after Edison invented the light bulb, half of Africa is still in the dark,” said Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina, President of the African Development Bank and FORBES AFRICA Person of the Year in 2013.
This new move to power up the continent was in line with the theme for this year’s gathering &#8211; the fourth  industrial revolution, which focused on robotics, artificial intelligence and how electricity can grow economies.
“We talk about the fourth industrial revolution, but it all starts with the need for electricity, which is like blood in the system. If we don’t have it, we can’t live,” says Adesina.
To help keep Africa on the world economic map, strong delegations came from a number of states. Several African leaders were in Davos:  Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, Hailemariam Dessalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Nigeria’s  Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma &#8211; despite several questions about his low profile at the Forum.
Members of the private sector too were there to allay fears that Africa may no longer be rising.
Oscar Onyema, CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, remains confident that Africa plays home to equity markets which continue to see interest from investors, regardless of the global market conditions.
“We just have to ride the cycles,” he says.
Feeling the same was Nicky Newton-King, CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the largest bourse on the continent that has won awards for the way it runs.
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“We have got to understand that there is a new normal out there, low growth in an uncertain global world, good investment opportunities will come, but we still have a chance to compete with our global peers,” said Newton-King.
Fellow members of the private sector with a strong focus on the continent, add that they too are concerned, but not shaken, by the headlines.
“I think it depends really on your time profile for your investments, I think there’s a growing interest from people who have a five to ten year view of what they want to be investing in to actually go to Africa,” said Geoffrey White, CEO of Agility Africa.
Ralph Mupita, CEO of Old Mutual Emerging Markets says: “We are long term investors, with our roots in Africa – South Africa to be exact. Despite the challenges at a macro level, we see the needs of the consumer and we are providing them with the service, we will roll out capital prudently.”
While the challenges are clear. Africa is still on the agenda for many &#8211; albeit with reservations. Power, partnerships, and certain regulatory frameworks are the sturdy lifeboats we need to ride out the economic storm.
And whilst many do agree that the short to medium term will be worrisome our future is not dim… perhaps we need to cast our eyes slightly further out on the horizon. After all Rome wasn’t built in day; neither will Africa be.

Tag: March 2016

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Tears of a wouNded bull

Never Turn Your Back On A Thirsty All Black

Why must there BE deaths in The Depths

Where Is The Black Mark Zuckerberg?

Collaborate Or Else

Islamic Finance On The Rise In Africa

SERIOUS WAHALA AS THE RESOURCE CURSE BITES

The soul behind the camera who captured inner beauty and power

Inspiration coming in from The cold

The bloody trail To The Truth

Fear, Truth And Daring In The Land Of Bread, milk And CUNNING

The Cruel Business Of Telling Stories And Bloody Shoes

From Investment Banker To Oil King?

Could Your Son Be A World Champion? Ask Me

Brrr…its cold for African optimists in the Alps this year