The African story

Articles

The African story

Wednesday, 01 July 2009 13:38

ENTREPRENEURS BOOK REVIEW “Until lions learn to write, hunters will tell their history for them” In his foreword to Moky Makura’s Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs, Richard Branson describes the transformative function that entrepreneurs have always exercised.

Where some people see problems, entrepreneurs identify opportunities – and by acting on these opportunities, entrepreneurs drive forward the economies of their countries. Therefore, the entrepreneurial spirit is also the embodiment of the spirit of service, known in Africa as ubuntu: the principle that a person exists only by virtue of the existence of other people. Authorship, of course, takes entrepreneurial skills. The problem, or opportunity, that Makura spotted was glaringly obvious: the lack of inspiring African business stories on the shelves of Exclusive Books and other purveyors of fine print. Concluding that the Afropessimism prevalent in the sensation-hungry media was exacerbated by the failure of Africans to tell their own stories superlatively, Makura set out to lead by example and fill the gap herself. The result: a collection of stories dedicated to 16 of Africa’s currently most prosperous entrepreneurs and visionaries intended to inspire readers to emulate and surpass performances that have to be read to be believed. No wonder that the cream of South African business talent turned out in force to celebrate the book’s launch at The Corporate Café in Illovo earlier this year. If, as Mokura states in her introduction, highlighting our achievements as Africans, showcasing our heroes and taking responsibility for the future image of Africa is a responsibility, then it is a collective responsibility. The task of compiling a comprehensive list of successful African entrepreneurs remains to be completed by some future encyclopaedist – Mokura had set herself a different task: “creating and profiling new heroes not only for Africans, but for the rest of the world to respect and admire”. The criteria for inclusion were simple: entrepreneurs who had managed to start multimillion-dollar businesses in Africa on their own and whose success had garnered them fame in their own countries and beyond. Above all, the heroes of the book were to be mavericks – “pure capitalists who, like the visionary Martin Luther King, had a dream, a dream they had the drive to realise”. Each chapter tells of how a particular entrepreneur set out to realise his dream, for example, Wale Tinubu, “The Upstart Entrepreneur”. From the impulsive decision to quit his job as a lawyer and set up office in his parents’ garage without knowing what kind of business he wanted to get into yet, to becoming CEO of Oando, the world-class Nigerian oil and gas company, Tinubu’s career has been chequered with moments of visionary excess in which he triumphed over the odds by sheer luck and willpower. Having secured financial backing from his parents to the tune of $10 000 for his oil services start-up, Tinubu chartered The Carolina, an old ship to which he formed a romantic attachment. And fell at once into a sticky cash-flow situation. Although the ship was transporting some 1 000 tons of diesel from an oil refinery to Lagos every 15 days or so, payments trickled in too slowly for Tinubu to service his commitments – payments to the shipowners went into arrears and they threatened to take back the vessel. At first Tinubu tried to sail away from the problem by keeping the shipowners at arm’s length, but then his genius asserted itself and he hit upon a maverick solution. Approaching his creditors, he suggested that they allow him to extend his debt and buy the ship outright. This would lead to a complete transfer of ownership and remove the owner’s need to chase around after the debt. Impressed by his logic, the shipowners agreed and Tinubu went on to finance the necessary funding, become independent and ultimately set up his own company. In sharp contrast to the chutzpah of Tinubu stands Kagiso Mmusi, “The Systematic Entrepreneur”. Discipline and commitment underpin the meteoric rise of this 42-year-old founder and executive chairperson of privately owned Pula Holdings, a group with an asset base of US$25 million employing more than 400 people and the only company in Botswana with an investment grade rating. After gaining the practical experience necessary to run a business at a motor dealership, Mmusi started a successful service station from scratch and logically and inexorably followed every lead that flowed from that venture, sifting all the experience that came his way for business opportunities. The service station morphed into a transport business – Mmusi would drive his own truck – that is now a state-of-the-art fleet of 20 tankers. The transport business acquired a sister trading company. Mmusi diversified into distribution for breweries. Then came a school. And an advertising agency. Mmusi systematically harvesting every field that came his way until he found himself with investments in Namibia and the director of a corporation. Surely anyone could have done it? Anyone can do it who has the drive and vision to succeed. Fourteen other case studies are presented in the book, each with a different way of doing things – Prince Kofi Amoabeng, “The Eccentric Entrepreneur”; Mo Ibrahim, “The Accidental Entrepreneur”; Kwabena Adjei, “The Traditional Entrepreneur”, and so on. It is to be hoped that these stories will inspire readers to take their place among the lions of Africa. After all, as Makura says, Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs is a work in a progress. Greg Penfold Behind Moky Makura believes in telling our own stories so we can share our African experiences What inspired you to write “Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs”? I was inspired to write the book because I believe that as Africans, we don’t have enough of our own stories. We don’t acknowledge our own heroes and I think that we’re almost backwards about coming forward about the things we have done on the continent and that is one of the reasons why the book is important – to identify and showcase the entrepreneurs whom I believe are at the very top of their trees in terms of what they have achieved. I remember going into bookshops – I consider myself to be a bit of an entrepreneur and I was always looking for entrepreneurial stories and business autobiographies taking on Africans. I’m an African living in Africa, and the only books available to me were about American and British entrepreneurs. I realised that there was a gap, an opportunity here, so I set up to write the book because I thought like me, many people would be equally inspired by stories that came out of the continent. I felt I could identify more with those stories than with the books that were out there. Another thing that struck me is that as Africans, we do not really know each other very well. Your average African knows much more about what Americans have for breakfast than what a Nigerian has for breakfast, or a Ghanaian has for breakfast and Kenyans don’t know what Zimbabweans are doing – and so it goes on and on. What does the African continent have that the rest of the world doesn’t? We have much that the rest of the world doesn’t have. We have many of the basic commodities that make the developed world go round. We have the riches of the world. I think what we as Africans need to learn to do, is actually develop those assets we have to the degree where we are not reliant on the Western world to buy goods at cheap prices and add value to it and then sell it back to us. That is the problem, I believe. I think we have much to offer and we need to gain more confidence in ourselves as South Africans, that we can actually do it. In one of the chapters in my book, about Richard Maponya, he got into mining because he was tired of all the big mining companies coming in and almost implying that local companies couldn’t do mining. He said he got into it simply to prove a point to the locals that, yes, it’s more than getting the concession, which is what the locals were doing and then waiting for international companies to buy the concession off them. He decided to just start mining. He has made so much money and gained valuable expertise by doing exactly what the international companies do – to me, that’s actually what we should be doing as Africans. We must have that confidence and not look to somebody else to bail us out and to say, “Look, here’s the raw commodity. Come and buy it and refine it and then sell it back to us at 10 times the price we sent it to you.” Moky Makura, born in Nigeria and educated in England, has a wealth of experience behind her and has had roles such as television presenter, writer, producer, actress and is a successful businesswoman. She currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.