The Entrepreneurs Spurring Africa’s Rise

MARCH 2016
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
Special Report
The Entrepreneurs Spurring
Africa’s Rise

Knowledge@Wharton | Wharton Social Impact Initiative Special Report
B
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Five Strategies for Success: Lessons from Entrepreneurs Fueling Africa’s Economic Rise 1
Addis Alemayehou
Ethiopia’s Opportunities: Double-digit Growth with Cultural Awareness Required 3
Richard Arlove
Before Investing in Africa, Investors Need to Shed Two Major Misconceptions 6
Neku Atawoodi
‘We’re Making It Safer to Invest in Africa.’ 9
Hakeem Belo-Osagie
The ‘Citizens of the World’ Tackling Africa’s Next-generation Business Challenges 11
Ismail Douiri
Morocco’s Leading Financial Institution Is Banking on a Pan-African Strategy 15
Tabitha Karanja
Breaking the Multinational Monopoly on Kenyan Beer Sales 18
Acha Leke
Why Inclusive Growth Is Key to Africa’s Rise 20
Wendy Luhabe
How Economic Activism Can Empower the African Woman 22
Serge Nawej
Why the Diaspora Has an Important Role to Play in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 25
Soga Oni
Making Medical Devices More Accessible, Affordable and Reliable 27
Alpesh Patel
Creating an African Brand That Appeals to African Youth 29
Cherae Robinson
Creating a Connected, Curated — and Mobile — Travel Experience in Africa 32
Ralph Simon
‘We Are Living in the Era of the Screenager’ 35
Shose Sinare
‘Thinking Big’ About Investments in Africa 37
Othman Tazi
No Place Like Home: Pulling out of Europe, Expanding to Neighboring Countries in Africa 40
Hema Vallabh
Women Engineers in Africa: Pushing Past Old Roles 42
Jocelyn Wyatt
Finding a Creative Solution to Poverty-related Challenges 44
Willy Yav
How a DRC Firm Is Tapping Local Knowledge and Global Standards 46

The Entrepreneurs Spurring Africa’s Rise
1
INTRODUCTION
Five Strategies for Success:
Lessons from Entrepreneurs Fueling Africa’s Economic Rise
Many African nations face grave challenges, including widespread poverty and unemployment.
But the continent is also home to many of the fastest-growing economies in the world and
entrepreneurs who are spurring Africa’s growth in unique and dynamic ways, write Katherine Klein, Wharton
management professor and vice dean for the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, and Nick Ashburn, the Initiative’s
director of emerging markets. Klein and Ashburn recently joined Knowledge@Wharton at the African Leadership
Network’s 2015 annual gathering where they interviewed 18 entrepreneurs and executives who are leading, launching,
scaling and supporting businesses across the continent.
Think about Africa and what pictures come to mind? If you
haven’t lived or travelled in Africa, the pictures are likely
to be few and a tad hazy: Giraffes grazing on an open
savannah, perhaps. Maybe an Ebola treatment clinic, or a
colorfully garbed woman carrying a perfectly balanced and
heavy load on her head.
These stereotypes don’t begin to capture the diversity of
Africa today — a vast continent of 54 countries. Nor do they
capture the economic vibrancy and growth that have led
expert observers and residents alike to adopt the phrase
“Africa Rising” to describe the transitions underway on the
continent.
To be sure, many African nations face grave challenges
— widespread poverty and unemployment, ongoing
corruption and violence, and limited access to world-class
institutions and infrastructure.
But, Africa is also home to many of the fastest growing
economies in the world. Indeed, the World Bank projects
that six of the 12 fastest growing economies in the world
from 2014 to 2017 will be in Africa: Ethiopia, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Tanzania,
and Rwanda.
Many African countries are diversifying their economies,
transitioning from a heavy reliance on extractive industries
to infrastructure, telecommunications, manufacturing,
and retail. The middle class is growing rapidly. And the
continent has seen progress on many social indicators too.
Youth literacy rates are up substantially, for example. Child
mortality rates are down.
To meet with leading entrepreneurs spurring Africa’s
current growth, Knowledge@Wharton and the Wharton
Social Impact Initiative traveled to Morocco in November
2015 to attend the annual gathering of the African
Leadership Network. In this special edition of Knowledge@
Wharton, you will meet 18 entrepreneurs and executives
who are leading, launching, scaling, and supporting
businesses across the continent.
In candid interviews, they described the distinctive
challenges they face in doing business in Africa. Early stage
investments are hard to obtain in most African countries;
angel and early stage investors are few and far between.
And while many African governments are demonstrating
increasing transparency, stability, and effectiveness, real
political risks remain. These realities are challenging
enough. Misperceptions can make them worse. Fears lead
many would-be foreign partners, investors, and customers
to overestimate the risks and underestimate the benefits of
doing business locally in Africa.
So, what drives leading African entrepreneurs’ optimism,
tenacity and success in launching and growing businesses
across the continent? Five key themes emerged across our
interviews.
1. COMING HOME TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
A striking number of the entrepreneurs with whom we
spoke were members of the African diaspora. Their African-
born parents raised them outside the continent — in
Europe, Asia and the United States — but maintained close
ties to their home countries. Educated abroad and now
adults, the entrepreneurs felt a calling to return home to
Africa to build a business and a better world. Head and
heart converged on a plan that promised — and in many
cases delivered — economic and emotional returns.
Soga Oni’s story was typical. The founder of a recently
launched medical devices services company in Nigeria, Oni
grew up in a small town outside Lagos. “I spent most of
my formative years there,” he reflected. “I did my college
in Nigeria. After that, I went to the U.S. for a master’s. I
worked for a few years as a software engineer in the U.S.
And then I went through a midlife crisis. I wanted to move
back and I wanted to know what I could do to help back
home.”

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2. RECOGNIZING THE AFRICAN OPPORTUNITY
Many of the entrepreneurs and leaders with whom we
spoke commented on the potential for business growth
in Africa. Economic growth has been slow in developed
economies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Not so in
Africa. With the expertise and connections to launch new
businesses in Africa, the entrepreneurs seized upon the
opportunity to get a first mover advantage.
Acha Leke, a director in McKinsey’s office in Johannesburg,
South Africa observed, “In the late 1990s, the continent
was basically not growing. Growth was about 2%-3%.
Population growth was about 2%-3%. Over the past
15 year, African has been the second fastest-growing
continent. All the sectors are growing, so it’s been a very
exciting time to be here. We still have challenges. But, it is
an amazing, exciting time to be part of this whole Africa-
rising story.”
3. UNDERSTANDING AND RESPECTING
DIFFERENCES
Many Africans complain that non-Africans don’t
understand that Africa is a continent not a country, and
a huge continent at that. The entrepreneurs with whom
we spoke were keenly aware of the differences among
African countries. Successful businesses, they emphasized,
understand and adapt to local customs — to the language,
culture and economic status of each country. What works
in Benin may not work in Botswana. Local knowledge and
local partnerships are key to success, they emphasized.
Addis Alemayehou, CEO of 251 Communications, echoed
this theme in describing some of the factors that make
Ethiopia, Ethiopia. “The biggest challenge about Ethiopia is
perception.... So, people have this preconceived idea about
what they should expect when they land on the ground....
[Ethiopia] is a very old country. We’ve been around for
3,000 years; the U.S. is like a teenager compared to us.
We’ve never been colonized. We have our own language,
our own way of telling time.... There are all different things
about the country that a lot of people don’t know. Knowing
that, understanding it and respecting it will get you a lot
further.”
4. BUILDING A NEW AND DISTINCTIVE BRAND
While highlighting the importance of adapting and
marketing to the local, country-specific economy, many of
the entrepreneurs we interviewed spoke of the opportunity
and need to create African brands — brands from Africa for
Africa. The goal was not just an attractive or even a great
product, but a brand — an identity, really — that says this
business is not some multinational’s outpost: We are of
Africa and for Africa.
Alpesh Patel, the founder of Mi-Fone, noted, “When I
left Motorola, I was approached by other brands, but I
figured that Africans are actually best served by Africans
themselves.... [Mi-Fone is] an African brand, which
means basically 100% African ownership. The soul of the
brand is very African. The essence of the brand — our
communications — is very African and skewed towards
youth. We were the first to do this.”
5. SEIZING DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES
And, finally and perhaps not surprisingly, digital products,
services, and strategies abound. African business leaders
have seen the potential to leapfrog the international
competition with mobile phones and mobile banking. The
African entrepreneurs we interviewed are, in many cases,
pursuing digital solutions to market failures.
Richard Arlove, CEO of Abax, commented, “What attracts
people ... is the sheer market size of Africa — the numbers of
people and also the fact that Africa can leapfrog in certain
cases, learning from the mistakes that have happened in
other countries. You see that in in mobile payments, in
technology, in banking.... There are a lot of new ideas, a lot
of intellectual property that is being developed in Africa.”
The business leaders and entrepreneurs we met at the
annual gathering of the African Leadership Network varied
in their ages, experiences, nationalities and industries. And
yet they espoused common themes and values:
• Returning home to make a difference.
• Recognizing the African opportunity.
• Understanding and respecting cultural differences.
• Creating brands that are both world class and
distinctively African.
• Seizing the opportunities of the digital revolution.
Combine these strategies with traditional business acumen,
smarts, and drive and you can do well and do good across
the continent, our interviews suggest. The 18 business
leaders and entrepreneurs interviewed in this special
edition of Knowledge@Wharton are helping to transform
many African economies and the lives of millions.
We encourage you to read on, enjoy the stories and insights,
and draw your own conclusions about rising Africa.

Ethiopia’s Opportunities: Double-
digit Growth with Cultural Awareness
Required
Addis Alemayehou is CEO of 251 Communications, which
stresses the importance of integrating cultural trends with
contemporary branding and advertising.
3
Ethiopia’s Opportunities: Double-
digit Growth with Cultural Awareness
Required
Addis Alemayehou is CEO of 251 Communications, which
stresses the importance of integrating cultural trends with
contemporary branding and advertising.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us … about your story. You
were a pioneer in leaving Ethiopia and coming back.
Addis Alemayehou: I’ve been back for about 15 years,
part of the first wave of Ethiopians returning…. I left
Ethiopia when I was seven or eight and grew up in Kenya. I
finished high school in the U.S., emigrated to Canada. Then
back to Ethiopia in 2001.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why was it important for you to
come back to Ethiopia?
Alemayehou: That’s a question that always comes up.
For people who move back now it’s probably very obvious
why they’re back. It was a different story for me because
outside Ethiopia there was always one question I got asked
everywhere I went and that was, “Where are you from?”
When I went back home in 2000 on vacation, that was the
one question nobody ever asked me. That basically did it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Were you an entrepreneur from
the start when you moved back? What were some of the
business and leadership things you took on when you first
came back to Ethiopia?
Alemayehou: Some people are born entrepreneurs and
I think I’ve always been one. You can tell this to my father
now that I’m older and wiser. My first business venture
was sort of stealing my dad’s car and providing nightclub
services to friends in Nairobi during the weekends. But I’ve
always had ideas, where others didn’t. Africa, and obviously
Ethiopia, offers a tremendous amount of opportunity. I feel
like the guy who made the first chair because he got tired
of sitting on the floor. There are a lot of chairs to be made
on the continent.
Knowledge@Wharton: That’s a really good metaphor.
Tell us a little more about 251 Communications, what that
does and where that started.
Alemayehou: 251 started about four years ago. Prior to
that, I was an employee, a contractor supporting Ethiopian
exports to the U.S. For about five years my job was to
promote the best Ethiopia has to offer in clothes, textiles,
shoes and flowers. We did trade shows over a couple of
years. It was an ideal position for me to understand the
opportunities within the private sector, the challenges
within the private sector, and also build a very good
network with the public sector and with the government at
the highest level.
Our economy has been growing in double digits for a
number of years. We had the likes of Heineken, Unilever
and P&G coming into the market. That offered an
opportunity for communications, because there was about
to be some serious competition on the ground. That’s how
we launched our firm as a 360º branding communications
and PR agency in the country. We’ve now expanded that
into doing consumer insight and research, and providing
logistic support for clients that are coming into the country.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are some of the challenges
for foreign companies coming into Ethiopia?
Alemayehou: The biggest challenge about Ethiopia is
perception — perception before you even get there. So
people have this preconceived idea about what they should
“I feel like the guy who made the first
chair because he got tired of sitting on
the floor. There are a lot of chairs to be
made on the continent.”

4
expect when they land on the ground. The second is a lack
of information with regard to the opportunities as well as
the challenges. Third is the fact that it’s a very old country.
We’ve been around for 3,000 years; the U.S. is like a
teenager compared to us.
We’ve never been colonized. We have our own language,
our own way of telling time. Our New Year is September
11; our Christmas is January 6. It’s 2007 right now. These
are all different things about the country that a lot of
people don’t know. Knowing that, understanding it and
respecting it will get you a lot further.
There are key parts of the economy that are closed and
they are not going to open anytime soon. We have a very
strong government that’s more a development state model.
They’re following what the Chinese, and the Koreans and
Singapore did some 30-40 years back. Knowing what the
government strategy is in terms of where it wants to go is
key.
Our currency is an issue at the moment in terms of
getting your money out. You will get it out, but it takes
time because we’re having some serious issues. But the
companies that know that and understand it are putting
money into the country. I always say if the big boys are
putting in that kind of money, it should be okay because
they’ve done their homework.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are some of the top-level
pieces of advice that you give brands coming in?
Alemayehou: It’s interesting because you have a lot of
brands, especially multinational brands from Europe or
the U.S. or anywhere else wanting to use a cut-and-paste
model. Africa is 52-53 countries? You don’t want to split
up your marketing budget into 53 different markets. So
they tend to generalize it and use the same branding or the
same strategy.
We’ve been fighting for the past three years to
differentiate Ethiopia from that. A lot more brands
understand that. I think Coca-Cola is one of the first
multinational brands to say this place is really different.
They look different. They talk different. They’re in different
time zones. So we’ll put the extra resources to talk to them
in a language that they understand. I think some of the
others are also following suit.
That’s our advice. Every market says we’re different. But
we’re truly different.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give an example of how
you’d brand something differently for Ethiopia compared
to another African country, just to support what you’re
saying about the uniqueness of Ethiopia?
Alemayehou: One is features. In terms of the features of
Ethiopians, they are very distinct and unique. Second is
our script. We don’t speak English. We don’t write English.
We have our own script. It’s called Amharic, and that’s
the national language. So, if you want to talk to 95 million
people, you need to speak to them in a language they
understand. It’s a very exciting market. We have 44 million
people under the age of 15. The average age is 17. Out of
95 million people 75% are under the age of 30….
Knowledge@Wharton: What about the homegrown
entrepreneurs, the domestic companies? You seem to be
uniquely positioned to grow things internally. What’s the
pulse of entrepreneurship in Ethiopia?
Alemayehou: You know, there’s a saying in my dad’s
generation: being a son of a businessperson is not
something to be proud of. People wanted you to become an
engineer, or a doctor or a lawyer. Now things have changed
because we’ve come from 17 years of communism.
Between 1974 and 1991, it was almost illegal to own a
business in Ethiopia. And we have a very young, robust,
unique and very aggressive private sector on the ground
that knows and understands that it’s only time before the
floodgates open. It’s sort of like let me grab a slice of the
pie before everybody else comes in. It’s a very exciting time
to be an Ethiopian and to watch it.
Knowledge@Wharton: I also know that you started the
first English language radio station in Ethiopia. How did
that happen? Tell us a little bit more about it.
Alemayehou: It was very simple. It’s the same scenario
as the guy who made the first chair getting sick of sitting
on the floor. When I moved back to Ethiopia, I had the
first generation iPod. I planted it in my dad’s car and I’d
“Our currency is an issue at the
moment in terms of getting your
money out. You will get it out, but it
takes time because we’re having some
serious issues.”

5
drive around. I had no clue as to what the entertainment
industry or what the media industry in Ethiopia was. I
was happy in my own little world until I lost that iPod and
ended up not having anything to listen to. So I spoke to
friends and looked around the market and I realized that,
if I needed it, there’s a lot more people who would need it
as well.
It took a while, but we went out and launched the first
station. I have a very simple model in the sense that I grew
up in Kenya. Kenya’s business environment is much further
than ours, but not too ahead that we can’t reach out and
grab something that works for us. So I went to Kenya
and spent some time with the top station and poached
someone and I launched the station. That’s basically it.
Whatever you’re doing, a lot of us used to think our
countries were booming until we started listening about
some of the other countries. So the whole continent is in
the fast lane for development. It’s an amazing time.
“Kenya’s business environment is much further [advanced] than ours, but not too
[far] ahead that we can’t reach out and grab something that works for us.”

Before Investing in Africa, Investors
Need to Shed Two Major Misconceptions
Richard Arlove is CEO of Abax Corporate Services, a
Mauritius-based international provider of integrated
corporate, business and advisory services for private equity
funds.
6
a system of legislation. This provides you with a first-class
environment where as an investor you feel at ease to lead
your company there, to deliver profits there and, basically,
for that company to manage your assets on the continent.
This is what our business is: to advise companies and
individuals how the Mauritius financial center can help to
do that and then, if they’re interested, form a company in
Mauritius to do that.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give me one or two
examples of deals that Abax may have assisted with that
led to investments in Africa?
Arlove: I’m not sure whether I can give the names of these
companies because the name is sometimes confidential.
I’ll just think about the few names which I know I’m
authorized to talk about. Abax administers about $22
billion dollars of client assets, so there’s a lot we can talk
about. Not all of it is in relation to Africa. There’s Asia
as well because Mauritius is a financial center. It is very
popular for structuring investments into Asia.
Knowledge@Wharton: Roughly how much deal flow do
you see going into Africa right now?
Arlove: It’s difficult to say for sure. But what I can tell you
is as a financial center, about 55% of the new companies
that are being registered in Mauritius are in relation to
Africa. Five years ago, it was probably less than 10%. These
days, the Mauritius financial center is recognized as the
premier financial center by the developmental and finance
institutions such as the African Development Bank and
the IFC in Washington. They would need to domicile their
private equity funds in a country. Normally they would
choose an African country. The most popular jurisdiction
that they would use would be Mauritius. There is a lot of
governance here.
Knowledge@Wharton: I understand that Abax helps
companies do business with Africa. Could you explain what
you do and how you started doing it?
Richard Arlove: Abax is a company that has 22 years of
experience in helping corporates, private equity funds,
entrepreneurs and high net-worth individuals that are
doing business with Africa or in Africa to look at how to
optimize their enterprise value and their shareholder value
when they do cross-border investments and cross-border
trade or business. Basically, if you take a company that
wants to invest in Africa, often that investment would take
place in a number of countries and not in a single country.
Then comes the question about where the headquarters
should be? Where should my holding company be? It
could be in one of the countries or it could be in a financial
center.
The advantage of using a financial center — now I’m
going to talk of the Mauritius financial center — is that
it has an ecosystem which you may not find in any of the
business hubs or countries in which the actual business
is carried out. This ecosystem in Mauritius would include
financial, economic and political stability, a rule of law and
“In a sense, the world financial crisis in
2008 has turned the attention of many
investors away from the traditional
places of investment and towards
Africa.”

7
I’d like to share the story of a Nigerian client who told us
a few months ago how he was grateful that we have, in a
sense, forced him to have governance in his companies.
That has allowed the valuation of his shares to climb
because the governance in and of itself has made him more
attractive to big guys like big banks. He sold these shares at
a value of, let’s say, 100 two years ago and now he’s being
offered 175 because of the actual governance that exists.
I think it’s very interesting that once someone wants to
go across borders he needs to do things in a certain way.
Maybe if he was doing it as a small business within his
own country he would not feel obliged to do that. But
this is where people like us in financial centers can help.
For example, the PTA (Preferential Trade Area) Bank has
put up a $1 billion fund for infrastructure in Africa. They
chose Mauritius as domicile for the fund, because of the
governance.
Taxation is relatively low in Mauritius and many people
feel that people use Mauritius because of its tax. One of
the reasons is tax but that’s not the only reason. There are
many other reasons as I mentioned — the ecosystem, the
fact that there’s a bilingual, educated workforce. [Knowing
both] English and French is very helpful when owning a
business across the continent. We are increasingly seeing
Mauritius as a place where a lot of businesses in relation to
Africa are structured. This is becoming like an investment
banking center. People who need finance and have projects
can get finance from the banks and from the private equity
firms who are looking for projects to invest in.
Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned that the volume of
investment has gone up from 10% to more than 50% now.
What accounts for this tremendous increase in interest in
Africa as an investment destination?
Arlove: I think in a sense the world financial crisis in 2008
has turned the attention of many investors away from the
traditional places of investment and towards Africa. I also
think that Africans made an effort to become more visible
as an investment destination. I must also say that there’s a
lot of intra-Africa business. A number of businesses from
South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire have
grown their markets within their own country to the point
that they feel that it makes sense for them to go beyond
their own borders.
What attracts people as well is the sheer market size of
Africa — the numbers, the number of people, and also the
fact that Africa can leapfrog in certain cases learning from
the mistakes that have happened in other countries. You
see that in mobile payments, in technology, in banking.
There are a number of innovative ways of doing business
in Africa that you may not see in other continents. The
realities of the place are such that entrepreneurs — African
entrepreneurs — are coming up with new ways of doing
things. There are a lot of new ideas, a lot of intellectual
property that is being developed in Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: Which are some of the regions
that are getting most of the investments and why?
Arlove: There’s a lot of change that has happened over
the past year or so because of the fall in the prices of oil
and of commodities. Places which used to be attractive
are getting less investment. However, we are seeing some
mergers and acquisitions because of this. There are many
deals because prices are going down. Some people are
interested in buying these companies that are not doing
well. But, generally speaking, what we see is that the places
with a large number of people with spending power attract
investment. Nigeria, definitely. We are seeing Cote d’Ivoire
as well coming out of a bad period. Ethiopia, because it’s
opened up. Kenya; I would say the usual suspects are
attracting a lot of investment. Mozambique used to attract
a lot because of its resources; now less so. South Africa; we
don’t see so much going into South Africa but we see a lot
out of South Africa on to the continent.
Knowledge@Wharton: China has in recent years been a
big investor in Africa but the country has recently started
having some economic difficulties. Have you experienced
any slowdown in Chinese investment?
Arlove: We have not seen much of the Chinese investment
using intermediaries like us. I’m saying that for Abax, but I
could be saying that for many banks as well or the big four
accounting firms and lawyers. Many Chinese companies
will not use
intermediaries to do business in Africa. Very often the
deals that the Chinese do are “G to G” — government to
“The Western world would think, ‘How
do I structure this? How do I get my
legal agreements in? Who do I put on
my board?’ The Chinese will just go
and do the transaction straightaway.”

8
government. The Chinese move fast when they have a deal
and transaction. The Western world would think, “How do
I structure this? How do I get my legal agreements in? Who
do I put on my board?” The Chinese will just go and do the
transaction straightaway. That said, we have seen over the
years a number of Chinese companies having difficulties.
And they come to people like us to say, “What do I do now?”
So we have seen a lot of Chinese; we know a lot of Chinese
investments. It is true that some Chinese investments
are going to be down because of the problems that China
faces. But I do not think it’s significant. We see China very
much interested still.
Knowledge@Wharton: When new companies consider
investing in Africa, what do you think are the biggest
misconceptions they have?
Arlove: The big misconception is that Africa is one country,
is very homogeneous. Africa is huge. I don’t know whether
you’ve seen that map of Africa where you can fit in all
of Europe, the U.S., China, India and so on. It’s huge in
terms of size. It is also very diverse. And the link to that
misconception is the fact that Africa is seen as a continent
where there is only poverty, war and crime. These two
things are probably the biggest misconceptions. Therefore,
from a business perspective, this means that people may
not be seeing the actual opportunities of Africa. It’s really
an emerging market where there’s space to grow almost
any type of business.

‘We’re Making It Safer to Invest in
Africa.’
Renowned Nigerian female polo player Neku Atawodi is the
founder of Malaik, an equity crowdfunding platform.
9
Knowledge@Wharton: What is Malaik?
Neku Atawodi: Malaik is an equity crowdfunding platform
that helps SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in Africa
looking for finance. We like SMEs [because they] provide a
lot of jobs for Africa; it helps our unemployment problem.
And we connect to investors looking to invest in African
businesses.
Knowledge@Wharton: This is an online crowdfunding
platform? Tell us about where you are in this process —
how many companies, how many investors? Is this ready
for action?
Atawodi: We’re a few months old. We are open to the
public. We are raising funds for three companies; we have
completely funded two of them. We’re looking for success
stories. We don’t want to just put people on the platform
and then leave them there. We actually want to help
them — put them in touch with people who want to make
investments and want to make a difference.
Knowledge@Wharton: You said two of the companies are
fully funded? What level is that?
Atawodi: I-Drop Water was looking for $300,000 to enter
Nigeria. They are a South African company. It’s a really
cool company and has solar-hub water dispensers that
sell water at 10% of the bottled water price. [Access to
affordable] bottled water is a huge problem in sub-Saharan
Africa. So I’m really excited they are coming in.
Our second company is ReelFruit. (Affiong Williams, CEO
and founder of ReelFruit) does processed foods. She dries
fruits, she packages them and she sells them. I’m really
proud of her because in the last “Forbes [Africa’s] 30
Under 30” she was the only woman and she was on the
cover.
Knowledge@Wharton: Who are your current investors
and who do you anticipate will be your investors? What’s
the profile?
Atawodi: Malaik is very keen on building a strong network
of high-net-worth individuals interested in investing in
Africa. When we open it to the crowd, we’ll have smaller
investors. But we want the high-net-worth [investors]
to be the lead. If someone wants to invest in Africa and
is coming from America, you want to have a big business
person in Africa also backing that company. It’s for Africa
by Africa, and then everyone else can come in and take a
piece of the pie.
Knowledge@Wharton: When you open to the public,
what will the minimum investment be?
Atawodi: $1,000.
Knowledge@Wharton: How did this company come
about? You were a champion polo player, I believe? Then
you said, “Enough with the horses?”
Atawodi: No. I still play polo. I’m building a polo club in
Lagos where I’ve been pushing to have polo on television.
We finally signed a partnership with SuperSport, the
largest sports network in Africa. I own a charity; I don’t
want to call it a charity. It’s an organization called Ride to
Shine and we teach African orphans to ride and play polo.
“It’s for Africa by Africa, and then
everyone else can come in and take a
piece of the pie.”

10
Knowledge@Wharton: So that was the genesis of Malaik?
Atawodi: Yes. I was working with the ministry of sports
to build a riding center. We don’t accept donations so we
weren’t able to change our model. I was wondering, “How
do I get people to chip in without telling them to donate?”
And then we thought, “Why not just split it into equity and
we tell all these people, it’s going to actually make money
because we will charge the sponsors. If you put in this
amount, you get this much equity. You have the potential
to make money or just an impact.” People really responded
to that.
Knowledge@Wharton: You are a serial entrepreneur.
What are some of the lessons that you’ve learned from
starting other businesses that you’re bringing to this new
venture?
Atawodi: One of the biggest lessons I learned was that
the first bits of money you get is from friends and family.
Friends and family will support you if you have a clear
business plan. My initial angel was [my] daddy and I’ve met
a lot of people that don’t have that. To be honest, he asked
me for a business plan. But [later], I didn’t have to hit my
parents for more money. I got investors to do that and
showed them how much money they’d be able to make.
So that’s what I’ve learned: There’s other ways to finance
beyond daddy and mommy.
Knowledge@Wharton: As you envision growing Malaik,
one of the challenges will be making sure that the
companies coming to you are investment ready and at a
stage where they can take a meaningful investment. If the
typical amount you’re giving is $250,000, that could be
completely overwhelming for an early-stage entrepreneur.
What’s the process that you will use to vet to these
companies?
Atawodi: We’ve got a very cool four-step due diligence
process. I see a lot of companies in this space do a two-step
but, it being Africa, we added two extra steps. We have a
business analyst. We’ve got an in-house financial analyst.
Then we send the proposal to our partners who are
required to do an in-house due diligence. Then we make
the entrepreneur the offer. But it lists on a platform;
PwC does an audit. It could get to a stage that you make
that offer and then PwC finds something out. Not many
people investing little chunks like $1,000-$2,000 have the
resources to get a four-step due diligence process or even
one of the big four do an audit for you. We’re making it
safer to invest in Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: What has been the response that
you’re getting as you’re starting to spread the word?
Atawodi: It’s crazy. The response has been overwhelming.
It makes it completely worth it when you see how much
people respond to something that just popped into your
head.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where do you expect to be in a
year?
Atawodi: We are aiming to be in all countries in Africa. We
want to enter the Middle East. We want to enter America.
My business plan is completely changing but I hope that
Malaik will continue to grow to be a global investment
platform.
The word Malaik is very cool. How do you say angel in
Arabic? It’s mal’ak. How do you say angel in my language
Hausa? It’s mala’ikan. How do you say angel in Swahili? It’s
malaika. The name connects Africa and the fact that we’ve
been able to enter so many countries with that name is
really cool. Our logo is a seed growing — a new plant and
then an angel.
“We’re making it safer to invest in
Africa.”

11
The ‘Citizens of the World’ Tackling
Africa’s Next-generation Business
Challenges
Hakeem Belo-Osagie is chairman of Etisalat Nigeria, one of
the country’s largest mobile networks.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let me start with a poem, the
poem you cited in a recent talk. You quoted Robert Frost:
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I — /I took the one less
traveled by/And that has made all of the difference.” What
did you mean?
Hakeem Belo-Osagie: By that I meant, if you are going
to be a successful entrepreneur, it is very important that
you have the courage to listen to yourself, to avoid going
down the route that most people want to take, because
therein lies the opportunity. And if you go where you want
to go, you are likely to be one of the earliest people there
who seizes the opportunity and makes an entrepreneurial
success. I think it is a normal human trait to seek the
reassurance of being among a number of people who all
want to do the same thing, or all want to go the same way.
There’s that reluctance to strike out on your own. One of
the reasons I love that poem is that it keeps reminding me
all the time not to be afraid to take that route.
Knowledge@Wharton: If you think about the times you
had to take that route, and summon courage to do so, tell
us about one.
Belo-Osagie: The first one that is significant to me in
entrepreneurial terms was leaving the government of
Nigeria, and deciding to set up a petroleum consulting
company on my own.
Knowledge@Wharton: This was in…
Belo-Osagie: 1981. I was about 30-31 and had just gotten
married. Being an entrepreneur was not at all popular at
that point in time. In fact, I distinctly remember people
asking me, “Hakeem, what are you doing? What’s this thing
about working on your own?” Basically, the thought at that
time was that people who worked on their own were those
who could not get employed by anyone else. Therefore,
their excuse was that they were working for themselves. In
Nigeria, you went to work for Shell, or Mobil, or Citibank,
or Chase.
There is a part of you that feels that you are going to fall
flat on your face if you follow this idea and it just doesn’t
happen. Then there are all the other excuses — I’m getting
married, we’ve got the children, we’ve got the rent to
pay…. I made up my mind at that point. [I said], look, I’m
30. If there is a time to fail it is now, because then I have
plenty of time to correct the mistake and go somewhere
else. But I’m really going to do something I genuinely
believe in, and I’m going to pursue it with all my passion,
all my determination. While working in the government
of Nigeria, I had seen this gap. I could see lots of people
who wanted to do business in the petroleum area, but
didn’t know how to go about it. They needed someone who
understood the private sector, the public sector, someone
who was Nigerian but understood them as foreigners. I
saw that gap, and I thought, this is going to be it. That was
probably the second time I’ve taken the decision, going
completely on my own, but the first time I was doing it as
an entrepreneur.
“If you are going to be a successful
entrepreneur, it is very important
that you have the courage to listen
to yourself, to avoid going down the
route that most people want to take,
because therein lies the opportunity.”

12
Knowledge@Wharton: What do you think about the
kind of talent pool you need to assemble? What does an
entrepreneur need in his or her top management team? As
you are assembling that team, what are you looking for?
Belo-Osagie: The first point I want to stress is the
importance of a team. I do not believe in the Steve Jobs
of the world, in the sense that there is this hero, and he
is a genius. I believe that behind any Steve Jobs and any
Bill Gates, if you really tell the story, you will find that
there were two or three other people, maybe not as rich,
definitely not as well known, but crucial to their success.
They probably had complementary talent. The really great
leaders recognize that. So I tried to assemble a team with
different functional skills. Obviously you’ve got to have
someone who is very knowledgeable in marketing, you’ve
got to have someone who is very knowledgeable in finance.
But for the purpose of Africa, there is one combination that
is very important, and that is the combination of someone
who is not an MBA and did not live most of his life in
the U.S. or the U.K. He must have lived most of his life in
Nigeria and been educated in Nigeria, and therefore has a
sense of how things really are.
I find that a lot of young MBAs I meet don’t appreciate this
person’s talents. They tend to look down upon these guys.
“They’re not as articulate as I am. They don’t know how
to do spreadsheets. Their presentations are not as good
as mine.” And, for that reason, they lose their knowledge,
their experience and often their wisdom. So I try to have
a combination of people who are well qualified and have
a sense of business strategy as taught in business schools
and other people who are the complete opposite — people
who have grown up in Nigeria and have street smartness.
It’s that combination that I think is transformative in
entrepreneurial activities within Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: Is there a challenge for those
individuals, whether they are getting a Wharton MBA or
whatever, to find local talent?
Belo-Osagie: No, the problem is for the Wharton MBA,
the Stanford MBA, the Harvard MBA, to feel that they
need such a person. The freshly-minted Wharton MBA
or Harvard MBA has that supreme confidence that that
degree tells you you ought to have. You are poised to
conquer kingdoms. It is very difficult for that person to
seek advice or cooperation from some guy who has just
a high-school education and has been working in some
businesses that, in his view, don’t have a strategy, don’t
have a five-year plan.…
His predisposition is to explain to him how he has got it
wrong. Therefore he is not really looking for that partner. If
he does look for a partner, he will find that there are many
of them there. Then what he’s got to get used to is the idea
of listening to this person, and incorporating that person’s
perspective in his own decision-making process.
Knowledge@Wharton: We are sitting here with your son,
listening. He is getting an undergraduate education now at
Stanford. What does this mean for how you’ve raised your
kids?
Belo-Osagie: I think I’ve raised my children to be citizens
of the world. I see their generation as the generation that
may live in New York for a couple of years, in Lagos for
a couple of years, may think … why not Dubai, why not
London? That is normal for their generation, in the way it
was not for our generation. In our generation, you went to
England or the U.S. to be educated and, when you finished
the education, it did not occur to you to do anything else
but to go back home.
This is a very different generation. Now we try to make
sure that they come back to Nigeria very often, so that
they never lose touch, and they have a sense of how
things work. That said, if they do come straight back to
Africa, they will still have to go back through that period of
reintegration, understanding how things are done here.
I remember when I was in university in England, I
met a Rhodes Scholar. He had gone to Harvard as an
undergraduate and then came to Oxford as a Rhodes
Scholar. Most people with that background usually go to
a famous East Coast law school. I asked him why he was
going to the University of Texas for law. He said, “Look
Hakeem, I come from Texas. It’s bad enough that I went to
Harvard. It’s even worse that I went to Oxford. So if I have
any plans of having a career in Texas, which I hope to have, I
need to start understanding how Texas works, how people
in Texas behave and have a network of classmates who are
in Texas.” And I responded by saying, “I thought you were
all Americans.” He said, “That is a very big mistake. We
each have our slightly different cultures. They may not be
obvious to you as a Nigerian, but they are very obvious to
“I believe that behind any Steve Jobs
and any Bill Gates, if you really tell the
story, you will find that there were two
or three other people, maybe not as
rich, definitely not as well known, but
crucial to their success.”

13
me.” So he headed straight back to Texas. They will have to
do their ‘going back to Texas’ at their own time as well.
Knowledge@Wharton: You are someone that people look
to for advice and a perspective on developing businesses
in Africa, and certainly we have seen many entrepreneurs
who are aspiring to build businesses in Africa. What do you
see as areas of particular opportunity?
Belo-Osagie: The entire technology sector is an area of
tremendous opportunity, because the generation before
them doesn’t understand it. We pretend to, but we
fundamentally don’t understand it. I remember a friend
bringing to me a young man with an e-commerce idea. For
me the thought that anybody would buy clothes or books
through the Internet was still very foreign. Don’t they want
to hold the book and sort of leaf through it, browse through
it? Explain to me how you could browse through it on the
Net. That was still very new to me. I think that, especially in
developing countries, technology will be used to leapfrog
the sequential development that we see in the West.
I think African countries are going to jump check books,
jump credit cards, and will probably move straight from
cash to mobile phones, and mobile commerce. Now the
new generation understands that, therefore I think that the
whole technology, the whole IT, the whole communications
area, can be an area of tremendous opportunity. That’s one
area. Another area is housing. My generation of architects
and builders all are used to building houses for the elite.
We never did anything more than that.
One area that I don’t know much about, but I imagine it
must be an area of opportunity, is food production. For so
many years we were an agriculture — cash crop — area.
The move from learning how to farm intensively for food
production and food export is not a huge leap. But it is one
that a whole generation of people like myself, who were
brought up to think urban, not rural, doesn’t recognize.
That is why I am very excited now when I do come across
young people in their 20s who say they would like to do
agribusiness.
Knowledge@Wharton: When we look at the growing
economies around the world, many in Africa are among
the fastest growing. There seems to be a shifting, rallying
cry to focus on inclusive growth — not only growing the
economy but growing the number of jobs. Are there areas
that you think are particularly promising for inclusive
growth? For job creation?
Belo-Osagie: Yes, the whole area of agriculture and the
ability to use technology to extend banking services, or
any service, in which you have a high cost of acquisition
of clients, or a high cost of service. You are able, with
technology, to bring down those costs. When I was
in banking, a big problem was that regular banks had
branches and large number of staff. So whenever the
government encouraged us to open branches in rural
areas, we sort of yawned, we sort of had a wary look
on our faces. The next thing for us was how do we get
the government to subsidize what we felt would be
loss-making ventures. But when you start to have people
who are willing to use the Internet, willing to use a mobile
phone and have technology penetrate rural areas, it means
that you have possibilities of inclusive growth.
One other comment that I would like to make is that I
personally have always believed that inclusive growth is
necessary. I have often thought that there is a reluctance
of people in the business schools to look at the fact that
we must have an agenda that includes the poor. It is almost
as if we feel that to have that concern is “socialist” or
impractical. Or we simply say that the market will take care
of that. I don’t think the market always solves those kinds
of problems. I feel that the state must find ways to ensure
that all citizens have some basic economic rights, whether
they be education or health. They need to play a part in the
economy. If efforts are made to ensure that they play a part
in the economy, what we have is a broad-based economy.
We have spending power, which is broad-based. That, by
itself, will trigger certain businesses that wouldn’t have
been set up because they would have assumed that the
poor don’t have spending power, and therefore are not the
basis for a successful business.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you see that as the role of the
state — to be setting that agenda? Or do you think that
is a role for the private sector regardless of the state’s
practices and policies?
Belo-Osagie: I think the state has to point in that direction,
because most businessmen are not that risk taking. Unless
infrastructure is provided, we still give our priority first and
foremost to our shareholders.
Knowledge@Wharton: Shifting a bit from the topic of
business, you are also a prominent philanthropist. Talk
“The change that is taking place now
is a redefinition of the centuries-old
question: Who is my neighbor?”

14
to us about the role of philanthropy, and the state of
philanthropy in Nigeria and other countries in Africa.
Belo-Osagie: Well, I earlier made a comment: “All Africans
hate being called philanthropists.” The reason why we
hate being called philanthropists is that there is a saying
— certainly in Islam, and I suspect that something similar
exists in Christianity — which basically says that, if you
are going to be truly good, then what your right hand
gives, your left hand should not even know that it has
been given. When you give, it is not something you should
talk about, be boastful about, or be public about. There is
nothing I hate more than being told, ‘You are a very good
philanthropist.’ There is nothing I hate more than when I
meet other folks who announce their philanthropy; I am
very uncomfortable with it. That said, I have come around
to the view that to the extent that people hearing that A is
doing B, C, and D, it encourages them to do so, too. That’s
helpful. I guess I sort of very reluctantly come out of the
darkness to talk about these matters. People in Africa have
always been giving money for causes. They tend to be for
the extended family, the village community or people who
are part of what they regard as a larger family. The change
that is taking place now is a redefinition of the centuries-
old question: Who is my neighbor?
What I want to discourage are what I call those groups
— and there are a lot of them — who appear to be
philanthropists, but are essentially supporting their
business or political ends.
Knowledge@Wharton: My last question is about the role
of women in business.
Belo-Osagie: I think women are going into business more
and more. That said, when I look back and I hear about, say,
my grandmother, she was always in business. She was a
wife in a polygamous home. It was expected in that home
that she would not be looked after by her husband. Her
husband gave her some money but it was expected that
she, through farming or often trading, would contribute
a lot to him. What is fascinating is that the advent of
Westernization and urbanization, in some respects, really
reduced the economic rights that women had. Because
when you moved from an agricultural community to an
urban community and the woman got married, she now did
housework. The husband was the breadwinner. So she lost,
to some degree, that independent sense that comes from
being able to earn her own money or being able to involve
herself in an economic activity.

15
Morocco’s Leading Financial Institution
Is Banking on a Pan-African Strategy
Ismail Douiri is co-chief executive officer of Attijariwafa Bank
based in Casablanca.
Knowledge@Wharton: Could you tell us a little bit about
the bank and its operations?
Ismail Douiri: It’s a financial institution that’s present in
all segments of financial services. We are a commercial
bank, but on top of that we control the largest insurance
company in Morocco. We control specialized financial
service companies in consumer credit, in mortgage, rapid
transfers, remittances, leasing, even long-term car leasing.
We are present in anything financial, usually in a leadership
position.
The company is the result of the merger of the largest
private sector banks in Morocco. That happened in 2004,
and it combined the strength of two leading banks. One
of them was very strong in risk management and cost
control — more corporate — and the other was very strong
in retail, in innovation and in distribution. We are now the
leading financial institution in Morocco. We’re listed on the
stock exchange in Casablanca with a market capitalization
of $7 billion. Our total assets are $42 billion. We rank
between fourth and sixth in the continent after the large
South African banks and an Egyptian bank.
Knowledge@Wharton: I know that Morocco has very
often taken a pan-African view rather than just looking
at the country itself. But how is your bank playing a
pan-Africa role?
Douiri: Well, the international expansion is fairly new
compared to our 110-year history. Our first experience
was in Europe 40 years ago, and it was around two topics
— immigrant banking and trade finance. So we first set up
rep offices and now a fully licensed bank in France. We are
present in Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany
and the U.K. This is because the natural business area of
Morocco is Europe. More than 10% of our population that
lives in Europe is migrants, and they will continue sending
home large amounts [of money]. Approximately 5% of our
GDP comes every year in remittances. So we were bound
to be there, and this is what I consider part of our Morocco
business.
But when we started to see the slowdown in financial
services in Morocco due to the high penetration within an
economy that is fairly small, we had the choice of either
accepting the slower growth and becoming a utility stock
or finding continued avenues for growth by replicating
what we learned in Morocco and in neighboring markets
that had lower penetration of financial services. This
is exactly what we did after the merger that created
Attijariwafa Bank. We did a thorough country scan using a
number of indicators in order to prioritize the markets we
had to enter.
Ten years later, we are in most of our priority markets.
There is one missing part — Algeria, our immediate
neighbor where the economy is twice as big as Morocco
and the banking industry is approximately the same size
but more fragmented. So there is a lot of value to be
created in Algeria if we were able to compete. We applied
for a license. That was one of our first steps in 2005. But
we never got an answer.
“[In Morocco], we are still a long
way from a start-up culture. But,
at the same time, we’re very
entrepreneurial.”

16
Volatility was managed through diversification, because
we entered so many countries that a crisis in any given
country would not hurt us overall. Plus, Morocco remains
big – 80% of the balance sheet. The combination of all
this has [led] our board [to] ask us to make larger, bolder
acquisitions, which means going into larger markets like
Nigeria or Egypt or Ethiopia if it opens up.
Knowledge@Wharton: Take us through the strategic
decision-making process you used in identifying your
priority markets. What were the risks that you considered,
and how did you hedge those risks?
Douiri: The risks are related to the indicators. The top
indicator has to do with the macroeconomic situation. We
are a bank. So we live with the macro, we live with interest
rates, with currency. The second big theme had to do with
regulation. We also looked at cultural aspects. How will we
be able to conduct cross-border projects? We don’t aim to
just plant the flag; we need to work hard on transferring
best practices. A good proxy for cultural proximity is
language. We needed our teams to communicate easily.
In the top three buckets, we had French or Arabic speaking
countries, and this is what we have executed so far. But I
believe that language shouldn’t be a barrier; the younger
generation in Morocco now speaks English more and
more. So, the next step will be outside the French-speaking
world.
Knowledge@Wharton: To what degree was the financial
crisis in Europe a factor in your planning a pan-Africa
strategy?
Douiri: The crisis happened later. When we planned
the pan-African strategy it was 2005 and things were
going well everywhere — in Europe and also in Morocco.
Morocco was still a high-growth country. We were just
projecting the fact that banking services would saturate at
some point.
Knowledge@Wharton: We would be interested in your
perspective on the start-up economy in different countries
in Africa. What role is your bank playing with start-ups?
Douiri: It’s much more dynamic than we think. I was
struck for the first time when in 2014 the Global
Entrepreneurship Summit took place in Marrakech. It
was a state department-led initiative. But here I was at
an event organized by a foreign country with Moroccan
entrepreneurs whom we had never really met — whom
we don’t get to meet every day because it’s not the same
environment. And they were doing a great job explaining
their business model, talking to investors, talking to the
vice president of the U.S. It opened my eyes to this vibrant
environment.
Now, let’s get to the real fundamentals. I think Morocco is
a very small market for any start-up. It’s a market where
you have many more hurdles than in a developed market
because you need to educate people to trust you in a
culture where risk taking is not very developed. So I’m not
over optimistic. I’m optimistic to see that young people
have the energy, the will and the skills. But I don’t think it
will be an overnight revolution. There is still one big block
missing which is early-stage venture capital.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are you thinking of this in
Morocco in particularly, or throughout the continent?
Douiri: Morocco is the place I know best, and I think what
I’m saying about Morocco is true for all the other countries
where we operate. Maybe it’s not true in countries that
are more English-speaking. The missing part for me is not
the role of the private sector; it’s the role of governments
— co-investment in early stage projects, development of
higher education which is not that great in Morocco….
The whole education industry needs to be revamped. The
system was built during a period where the ultimate goal
was to be a civil servant, not an entrepreneur. We are still
a long way from a start-up culture. But, at the same time,
we’re very entrepreneurial. This informal economy is very
important for a developing country.
To come back to your question: “What do we do?” We
believe that private equity is a different business. So we
have a subsidiary that manages funds — private equity
funds. But we don’t interfere with their strategy. What
we’re doing as a bank is to enlarge our lending market to
very small enterprises, in particular in the informal sector.
This is a new avenue. We’re offering formal credits to
informal businesses.
“We had the choice of either
accepting the slower growth … or
finding continued avenues for growth
in replicating what we learned in
Morocco in neighboring markets that
had lower penetration of financial
services.”

17
Knowledge@Wharton: I have one last question. All
around Africa you see mobile banking on the rise. How do
you see the prospect for mobile banking in Morocco and
North Africa, specifically with regard to bringing unbanked
sections of the population into the financial sector?
Douiri: First, it’s very important to create definitions of
mobile banking. The mobile as a channel to interact with
your bank is really becoming very important. We invested
heavily in that, and we’re seeing the new generation use
more and more of that channel — even more than the
Internet. Anything you have in the U.S., we have it in
Morocco, and soon in the other African countries where
we’re present because we’re also developing that. For the
rest, it’s mostly about remittances and payments. So it’s
not really mobile banking. I would call it mobile payment.
So far, mobile operators have not been able to build a bank.
They have built a remittance and payment system based on
their mobile.
In Morocco, the context is very different. We have already
11 million cards — debit or credit — in the pockets of
Moroccans. There is only a 10 million active population.
So people who want an electronic payment form have it in
their pocket. For us, the challenge is to push people to use
their card for more than just withdrawing cash.
All mobile operators who have tried mobile payments in
Morocco have failed. Why? Because the infrastructure
is not needed. There is no gap to be filled by mobile
operators.
Coming to low-income banking, there are a lot of initiatives
in Morocco. Everybody in the cities has a bank account,
even people in the countryside. So it’s high banking density,
very low prices. You can have a bank account for 50 cents
a month, and that includes your debit card and even free
checkbooks. So in a sense it’s being commoditized. This
is the model in Morocco. Elsewhere, we will have to take
into account mobile operators that are sometimes making
rapid progress. They will be very hard to beat but, at the
same time, they will need us when they want to improve
their offering. So everywhere else it will be competition.
Our subsidiary Wafacash has already applied for licenses
in Western Africa and Central Africa. It will be very
interesting south of the Sahara. But the game in Morocco
is pretty much finished.

18
Breaking the Multinational Monopoly on
Kenyan Beer Sales
Tabitha Karanja is CEO of Keroche Breweries, Kenya’s only
homegrown brewery.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about your company? What
do you produce, how big are you, how old are you?
Tabitha Karanja: I am the CEO of Keroche Breweries and
the founder. It was founded in 1997. We manufacture
alcoholic beverages. We have beer, we have wines and we
have spirits…. Beer is the main product.
Knowledge@Wharton: So how many different beers do
you have, what is the name of your beer and what are your
sales?
Karanja: At the moment, we have two beers — Summit
Lager and Summit Malt. Our capacity is 1 million liters. We
are doing 50% of that because the capacity expansion was
done recently. We are hoping to reach full capacity in one
year’s time. Then we can think about expanding across the
African continent.
Knowledge@Wharton: What percentage of your sales are
beer vs. wine and spirits?
Karanja: At the moment, it is 50:50.
Knowledge@Wharton: We don’t often see a beer
company founded by a woman. How did you start this
company?
Karanja: I was in a trade business. We were buying
manufactured goods to sell to the people. It was
a hardware shop. I thought, why don’t I go into
manufacturing. I didn’t know what to manufacture.
I did market research and saw there was a gap in the
lower end of the liquor market. The only players were the
multinationals and they neglected the lower end of the
market. People were left to drink whatever was available.
It was not hygienic. I thought, why don’t I come up with
a product that is hygienically produced, affordable and
meets international standards? It was received very well.
Within five years, we took over the market.
When we were working on that, I discovered that at the
top end and middle market, consumers didn’t have any
choice. One multinational had dominated the market for
eight years. I then thought, why don’t I come up with a beer
that offers a choice. (At that time, people could go to a bar
and say they wanted a cold beer or not; there was only one
brand.) I introduced a premium product — a beer that was
naturally brewed and sugar free. When people drank it,
they realized they had no hangover. It was again received
very well. Within two years, we had to expand the brewery.
Knowledge@Wharton: At present, are your sales limited
to Kenya?
Karanja: We are just in Kenya. But, of course, we go
to Uganda. You can find people buying our beer. That’s
unofficial. But we want to go to Uganda officially. And
Tanzania, the whole region — the African market — by next
year.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about your employee base.
Karanja: We have about 300 direct employees and
thousands in the distribution network. Ninety-five percent
“One multinational had dominated the
market for eight years. I then thought,
why don’t I come up with a beer that
offers a choice.”

19
of these 300 are professional because the technology we
use for brewing is the latest. So it is a lot of skilled labor;
95% are engineers, brewers, marketers accountants and
all that.
Knowledge@Wharton: As you look back at the past 10
years, what have been the most significant challenges that
you’ve had to overcome with the business?
Karanja: The biggest was to break the monopoly of
the multinationals. They were not ready to give up any
percentage of their market, because they controlled 100%.
People have seen the resilience, the determination and the
focus that I’ve put into the business. And I’ve inspired many
people in Kenya and now Africa. They’ve seen that it can
be done. Especially being a woman, now people see we can
do it.
Knowledge@Wharton: So how did you break these
monopolies?
Karanja: Mostly it was through the support of the
Kenyans. Our competitor used to pay the barmaids not
to stock our products, put them under the counter. So
I tried to come out and face the monopoly committee,
the competition committees and the parliamentary
committees and then the media. And the people said “we
need to support this.” Then, when they tasted the beer they
realized it’s better than what they were having before. So
that is how I broke the monopoly.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about how you as a woman
lead. Is it significant that you’re a woman? Are you just a
leader who happens to be a woman?
Karanja: I’m a leader who happens to be a woman. When
people look at me, they don’t see me as a woman; they see
me as an entrepreneur.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where did this entrepreneurial
spark that you have come from?
Karanja: I can’t say my family was in business. I think it’s
just that wanting to make a change. After dealing with the
hardware business, seeing these are things manufactured,
thinking why don’t I go into manufacturing. Then going
there realizing the market was really controlled, that it was
very hard to break. People had really started looking at me
with hope. I knew if I didn’t push it, I’d kill a lot of dreams.
So that’s what really has kept me going.
Every time I have challenges, I know I have to overcome
them, I have to recover. So I push myself. I feel people
behind me watching. I don’t want to give up so that people
won’t ever say: “But you want to try this? You can’t make
it. Remember, Tabitha tried and she was unable.” But today
it’s proof that we can do it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where do you think your company
will be in 10 years?
Karanja: In 10 years I believe that we will be across the
African continent. I believe the alcohol market is controlled
by the multinationals. Because Africa is rising, Africans
should have a share of their market too.
“When people look at me, they don’t
see me as a woman; they see me as an
entrepreneur.”

20
Why Inclusive Growth Is Key to Africa’s
Rise
Acha Leke is a director in McKinsey’s Johannesburg office.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about your coming back to
Africa after getting your Ph.D. at Stanford, and the work
you’ve done in expanding McKinsey across the continent.
Acha Leke: I did my PhD at Stanford and spent my last
summer with McKinsey in South Africa. It was the only
office we had then. This was in the late 1990s. I had an
offer to return to the Johannesburg office, but nobody
was going back to the continent then. It was quite a mess. I
decided to start in the U.S. I began at the Atlanta office, but
always felt this pull to come back to the continent.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where you had grown up?
Leke: I’m from Cameroon. I reflected on the fact that it was
very easy for us to stay out and complain about what was
going on in the continent. But the question I asked myself
all the time was: “Whose responsibility is it to change
things?” Those of us who were outside saw that if we
didn’t come back to change things, who would? In the early
2000s I decided to transfer to our Johannesburg office for
a year; it’s been 15 years.
Knowledge@Wharton: Now McKinsey has many more
offices in Africa other than at the Johannesburg?
Leke: Yes. When we started we had 50 consultants
who transferred to Johannesburg. Today, we have 350
consultants across seven offices. We’re in Egypt and
Morocco and North Africa. We have 70 consultants in
Nigeria, another 30 in Kenya. We’re in Ethiopia, we’re in
Angola, and our biggest office is in South Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: What kind of changes have you
seen in these 15 plus years?
Leke: The continent has changed dramatically, and for the
good. Five years ago, we published a report online which
talked about the transformation of the continent on a
number of dimensions. In the late 1990s, the continent
was basically not growing. Growth was about 2%-3%.
Population growth was about 2%-3%. Over the past
15 years, Africa has been the second fastest growing
continent. All the sectors are growing, so it’s been a very
exciting time to be here. We still have challenges. But it is
an amazing, exciting time to be part of this whole Africa-
rising story.
Because of the growth that we’ve seen and the global
financial crisis, we found that a lot of educated Africans,
who would’ve stayed outside, had decided to come back.
The first year we set up the Lagos office, we had 1,500
applications — 1,000 applications from people in Nigeria
and 500 from people outside Nigeria. They were not just
Nigerians. We had Chinese, Belgians, Brazilians apply.
Out of the 500, we made 12 offers. Out of the 1,000
applications from Nigeria, none.
Knowledge@Wharton: You made no offers to the
Nigerians who applied? That speaks, I presume, of the gaps
in the intellectual capital, the education systems in Nigeria
and perhaps elsewhere in Africa. Speak to us about those
challenges.
“The question I asked myself all the
time was: ‘Whose responsibility is it to
change things?’ Those of us who were
outside saw that if we didn’t come
back to change things, who would?”

21
Leke: We have big issues, especially with education levels
on the continent. But it also speaks of gaps at McKinsey, on
how we evaluate candidates. These were extremely smart
candidates. But we took our typical European, U.S.-centric
approach to evaluate them. We’ve seen change there.
Knowledge@Wharton: One senses that all the
entrepreneurs we have been meeting are part of this larger
story — Lions on the Move [the title of a 2010 McKinsey
report on Africa that Leke co-authored]. But I think it
would be helpful for you to talk to us about the larger plan.
What are the other institutions, the other players beyond
talented entrepreneurs, that are needed to continue to
propel Africa’s growth and overcome its challenges?
Leke: Well, there are a number. I tend to start with the
governments. A lot of the work we do – 67% —is with the
public sector across Africa. In the U.S., it’s about 10%-15%.
We believe that to have an impact on the continent you
have to serve the public sector. We’re very involved with
serving governments — at the president level, ministers —
helping them make overall strategies or sector strategies.
What we’ve seen is a fundamental transformation within
governments. First, there is a lot more political stability.
Obviously, you have challenges and conflicts here and
there. But it’s a lot fewer than 10 years ago. You see
more microeconomic stability. Many countries have gone
through tax reform. Nigeria raised another $700 million in
tax revenues last year on top of the budget.
Governments are going in the right direction. Then you
have the emergence of pan-African champions. Companies
that started in Nigeria are now present across countries.
They’re expanding. You are starting to see some big African
multinationals emerge. Entrepreneurship is a big thing.
One of the biggest issues we have in the country is jobs.
We are not good at jobs. We did a study called Africa at
Work, which we published a few years ago, looking at what
it would take to accelerate job potential in the continent.
The reality is that the private sector on its own would
never get us the jobs.
We want to meet a lot more entrepreneurs, large-scale
entrepreneurs. We want people who would bring jobs
for 40,000 employees. But I think we don’t have the right
environment to help them scale. That’s the big challenge
on the entrepreneurship front on the continent. Then you
have all the social entrepreneurs who are doing the right
things. And you have the multinationals — people from
outside — helping us. That’s a big influence.
Knowledge@Wharton: As you look forward, what are the
kinds of things that need to happen to continue this growth
and to create more jobs?
Leke: The focus is now clearly inclusive growth. The
sectors that create growth are different from those that
create jobs. I’ll give an example. The resources sector, over
the past 15 years, has contributed about a third of Africa’s
growth, directly and indirectly. In that period, we have
destroyed jobs. We have fewer jobs today than we did 15
years ago.
Knowledge@Wharton: And the key industries in the
resources sector are?
Leke: Oil and gas, mining and those kinds of industries.
Now, those that create jobs are agriculture, manufacturing,
and retail and wholesale trade. That’s where the jobs are
going to come from. I think we’re going to get there. We
will have the largest workforce in the world by 2030-2035,
and we need to make sure that these people are educated,
they’re ready for the job market and there are jobs for
them. So that’s one.
The second challenge: There are questions now around
the global slowdown. What’s happening in China, with
its commodity prices. And also in the U.S., as rates go up.
What’s going to happen to Africa? Is this Africa-rising story
real? How much will Africa continue to rise? We’re in the
middle of looking at that. We are publishing the sequel
to “Lions on the Move.” We don’t have the answers yet.
But it’s very clear that there are risks, especially for the
commodity-driven economies. They’re starting to eat away
at the fiscal buffers they had.
Knowledge@Wharton: As you think about these
challenges and opportunities and how you move to create
more inclusive growth in the continent, what are the levers
of those changes? Is it the educational system? Is it policy?
What should we be thinking about?
Leke: It’s across multiple dimensions. I think it’s definitely
the educational system. We need to radically transform
the educational system across the board. We need to put
in place new policies to ensure the enabling environment.
We need much closer collaboration amongst ourselves.
Africans are just not connecting with each other.
“We still have challenges. But it is an
amazing, exciting time to be part of
this whole Africa-rising story.”

22
How Economic Activism Can Empower
the African Woman
Social and economic activist Wendy Luhabe passionately
believes in empowering women, especially when it comes to
realizing their potential in contributing to the economy.
Knowledge@Wharton: You describe yourself as an
economic activist. You’re based in South Africa. What is an
economic activist?
Wendy Luhabe: In my case, it’s focusing on the
participation of women in the economy. When I thought
about what we’ve been doing, I realized that you hear of
social activists or political activists, but you don’t hear of
economic activists. The work we’ve done deserves the
description. We pioneered two ventures: the first one
was an investment company we started 20 years ago. It
mobilized 18,000 women to become investors for the
first time through a platform called Women Investment
Portfolio Holdings. The company is still in existence. It has
a value of about $200 million.
After that, about 10 years later, we started a private equity
fund for women, which was also an unheard of concept in
the world. There are less than 10 funds that are focusing
on women-owned enterprises. This was definitely the first
and probably still the only one in Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: That company still exists as well?
Luhabe: The fund has closed but several of the
investments are still in existence.
Knowledge@Wharton: In the private equity company,
were you solely focused on investing in women-owned
businesses?
Luhabe: Yes.
Knowledge@Wharton: In the first case, it was women
investors?
Luhabe: Yes. In the second case, it was investing in
companies owned by women. My view is that if we grow
the number of women entrepreneurs and give them access
to capital and the business expertise to enlarge their
businesses, they will contribute towards creating jobs,
which is a major challenge in South Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: How did you come to this?
What was your pathway that led to these very bold and
entrepreneurial moves?
Luhabe: It was a combination of things. South Africa was
becoming a democracy and we had politicians who were
committed to gender empowerment and passed legislation
that made it possible. So it was largely the environment.
Observing that as the political landscape was being
rearranged and women were being left out, we decided
that we would create our own opportunities rather than
wait to be invited. That’s how it happened.
Knowledge@Wharton: You had a background in finance?
Luhabe: I studied commerce. I didn’t work in commerce
or finance, but I studied it. I worked in marketing. My first
10 years were in marketing. But the three cofounders
came from finance; all three were in banking. That’s why I
handpicked them, so that we wouldn’t be ignored because
we didn’t understand the industry we were getting into.
Knowledge@Wharton: As an economic activist now, what
is the focus of your activities?
“We wanted to take women beyond
that to say, you can provide labor and
you can consume, but you can also be
an investor responsible for your own
financial independence.”

23
Luhabe: Communicate economic empowerment. I’ve
invested in a micro bakery project that will have a footprint
of about 400 bakeries throughout South Africa. It will
enable women to generate an income of 5,000 rand a
month — about $500 a month — from zero to $500 a
month, making their own bread and supplying it to their
immediate neighborhood.
Knowledge@Wharton: You are an investor in this? You
helped to grow the business?
Luhabe: I am. I’m identifying economic opportunities that
can help uplift communities. The first project we’ve done is
the bakery. It’s not mine; it’s an existing project that I have
invested in to help scale it. I’ve invested in an agricultural
project in the southern part of the country in a community
that owns land, but didn’t have the resources to invest in
seeds. I discovered that seeds for agriculture are the most
expensive part. So I invested to enable them to buy the
seeds.
Knowledge@Wharton: In your years of doing this kind of
work are there lessons that you’ve learned or that you’ve
discovered that are very helpful for scaling these kinds of
businesses, for knowing that this bakery is a good idea, it
will work and we can scale it?
Luhabe: I can’t answer that because I’m not operational.
I’m an investor. So you would need to talk to people who
are operational. I’m sure there must be many lessons.
Because when you are pioneering and you are on the
ground, you’re responding to issues as they develop. I think
the tragedy is that those lessons don’t get documented.
Knowledge@Wharton: There’s certainly a lot of interest.
To this day you are quite pioneering in bringing women into
investing.
Luhabe: It hasn’t been done. When we started it, it had
never been done and it still hasn’t been done. I’m not sure
why because we’ve traveled extensively to share the idea.
Somehow people just haven’t been able to get it off the
ground. I don’t know whether in our case it was because
of the confluence of a change in the political system and
people feeling quite optimistic about the future and the
opportunities opening up.
Knowledge@Wharton: If you were to tell us the typical
woman who invested in that fund, who was she?
Luhabe: What’s actually quite unique about this is that it
mobilized South African women from all walks of life. So
there were white women, black women, ordinary women,
wealthy women, educated women, uneducated women,
rural women, urban women. What we did and how we
were able to do that is because we invested two years
before the company was established doing a roadshow
which was called Beyond Labor and Consumption. We
felt that all that women were considered good for in the
economy was to provide labor, or we consume, we buy. We
wanted to take women beyond that to say, you can provide
labor and you can consume, but you can also be an investor
responsible for your own financial independence.
It was because of that roadshow. It took us about two
years. We have nine provinces in South Africa and it went
to every single province and spoke to women from all
walks of life.
Knowledge@Wharton: I would imagine that there would
be a barrier with married women feeling like they couldn’t
invest their family’s wealth, that the men controlled it or
the men had to approve. Did you have to win over the men
as well?
Luhabe: We actually had men who bought shares for their
wives and their daughters and their helpers. South Africa is
fortunate. We are lucky that we have help in our homes. So
we had a lot of white families who actually bought shares
for their helpers as well. So we really mobilized the nation
and people got behind it.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are the sort of challenges
and opportunities that you’re seeing now for women
entrepreneurs in South Africa?
Luhabe: I think it’s the same issues as everywhere
else: access to capital, to expertise, the knowhow, the
ecosystem. South Africa doesn’t have an ecosystem for
entrepreneurs. Although we have a well-established
financial services sector, it doesn’t support entrepreneurs.
It’s totally risk averse.
We don’t have a venture capital culture. There is an
element of angel investing, but it’s still very limited. We
“It mobilized South African women
from all walks of life. So there were
white women, black women, ordinary
women, wealthy women, educated
women, uneducated women, rural
women, urban women.”

24
have private equity, but private equity doesn’t invest in
start-ups. So we have pockets of things. We have lots
of government funding, but it doesn’t really reach the
opportunities that are in the marketplace because we
lack the ecosystem. They just don’t know how to assess
projects and opportunities and risks. The funds usually go
unspent. They don’t go where they are supposed to go to
because of that lack of an ecosystem in the economy.
Knowledge@Wharton: But somehow you broke through
this many years ago.
Luhabe: It was because we were right at the beginning,
before there were rules and laws and things. We kind of
made it up. Sometimes that’s an advantage when there’s
nothing in existence, you can make it up.
The empowerment initiatives that existed at the beginning
of our democracy were driven by a few individuals who
were primarily men. What we started was the first one
that mobilized large numbers of individuals, with a focus
on women obviously in our case. That was an example
of what I think the government intended with economic
empowerment, to make it broad based in a meaningful way.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are there any key skillsets or
talents or abilities that you feel you had to employ to be
successful in this?
Luhabe: Well, three of my cofounders came from the
banking sector, so they understood what we were trying
to do. We were offering a solution in a sector that we
understood. They were known in the industry and they
understood the industry.
What I didn’t tell you is that we did two capital raisings
from the women themselves. The first was 25 million
rand. We needed to do a second one and raised 75 million
rand. The first 100 million rand to get this company off
the ground and to acquire equity in the various industries
came from women themselves. Because of that, by the
time we raised institutional funding we had already proven
the concept.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where do you see your work
taking you over the next five years?
Luhabe: I’m beginning to invest in Africa. I’m going to invest
in the food business in Kenya. I’m going to invest in Nigeria.
I’m going to begin investing outside South Africa.

25
Why the Diaspora Has an Important Role
to Play in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo
Serge Nawej is an attorney specializing in African business
development with global law firm DLA Piper.
Knowledge@Wharton: You left your home country — the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — when you
were 12. And you have come back. Please tell us why you
left and why you came back.
Serge Nawej: We left in 1992, because I am from a family
with a political background. We went to Belgium. I spent
22 years in Belgium. I graduated, became a lawyer and
I decided to go back home because this was the duty of
someone who was being educated outside. It was part of
my objective, even when we were in Belgium. The only
thing that was important for me was to come back and do
something, probably not in politics, because I have seen
what politics could do to people. My mother was tortured;
they broke her hand.
I wanted to do politics differently by doing business.
And the way to do business [in my case] was to bring
reliable companies, reliable players, into countries that
are sometimes seen as failures, but their people are really
good and they are developing a lot of things.
Knowledge@Wharton: So after education and becoming
a lawyer and working for DLA Piper in Belgium, you
said, “You know what? I want to go back to the Congo. I
can make this work as a lawyer, and I can do something
good for the country.” What was the reaction from your
colleagues in Belgium?
Nawej: Well, it was a bit more. They came to see me
because I had started a small law firm. None of the big
firms were familiar with Africa. But they said, “We need to
have a strategy for Africa. Would you join us?” I thought a
lot and then decided to join them.
It was difficult. When you have correspondents — legal
correspondents — who are not responsive, sometimes
inefficient — not because they’re not good, but because
they have not been used to the type of transaction we
handle — you have to be there.
So I decided I would go. We built something; I have created
with two colleagues a law firm named Proxima, which is in
the DRC. We are starting to handle quite a number of large
transactions.
Knowledge@Wharton: What kind of misconceptions do
you find that people have of the DRC?
Nawej: The misconceptions are mainly about corruption.
There’s corruption in any country. At a certain level, it’s the
middleman.
Knowledge@Wharton: So your advice is to avoid the
middleman?
Nawej: Definitely. At least make sure that you do the
proper due diligence.
Knowledge@Wharton: What kinds of opportunities
can businesses find in the Congo, and are they actually
beneficial for Congo citizens?
Nawej: Of course. Infrastructure — you have to deal with
the government. The government now understands that it
had to be different; we’re coming from minus 150. Now we
are minus 50. This means we have done a lot. Agriculture,
of course. Mining. We have most of the minerals in DRC,
and you don’t have to dig too much.
I am also starting to see something which I was
underestimating — IT. Young people with a lot of talent
“If the diaspora just comes home, we
will fail. We need to be with the local
people to understand.”

26
are developing apps. But the problem is that they are
not getting assistance. So this is why I am also assisting
business development — business incubation and creation.
I was doing that before even being at DLA.
Knowledge@Wharton: What do you see as the barriers
that must be overcome in the next five to 10 years to
achieve the kind of vision that you and others have for
business in the Congo?
Nawej: I think it will be political transition, which is an
issue. Stability is the key. A challenge will also be the
relations with our neighbors, which we can increase by
doing more businesses. But I don’t see any particular
challenge which will stop the country and its people. There
is a critical mass of people coming back.
Knowledge@Wharton: So this is partly the diaspora
coming home?
Nawej: It’s a combination, because if the diaspora just
comes home, we will fail. We need to be with the local
people to understand. We also need to listen to our elders
– sometimes, to listen carefully not to do what they did.
Knowledge@Wharton: Investors from the West have
been active in Africa for decades — British, French
investors. But now there is a new group of investors from
Asia — the Indians, the Chinese — who are quite active in
Africa. What do you find is the difference between these
new investors and their strategy and the old imperialists,
as they were called?
Nawej: Well, I would not use the word “imperialists.” But
if you see development and the changes that have been
coming in the DRC, they have come through the BRIC
countries. They have shown the people that we should
not be satisfied with some small roads which will be built
10 times and paid for 20 times to the same Western
countries. But now, competition is not only between
Western countries, but also with new competitors. The
new investors are not coming with a lot of conditions. So
we will be entering into the same system; it’s not bad. And
it’s bringing a lot more business for lawyers, so it’s good for
us.
“The new investors have shown the people that we should not be satisfied with
some small roads which will be built 10 times and paid for 20 times to the same
Western countries.”

27
Making Medical Devices More
Accessible, Affordable and Reliable
Soga Oni is the co-founder of Medical Devices as a Service,
an African medical equipment services firm.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about your company,
MDaaS.
Soga Oni: MDaaS is an acronym for Medical Devices as
a Service. We are a medical devices services organization
whose mission/vision is to make medical devices more
accessible and affordable in Nigeria and across the African
continent. We do this by providing flexible acquisition
options to hospitals. We also train biomedical technicians
who service a full range of medical devices and make sure
that the devices don’t break down.
Knowledge@Wharton: It sounds like there are two key
functions. Part of it is the acquisition of medical devices
and the other part is service and maintenance.
Oni: That is correct. I think one of the biggest challenges
hospitals in Nigeria and all African countries face is, No. 1,
medical devices are capital intensive. Unfortunately, there
is not a lot of financing out there. No. 2 is the maintenance
and repair of these devices. A lot of African countries,
Nigeria included, lack skilled biomedical engineers who
could service these devices. I know a doctor who bought
a new $50,000 machine that broke down in six months
and they had to fly in someone from Korea to fix it. That
shouldn’t happen. So that’s the problem we’re trying to
solve.
Knowledge@Wharton: How long have you been in the
business? What stage is your company in?
Oni: We are still early in the process. It’s been a one-year
journey for me from ideation. This came originally because
I visited my dad. He is a medical doctor and I visited his
hospital. I saw the way he had this equipment, stuff that he
just threw away. I worked with some of my classmates at
MIT to look at the problem and I realized that this was a
huge problem across the continent. I started working on it,
eventually got some support from the African Leadership
Network and decided to move back in February to launch
in Nigeria.
Since February, it’s been setting up the processes I needed,
doing more interviews with doctors to see what they really
want. The idea evolved with me just talking to people,
getting feedback. Right now we have a pilot; we’re in the
process of shipping the devices in.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us a little bit about your
background. You grew up in Nigeria?
Oni: I grew up in a small town, a few hours from Lagos.
I spent most of my formative years there. Then did my
college in Nigeria. After that, I went to the U.S. for a
master’s degree. I worked for a few years as a software
engineer in the U.S. And then I went through this midlife
crisis: I wanted to move back and I wanted to know what I
could do to help back home.
That led me to apply to MIT. I got in. I had studied systems
engineering in Nigeria. That deals with big social technical
problems. This is a big social technical problem. It has a
technical component and a social component. That allowed
me to see things from a bird’s eye view. It also enabled
me to see how things work in the trenches. That made me
want to contribute back.
Knowledge@Wharton: Was it an easy decision to come
back?
“I know a doctor who bought a new
$50,000 machine that broke down
in six months and they had to fly in
someone from Korea to fix it. That
shouldn’t happen.”

28
Oni: In a lot of ways, I’m privileged because I still have
my family back there. When I moved back originally, I got
support from my family.
Knowledge@Wharton: Going back to the pilot that
you’re doing now, what are the medical devices that you’re
bringing to these hospitals?
Oni: We’re bringing about 12 devices of six different types.
We had a conversation with them about what their needs
are, what their requirements were and what they wanted.
Then we made that decision to bring in those devices for
them.
Knowledge@Wharton: When you look at the medical
device industry, are you bringing in technology that exists
in the Western countries or are you looking at some of
the innovations that have been made where some of
these technologies and devices have been adapted for the
developing world at a much lower cost?
Oni: Our approach is we bring in technologies that
are cheaper. We bring in X-ray devices and ultrasound
equipment, for example, from the early 2000s. They are
well maintained and refurbished. They cost about a tenth
of what the new ones would cost. That’s our approach.
I think it’s interesting though, your question, because
there’s been this approach to strip down devices and
reposition them for Africa. That works in some cases, but a
lot of hospitals, especially in growing cities like Lagos, want
the good stuff. They don’t want the stripped-down version;
they want all the features.
Knowledge@Wharton: Just to push back very gently, you
don’t feel like you’re going to replicate a very high-cost
medical system in Africa at a time when it’s running into
problems in the West?
Oni: We will replicate what they have there. We will make
ours in the end. We have to be realistic about these things.
The devices that we’re bringing in are trade devices; they
will be useful for the marketplace. What we’re also doing
is training people on the ground. We’re not trying to bring
people in from outside.
Hospitals will look at all the options. They’ll have to make
the decisions themselves. We need more approaches to
solve this problem. In the end, there’s a place in the market
for people like me and also dirt-cheap Chinese products.
It’s a huge, huge market.
Knowledge@Wharton: I’d love to hear about what you’ve
been learning in the process of building this company over
the past year, the major turning points and lessons for you.
Oni: I’ve learned a lot. Originally, I wanted to start a
company that leases medical devices. But you need
the ecosystem to support leasing. Until we have that
ecosystem, leasing is just me giving you money. I would
never be able to be sustainable.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let me make sure I understood
that. Your first approach was to…
Oni: Lease the equipment. But we learned that big banks
have a problem financing equipment, financing doctors.
If you finance a car and don’t get paid, you can get the car
and sell it. But even if the big bank gets an X-ray machine
back, what do they do with it? There’s no second market to
go to.
Knowledge@Wharton: At this stage in your early
development, is MDaaS all Soga Oni, or do you have a team
working with you?
Oni: I’ve had teams. I’ve had people work with me
throughout the whole process. But we finished in May
from MIT. Now [my friends] have got good jobs all around
the world.…
Knowledge@Wharton: Where do you hope to be in a
year?
Oni: I want the pilot to be successful. By that time, I would
have moved out to all the hospitals across the country. One
of the big components of my organization is the training
— biomedical training. So I’ve asked for a set of biomedical
technicians good to go, ready to work.
“This is a big social technical problem.
It has a technical component and a
social component.”

29
Creating an African Brand That Appeals
to African Youth
Alpesh Patel is the founder Mi-Fone, an IT and
communications retailer in East Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: What is Mi-Fone all about?
Alpesh Patel: When I left Motorola, I was approached
by other brands, but I figured that Africans are actually
best served by Africans themselves. But, how do I create
something [in a segment] where the big brands were not
looking?
There was complete ignorance of the mass market
consumer sector, which we call the bottom of the pyramid.
So we developed a brand called Mi-Fone. It’s an African
brand, which means basically 100% African ownership.
The soul of the brand is very African. The essence of the
brand — our communications — is very African and skewed
towards the youth.
We were the first to do this. A lot of people thought I was
crazy because it was 2008 — in the middle of a recession.
How am I going to compete with Samsung? How am I going
to compete with Nokia? How am I going to compete with
all the cheap Chinese products coming to Africa? But it’s
because I had the experience in the business for so many
years that I had my relationships in place already.
Knowledge@Wharton: What does it mean for a cell
phone company to be completely African?
Patel: Local brands are on the rise. In China, the No. 1
brand is Xiaomi. In India, it is Micromax. We hope one
day to become the No. 1 local brand in Africa. It’s about
understanding the local relevant cultures. Africa is 54
countries in one continent, which is very fragmented. A
phone that’s successful in Kenya may not be successful in
Rwanda.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give us an example of a
phone that is going to sell in one or many African countries
and you don’t need the features in the U.S.?
Patel: Our tagline is “Aspiration within reach.” Everyone
in Africa today has heard of Samsung, has heard of Apple.
Everyone wants an Apple. Unfortunately, the pocket
will not allow them to get an Apple iPhone. That’s called
aspirations beyond reach. The $100 Mi-Fone gives you
the same features, gives you access to the Internet, good
speed, good battery life and is durable. That’s what we call
“Aspiration within reach.” And that’s what Mi-Fone’s all
about. It’s a social message as well.
We want to empower Africans via smartphone technology.
Their pocket allows them to have access to the world by
a four-inch or five-inch smartphone screen. This is their
world. It’s not a round world. It’s a four-inch screen. This is
their window to the world.
From here they’re going to be able to run their lives. When
you run your life through your smartphone, you become
more productive. As you become more productive, you
become more prosperous and, as you become more
prosperous, everyone becomes happier. What we’re trying
to get across here is that we understand what the people
in Africa need.
Knowledge@Wharton: What were some of the challenges
involved in getting into the device side of the mobile
business?
Patel: I’ve had challenges from day one. The big challenge
was I didn’t have any external funding for seven years. I
went knocking on doors. I got shot down at all of them. The
challenge in this business is the perception. The finance
community feels that this is a commodity business.
“I want to be able to execute my
vision…. The challenge is learning.”

30
The second challenge we had was that we were not a
known brand. It is a very brand-driven market. So we had
to become very innovative. Innovation for me is not the
next technology breakthrough. Innovation is taking the
traditional business model and flipping it. And that’s what
we did with the phone business.
Knowledge@Wharton: Give us an example of how you
flipped.
Patel: One of the first things we did was piggybacking
on what was in the news at the time. We actually did the
“Mi-Obama” phone. We launched this in western Kenya
on the day he became president and sold 8,000 phones in
five days. What we said was, if you could put Obama on a
t-shirt or a coffee mug, you could put him on a phone. So
we developed this handset. At the back it said, “Yes We
Can.” And because his father was from western Kenya, we
sold it in that area. People bought it as a memento. It’s very
basic but no other brand would do that.
Knowledge@Wharton: I was curious when you talked
about the difficulty of getting early-stage investment in
your company. What changed? What did it take to be able
to attract investors?
Patel: Six months ago we got acquired; fifty-one percent
of the brand has been sold to Imperial Holdings of South
Africa. It makes me very proud of what the brand has
become because it’s a validation of us being a start-up,
growth stage and then getting acquired by a public
company. That means they’ve done their due diligence
on us, they’ve done all their checks on us and they know
that we are a shining example of how you can start a
pan-African business with zero capital and within a few
years create the foundation to be able to take your growth
to the next level. They’ve given me the capital now to build
a proper business.
Knowledge@Wharton: What will you do with the capital?
Patel: Well, you know you always have this wish list — I
wish, I wish, I wish. Now that I’ve got the capital, I’m going
to start ticking it off. We’ve always been constrained in
hiring very smart people. So the first thing is obviously
getting the right headcount, fast-tracking our distribution.
We’re in 12 countries but we want to increase our
footprint. We would like to grow this business very quickly
over the next five years via organic growth, which is selling
more devices, and acquisitions. That way we can create our
own ecosystem.
Knowledge@Wharton: I am interested in the social
impact. I think that businesses create positive social impact
in a variety of ways. It sounds like a big focus for you has
been in the product itself and the services you offer. A
complementary way might be through your employment
strategy. Is that something that you think about?
Patel: We run a very neat organization…. I didn’t have any
funding. So we worked a lot on Skype. I outsourced a lot of
my team. But, since the acquisition in May, we have set up
our African HQ in Nairobi. We have employed six people,
five of them are local Kenyans, and our next stop will be
Nigeria. But you need people on the ground. So that’s
where we’re making a lot of investments.
We’re going to spend more money on product
development, on the software but also having this whole
Mi-Fone look and feel. This does not look like a cheap,
Chinese phone. We give you a Chinese price but we won’t
give you a Chinese phone.
Knowledge@Wharton: And where are they
manufactured?
Patel: They’re manufactured in China just like everything
else. But there would have to be an assembly or factory in
one of the African locations. That will create more jobs.
Knowledge@Wharton: Now in addition to Africa you also
have a base in the Middle East. Tell us about the Middle
East part.
Patel: The head office is in Dubai. We don’t do any
business in the Middle East. It’s just the way this
transaction was structured. We got bought out by the
South African company but they did it through their Dubai
entity. I’ve lived in Dubai for eight years. It’s a city that
works.
Knowledge@Wharton: One of the biggest challenges for
any start-up is building the brand — especially when you’re
competing with some of the global brands.
“When you run your life through
your smartphone, you become
more productive. As you become
more productive, you become more
prosperous and, as you become
more prosperous, everyone becomes
happier.”

31
Patel: It takes 10 years to build a brand.
Knowledge@Wharton: What were some of the
innovations on branding that you had in addition to the
Obama phone?
Patel: We could do tons. We are very good at innovating
clever messages. We use the power of social media.
We developed the world’s first black smileys. Do you
remember the movie, “Back to the Future?”
Knowledge@Wharton: Yes.
Patel: Our whole campaign went out as “Black to the
Future.” Again we’re targeting the youth who are very
savvy with all this. So they understand. We also came out
with these really fun ads like, “Tired of the Same Song?”
Very cheeky and rebellious.
Knowledge@Wharton: I have some questions about the
challenges you find as an entrepreneur working in Africa,
especially developing a pan-African strategy?
Patel: Today, you see a lot of successful companies but
they’re successful in one market. Like they’re very good
in Nigeria, they’re very good in South Africa. My strategy
from day one was not to have my eggs in one basket. Let’s
go pan-Africa straight away. This proved to be much more
difficult but it also got us that presence we needed. Second,
is the perception of the brand. Third, because there’s no
funding and everyone wants credit in this business, we had
to negotiate with the factories to get some credit lines and
juggle this in a way that we could satisfy both the clients
and the factories.
Knowledge@Wharton: And the margins?
Patel: The margins are pretty good. But I also paid 30% in
finance costs because I would borrow private money. Even
after that 30%, we still make a small profit. I didn’t have an
office for the first two years. I didn’t even take a salary.
Knowledge@Wharton: You’ve just been acquired. What
are the kind of decision points that you’re wrestling with,
that you’re mulling today?
Patel: I have a lot more responsibility now. I have a much
bigger team to report to. I want to be able to execute my
vision, bring in the right people to execute while I give
them all the strategy and what’s the next thing coming for
Mi-Fone. The challenge is learning.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where would you like to see
Mi-Fone in five years?
Patel: There are 500 million phones going to be sold in
Africa in the next five years. I want 10% of that.
“My strategy from day one was not to have my eggs in one basket. Let’s go pan-
Africa straight away.”

32
Creating a Connected, Curated — and
Mobile — Travel Experience in Africa
Cherae Robinson is the founder and CEO of Tastemakers
Africa, a mobile app that allows travelers to book curated
experiences in African cities.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where did this love of the African
continent get started for you?
Cherae Robinson: I think I’ve wanted to go to Africa as
long as I can remember. I used to work in development.
I worked in CIMMYT (Centro Internacional de
Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo), a World Bank research
institution based in Mexico. I was spending a lot of time
in southern and eastern Africa. Before that, I spent about
a month in Sierra Leone. So part of it was, as an African-
American, I was interested in the historical context. Then,
when I was there for work, I saw the wealth of business
opportunities available on the continent. It’s kind of dual
interest for me.
Knowledge@Wharton: I want to know about
Tastemakers. Tell us a little more about that and your
business there.
Robinson: Tastemakers is a mobile app that allows you
to book epic experiences in African cities. It’s about
connecting you to insider ways, with an authentic African
experience. The idea of being premium and African is not
something that you see, particularly in the travel space.
What we do is create all these experiences, right now in
five countries, that allow you to travel, be included, be an
insider, but at the same time, travel with a certain degree of
safety and style.
Knowledge@Wharton: The interesting part is that you’re
doing it through an app. It may not be normal to think
about travel in that way. But in the digital world we live in,
it’s an area of focus and probably an area of growth.
Robinson: We knew we needed to create a platform. If
you go to Tastemakersafrica.com, you see lots of visual,
first-hand account content on things that should inspire
you to travel and explore African cities in a different way.
We knew that there was a lot of content about Africa
being produced. We needed something to actually take
people there in a way that speaks of the trends in the travel
industry right now. Orbitz, Expedia … everybody is trying
to go mobile and go local at the same time. Tastemakers is
a pioneer in doing this, because we started in the beginning
knowing that travelers not only wanted to have these
more connected experiences, but they also wanted to be
able to book these things in just a few taps. That’s what
Tastemakers does.
Knowledge@Wharton: So where is interest in a product
like Tastemakers coming from?
Robinson: There are two sets of people. You have more
people doing business in Africa, and they don’t have access
to what’s happening locally because their companies say,
“Be safe, stay inside your hotel.” They want to be better
connected. So you have that subset of people. Then you
have 10 million people — particularly younger people —
who are going to the continent already, but just not being
connected. They’re reading blogs for hours, they’re trying
to find ways to connect, but there’s no brand that says,
“Come here, find everything that’s awesome, and then
book it through this interface where you spend 70% of
your time anyway.” People look at their phones 70 times
a day, at a minimum. They are used to these devices. But
they don’t have that option once they come to the African
continent.
“The idea of being premium and
African is not something that you see,
particularly in the travel space.”

33
Knowledge@Wharton: Was an app the most
straightforward and easiest way to bring this information
forward?
Robinson: Yes. When I first started Tastemakers, I had
thought about it as a consulting opportunity. I said, “I can
consult with tourism boards and help them figure out how
to talk to this next-generation traveler who sees himself
as a global citizen.” I tried that. I said, “Well, we can do a
blog and help them brand it.” But it just wasn’t sticking. It
just wasn’t working. What I realized is that travelers today
are mobile. Even their hotel decisions are something that
people make on their mobile phones. The other piece was
the supplier side of the business; these people are not
sitting at a desktop. When I looked at where the traveler
was and where the experience providers were, all of them
are on their phones all the time. So, for me, it seemed
the best way to penetrate people’s minds and the travel
decision-making processes in a place where they were
spending the majority of their time anyway.
Knowledge@Wharton: If I go on your app [does it list]
where my deals or my opportunities are within the next
couple of days, or is this something I could also plan in
advance?
Robinson: That’s what I think is really special about
Tastemakers, because the other thing we noticed about the
African travel space was that it’s run by the idea of a tour
operator. So you have to plan weeks in advance. But in the
Tastemakers app, it’s virtually on demand.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are some of the key lessons
you have learned?
Robinson: I don’t think we would be as far along as we are
if we didn’t go through an accelerator. Accelerators give
you networks. I don’t think you can be successful as an
entrepreneur without figuring out who your networks are,
how to grow them, how to utilize them. Tastemakers is a
small start-up. We raised a round of angel funding over the
summer. But being part of the African Leadership Network
Ventures program enabled us to find people who would
do things for us. We didn’t have the budgets to hire them.
So I think that’s one of the benefits of going through an
accelerator.
The second piece is really pushing to challenge yourself on
your model. With Tastemakers we had a commission-based
model to begin with. It seemed the right thing. But through
the accelerator, we learned that we were diminishing our
value proposition. We were devaluing the time it takes to
curate these epic experiences. We realized that we really
had a premium business model.
The networking is probably the biggest piece. I think the
last part that we got from the accelerator process was
peer-to-peer learning. I can’t stress how much those
peer-to-peer learning opportunities and peer-to-peer
relationships have catapulted us over one obstacle or
another, just by learning what other persons in the same
position went through and how they solved a problem.
Knowledge@Wharton: The fact that there is so much
development going on in Africa right now means that the
continuing relationship with people is going to be very
important to the success of this operation.
Robinson: In Africa, the start-up space is still fairly new
and novel. The funding space is even more novel. And
so the community of founders and investors and the
ecosystem around them that helps businesses scale is
critical. With Tastemakers, we won a start-up competition
called She Leads Africa in Nigeria last September. She
Leads Africa catapulted us into that ecosystem.
Knowledge@Wharton: As you operate in Africa, what are
some of the real challenges that you’re facing in operating
a business?
Robinson: I think one of the things, particularly in
our leisure and travel industry, is talent and grooming
talent. You have talent that comes back and works for
a multinational — with a multinational salary. I think
one of the things that we’ve had to do was create a lot
of processes around talent — referral-based programs
and programs to train talent. Both talent that works for
Tastemakers directly and the staff at the restaurants and
the tours and the activities that our travelers are booking.
Customer service is a big issue on the continent. It’s a very
different level of service from what one is expecting in the
kinds of experiences that Tastemakers is focused on. We’ve
had to identify the gems and help take them to the next
level. There are smart, sharp people, but you have to be
willing to put in the work to help those people get to their
true potential. I think the other piece is infrastructure.
“[The new leadership] is moving the
continent forward, moving their
countries forward. For me, the
leadership change is really about that.”

34
Knowledge@Wharton: What are you looking for and
what are you seeing around leadership on the continent?
Robinson: Leadership is changing on the continent. The
old version of leadership, which was not about bringing up
the next generation, but about making as much money as
you can and keeping it in your little clan or whatever you
call it, is going away. [The new leadership] is moving the
continent forward, moving their countries forward. For me,
the leadership change is really about that. It’s about helping
individuals and organizations achieve their potential. That’s
really exciting, and hopefully will cross over into politics.
But right now, business is leading that call.
“In Africa, the start-up space is still fairly new and novel. The funding space is
even more novel.”

35
‘We Are Living in the Era of the
Screenager’
Ralph Simon heads London-based Mobilium Global, a
company based in Africa with operations in the U.K. and the
U.S.
Knowledge@Wharton: I was very curious to see what you
are doing in the health care space with Mobilium. Could
you tell me a bit about what Mobilium does and how you
got started?
Ralph Simon: Mobilium is a company based in Africa, the
U.K. and the U.S. It was originally started as an offshoot
of a company that had become the first outside Korea
to develop ringtones and a commercial ringtone service.
This was in the late 1990s when the world was turning
into ‘screenagers.’ What is a screenager? In today’s world,
people are looking at their smartphone, their tablets, their
PC, their TV screen.
This whole notion of “screenage behavior” is now
ubiquitous. We are living in the era of the screenager.
With our background knowledge — both in terms of
working in the telecommunications space plus working
in the entertainment space, because my background
was originally in entertainment — we felt that if you
could gamify using entertainment constructs, health and
mobile combined, this might be a very interesting way of
addressing some of the important needs of the future with
people who are screenagers.
Knowledge@Wharton: So how do you do that through
your business?
Simon: Well, let’s take Africa as an example. People do
not necessarily have access to formalized medical care or
health care. It is estimated that, in each African country,
there are almost 100,000 community health workers.
What does the community health worker have to connect
himself to the patient and data, such that the data goes up
into the cloud and can be used by the ministry of health to
get an effective or better health service?
Keeping that premise in mind, we approached the largest
telco in Africa and we convinced them that they needed to
have a health program of sorts available on their devices.
We looked through about 400 or 500 different
applications. What we found was that if we could come
up with a wheel of 10 to 12 health-related apps that
could then be put onto a mobile phone, this could be a
way for the subscriber using more data. The participating
companies that were in our wheel or aggregation, so to
speak, would then be able to derive additional income
and revenue by the government subsidizing some of the
services like HIV diagnosis or diabetes diagnosis.
Knowledge@Wharton: How many users do you have in
Africa? And what are some of the most popular apps?
Simon: We are really at the genesis of the process
because it takes quite a lot of time to weave this into the
infrastructure of the telco. The biggest [use for it and it’s]
in the early phases of this, is distance diagnosis. Rural
clinics might be able to key into a major center for their
patients using the mobile device. And then, of course, also
provide a data uplink.
Let me give you an example. A mother has a newborn, the
newborn is ill, she goes to see a community health worker.
The community health worker attends to this woman
and her baby and then puts the data into her own mobile
phone. The data then goes up into the cloud. That becomes
“What is a screenager? In today’s
world, people are looking at their
smartphone, their tablets, their PC,
their TV screen.... We are living in the
era of the screenager.”

36
the consultation with the community health worker —
that’s the record, it’s no longer paper, it’s all digital, it’s all
on mobile and immediately accessible.
Knowledge@Wharton: In which regions of Africa are you
most active at the moment? Where do you see the most
potential?
Simon: The region where we’ve started this is something
that is known as the Southern African [Development
Community.] This is South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe,
Namibia, Botswana [and other nations]. You have four or
five major telcos trying to do something there. We will use
that as the first step and gradually migrate that to East
Africa, West Africa and so forth.
Knowledge@Wharton: Which telco are you working with?
Simon: MTM.
Knowledge@Wharton: In trying to build your business in
Africa, what have been some of the biggest risks and how
did you deal with those risks?
Simon: The biggest risk was stepping forward and putting
in the investment and developing the platform in the
hope that one of the telcos would see it as being valid for
a new kind of health service they can provide to health
screenagers. It was taking a risk entrepreneurially, but
recognizing that there’s growth in what is now popularly
known as “personalized telemetry.”
People in America would be very familiar with Fitbit,
which is basically a measuring device on your wrist that
gives you a sense of your body movement, so to speak, or
body function. We recognize that more people will want
to take their health into their own hands. One of the most
important pieces of writing in this area is by probably the
leading medical expert in connected health in the U.S. —
Eric Topal. He has written an incredible book called The
Patient Will See You Now. Topal recognized the patient
is becoming much more proactive in his own health. He
says when a patient goes to see a doctor, the first thing the
doctor hears from the patient is, “Doctor, I’ve spoken to Dr.
Google and Dr. Google has said...”
Knowledge@Wharton: In addition to Africa, you’re also
active in other parts of the world, including the U.S. Can
you give me a sense of your other activities?
Simon: We’re involved in mobile entertainment and
mobile content. We have a mobile games company, which
is headquartered in Dublin, in Ireland. We are just about
to complete the making of a big mobile game, the first
game ever made on John Lennon, the former Beatle. Even
though Lennon has been dead for over 34 years, he has
16 million Facebook followers throughout the world. Also,
in the area of mobile content and entertainment, we’re
deeply involved in mobile Bollywood [Hindi cinema]. It’s
called www.bollywoodhungama.com. Bollywood produces
twice as many movies as Hollywood. There is massive
hunger and interest in Bollywood movies. And there are
the wider global Indian constituencies who love Bollywood.
We export our Bollywood content to about 45 countries
outside India.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where do you see yourself going
in the next few years?
Simon: I’m driven by what’s coming next and how
technology can help screenagers have easier lives. We are
trying to work out what might be an emerging technology
with mobile or mobile devices or connected devices that
might be beneficial to people [and help them lead] better
lives.
“I’m driven by what’s coming next and
how technology can help screenagers
have easier lives.”

37
‘Thinking Big’ About Investments in
Africa
Shose Sinare is the CEO and founder of Investment Capital
Group, a Tanzania-based company created by female
investment bankers and a lawyer.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about Investment Capital
Group.
Shose Sinare: Investment Capital [comprises] a group of
companies that was formed two years ago by investment
bankers and a lawyer. All of us were women. The focus was
to create a group that could take advantage of the “Africa
rising” story. We sell the growth areas of financial services,
real estate, infrastructure, agribusiness and the extractive
industries, because Africa is full of natural resources. We
asked ourselves: How can we be part of this Africa-rising
story and grow and build pan-African businesses at global
standards?
Our approach right from the beginning was very
disruptive, very different.
We approached our growth from a “think big” philosophy
and through a collaborative arrangement. In two years,
we’ve managed to grow and build eight businesses — four
of them in financial services. So we own two corporate
finance houses, a private equity firm together with a
company in South Africa called Musa Capital, and a
technology business with four cofounders. It’s in the
mobile space and sits above your bank portfolio, card
platform and the mobile platform. We’ve got various
products around that.
Knowledge@Wharton: That’s PayLink?
Sinare: Yes. I’d like to talk to you a little bit about that.
We also own the mining rights for gold south of Tanzania.
We’ve gone into a joint venture with a manufacturing
business in South Africa to serve the rail industries.
I’m sure you’re aware Africa has not spent much on
infrastructure and there’s a huge focus on rail to enable
trade between countries. So, in a nutshell, the Investment
Capital Group is a group of companies that brings together
all those people who are interested in Africa. We ensure
that we are part of that growth story, the business that
we grow. We bring projects to clients and clients bring
projects to us.
PayLink is a locally-founded technology business. It has
been created by four cofounders — two women and
two men. PayLink looks at digitalizing Africa, digitalizing
transactions. It can be from systems that enable pension
payments to automating things like municipality payments.
So it’s across a spectrum of possibilities because right now
Africa is a cash-based economy and we want to become a
digital economy.
What we also are very passionate about in PayLink is
understanding the community-based environment. We
created a product called the Vicoba mobile. Vicoba stands
for Village Community Bank. We discovered that in Africa
everything is done through groups, through societies,
through communities. These groups can range between 30
people to 100 people. They save in the groups, they have
kitties for insurance, for welfare and they lend within their
own groups.
We traveled from Dar es Salaam to 26 regions to try and
understand these groups from the rural areas to the urban
areas. What we discovered is that each group is quite
different. But each of them had commonalities. One, it was
a community-saving platform. Two, they saved for welfare
to be able to pay their children’s fees, to pay for deaths and
“Right now Africa is a cash-based
economy and we want to become a
digital economy.”

38
funerals within their communities, and to be able to lend
— to leverage off each other — so that they’re able to do
small businesses. We found that 80% of the groups were
women, based mostly in agriculture and small enterprises
at the bottom of the pyramid and that interested us. These
are entities that have no access to finance and no access
to formal banking yet they’re targets for theft within their
own groups, with treasurers running away with the money.
When we started to do a bit of research around these
groups, we thought: Now can we digitalize groups that
are quite diverse, very remote and have no access to the
Internet? How can we bring them into the formal banking
environment in an affordable manner? So we created a
mobile payment platform for them. It uses the basic Nokia
$10 phone because 95% of these groups had access
to only a feature phone. We used existing platforms of
M-Pesa. What is different between us and the direct
M-Pesa? Ours is community-based. We created shared
wallets within each group. Each group has a specific code.
They’re able to deposit for welfare, for insurance, able to
lend. We have replicated what they are doing naturally into
a digitalized space. They can utilize other services. They’re
able to pay for electricity.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us a little bit more about how
you came up with this idea.
Sinare: Initially we were looking at the Tanzanian space.
We found that there are seven million people in Tanzania
who are part of these groups. Then we said: “Wait a
minute. Seven million people. You have quite a sizable
amount of money around in physical cash. Wouldn’t it be
good to digitalize this and get that data?” Data becomes a
powerful tool that we can share with other stakeholders.
Then we said: “Wait a minute. Can we scale up?” Eighty
percent of sub-Saharan Africa is employed in informal
sectors. We’re talking about 800 million people.
Knowledge@Wharton: How is the informal sector
defined?
Sinare: Those that do not provide formal jobs. They could
be selling fish. They could buy and trade, literally doing
anything to make ends meet. They could be growing
bananas and selling them in the market. But they’re not
in any way in the formal arena and that’s the majority of
Africa. That’s the reality of Africa and I’m sure this is the
reality in a number of Asian countries as well.
Then we looked at the data and saw that they account for
55% of Africa’s GDP. We looked at the data again and saw
that only 34% of Africa’s population was banked, which
means a massive [number of people were] unbanked.
Then we looked at mobile technology and how Africa is
leapfrogging. We saw that 12% of mobile users in Africa
have mobile wallets vs. 2% in Europe. So how do we
align ourselves to what is happening from a technology
perspective in Africa to bring these excluded groups into
society while, obviously, making returns? This is a model
that is self-sustaining.
Knowledge@Wharton: You’ve talked about the potential
here for growth. Talk to us about the challenges.
Sinare: The biggest challenge is access to finance. I don’t
like to talk about access to finance because it’s the obvious
one. Money doesn’t solve everything. We are looking at
places like Silicon Valley (to raise money). But the biggest
challenge has been access to finance and access to
information, and access to where you can get partners that
have a similar interest.
Knowledge@Wharton: You’ve obviously had big success
in the past two years with this new company. You’ve grown
very quickly. What — your personal leadership, your
connections — has allowed you to get to this stage?
Sinare: I think foremost is my mentality. I think it’s more of
an attitude. I’m being bold. A lot of people, when they leave
employment, like to set up a small business and they do
consultancy. We wanted to think big. I know people don’t
like Donald Trump but we wanted to have this think-big
mentality and also a selfless mentality.
From the beginning, our approach was collaborative joint
ventures. We would not be where we are today if we did
not have the approach that there is more — it’s (thinking)
from an angle of surplus as opposed to an angle of deficit.
We’ve been able to get here by having the right partners.
We have certain values that we adhere to and we ensure
that the people that we partner with have the same values.
One of them is obviously the entrepreneurial spirit; we like
a positive mentality. The other one is our ethics. Another
value is giving back.
“We asked ourselves: How can we
be part of this Africa-rising story and
grow and build pan-African businesses
at global standards?”

39
Knowledge@Wharton: I know you’re really passionate
about connections — from a variety of angles with a lot of
partners. What can still be done?
Sinare: There are always opportunities to connect. Some
people would look at connecting from just a business
point of view. You know, I’m looking for a partner. Are you
coming? You are my partner. It’s a joint venture. No. Our
connectivity has to go through the spectrum.
So when you talk about partnerships, we look at it from
a different perspective. There’s the generic that the
Investment Capital Group does — which are joint ventures.
But there is a much deeper partnership. Part of it is
research. Part of it is how we can really learn from you? I
mean, if we say we want to be a global brand, we’ve got to
be close to global players. We look at partnerships from
the micro as well as from the macro perspective.

40
No Place Like Home: Pulling out of
Europe, Expanding to Neighboring
Countries in Africa
Othman Tazi is head of product and business development
at Richbond, a leading home products manufacturer in
Morocco.
Knowledge@Wharton: Richbond is a third generation,
family-owned company. For those who are not familiar with
Richbond, can you tell us a little about the company and its
operations?
Othman Tazi: Richbond was founded 50 years ago by my
grandfather, in the wake of the independence of Morocco.
It was originally a chemicals and plastics company and it
specialized in home products. After that, he founded a
company that also worked in home products, but more
with foam and mattresses. Since then, we’ve branched out
into a number of activities. Today, we are primarily a home
products manufacturer and we have a foothold in the agro
industry.
Knowledge@Wharton: How much of your business is in
Morocco and how much is outside?
Tazi: Today, everything is in Morocco. We have 2,500
employees. We made a brief foray into Europe, opening
a network of our own stores, selling Moroccan furniture
and especially Moroccan decorative products in France,
Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. But it wasn’t very
successful because of the economic crisis that has hit
Europe for the past maybe 15 years, on and off. So we
slowly franchised most of our activities there, decided
to refocus on our core Moroccan activities. And now,
we’re exploring — well, we’re more than exploring, we’re
preparing to enter Côte d’Ivoire and probably Kenya.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you tell me the thought
process that you went through in deciding how to go about
expanding into other parts of Africa?
Tazi: We and the rest of the Moroccan economy are
generally pointed at Europe because it’s such a large
economic unit. But the past few years haven’t been very
kind to Europe. So we had to look for growth elsewhere.
Africa has been offering very attractive rates of return to
any number of industries.
Knowledge@Wharton: What kind of returns?
Tazi: When we met the investment authority in Cote
d’Ivoire, I was pleasantly surprised to hear them almost
apologizing for only having achieved 8% growth in 2013 –
which, coming from a country that’s almost in a recession,
I found amusing. Granted, the base isn’t the same, but any
activity that can offer 8% growth is worth putting a few
seeds into and hoping that they yield something more
impressive later on. Likewise, East Africa has a number
of attractive characteristics. I am thinking of the general
rule of law, an investor-friendly state and business climate,
large markets in terms of population and a growing,
burgeoning middle class. So people who work with the
middle class and need a certain amount of protection for
their long-term investment would be more than welcome
in East Africa. That’s the feeling and the welcome that we
have had.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are there any other markets that
you are exploring in Africa as a way to grow throughout the
continent?
Tazi: Our conglomerate has a distinct business unit for
this that I don’t really work with. But sometimes, our
interests collide, in hotel furnishing [for example]. In
Morocco, we are the partner of choice for a leading hotel
group to entirely furnish their hotels, from the bedrooms
“The past few years haven’t been very
kind to Europe. So we had to look for
growth elsewhere.”

41
to the restaurants to the kitchens. We spun that activity
into a distinct business unit, and we’re looking to use
our expertise to enter other regions in the Middle East
and North Africa. I am thinking of Algeria, Tunisia and
Libya. We’re also relatively close by boat to Senegal and
Mauritania, and we’d like to try to work there. Otherwise,
no, most of our African focus is for the foam/mattress
activity and that’s in Western and Eastern Africa.
Knowledge@Wharton: When you look at entering some
of these markets, what sort of risks do you think that you
would face? And how do you plan to hedge those risks?
Tazi: Well, the first risk we face is that our technical
know-how might not be adapted to the local environment.
There’s always that transition period. You take your
assumptions that you’re used to in your home market and
you verify: Do they apply in the new target market? Most
of the assumptions, or a number of the assumptions, will be
incorrect and need tweaking. It’s important to make sure
that the initial wager isn’t so big that the entire adventure
is risky. There’s obviously country risk in some places in
West Africa, specifically where any government transition
is marked by a certain amount of uncertainty. We need
to plan for that — although, to be fair, for the past couple
of years, it hasn’t really been a problem in Cote d’Ivoire.
We’ve met a number of very large, multinational companies
who had no hesitation in undertaking large investments,
multiple-billion dollars in energy or whatnot. There is
always the risk that — I’m thinking of corporate governance
— if we are based in Casablanca, Morocco, are we going to
be able to manage the activities in another country from a
distance? Are we going to be able to find the right people
to manage it? If not, how are we going to manage both the
existing and the future activities?
Knowledge@Wharton: Have you thought about how you
will deal with those questions?
Tazi: A number of our colleagues are going to move to
Abidjan for at least two years. I, myself, am looking forward
to spending a few years in our various African activities.
We have always invested in IT because we believe that
it gives us a competitive advantage over competitors in
Morocco. I am confident that IT will allow us to manage
a certain number of critical aspects of our business, even
from Casablanca. That said, we’re still a family company….
So there’s a big transformative effort that we’re currently
undergoing. We’re undergoing it with external institutional
investors and external consultants. The family — every
generation, every member — has to question themselves:
Are we doing something that is sustainable, that can be
scaled and exported?
Knowledge@Wharton: One of the big challenges in family
businesses is succession. How is your family dealing with
this?
Tazi: We are lucky in that we realized this very early
on — between the first and the second generation.
When my grandfather and his two sons started working
together, there was no assumption that his sons would
have all the key posts; quite the contrary. They had
to confront high-quality, external competition for key
decision-making posts. Nonetheless, it was easier back
then when the total workforce was just a few hundred
people. Today, it is impossible for just the family to run the
company effectively. And we’ve already started: Most of
our corporate suite is external, professionally qualified
managers. Those who remain from the family are generally
either not in key positions or they are working their way
to a key position, but in transparent competition. And the
recruitment process is both internal and external.
Knowledge@Wharton: If you were to project forward
over the next five to 10 years, where do you expect your
expansion plans for Africa and the business overall will be?
Tazi: Geographically, they will be much more Africa-
centered. We will probably start to steer a bit away from
hard, heavy industry. As I said, we’re entering the agro
industry. We’re investing very heavily in our distribution in
Morocco. We’re looking for opportunities in other sectors;
I’m particularly thinking of real estate. So we will probably
be both sectorally and geographically distinct from what
we are today. And I’m hoping that Africa will represent a
significant part of our work.
“I am confident that IT will allow us to
manage a certain number of critical
aspects of our business [in other
markets], even from Casablanca.”

42
Women Engineers in Africa: Pushing Past
Old Roles
Hema Vallabh is co-founder of WomEng (Women in
Engineering) based in Johannesburg.
Knowledge@Wharton: I wonder if we could start by
talking a little bit about WomEng?
Hema Vallabh: WomEng is a social enterprise that is
pretty much focused on developing, retaining and getting
more female engineers. It’s no secret that engineering is a
very male-dominated sector. We work across the pipeline
from high school where we create awareness and provide
information to girls about choosing engineering as a career
and breaking the misperceptions. We’re living in a fast-
changing world where engineering isn’t what it was 30
years ago.
Our university-level program is a week-long technovation
and business app scheme. It’s a two-pronged approach.
It’s typically getting business-ready girl students who are
studying engineering at the tertiary level. It’s about the
skills that an academic education does not provide — soft
skills and beyond that. It includes learning how to make an
elevator pitch to entrepreneurial skills or intrapreneurial
skills once you go into industry. Again, it’s about the way
engineering is changing and the technovation side is a
technical component.
We’re really about moving with the need, especially when
the continent is growing. Everyone talks about Africa being
the land of opportunity — there’s so much happening here.
But what are we as engineers doing to contribute to this?
It’s just getting to be hands-on — African solutions by
Africans for Africans.
There are a lot of cultural influences at play on the
continent about the role of a woman, the role of the girl
child, education. So we focus on a lot of those issues
beyond just the technical side of it.
Knowledge@Wharton: What kind of special challenges
— especially social challenges — do girls face in Africa
that might stop them from making the mental leap to
engineering as an area of study or even an area where they
can make a career?
Vallabh: It’s a mindset shift not only in the girl child but in
the family, the community and society as a whole. It’s what
I said earlier and I’m, of course, generalizing.
But in the African context there’s a very specific place for
the girl child. We don’t bring up our girls to believe that
they should even finish school, far less pursue a tertiary
education. Why would you do that? What are girls going
to do? They get married, they have babies and they’re the
mothers of the community. So why would you want an
education? Why would you want to go and work?
That narrative needs to change and that’s a challenge we
see. It comes at different levels. The core is changing the
mindset of the girl child herself to believe she can; that’s
why mentorship and role modeling is so important. But
that doesn’t work in isolation. The second level is changing
the mindset of the parents. Again, in the African context,
many children have been raised by grandparents or they’re
orphaned. Why should education be a priority when the
village is starving? Or your brother has HIV-AIDS? Or you
are the oldest sibling and have to look after your younger
ones? Why is education a priority? So we need to start
showing them that it’s an enabler and the momentum. You
say: “Educate a woman, educate a village.”
That’s part of it. But we have to change the social
context where girls are told, “Don’t be smart. You won’t
find a husband.” So what do these girls do? They dumb
“We’re living in a fast-changing world
where engineering isn’t what it was 30
years ago.”

43
themselves down. They don’t dream. More important, they
are made to believe that finding a husband is the be all and
end all of life.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are there some regions in African
that are more open to engineering careers for girls?
Vallabh: There’s a difference between the rural areas and
the urban areas. By virtue of the fact that you’re in a city, it
means that your family has moved there with the hope of
progressing in some way. Those children are more exposed.
Knowledge@Wharton: If you were to look at a typical
engineering school in an African university, what
percentage of students there are girls at the moment? And
are the numbers changing?
Vallabh: It is changing but not fast enough. There’s a stat
that says in Africa the number of students leaving tertiary
with an engineering degree is around 10% and that’s
supposed to be high. In Malawi, it is about 3%, if not lower.
It’s not enough and it’s not changing.
Knowledge@Wharton: Engineering is such a broad field.
Are there some areas of engineering where you find you
can break through the glass ceiling faster?
Vallabh: Yes and no. In Kenya, which is the
telecommunications hub, there is a higher percentage of
girls going to telecom. Engineering is historically male-
dominated because it’s perceived as needing physical,
brute force. Telecom breaks that perception. So we see
more girls going there.
In South Africa, the popular choices are chemical
engineering and industrial engineering. Something like
industrial engineering is perceived as less physical and less
masculine. So it’s very much based on perceptions.
Knowledge@Wharton: If you want to make a mark in any
field, it helps to have role models. At WomEng, have you
identified African women engineers who can serve as role
models?
Vallabh: Mentorship for us is the key. It’s the goal that ties
the organization together. Mentorship is essentially role
modeling. It’s seeing a real, live engineer.
You have the big success stories but also everyday
engineers — our mothers, our aunts and our sisters.
It’s these women who are practicing on a daily basis as
engineers. They are probably married, have kids and are
living “a normal life.” These role models are more important
for me than the big success stories.
Knowledge@Wharton: Even in the U.S., which is
ostensibly more open to a wide range of careers for
women, there has been this issue of disparity between
what men are paid and what women are paid for the same
jobs. To what degree does this problem exist in Africa?
Vallabh: It’s a global issue. It’s not limited to engineering.
But, in Africa, we’re not brought up to talk about money.
It’s something that’s a very hush, hush subject. Add the
nuance of being a woman on top of that… We ask our HR
practitioners, “Well, how many women actually negotiate
their salary?” It’s a really low percentage because, one,
they don’t know how to; two, they don’t know that they’re
allowed to.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where do you see engineering
careers for women going in the future — the next three to
five years?
Vallabh: For me, the engineering industry is changing.
If you switch on the news today, what are the subjects
you hear about? Population growth, climate change,
food security — all these subjects are around people,
around community. My personal belief is that engineering
is moving from being about things — because I think
the industrial revolution was really around structures
and things — to being about people. And who is better
equipped to be a part of that journey than women?
“Engineering is historically male-
dominated because it’s perceived as
needing physical, brute force. Telecom
breaks that perception. So we see
more girls going there.”

44
Finding a Creative Solution to Poverty-
related Challenges
Jocelyn Wyatt is executive director and co-lead of IDEO.org,
a sister non-profit to the Palo Alto, Calif.-based design and
innovation firm IDEO.
Knowledge@Wharton: For most of our readers, IDEO is
a well-known brand. IDEO.org is probably also known. But
just give us a brief overview of what IDEO.org is and what
it does.
Jocelyn Wyatt: IDEO.org is a sister non-profit to the
design and innovation firm IDEO. We focus on applying
human-centered design to poverty-related challenges.
Human-centered design is a creative, problem-solving
approach where we start with deeply understanding
people’s wants and needs, come up with creative solutions
in order to serve those needs more effectively, prototype
and test them, and refine them after getting feedback.
Ultimately, we implement and scale up solutions that
improve people’s lives. The type of work we do at IDEO.org
include things like reproductive health for adolescent girls
who live across sub-Saharan Africa, to tools for smallholder
farmers, to financial opportunity solutions like mobile
money products.
Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned human-centered
design for poverty-related challenges. What is human-
centered design? What makes it a unique tool for poverty
alleviation?
Wyatt: Human-centered design is a creative problem-
solving approach. We do a lot of qualitative research,
spending time with [the poor] in their own context, in their
places of work, in their homes, working alongside them
… to find out what it is that they want and need and are
willing to pay for and what would really improve their lives.
From there, we synthesize those learnings and identify
different insights and opportunity areas. We brainstorm
a whole range of creative solutions and develop some
concepts, which we then create into prototypes to test out.
We then implement and scale up both throughout a given
geography and globally as well.
The way it improves lives is that the solutions we’re
creating — instead of being things that are immediately
discarded or not sustainable — are solutions that people
actually use. They are typically market-based solutions
that people are willing to pay for, solutions that people will
come back to and tell their friends about, solutions that
delight people and are beneficial to them, are affordable,
and are the right product or service to meet their needs.
So, we improve people’s lives by providing them access to
clean toilets or clean drinking water, with more effective
tools to farm their land, or give loans to one another or
that sort of thing.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give us an example? Just
walk us through what the problem issue was, how you
approached it and then what the end solution was.
Wyatt: Recently, we’ve been working with Marie Stopes
International (MSI) in Zambia and now in Kenya to tackle
the challenge of reproductive health. We focus specifically
on reproductive health for adolescent girls. Typically,
reproductive health programs have focused on mothers
and on birth-spacing and on women stopping having
children once they have had the number they want to. Very
little effort has been placed on working with adolescent,
unmarried girls who are not yet ready to have their first
child. We’ve been working with those adolescent girls
to make sure that when they do have their first child, it’s
really their choice as opposed to an accident that will cause
them to drop out of school and [make] their family fall into
a continued cycle of poverty.
“For us, remaining centered on our
mission of improving the lives of the
poor has been critical.”

45
Working with MSI, we designed a three-part solution.
The first was a communications campaign, an outreach
campaign. There was a brand called the Divine Divas.
The Divas were girls that were bringing different forms
of contraceptives — superheroes to the girls. The second
piece was a peer-to-peer outreach program so that peers
would be connecting with other girls and sharing with
them what they knew about contraceptives and directing
them to the clinics. The third level was the clinic experience
itself. We designed everything from the look of the actual
clinic — the physical building, the way that it was painted
and set up, and the signs outside it. Our work included
the ways that the nurses interacted with the girls, the
business model in terms of how the contraceptives would
be delivered and what the girls would be required to pay
for and the follow-up.
We were designing many different touchpoints and a
whole system related to reproductive health with the
intended outcome of reducing instances of unplanned
pregnancy.
Knowledge@Wharton: You have worked in other
countries in Africa. Part of human-centered design
is empathy, and your team is not full of Kenyans and
Zambians. You have people from all over the world
working on these projects. So talk to us a little bit about
understanding and uncovering the context of these
adolescent girls.
Wyatt: Our team is trained in empathy, in doing qualitative
research and in connecting with people regardless of how
different their backgrounds are. Part of the techniques
that people learn at IDEO.org is about how to connect,
how to relate, how to ask questions to people to make
them feel comfortable. The second thing we do is work
with local partners. In this case, we were working with
MSI’s teams in Zambia and Kenya who were Zambians
and Kenyans. They had the experience, and we equipped
them to do the design research as well. So they also are
doing interviews, gaining insights, bringing that back to us,
participating in the synthesis sessions and really acting as
partners on our design team. Combining with local people
who are from these cultural contexts allows us to gain that
deep insight.
Knowledge@Wharton: Part of IDEO.org’s mission is
to spread human-centered design throughout the social
sector. What’s going on there?
Wyatt: IDEO.org has introduced a series of tools under
the Design Kit umbrella. We have a web platform called
Design Kit. We have now two courses that we offer in
collaboration. +Acumen is more of an introduction to
human-centered design for social innovation. The other is
specifically a prototyping course. Then we have the field
guide to human-centered design, which is actually a sort
of how-to on human-centered design. This three-part
collection of learning tools has now reached about
125,000 people around the world. We’re finding that
there’s widespread awareness of human-centered design,
and people are starting to practice it themselves.
Knowledge@Wharton: I’m curious to know more about
your own leadership skills. You manage diverse teams
and you’re also working in different contexts. What do
you think are some key attributes that contribute to the
success of IDEO.org?
Wyatt: One of our cultural values is optimism and
always believing that there are solutions to these difficult
challenges. As a leader, I continue to practice being
optimistic and positive. I believe in the strengths of our
team members and the partner organizations with whom
we’re working and, most importantly, in the communities
that we’re working with. Curiosity is another piece, as
we are working on a whole range of different sectors
— from agriculture to water and sanitation, health,
financial opportunity, employment and early childhood
development.
What it requires is being able to jump in and learn about
different challenges, different geographies and different
sectors all of the time. Constantly being curious about the
world and about learning and excited about diving into new
topics is certainly another piece of that leadership.
Knowledge@Wharton: I’m curious to know more about
the intersection of your work with the private sector.
Wyatt: We work with both non-profits and for-profits.
I think that there’s a role for all of those different types
of organizations. Working with the private sector has
many rewards including the ability to quickly get to scale.
That said, there are challenges in terms of getting things
implemented and thinking about the lives of the poor. It’s
often too easy to assume that serving the middle-class
would be an easier way to get to profitability. For us,
remaining centered in our mission of improving the lives of
the poor has been critical.
“One of our cultural values is optimism
and always believing that there are
solutions to these difficult challenges.”

46
How a DRC Firm Is Tapping Local
Knowledge and Global Standards
Willy Yav is the co-founder and chief commercial officer of
PYGMA, a Pan-African communication, property, telecom
and policy consulting firm that works in more than 15 Sub-
Saharan African nations.
Knowledge@Wharton: What is the PYGMA Group?
Willy Yav: PYGMA is [an acronym for] five best friends.
Paul [Kasseyet] was educated in Canada and Belgium in
finance and came back to Congo. Yav is my family name.
I was a journalist, media guy, who grew up in the Congo. I
went to South Africa and [after going] through struggles
started working at the [South African Broadcasting
Corporation] — in radio first and then on television.
G [stands for Jean Pierre Sempabwa Gatarayiha, who] is
my best friend; he’s Rwandese. He’s an architect trained
in South Africa. M is Mandla [Msimang], because it was
becoming a bit of a man thing. She’s actually our best
friend. She’s a Canadian citizen. She specializes in utility
regulations. And Alain [Yav], my brother — marketer,
ex-Proctor & Gamble and Cadbury — has trained and
worked in South Africa.
We decided one day to do something together instead of
only hanging out and partying. We created a company with
our initials. We tried something which was to represent
Levi’s jeans. We sold to the Levi’s group the possibility of
bringing them to Nigeria. I went to Nigeria, researched it
and tried to come up with a model that could work.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why Nigeria?
Yav: It’s a big market and Congo was not as dynamic at
the time. Nigeria was where Congo is today. So I ended up
being there and doing my research. We came up with some
conclusions. There were fakes in the market — Wrangler,
sold by the Lebanese. There was no way we could bring
Levi’s into the market unless the company agreed to give
us the lower range [products] at special prices. They
didn’t accept, so we left it. Then we decided to do our own
business.
We started an advertising agency. Why? Because we had
no capital. We were all doing quite okay, but we were
employees. Not me. I was already in the private sector.
I owned a small television production company. I was
also doing some advisory work, introducing people to
Africa. That’s what I’ve always been doing. I have good
relationships with a lot of people in different African
countries. I have been in 30 different African countries in
the past 24 years.
Why DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo)? Because
that was a market. That was a low-hanging fruit. It’s our
country.
It took a year [for us] to become the biggest advertising
agency in the country. Coming from a low base, we
shouldn’t brag about it. That was normal. But we brought
in proper advertising. I had to convince my brother, who’s a
strategist marketer, to come in and do this.
We created advertising — the modern advertising worked
in the DRC. It was based on the fact that we believe in
skills. My brother would take local guys and train them. We
were investing in people, sending them for training. More
importantly, we were recruiting people from abroad, a lot
of them Congolese back from the diaspora.
It was a difficult model because as soon as the market
started catching up, these people became more important.
“We decided one day to do something
together instead of only hanging out
and partying. We created a company
with our initials.”

47
We’d get him for $2,500. You invest in him for two years.
And two years later he becomes so important to the
market that he wants $7,000. That you can’t absorb in your
model.
Knowledge@Wharton: Who were your clients and what
kind of campaigns did you do?
Yav: The biggest client we had during that time was Celtel.
That’s Zain today. That was a pan-African telecom group.
And we became their agency in the DRC. We also had
Heineken.
Alain, my brother, brought in Kris Luckraj, a South African
of Indian descent, as creative director. Alain fought with
us and said, “Guys we can’t have an advertising agency
without a creative director. It’s crazy, like having a
restaurant without a chef.”
So he brought in Kris who became our partner at 13% of
the advertising group. Kris was a genius. We used to call
him the guru. [He took a] Heineken … beer called Primus
from 30% of the market to 70% of the market in two and a
half years. They just killed the competition.
Knowledge@Wharton: How?
Yav: Strategy. Understanding what was happening on the
ground.
Knowledge@Wharton: What was the strategy?
Yav: The most important thing that came out of this was
that we discovered, and Alain said, this is the base of
marketing. Don’t change what works; don’t try to come up
with your own way of seeing things as the best way. Adapt
what the consumers like; just make it proper. Package it in
the best way possible. Really understand the real market.
Go from knowledge zero and look, learn. There are 70
million people there that have been living without you for
years.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has your business
transformed? How have you taken those lessons that
you’ve learned in advertising and marketing to other
sectors?
Yav: Our motto is local knowledge, global standards. It
took years, but we started trying a lot of different things.
Knowledge@Wharton: Give us some sense of the range
of your projects. How many employees do you have and
are they spread out in the DRC and South Africa and
elsewhere as well?
Yav: In South Africa, we only have eight consultants. It
used to be a bit more. But we’ve reduced because the
model has changed into making them associates, which
is easier. We had an office in Washington with a partner
helping us to channel business from America.
In advertising, it is around 200 people. But we’re going to
downsize because we’re changing our model. Advertising
is now very vibrant in the DRC; competition is high. We’re
moving towards production. We do big shows, we do a lot
of reality TV shows and things like that that are relevant.
Production quality is as good as on international TV. But it
is relevant to the people; it has to touch their soul.
Knowledge@Wharton: As someone who’s had as much
experience as you’ve had in business, what is it that you
would want readers — who don’t have experience in Africa,
but are interested in business in Africa — to understand
about Africa today and where things are going?
Yav: I guarantee you this continent will be different in the
next 10 years. Within the next 20 years, it’s going to be
dramatically different. Why? Because the Congo I went
to 13 years ago and the Congo today are two different
countries. I’m telling young Africans, open your eyes
without emotions and face the reality of the challenges.
That’s where the growth is. That’s where the opportunity is.
Knowledge@Wharton: So you’ve emphasized the
opportunity. What are the important challenges that
need to be overcome in the DRC, or you can pick other
countries?
Yav: In Africa, the challenge is the mentality of the old
guard. It’s not their fault. They came from colonization.
(But) even the worst president in Africa today thinks of
building roads. He didn’t have to before.
(I tell people,) you are younger, you’re an entrepreneur, you
wake up in the morning, look at the difficulties, look at your
abilities, be realistic, pick what you believe you can achieve
better. Fight for it. Believe in it. Work on it. Be honest
about the difficulties. Share it with other people.
Stop looking at little … borders. We don’t plan, at PYGMA,
with [borders or roadblocks in mind, but] we respect them
because they are a fact. But we plan knowing that they
won’t be there soon.
“The Congo I went to 13 years ago
and the Congo today are two different
countries.”

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
Special Report
The Entrepreneurs Spurring
Africa’s Rise
About Knowledge@Wharton
Knowledge@Wharton is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania. The site, which is free, captures relevant knowledge generated at
Wharton and beyond by offering articles and videos based on research, conferences, speakers,
books and interviews with faculty and other experts on current business topics. Knowledge@
Wharton offers content in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese and has a separate site for high school
educators and students.
For more information, please visit knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
About Wharton Social Impact
Wharton Social Impact Initiative leverages Wharton’s strengths to develop and promote business
strategies for a better world. Through research, consulting, hands-on training, and outreach, we are
advancing the science and practice of social impact.
socialimpact.wharton.upenn.edu
About The African Leadership Network
The African Leadership Network (ALN) is a community of the most dynamic and influential leaders
working to create change in Africa and our community aims to contribute towards Africa’s prosper-
ity by strengthening relationships between leaders to encourage collaboration.
africanleadershipnetwork.com

The Entrepreneurs Spurring Africa’s Rise

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