General

Last week, many people I came into contact with told me the coronavirus isn’t real. My mechanic, a guest at the office and a few more professed how they could never get the coronavirus. I even had meetings where some people just refused to wear a mask, or took it off once they entered.  I engaged a bit further. Some people think COVID-19 is as a result of some biological warfare, or is a biological weapon not intended for Africa. Real people think that. Then I had one man postulate that it might be the plan of the world pharmaceutical industry to sell vaccines. 5G towers causing the virus is quite popular so I got that too.  Some even asked me “where are the sick people”? You’re not seeing many sick people!” These disbeliefs are very disconcerting because COVID 19 is very easily transmitted and if a large number of people continue to believe it’s just “not for them”, that’s dangerous on many, many levels. Conspiracy theories are especially tempting during such a huge occurrence like COVID-19 because it helps to explain a lot that we can’t readily explain. Our brain has a function of trying to make sense of things and when there’s no upfront explanation, it has to bring something more easily graspable to the forefront. Proportionality Bias. Proportionality Bias is this tendency for us to assume that big events have big causes. It’s not a wild defect; it’s only natural. But critical and/or scientific thinking can help us out of this, especially because it’s so easy to be led astray. We need to have a healthy appreciation of how one small decimal point in 1000000.00 can change the meaning of the number entirely. Another problem is where the onus is on you to provide proof of facts to an overly cynical naysayer. I’m talking about the people that have impulse responses like “were you there yourself?”, “…so you’re saying nobody can fake this” and the like. Having to convince people like that of a worldwide threat can be a big mountain to climb. How do you even respond to “you don’t know, anything can be true”. Because they’re right, if you go by their logic. Because there might be some way to make pigs fly but as at today, the coronavirus is very, very, VERY real and the severity of the situation hasn’t changed much so do your best to wear your masks and observe social distancing protocols as much as you can. The virus is survivable. The world IS still spinning. It can take a considerable amount of time to sit with someone and debunk conspiracy theories. Most people just don’t do it. Restrictions have eased up since the pandemic began. Secondary Schools are open now in Ghana though with strict protocols in place. Elsewhere, the NBA is back again. But don’t be fooled into thinking that when you encounter someone with COVID-19, the virus is going to be like “oh my, the Champions League is back this week so let me take a break and go easy on you”. No it won’t! Precautions must be taken as seriously as when this started. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, obviously. They’re just harder to spot nowadays. In 1890, a newspaper claimed that electric light was responsible for the global influenza outbreak. It sounds crazy now, right? But people bought into that! We can find conspiracy theories scattered all over history. In the 14th Century, a conspiracy theory claimed that Jewish people were responsible for the Bubonic Plague. Also in 1918, rumours spread that German pharmaceutical company Bayer had tainted its Aspirin tablets headed for the US with the Spanish flu. All these might seem like conspiracy theories now but a lot of people bought into them at that time. It’s happening again with the coronavirus pandemic. A century from now they will call it totally absurd when they look back at us and hear some people say that masks harm their health in a time of a novel high-risk airborne contagion. What’s worse is that in 2020, technology has made it very easy to get the wrong information across, almost as easy as it is to get the right information across. The internet is live and accessible to billions who are free to publish lies and truth alike. With a good enough budget, you can make anything sound true. You can make anything look true. That is currently a problem with the coronavirus because there are so many theories out there that just aren’t true but look too good to overlook at first glance. Believing COVID-19 is overblown comes with a hefty price. There are many people in the hospital, at home, that are dying or in critical conditions because they did not take the virus seriously. I know people that have died from this virus. I know people that know people that have died from this virus. If you want me to confirm for you if it’s real, this is your confirmation: the virus is real and people are still getting it. Don’t be an avoidable statistic. I have also noticed social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube taking measures to reduce the ease of spread of conspiracy theories. But it’s not easy for them. The share volume and frequency of uploads make it harder to flag and tag false information. Also, when they do find false information, it complicates issues when the person’s freedom of speech and expression comes into play. And it can get messy very quickly with the risk of bad press. This leaves them doing something, but definitely not close to enough. What we need to do about it. It is has become clear to me that it is incumbent upon you, upon me, upon all decent and well-meaning people, whenever and wherever we find ourselves, to try and stop these theories and treat them with the needed scepticism before many more people believe them. Do it for yourself and your loved ones, if that thought helps motivates you. The coronavirus is no respecter of persons. You can’t

Never say never. This piece isn’t to persuade you to flat out put aside your efforts for external funding. The world is still spinning, albeit amidst a full-blown pandemic. But if ever there was a time to look internally for value first, this would be it. COVID-19 did not spare the investment and venture capital (VC) space. There is less interest in putting money out there and more risk averse behaviour towards spending of any kind. This is true all over the world. This coronavirus has not been fully figured out and most investors and VC’s would prefer to wait to see how things pan out before leaping back into the game. I’ve been reading on how COVID-19 has affected international  diplomacy. It hits me now that it’ll reduce the preferred face-to-face due diligence processes that most investors and VC’s like to undertake. When flying out is not the first choice, foreign investors will opt for local investment opportunities on their turf rather. Don’t even get me started on company valuations. I mean, who knows anymore. Multimillion corporations have been reduced to dust during this pandemic. Apropos that, who can tell what’s worth what within the startup space in a time like this. But it’s definitely not the end of the world, literally. So, in the current times and space where things are not looking so good, I believe what we’re saying is LOOK WITHIN. Enjoy the following article, written by Simon Turner, Project Operations Director at MEST Africa, and Marco Rovagnati, Founder of Poapoa. Have a lovely week! ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ All too often we see startups obsessing over funding, especially when they’ve only just started out. Funding is seen as a holy grail, the solution to all problems and too often considered the only measure of success. This is a common pitfall for entrepreneurs, all the way from Silicon Valley (USA) to Yabacon valley (Nigeria).  When it comes to the African continent, it’s not surprising that we have the tendency of putting capital on a pedestal, given the challenges that entrepreneurs face when accessing finance. As humans we crave what we can’t have, which is why we must beware of red herrings.  Funding will not solve all of your problems. In this article we are going to debunk some of the myths around funding, emphasize the importance of bootstrapping for the early growth of your business, and give you a set of guidelines to understand whether you are truly ready to raise capital and how to make sure your business is in the shape to do so.  Any advice on funding should be tailored to your stage of development and specific needs, but if we have to make a blanket statement it would probably be: bootstrap as long as you can and try to think of ‘revenue’ as your primary funding strategy. In other words, don’t raise money until your business is making money.  Obtaining funding does not guarantee success or prevent failure, and as soon as you acquire funding, you also have to manage other people’s interests and agendas. You become beholden to people who want to make their money back (at considerable multiples). Some cynics would argue that once you raise money you basically end up working for someone else, so why are you in business?  What are the values driving you? For example, if you are pursuing entrepreneurship because you seek freedom and flexibility then accessing institutional funding (e.g. from a VC), might not be for you as it will turn your dream of freedom into a full time job with targets and accountability.  If you are extremely ambitious and driven to build the next tech unicorn, you need to prove that your idea can work and generate cash (also known as MVP, Minimum Viable Product). To achieve this, you don’t need millions of dollars but a few thousands will take you great lengths.  So, how do you get your first cash injection? We often see successful entrepreneurs being their own source of funding (savings, double jobs etc) and when things start to look promising they then reach out to their immediate circle of what we like to call ‘friends, family & fools’. Remember that this is your journey, don’t compare yourself to others and scale at your own pace; you are in the driving seat and you should seek funding when you least need it. The more mature and successful your company is, the more attractive you’ll be to investors, and the better the deals you’ll get. Being desperate will almost certainly get you the raw end of the deal. Besides, chasing funding is a full-time role that requires a lot of preparation and leg work and a lot of knowledge. You’ll be expected to be an expert and know your business and market inside and out.  Thus, if you’re not careful, chasing the dollar can distract from your core business. This is true when you are raising equity and even more when it comes to grants.  A well-crafted grant application requires several days of work and a really good track record, therefore, do not apply to every grant that looks remotely relevant, but focus on your business and be laser focused with a putting together a few outstanding applications. As a rule of thumb, the best applications and funding sources will come from within your network, hence you should focus on nourishing your connections with the entrepreneurial ecosystem rather than applying blindly to all the grants out there. Losing focus is a key danger for any entrepreneur and should be avoided at all costs. Bootstrapping your business will help you build a strong MVP (minimum viable product) and define a clear value proposition to your company, meaning that your product is well defined, your team is strong, you have traction (sales), you know your industry and competition and you have your financial projections.  You also need to be absolutely clear about the type of (funding?) you want (such as debt, equity, grants) and how you’ll use it. There are many different sources too. We’ve come

Speaking of millions of millionaires, I am not tone-deaf to the billions of people currently suffering from the harsh economic effects of this pandemic. I am merely recognising the fact that I can almost confidently say that you reading this article right now is into some form of “business”, or at least you have seriously thought of it. Looking at the current times, who hasn’t?  This pandemic has transformed everyone into businesspeople. Selling at a slightly higher price than you buy is the simplest form of “business” that a lot of people are looking to do to make up for lost income. The technical word for that is TRADE. Everyone’s a trader now. From selling facemasks to peddling mansions at “giveaway prices”, everybody seems hot. There’s massive interest now in generating alternative income now. Even the well-educated and well-to-do are adopting the hustler’s attitude. That’s a great thing! It is the recognition of this fact, coupled with the pan-African side of me that lead me to say that if people come to understand the utility of an African Continental Free Trade Area, they will make millions of it! Of course, the complexities of setting up the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is largely understated if you go by what you’ll read in this article. All things get quickly complicated in the geopolitical landscape. AfCFTA presents the idea of creating an infrastructure to support intra-African trade and economic collaboration. This article is about the glorification of that idea, and will say nothing about the efficacy of its execution. So don’t shoot the messenger.  It’s really hard not to support the idea of being able to seamlessly trade next door as opposed to overseas. Initiatives like AfCFTA identify the need to promote entrepreneurial capitalism within Africa as an escape from suffering. If properly marketed and if information dissemination efforts prove effective, I can see how many Africans will transform into business tycoons, in time. Let’s take a look at China. China has become the country with the most number of millionaires, with 4.4 million millionaires. When I first read about this late last year, I wondered how a communist country can rake up such a statistic. If we will all admit, the word “communist” doesn’t readily ginger up sentiments of individual riches. But as the facts currently stand, 100 million Chinese citizens make up the top 10% of the richest people in the world. THINK ABOUT IT: even a communist country like China must release a big enough dose of capitalism to fuel their campaign of being a powerful world market economy. Supply and demand has always been simple to understand but without the supporting infrastructure, you end up having an Africa that has all the supply but she exports way too much out of the continent when the demand can be met within ourselves, evidenced by importing way too much as well. Take Salt for example. The Ghana Export Promotion Council (GEPC) once identified Salt as important for the diversification of Ghana’s economy. One of the biggest purchaser of Salt is our friend Nigeria. Nigeria imports almost all of its Salt from Brazil. Ghana and Senegal together produce about 350,000 tonnes of Salt annually, and can do much more. If you want an oversimplification of AfCFTA, then see it as the scenario where Ghana can sell this Salt to Nigeria with very little wahala from import tariffs and border issues. As the mantra suggests, it’s to create a One African Market. My work with Agricultural Commodities Trading has indeed highlighted the fact that there are many people in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and many other African countries that are operating with significant amounts of working capital but have very little grasp of basic concepts that are necessary for effective trading, like turnover and costing. But trading is how Africa thrives. Trading come naturally to us; it’s in our nature. Even without a strong grasp of the basic concepts aforementioned, millions of Africans continue to thrive doing business and possess skills that cannot be taught in classrooms. This is why it will not be enough for our leaders to have a political agreement and call it a win. Like earlier stated, nothing is simple in geopolitics. But to businessmen, life has to be straightforward and towards one goal: profit. With the current spike in the interest of people to become entrepreneurs, the size of our prospective “Private Sector” just ballooned. For AfCFTA to be a certified hit, the people of the private sector need to be actively engaged because their level of involvement would indicate the efficacy of the initiative. That is why it is important to have headlines like “How the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could create millions of African Millionaires.” I don’t think Ama the Instagram slayqueen is aware that the crochet top she’s pushing on Facebook to Ghanaians has 50 million potential customers in Nigeria that she can very easily sell to when AfCFTA is implemented. Public education on AfCFTA and support for the initiative is important. Granted, the mention of “open market” brings with it the usual concerns but these concerns with AfCFTA have been seen before. Towards the end of the 1980’s, when the European Commission needed to convince member states and their citizens to accept their Single Market Programme, it was not an easy task. There were some countries that were concerned about opening up their markets, not too unlike Nigeria’s brief hesitation to join AfCFTA. To curb the fears and concerns for the Single Market Programme, Researchers in Europe published in 1988 what would later become “The Cecchini Report”, a detailed research into the cost of “Non-Europe”, putting a value on what’s actually at stake. This Report opened the eyes of critics and became the foundation and intellectual debate for a united Europe in commerce, paving the way for the Single Market Program being implemented on January 1st, 1993. You can make the case of increased competition from open markets dampening the chances of local markets to thrive, but a