Do I think I deserve an award for that? Hell yeah! But I know I’m not getting one (or am I?). Well, almost all my life. I feel that I have the battle scars that allow me to speak authoritatively on behalf of entrepreneurs. There is a brief period when I took up the comfort of employment. It was rewarding in its own way and truth be told, I was allowed to express myself entrepreneurially even in that setup. I learned something important during that time. I understood that the biggest difference between an employee and an entrepreneur is that entrepreneurs are hardly ever comfortable. Not that they never make money or attain wealth, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that entrepreneurs rarely ever sit back, feel content and think they are done regardless of their successes or failures. They are often asking, “What’s next?”

Opportunity is next. You see, the answer to that question lies in the next opportunity. That’s what’s next.

Though it’s probably impossible to prove, I believe that less than 50% of the opportunities available to human beings are ever taken up. That’s a disappointing percentage, isn’t it? There are a myriad of reasons why opportunities are never utilised. There may be capital constraints, poor timing, bad location etc. However, in my view, the biggest reason is that we don’t even know that the opportunity is there. So many opportunities come by and pass without us ever seeing that they were there. The good thing about these is that they leave us with less regret but wouldn’t we stand a better chance if we knew they were there? How much better would we be if we were able to pick these opportunities up? So much better, I say.

We owe it to ourselves to develop our skills to be able to identify opportunities wherever they may present themselves. But how do we do that? How do we turn ourselves into efficient receptors for opportunities that we often miss? The first answer lies in the very essence of being an entrepreneur. Instinct. Before you ask, instinct is naturally contained in some people but it must be developed and can be learned. Like most things, if you don’t build on it, it dies and if you build on it, it grows. If you are asking what happens if you don’t have good instincts, let me break it down for you. If you are an entrepreneur and have set up a new business and it has survived more than 1000 days, then you’ve got it. Just build on it by putting it more to the test. See what your instincts tell you about a situation and act on it. The only way to hone in your instinct is through experience. I realised this in my own experience. Now, when a client approaches us, I can tell with 90% accuracy, which client will cost us time and money. That has saved us quite a bit of money. So now, we are quite selective about the clients we take up. Better not to earn money than to lose it, right?

The second answer came to me when I took a trip to Zimbabwe a few months back. Whilst there, I was driving a Japanese imported vehicle. I’m generally a creature of habit and when I’m there, I listen to the same radio station. For some odd reason, the radio in the car I had could only pick up 2 radio channels. None of which were my regular channel. The fact that I couldn’t listen to the channel didn’t mean that it wasn’t there. It simply meant that the frequency at which it was broadcasting isn’t the frequency at which I was listening. That’s often the same problem with us and opportunities. They are often broadcasting at frequencies that we aren’t listening at. For some of us, these are frequencies we aren’t able to listen at. There are various reasons for this. Sometimes we consume our minds with noise borne from disappointments, frustrations or a lack of focus or any of a million reasons. The opportunities simply come and go. We need to keep our minds open and aware so we are able to pick up the frequencies when we need to.

I know, I seem to be creating a maze but it gets clearer. Wait for it.

The best way to make your mind “opportunity ready” is to constantly and continuously feed your mind. Yep, you heard right, feed your mind. The process of feeding your mind is easier than many people would think. You do this by reading, listening and watching things that challenge your mind and developing a healthy curiosity about the things in the world around you. Make that brain work. That’s how you expand it. If you constantly feed your mind, you become a receptor for much more stimuli around you than before and you are more likely to see opportunity when it comes. What may seem like useless information becomes your next breakthrough because you have opened up your mind to it. You become more aware of it. Sometimes, it may simply be because you are more aware of coming trends because your mind is now in that space. And as your mind continues to expand, you become more pre-emptive of trends. Here’s where it gets more exciting. When you get here, not only do you start picking up more opportunities, you begin to create opportunities. This is a realisation that has profoundly changed my life and has made me more relevant.

If you think about it, this message isn’t just for entrepreneurs. It can be for anyone because the concepts are universally applicable. Like anything in this world, it’s not easy. You must invest in the time and resources that allow you to be better. Read a book (I know some of you haven’t since college), play a game of chess or even scrabble. The basic principles hold true. You must strive and you must seek. That is the only way that you will find.

“Do you know how to make a million dollars?”

My mind raced to a million places and my heart beat excitedly in anticipation. I expected that he perhaps had created a laser that could heal a disease we had never heard of or perhaps he devised a Nobel Prize worthy formula for the earth’s rotation. Before you condemn me as an overly excitable fellow, let me give you the context. This guy was an African Einstein. I can’t vouch for what went on in his head but he kept plenty of unkempt hair and a sporting mustache with a dusty lab coat completing the look. When you saw him he always looked like he was working out something. I always imagined that his head was like a projector beaming complicated calculus that only he could see. Clearly I can be forgiven for thinking that the look went together with some higher cognitive ability.

You can imagine my utter disappointment when he offered his answer,

“You plant a million cabbages and sell them at a dollar each.”

I was shattered. How could my Einstein be advocating for agriculture in this modern age. Short of prostitution, agriculture is as old as economic activity gets. Moreover, it’s as creative as shelf packing. A man who was meant to fill our minds with a desire to conquer the unknown wanted me to plant cabbages. Needless to say, now in my 30s, I am yet to forgive this man.

If you look at it closely it’s a very African way of thinking about economics and perhaps it’s the reason why our great continent is only advocating for beneficiation of natural resources 100 years after the West got to it. The example of my physics teacher illustrates just how conflicting our own thinking is. It’s the strangest oxymoron. The analogy basically gives us the understanding that we are in a position of knowledge. Being a part of the global economy, we know what we want. We know what we buy. We know that we would want more but we never venture out to search for that “more” ourselves. we even boast great education systems yet we seem afraid to encourage our young entrepreneurs to venture towards the unknown. instead, we tell them to plant cabbages. What we really should be doing is encouraging them to dream and make new things. We should be encouraging them to be a part of the creative economy.

It may be appropriate now to explain what I mean by the creative economy. The best definition I can think of is the set of socio-economic trade dealing in creativity, knowledge and information and the transformation of those into tangible problem solving economic entities and products. To even simplify it further, I see it as the ability to create something out of nothing or very little and the foresight to monetize it. Basically, to borrow the children’s game, to make a dollar out of 15 cents.

I’m sure the more perceptive of you have already realised that cabbages in my assessment go well beyond just cabbages or just agriculture but it illustrates the usual economy. Things that people have been known to do all along. It’s either you are a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and so on. Oddly, it seems that if you can’t give it a name, it doesn’t exist. That’s the quandary that I have faced my whole life and it has taken me 3 decades to find an answer. Maybe I needed therapy, who knows. You see, I became part of the creative economy against all odds. For a long time I felt like a misfit. I’m the sort of guy who doesn’t fit into any conventional mould and I never have. For instance, I played soccer as a wingback, even though I was slow (running wise, that is), I played rugby even though I wasn’t very big, I’m a whizz at commercial business and organizational development even though I write poetry and humanities have always come easy for me. That’s just a tip of the iceberg. Now you can imagine my misery when I was asked what I wanted to be. Everyone else wanted to be doctors, lawyers, accountants and I knew that wasn’t for me. I was expected to give a name of a profession which had no name. I then became smart about it. I made stuff up. Sometimes I wanted to be a painting poet, a supermodel (in my defense, I won a modeling competition when I was 13), then a race car driver and once, to the dismay of those around me, I wanted to plant cabbages. Not be a farmer. Just cabbages.

The psychologist in me will tell you that it was more a cry for help and the pursuit for definition more than anything else. Whatever funny example I used was to illustrate that I desired to create and even more than that, the cabbages quip was a desire to make that million dollars. I guess I spent so much time trying to define myself in a world that boxed you according to a name and where a name didn’t exist, I was lost. That for me is the saddest thing. How many young creative minds have we killed because we have convinced them that they belong to pocket and they should stay in their lane? I can literally see the brain cells committing suicide. So, because you are an accountant or engineer, you can’t like Hamlet or you can’t dream. Have you ever thought that the much revered Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. These things don’t fit together nowadays and it led me to realize that Africa could embrace a creative economy and build creative entrepreneurs just by understanding that the world need not stand on convention. People need not be pigeon-holed. We must encourage our entrepreneurs and children to open their minds and explore possibilities. Only then do we build more fulfilling enterprises and create new things for the world to admire and hopefully buy from us. In case you are wondering, I have now found my definition. If someone asks me what I do, I simply tell them that I create value.

The problem from a macro economic level goes much deeper than just our thinking. We can’t ignore the role that policies and institutions play. I believe that our governments should have an unwritten contract with their citizens. Governments should say that if you create something viable and new, and it works, we will help you protect it and we will ensure that you will earn handsomely from it. This understanding is often created by enabling policies and institutions that support people who are bold enough to venture outside conventional comfort zones. Unfortunately in Africa, God giveth and the government taketh away. As an example, about 20 years ago, in a Southern African country far far away, a 15 year old student made a working rifle for a science fair. He was told that what he had done was dangerous and illegal and he must never do it again. He now works for a top arms company in the United States. In another incident, an engineer made a helicopter at home. He was told that if that contraption rose 10cm from the ground, he would be arrested. Now he consults for an aircraft company in Germany. Yet in another African country, a 17 year old boy made a radio using card board, wood, wires and Coca Cola bottle tops. He is now a lab technician in an underfunded hospital. Allow me a moment to wipe the tears from my eyes. It’s hard to understand why we stifle progress and creativity. The oddest thing is that we actively and vigorously stifle this creativity. Why we threaten those who create yet we have policies and institutions to support traders, cabbage planters and people who dig up stuff. Can we not understand that by embracing creativity we can be so much more? Creativity is an equalizer in that a single idea can leapfrog a business or an economy 20 or 30 years ahead.

We are happy to tinker on Facebook or Google but we don’t stop to think that not so long ago these were ideas that may not even have seemed plausible. They were created by the crazy imagination of people not so different from you and I. Knowing some of our governments as we do, had the concepts of Facebook and Google been mooted on this continent, they would never have seen the light of day. I can imagine how many privacy laws they would have broken and heck, if the government felt adequately threatened, jail time may have been the end result. But it shouldn’t be the case, let’s learn from the examples we have and encourage ourselves to become so much more.

I wrote this piece to encourage and in support of the misfit which I firmly believe I am too. Against the odds of alienating nomenclature where we belong nowhere because where our minds take us has no name and against economic circumstances that work against you, we have stories of victory. Yet we need more of those. We need to harness the potential of creative economies because there we can begin to compete with the advanced world instantly. We can create creative economies because that is the way of the 21st century and we ought to be modern people. We must open our minds to new things and new possibilities. To boldly go, where no man has gone before (I had to). So forget cabbages and forget labels. Let’s open our minds to creating something out of nothing or out of very little. Or at the very least, if we can’t live it ourselves, lets have the mental fortitude to encourage those coming after us to make a dollar out of 15 cents.

Do I think I deserve an award for that? Hell yeah! But I know I’m not getting one (or am I?). Well, almost all my life. I feel that I have the battle scars that allow me to speak authoritatively on behalf of entrepreneurs. There is a brief period when I took up the comfort of employment. It was rewarding in its own way and truth be told, I was allowed to express myself entrepreneurially even in that setup. I learned something important during that time. I understood that the biggest difference between an employee and an entrepreneur is that entrepreneurs are hardly ever comfortable. Not that they never make money or attain wealth, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that entrepreneurs rarely ever sit back, feel content and think they are done regardless of their successes or failures. They are often asking, “What’s next?”

Opportunity is next. You see, the answer to that question lies in the next opportunity. That’s what’s next.

Though it’s probably impossible to prove, I believe that less than 50% of the opportunities available to human beings are ever taken up. That’s a disappointing percentage, isn’t it? There are a myriad of reasons why opportunities are never utilised. There may be capital constraints, poor timing, bad location etc. However, in my view, the biggest reason is that we don’t even know that the opportunity is there. So many opportunities come by and pass without us ever seeing that they were there. The good thing about these is that they leave us with less regret but wouldn’t we stand a better chance if we knew they were there? How much better would we be if we were able to pick these opportunities up? So much better, I say.

We owe it to ourselves to develop our skills to be able to identify opportunities wherever they may present themselves. But how do we do that? How do we turn ourselves into efficient receptors for opportunities that we often miss? The first answer lies in the very essence of being an entrepreneur. Instinct. Before you ask, instinct is naturally contained in some people but it must be developed and can be learned. Like most things, if you don’t build on it, it dies and if you build on it, it grows. If you are asking what happens if you don’t have good instincts, let me break it down for you. If you are an entrepreneur and have set up a new business and it has survived more than 1000 days, then you’ve got it. Just build on it by putting it more to the test. See what your instincts tell you about a situation and act on it. The only way to hone in your instinct is through experience. I realised this in my own experience. Now, when a client approaches us, I can tell with 90% accuracy, which client will cost us time and money. That has saved us quite a bit of money. So now, we are quite selective about the clients we take up. Better not to earn money than to lose it, right?

The second answer came to me when I took a trip to Zimbabwe a few months back. Whilst there, I was driving a Japanese imported vehicle. I’m generally a creature of habit and when I’m there, I listen to the same radio station. For some odd reason, the radio in the car I had could only pick up 2 radio channels. None of which were my regular channel. The fact that I couldn’t listen to the channel didn’t mean that it wasn’t there. It simply meant that the frequency at which it was broadcasting isn’t the frequency at which I was listening. That’s often the same problem with us and opportunities. They are often broadcasting at frequencies that we aren’t listening at. For some of us, these are frequencies we aren’t able to listen at. There are various reasons for this. Sometimes we consume our minds with noise borne from disappointments, frustrations or a lack of focus or any of a million reasons. The opportunities simply come and go. We need to keep our minds open and aware so we are able to pick up the frequencies when we need to.

I know, I seem to be creating a maze but it gets clearer. Wait for it.

The best way to make your mind “opportunity ready” is to constantly and continuously feed your mind. Yep, you heard right, feed your mind. The process of feeding your mind is easier than many people would think. You do this by reading, listening and watching things that challenge your mind and developing a healthy curiosity about the things in the world around you. Make that brain work. That’s how you expand it. If you constantly feed your mind, you become a receptor for much more stimuli around you than before and you are more likely to see opportunity when it comes. What may seem like useless information becomes your next breakthrough because you have opened up your mind to it. You become more aware of it. Sometimes, it may simply be because you are more aware of coming trends because your mind is now in that space. And as your mind continues to expand, you become more pre-emptive of trends. Here’s where it gets more exciting. When you get here, not only do you start picking up more opportunities, you begin to create opportunities. This is a realisation that has profoundly changed my life and has made me more relevant.

If you think about it, this message isn’t just for entrepreneurs. It can be for anyone because the concepts are universally applicable. Like anything in this world, it’s not easy. You must invest in the time and resources that allow you to be better. Read a book (I know some of you haven’t since college), play a game of chess or even scrabble. The basic principles hold true. You must strive and you must seek. That is the only way that you will find.

I’ve asked many people that question and I have received as many answers as there are grains of sand on a beach. When you ask people what the object of life is, you will get a panoply of interesting and creative answers. The religious will speak of the tenets of their religious dogma and how that defines their purpose on this earth. The goal oriented will speak about the need to attain set targets and the romantics will bring tears to your eyes and joy to your heart speaking about love and the beauty of the rising sun (or some such). I don’t necessarily disagree with any of these or a myriad of others who I have not mentioned; however, I believe that they are overthinking things. Let me explain why. I agree wholeheartedly that our lives have a purpose. If you don’t think so, it may save you time to close this page. I believe that we can’t just be here to float around, breathe air and excrete waste until we die. Our purposes as different people on this earth may not be the same but we are all drawing from the same motivational reserve to be able to attain targets that lead us towards our goal. Therefore, the honest reality is that the object of life is to win.

Yes, to win.

Before you condemn my thinking as capitalist propaganda, hear me out. If you believe that your purpose is to help others by alleviating poverty, as an example, then if you are able to do that and help people around you, you have won. If your purpose is to make a billion dollars, once you attain that, you have won. If you believe you are here to find love and enjoy it then by attaining that, you have won. Therefore, the reality is that everything we aim for, dream or desire, whether it is for us or for others constitutes a win once attained. If we commit to it and search for it then, it follows that the reality is that we seek to win every single day of our lives. The basic reality is that human beings are goal oriented creatures and by understanding that, we are able to motivate ourselves so much more and so much better because it’s always easier to run a race with a goal in sight. That is why people spend countless hours trying to learn how to set goals and drive towards them.

It is important to understand that human beings are not one dimensional. Very few things in life ever are. So, you don’t live in this life with one goal or one target for your entire existence. It would really be sad if people did because it would mean that if you fail (and failure does happen) then you may as well hang yourself on the nearest tree. The reality is that we have so many different things that we wish to attain, some big and some small. You could be a husband /.wife, a parent, an amateur sportsperson, a writer and a business executive all at the same time. Therefore, you want to grow your marriage, improve in your sport of choice, publish articles, provide for your children and make money all at the same time. The is no known limit to the things we can strive for. That’s because if there’s one thing that God gave us in abundance, it’s potential. What we do with it is another matter.

The two ideas that we have introduced bring us to the win principle. We have understood that human beings desire to win, that is the object of life and at the same time, we desire to win on numerous fronts simultaneously. It goes without saying that with this multi-dimensional approach to life, not everything can go smoothly at the same time. At times one thing will go wrong or at times everything goes wrong and we stop seeing our targets in sight. That’s just the way it is. Expect it and anticipate it. In order to get the right drive to surge forward in our goals and secure those wins, we must be motivated. Motivation is really the desire to go on. It says to you, regardless of what’s on the ground, “Let’s go!” To be able to meet our targets and do the great things we would like to do, we must really keep our motivation levels up. The win principle is all about motivation.

I have realised in my numerous personal and entrepreneurial battles that things can go very bad. And often, when you are juggling several things at the same time, one of them going wrong can throw a spanner in the works. That’s why you often hear that when people are having challenges in their relationships, their work also suffers. That is because the negativity of the area of your life that’s going wrong often carries itself into other areas of your life. It’s really a play on your motivation. A cocktail of losses demotivates and leads one to believe that there are losses in other areas of their lives. That assertion is often just an impression and often not the prevailing reality but by lacking motivation, your actions then drive the rest of the areas of your life into a nose dive. Therefore, a single real loss can create a domino effect by inspiring perceived losses which inform our actions and then create more real losses.

All is not lost though, (tuck away your hangman’s noose), the same is applicable to the reverse and positive side of life. In exactly the same way that losses demotivate, wins can motivate. A win in one part of your life can lead to a scenario where you believe that you can do anything. You begin to believe in yourself and you take on more and hence achieve more. Thus, a real win, creates a number of perceived wins which often lead to winning actions which inspire more wins in your life. Therefore, the pursuit of wins motivates.

It gets even better. One of the most interesting things that I have realised is that is that you can turn around a series of losses by attaining a single win. The power of a win often trumps the power that losses have over you. That’s because of how human beings are wired. We are naturally positive and aspirational creatures and therefore we embrace wins in a big way. It’s that same aspiration and positivity that allowed our ancestors to create fire when they were cold when it was so much easier to curl and die. It’s that same aspiration and positivity which has seen us continuously and consistently turn problems into solutions and that has become the bedrock of human innovation.

More interestingly, you don’t need to secure a win in the area in which you need it most or in the area where you are facing loss to be motivated. Allow me to explain. There was a point in my life when I was dabbling in a number of businesses and at the same time working on my fitness and health. Things in business were going badly and needless to say, my motivation levels were low. However, when I ran my first 5km run, I felt like I was on top of the world and I could do anything. I took that positivity and enthusiasm into business and that was our turning point.

Therefore, the win principle simply says that motivation is derived from wins and the wins needed to motivate a person or people do not necessarily need to be related to the area of loss. They simply need to be present and realised.

The last part is absolutely critical. You need to see a win as a win for it to motivate you. If you don’t, then it’s like it’s not there. Awareness of where you are, what you need and what you have is absolutely critical. Therefore, to bring it to a more practical level, when you see things taking a wrong turn in any part of your life and sometimes you can’t find a solution to a nagging problem, take the time to craft a win. We often know where it’s easiest to find that win. Go there and get that win, you will often find that you will create a reservoir of motivation and enthusiasm which often drives your turnaround.

The object of life is to win.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream.

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I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents.

I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore 

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

Who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions!

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream;

Hope you are doing well ?

Today, i remembered our discussion about 15 years ago on what the future held for you in the corporate.  I remembered how excited you were to get your first job, straight out of school as an engineer. I remembered how eager you were to put in all your best to see every assignment to completion 

Along the way Thelma, there has been successes and failures, joy and anger, laughter and crying, anxiety and hope, confusion and certitude , it has been one hell of a ride, but most importantly the lessons at each stage has been well worth it.

Each stage, has prepared me for the next, and that keeps me hopeful and excited for the next 15 years. But now that i am here, i wanted you to know a few things i picked up along the way

1. The hurdles you will encounter at each stage will prepare you for the next, be sure to focus on the lessons because in hindsight all hurdles become puddles.
2. Fear cripples your ability to be creative and reduces your thinking capacity, fear nothing but strive to understand as much as you can.
3. The road upwards will be an undulating one, but as Mr Amankwah (physics teacher in high school) always said, “Water always finds its level”. Keep calm and trust the process my dear Thelma.
4. Get yourself some good mentors as early as possible  to help you on the journey. Don’t be shy to reach out to the ones you admire, they are more than willing to help and see you succeed.
5. Know when to speak and when to keep quiet.(
6. It may seem impossible, but be prepared at all times, so you can avoid unnecessary pressure which will impact your delivery.
7. Learn a new language once a while, you will need it.
8. Learn to compartmentalize your various roles as an employee, entrepreneur, wife, mother, daughter,sister, friend etc and you will be good.
9. You will encounter unconscious biases almost everywhere you go, the world doesn’t revolve around you , so get up , fix your crown and always remember who you are.
10. Remember as you receive support from mentors, reach out to others who may need your support as well.

Happy women’s day my dear, the journey is getting exciting each time.

I look forward to the next 15 years and to write you another letter, until then find a focus and keep doing you.

Regards

Older Thelma

Some advances made in mobile technology, education, the start-up ecosystems and health has helped to generate a new narrative for Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the fastest mobile phone penetration growth of any region in the world and its 420 million mobile subscribers is expected to grow to more than a half a billion by 2020 (GSMA)

High School enrolment across the continent rose from 25% of eligible children in 1999 to 41% by 2012, as education programs were expanded and school fees were scrapped. (UNESCO)

The start-up and innovation landscape have evolved rapidly with the youth at the forefront. VC funding in Africa has grown from $277 million in 2015 to $560 million in 2017.Among most of the solutions has been fintech, transport and logistics, health care,etc. (Partech Ventures)

Intensifying interventions helped reduce malaria incidences by 21%, and malaria mortality rates by 31% between 2010 and 2015 (WHO)

Towards a digital transformation -Connectivity

There is an urgent need to speed up the rate of transformation across the continent and to achieve this target, there is the need to systematically design a roadmap that will catapult Africa into the single digital market as envisioned by the Smart Africa Alliance.

In this article, I will deliberate on Connectivity as one of the basic building blocks for the transformation.

The internet penetration rate for Africa stood at 35.4% whiles the rest of the world averaged 54.4% at the end of 2017.Among the top reasons for the low rate of penetration are Lack of affordability, lack of access, lack of relevant content and skills etc.

As the broadband market becomes matured, the rate of penetration slows down due to the fact that the service providers, – which in the case of Africa are majorly mobile network operators- continue to use the traditional business models with a limited time for the Returns-On-Investments and focus on commercially viable demographics.

There exists a certain demographic base of the population who do not make the mark, in terms of being commercially viable from the supply and demand sides of the coin.This population may not have the purchasing power as well as a high cost involved in delivering the service to the locations due to the relative distances.

Perhaps, it is time to change the traditional business model for the service providers and add the intangible or non-direct benefits such as job creation, improved quality of life, access to information, increased literacy levels etc. Research to establish the relationship between various ICT products including broadband connectivity and GDP – Gross Domestic Product of a country shows that for every 10-percentage increment in broadband penetration, a developing country’s GDP grew approximately 1.4%.

How about quantifying the efficiency and increased market reach of being online for the Small and Medium Enterprises who hitherto had no access  for their products and services thus, making this an intangible benefit in our efforts to increase entrepreneurship to curb the woes of unemployment?

How about quantifying the impact of lives saved through telemedicine for people who hitherto would not have had access and had to die because they had to have the financial muscle to travel to where the right service is?

How about quantifying the impact and increased productivity for the child who had little or no access to education, but thanks to the service provider’s connectivity, the child has access via e-learning?

The above impact may not be achieved within the traditional Return-On-Investment period for the Mobile Network Operators but some more years down the line, the impact will reflect on Gross Domestic product of the country of implementation.

This calls for deliberations between law and Policy makers, regulators, the Internet service providers, passive infrastructure providers, sub marine cable providers on how to find the right equilibrium, in terms of declaration of returns, taxation modalities and investments required to connect the un-bankable unconnected.

With knowledge of already existing efforts by the various Regional Economic Communities and some Pan -African institutions, it is time the private sector is given a place at the table where policies,regulations and other strategies are being created for digital transformation of Africa.

The operationalization of the African Continental free trade Area (AfCFTA) makes for a good case study for this agenda.

Currently,Africa’s intra-regional trade lies well below that of other regions. In 2017, intra-African exports made up 16.6% of total exports, compared to 68.1%, 59.4% and 55.0% for intra-Europe, Intra-Asia and intra-America exports, respectively[1]. The figures for imports are similar. In addition, digital markets are largely national and do not benefit from the scale of the continent.

Post implementation of the ACFTA, the continent is expected to increase the intra-African trade by 52% by 2022 and an estimated $3.6mn in welfare gains.

The major contributing factor for the success of ACFTA will be how we invest,adapt and use technology like broadband connectivity, e-commerce, integrated payment systems, integrated digital identity system, drone services, Big data technology, Artificial Intelligence etc as enablers.

As for the the services and products, Imagine the impact on your business, when suddenly opened up to 1.2bn people! Are you adequately prepared for this opportunity?

We need to get ready for this opportunity in terms of digital skills and general human capacity upgrade, deployment of e-services , improve our ability to quickly scale up for demand , redefine the way of work along the business value chain, be culturally aware as Africa is diverse, set up policies to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, and be hungry enough to make it happen among other elements.

It is for the reason of timely achievement of the above requirements that i think the time is now to have the private sector make inputs to policies and regulations and allow them to lead in implementation, whiles government and Policy makers guide to ensure every stakeholder is in line with the vision of the various Sovereignties.

[1]https://unctad.org/en/pages/PressRelease.aspx?OriginalVersionID=520

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream.

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I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents.

I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

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When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

Who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions!

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream;