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4th Annual
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90 YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS ACROSS THREE SECCTORS

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T 9,300 | Uganda UGX 15,100
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4
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FORBES AFRICA

CONTENTS – JUNE 2018 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 5

48
6 | Editor’s Note // Methil Renuka
10 | Brief 360

FOCUS
| ‘THE DAVOS OF AFRICA
48 The inaugural Africa Investment Forum in
November in Gauteng aims to accelerate
Africa’s development and close the annual
$67 billion to $107 billion investment deicit.
BY KAREN MWENDERA AND METHIL RENUKA

| SOWETO BURNING
52
66 On June 16, it’ll be 42 years since South African
policemen gunned down scores of schoolchildren
in the ‘Soweto Uprising’. It was a day that shocked
the world and will be forever seared into the mind of
83-year-old journalist Enoch Gama.
BY CHRIS BISHOP

INTERVIEW
| ‘WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IS UNDER
56 ATTACK GLOBALLY’
We caught up with former Malawian President
Joyce Banda in Johannesburg just before her return
to Malawi after four years away. One of four female
presidents Africa has had, she spoke about her
plans but is guarded about her return to politics.

ENTREPRENEURS
| GETTING THE WORLD MOOVN
66 Tanzanian-born Godwin Gabriel has a non-tech
background but is challenging the Ubers of the
world with a ride-sharing app of his own.
BY PEACE HYDE

| A FORTUNE IN THEIR BACKYARDS

74 The two 21-year-olds dove into business after high
school in Zimbabwe, turning bananas into a low-
cost alternative to wheat flour.
BY KAREN MWENDERA

Cover image by Motlabana Monnakgotla

2 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

 FORBES AFRICA

CONTENTS – JUNE 2018 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 5

Pg14
COVER STORY
UNDER 30
BY ANCILLAR MANGENA

TRAVEL
| STEPHEN SAAD’S
80 VENEZUELA
The South Africa-based
Chief Executive of Aspen
Group describes his
business trip to Caracas
in Venezuela as going to
a war zone. Yet, it’s one
of his most vivid travel
memories.
BY SAMANTHA STEELE

SPORT
| MORE OLYMPIANS
92 IN SOUTH AFRICAN
Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla

POOLS
South African swimming
sensation Chad le Clos
still has plenty he wants
to achieve in the pool, but
tells FORBES AFRICA he
has also recently embarked
on a project he hopes will
create a new generation of
Olympic gold medallists.
BY NICK SAID
FORBES AFRICA

CONTENTS – JUNE 2018 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 5

Pg70
CONTENTS – JUNE 2018

YOUR WHISKEY CAN

TAKE YOU FAR
Whiskey aficionado Saverio Cardillo
on South Africa’s top tipple, and
why it may be wise to invest in a
few bottles.
BY MELITTA NGALONKULU

Now you can enjoy reading FORBES AFRICA at:

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4 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

FORBES AFRICA
EDITOR’S NOTE
THE INSTAKIDS
ON THE BLOCK
‘I
f you can’t
beat ’em, join
’em,” I surrep-
titiously tell
myself every morning,
walking into work, and
greeting the talented young
team of African journalists
and designers at FORBES
AFRICA, all of who are
under 30.
More than a decade older than them, I find it a mission
keeping up with their talkathons – millennial minds run faster
than Intel Processors. Every day provides new insight into
their plugged-in world – the latest winter parka on the market
that Pinterest didn’t have on this morning, who Gigi Hadid
was out with the night before on Instagram, why Bantu Knots
are the fashion craze I must try, and why they trump tradition
and think technology will one day save the world.
A world where apps equal aptitude, and even the fourth
industrial revolution is passé. “Haven’t you heard, we are
already talking the fifth industrial revolution,” they chuckle
behind my back, a curt cue to look it up, among other uber-
cool things I may have missed in my newsfeed that morning.
Yet, it is this talented, talkative cast of characters I work
with every day that I thank for every issue we put out of
FORBES AFRICA and FORBES WOMAN AFRICA. Their
tech-savviness is a prerequisite for any magazine in a new
digital world.
And this one, our June edition with the ‘Under 30s’, is spe-
cial this year as this is the first time we have tried a gatefold
cover.
For weeks, Africa’s brazen young achievers dominated our
impromptu debates by the desk, as the team headed by Ancil-
lar Mangena pored over at least 600 profiles and pictures,
finally agreeing on the 30 in each of the three categories.
Views expressed by commentators in this publication are not necessarily those held by FORBES AFRICA or its members of staf. All facts printed
in FORBES AFRICA were confirmed as being correct at the time the magazine went to print.
6 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
I believe the list is but a subset of the greater population
of bright young entrepreneurs shaking up industries across
Africa. For each person on the list, there may be multiple
others operating in the same sectors that we have not heard
of – as yet.
But that is why we need to make a start, as those stories will
unravel too, and we will continue writing about young talent,
detailing their trajectories, their individual tales of resilience cre-
ating businesses and jobs for other young people; for over 40% of
Africa’s working age population is between the ages of 15 and 24.
The ‘youth dividend’ and the ‘youth bulge’ may have become
fashionable rhetoric at summits on business and politics, but the
need is to continue to attract and nurture them.
As the savvy African Development Bank President, Akinwumi
Adesina, said to us recently, every university in Africa should
include entrepreneurship as a subject.
And thankfully, as we found, this is also a generation more so-
cially-conscious: they put money and meaning on the same weigh-
ing scale, believing in the dictum of doing well by doing good.
So as a member of Generation X, I salute the Generations
Y (millennials) and Z that have come after me, and can’t but
imagine what Generation Alpha (the children of the millennials)
– reportedly already a sizeable consumer market – will be like.
Photo by Motlhabana Monnakgotla
METHIL RENUKA, EDITOR
letters@abn360.com
www.forbesafrica.com
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8 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

African Trade Policy Centre
 BRIEF 360
CEOs ON THE COLD
PRISON FLOOR A ROYAL TOUR: WHEN THE
Events honoring Nelson Mandela’s centenary year PRESIDENT TURNED GUIDE
continue to unfold in South Africa, and the former
president’s birthday month in July will see a slew of American travel journalist Peter Greenberg’s film, Rwanda:
them. The Royal Tour, the fourth in his The Royal Tour series of
One of the first in the series will be on July 11, with documentaries, was released on national television in
the Nelson Mandela CEO SleepOut-Liliesleaf Edition Rwanda in April.
hosting 200 CEOs as they spend a cold winter’s night Premiering on American public broadcaster PBS, it
at the iconic Liliesleaf Farm and Museum in Rivonia, was shot during a one-week exploration of ‘the land of a
Johannesburg. An auction is expected to be held for thousand hills’ as Rwanda is known.
Mandela’s outside bedroom at Liliesleaf where he spent The hour-long film depicts the new Rwanda that rose
hours writing, reading and reflecting. from the ashes of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
A week later, on his birthday, business leaders and celebs In the film, Greenberg’s tour guide is none other than
are set to spend a night on Robben Island, inside the President Paul Kagame himself, who shows him around
maximum-security prison and courtyard where Mandela some of Rwanda’s most celebrated attractions including the
spent 18 years. Cell number 7, Mandela’s home during his Akagera National Park and Volcanoes National Park.
imprisonment, is sure to be a magnet. In a break from formality for the president, together,
they go hiking, jet-skiing and cycling. One of the most
memorable scenes
in the film is when
the pair ride bicycles,
SAFETY OF MINES UNDER SCRUTINY: with a cheering crowd
of locals jostling to
‘DEATHS ALMOST EVERY WEEK’ catch a glimpse of
South Africa’s mines, already some of the deepest and most their leader. Another
expensive in the world, are under pressure to improve safety clip shows the two
following the recent death of seven miners after a seismic event, 70 playing tennis with the
kilometers west of Johannesburg. president humorously
Trade unions led by the Congress of South African Trade Unions
promising Greenberg a
(COSATU) in May picketed in Johannesburg’s central business
cow if he wins.
district at the oices of the Chamber of Mines, which represents
some of the country’s biggest mining companies including Sibanye- Greenberg’s The
Stillwater, owner of the mine where the workers died. Royal Tour series sees
This year alone, 33 miners have lost their lives underground, him journey to select
across the country. countries ofering
“The mining industry needs to prioritize this issue as many of audiences vignettes of
our own are dying almost every week,” Sdumo Dlamini, COSATU extraordinary locations,
President, told the protesting miners. historic landmarks and
The Head of Safety and Sustainable Development at the cultural experiences.
Chamber of Mines, Sizwe Phakathi, acknowledged the concerns
This is the first
raised by workers, reiterating the industry was committed to zero-
film from an African
free fatalities at mining operations throughout the country.
country for the series.

10 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018


THE WORLD’S OLDEST MAN MAY BE
SOUTH AFRICAN
Fredie Blom celebrated his 114th
birthday on May 8.
Although it is yet to be verified by
the Guinness World Records, Blom has
been reported to be the oldest man
alive. The person currently holding this
record is Japan’s Masazō Nonaka who
Photos by WPA Pool via Getty Images / Bloomberg via Getty Images / Nation Media via Getty Images
TIGER BRANDS ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY;
LISTERIA SCARE HITS INDUSTRY HARD
South Africa’s food industry
continues to reel from the listeriosis
outbreak.
Tiger Brands, Africa’s biggest
food producer, accepted
responsibility for the cases linked to
the ST6 strain of listeria after tests
at its Polokwane and Germiston
factories.
Tiger Brands’ Enterprise Foods
and RCL FOODS’ Rainbow were
identified as the largest sources of
the outbreak, with RCL accounting
for less than 10% of the cases while
Enterprise has been blamed for
about 90%.
The food sector is struggling to
is 112 years old.
According to Times LIVE, Blom, a
former gardener, was born in Adelaide
in the Eastern Cape Province of South
Africa, 14 years before former South
Africa president Nelson Mandela, who
would have turned 100 this year.
contain the fallout from the biggest
recall of cold meat products with the
number of cases reported increasing
to 1‚019 since January 2017 and
deaths reaching close to 200.
The company is concerned
about the financial and reputational
damage as the afected factories and
abattoirs have been closed for more
than a month.
Meanwhile, Senzeni Zokwana,
South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries, says he is
concerned about the outbreak and is
investigating reports that imported
meat products may also have been a
source of the scare.
– Inputs by Karen Mwendera, Lubabalo
Mashiqana and Steven Muvunyi
FORBES AFRICA
BRIEF 360
Over half of the Young Global
Leaders (YGL) class of 2018 are
women, and the majority of
the cohort are from emerging
economies.
According to the Global Economic
Crime and Fraud Survey (2018)
conducted by PwC, South Africa’s
rate of reported economic crime
at 77% is higher than the global
average at 49%.
KENYA’S FORAY
INTO SPACE
A satellite built by the University of
Nairobi was deployed into space in
May.
The small low-orbiting satellite
was first delivered to the International
Space Station in April and was
launched into space from there.
Kenya is now the ninth African
nation to launch a satellite into space.
Funded by the Japanese government,
the satellite will loop the earth every
90 minutes. It will provide Kenya with
weather, mapping, and environmental
data for 12 to 18 months.
President Uhuru Kenyatta
congratulated the University of Nairobi
on the milestone. “I’m encouraged by
the venture by University of Nairobi. It
is an inspiration to Kenyans to study
space science for development of our
economy,” he wrote in a speech read at
the deployment ceremony in Japan.
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 11
FORBES AFRICA

ECONOMY – SOUTH AFRICA

VAT’STHE
MATTER
South Africa’s small but potent one percentage
point VAT increase – high-income households who
haven’t felt it as yet must brace themselves.
BY SAMANTHA STEELE

I
t’s a creeping, insidious, almost
invisible increase, casting a net over
every South African pocket: Value
Added Tax (VAT) increased to 15%
(from 14%) this year in April and is designed
to “predominantly afect higher income
earners”, as the Daily Maverick reported in
February.
South Africans who haven’t felt it yet
should brace themselves for a sweeping tide
of increases that all-too-quickly add up to
thousands of rands.
“It will afect you everywhere,” says
Reana Steyn, the Ombudsman for Banking
Services.
Says Natalie Napier, partner at the Tax
Practice at Hogan Lovells: “It will afect all
services, and afects everyone where there’s
a VAT charge.”
VAT afects both goods and services,
risk funds at BDO South Africa.
The more insidious efect of the VAT
increase comes into play with compound
interest. If slivers of funds that would
go towards retirement (even cents come
into play here, but a mere R100 makes a
huge diference) are redirected towards
daily living costs, savings or are simply
not put into the compounding accounts
they would normally go to, the benefits of
compound interest are lost – and that over
time becomes thousands of rands.
WHAT SA’S RICH WILL
ALSO BE HIT BY:
đ
0+, 0%!. %*+)! 04 .0! +" ąĆŌČ
"+. ,!+,(! !.*%*# +2! āċĆ
)%((%+* ĨĸāĂĂČąĀĀĩ
The kind of increases you’ll
experience will be small – the problem
is they’re in every transaction you make.
Here are two examples of everyday costs:
Bond: A family that pays a bond or
rental for R7,500 ($600) per month, will
pay an additional R75 ($6). Retirement
annuity and pensions: The increases are
incremental on both, but the real danger
lies in the magic of compounded interest.
Adds Frantzeskos: “These costs become
quite substantial over a period of time.”
For example, a mere 66c loss is easily
compounded into over R400 ($32).
“Fretting about every single latte you
buy is the fastest way to a heart attack
and a boring life,” says Beckbessinger.
“What’s really going to make a diference
is addressing the two or three biggest
line items on your budget, which
and it’s the services that are going to add
the nasty and unexpected surprises to your
overall budget.
“The biggest impact on all of us will be
due to indirect efects. A lot of the operating
costs for businesses will be increasing. Some
commercial property rentals will be exposed
to the VAT hike, and the costs of buying all
of the goods and services businesses needs
will increase,” says Sam Beckbessinger,
fintech entrepreneur and author of Manage
Your Money Like a F*cking Grownup.
The wealthiest South Africans contribute
80% to VAT, says Cindy Frantzeskos, the
MD of employee benefits, retirement and
12 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
đ %)%0! +),!*/0%+* "+. ę.'!0ƫ
.!!,Ěċ Business Live !4,(%*/Č
ė.'!0 .!!, +1./ 3$!*
,!./+*( %*+)! 04 0(!/ .!
*+0  &1/0! "+. %*ý0%+*.5 /(.5
%*.!/!/Č .%/%*# !û!0%2! 04
.0!/ * .! 1%*# .!( %*+)!ċ

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%*ý0%+*.5 .!(%!"ċĘ
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+*/1)!./ * !4,!0  ĆŌ ,+%*0
%*.!/! 0+ ăĀŌ %* !4%/! 10%!/ +*
2!$%(!/ċ
đ ćŌġāĀŌ %*.!/! +* 04!/ +* (+ġ
$+( * 0++
could be your home loan repayments,
your car, groceries, school fees or debt
repayments. Ironically, research suggests
spending on once-of experiences has
a greater impact on our happiness than
spending on stuf we use every day like
our cars. Rather make the sacrifices on
the big things and give yourself the gift
of much less stress in your budget every
month.”
Individually, these costs seem low,
but add them – along with the additional
costs to a bevy of other financial
services–and a household can take a
substantial hit every month.
UNDER

THE STARS OF
TOMORROW
YOU SHOULD
KNOW TODAY
 Photographer: Motlabana Monnakgotla
Assistant photographer: Nathi Khumalo
Art Direction: Lucy Nkosi | Katlego Banoe
Stylist: Neo Modisakeng
Make-up artist: Elinah Mangena
Hair stylist: Okunubi Ibraheem Douglas

The 2018 FORBES AFRICA Under 30 is our authentic and most deinitive list of Africa’s most promising young
change-makers. This year is our fourth edition of the list and for the irst time, inspired by the growing number of
young men and women entrepreneurs, we have expanded it to bring you 30 game-changers, all under the age of 30,
across three sectors – business, technology and creative. The 90 in total are challenging conventions and rewriting
the rules for the next generation of entrepreneurs, creatives and tech gurus.
We put in months of rigorous research, sifting through over 600 nominations, vetting them for weeks, verifying
and investigating them. We favored entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and took into account their business size, reve-
nue, location, potential, struggles, social impact and resilience. A panel of judges then debated the inal 90. You may
not know many of their names now and they may not be richest people in Africa, but they could be the billionaires
of tomorrow gracing our future covers. This compilation is exciting, inspiring and ofers a sneak peek into Africa’s
future. Meet the class of 2018. The list is in no particular order.
EDITED BY: ANCILLAR MANGENA
DESIGNED BY: LUCY NKOSI
Under 30
BUSINESS
Yannick Nzonde, 29, DRC
1 Co-Founder: ATI Groupe

N
zonde is a brave man. Five years
ago, he founded ATI Groupe,
a construction company, with
the R6,000 ($478) he earned
from renting out his friend’s BMW that he
had borrowed for a weekend. He is also the
founder of Mulundu Investment Holdings,
which houses ATI Groupe and Chi Groupe,
a management consulting firm. Mulundu
Investment Holdings turns over a million dollars
in revenue each year for the 29-year-old.
This is a long way from where it all began
when he was only 14.
“I had bought a watch from a local market
place in DRC for $5. One of my younger brother’s
friends loved it so much he ofered to buy it from
me for $20. The next day, someone else ofered me
more for the same watch,” he says.
It marked the start of a rewarding
entrepreneurship journey. He sold everything he
could get his hands on. At 15, he relocated to South
Africa where he started buying computers, solar
lights, fat burners and pool tables and selling them
back home.
“I have always been the person to find
solutions to problems and people have always
come to me. I have always been the person to
jump on opportunities once I see a gap in the
market. I have also always wanted to leave a
legacy.”
Nzonde says he lives by the words of American
marketing specialist Guy Kawasaki: “The best
reason to start an organization is to make meaning;
to create a product or service to make the world a
better place.”
One of the many ways he is making the world
better is through providing power solutions in
rural DRC.
“We are the second company to have brought
solar energy solutions to the DRC in the Katanga
region. This changed many lives as people are
used to generators while some had never seen
electricity before,” says Nzonde.
Not bad for a man who comes from a family of
24 and walked 15km to school.
 FORBES AFRICA

UNDER 30 – BUSINESS

Ladipo Lawani, 29, Nigeria

3 Founder: L&L Foods

L&L foods is a food processing and

packaging company focused on the
Nigerian market. They source agricultural
produce from local farmers and transform
them into quality snacks. Their primary
line of products is a premium brand of
nuts called Mr Ekpa. Lawani employs 12
people.

Leroy Mwasaru, 20, Kenya

2 Founder: Greenpact

This 20-year-old is making money from waste while

solving a serious problem. He is the founder of Greenpact,
a company which produces and distributes afordable and
high-quality innovative biogas digester systems to get bio-
gas from both agricultural and human refuse. His mission
is guided by the overarching vision to become the leading
provider of clean household energy solutions across East
Africa. He has won many accolades including the Innovate
Kenya challenge in 2013.

Emmanuel Ademola Ayilara, 29, Nigeria

4 Founder: LandWey Investment Limited

LandWey is a real estate development and management

company turning over $14 million per year. It started with
just five employees. Today, they employ 42 full-time staf, 370
realtors and 16,000 consultants.
Ayilara’s journey to entrepreneurship started when he was in
school. His first stint was at a coaching center in Abeokuta, Ogun
State in Nigeria. The business failed. He tried his hand again,
this time, running a vocational training program with over 3,600
students.
“Once I had a taste of success, there was no turning back.
Starting and running businesses became my turf and all I had to
do was build more capacity. I always believed opportunities would
come to those who were most prepared so I put in the hard work
even when no one noticed,” he says.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 17

 Mwiya Musokotwane, 28, Zambia
5 Founder: Thebe Investment Management

Musokotwane knew he wanted to be an

entrepreneur at age 16 after reading US
billionaire Warren Bufet’s biography.
It inspired him to secure a degree in
finance. His first venture in business was
when he co-founded a tech startup while
pursuing his Master’s. The business failed.
At 23, he had a dream to build a mega
city. Armed with lessons from the first
business, he worked tactfully. At
24, he left his job to pursue
it. With the help of his
family, he founded Thebe
Investment Management.
The company is the
Nomvula Mhambi, 29, Zimbabwe
owner and developer
of Nkwashi, a 3,100 6 Founder: Disruptive Innovation
acre mega-project
in Lusaka, Zambia.

Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed
7 Falalu, 28, Nigeria
Founder: FaLGates
Falalu saw an opportunity to
make money when he realized
Nigeria consumes about seven
million metric tonnes of rice and
only produces 2.7 million metric
tonnes, forcing the country to
spend more than $2 billion in
imports. “I always
had an interest
in farming, I
remember
writing in
our high
By age 25, he had
generated $1
million in cash
flow. He employs
80 people.
school’s yearbook under future
ambition that I wanted to be a
farmer,” he says.
With a total annual capacity to
produce more than 5,000 metric
tonnes, he founded FaLGates, a
rice mill producing a variety of
rice products. They employ 30
people in Kaduna and over 150
people at their anchored farms
in Niger and Kebbi. They turned
over about $450,000 in 2017.
Falalu holds a degree in
Computer Science and a
Master’s in Management
from Swinburne University
of Technology, Australia. He
also holds an MSc degree in
Entrepreneurship from the
University of Nottingham.
W
hen her mother couldn’t aford to take her
to university because of the economic and
political downturn in Zimbabwe, Mhambi
turned to entrepreneurship. She registered
a catering and events management company at age 19. She was
later invited to work on a concert that featured Akon and Sean
Paul. It opened doors.
A year later, she was called to assist with artiste logistics for
a concert that hosted Ciara, Phat Joe, Lil’ Kim and DJ Scratch.
At age 22, her company was contracted by DStv Zimbabwe to
host their Big Brother events. She saw a gap in the advertising
industry and founded Disruptive Innovation, a full service media
communications and advertising social enterprise.
For the first two years of the business, many doors were shut
in her face. When she was close to giving up, she was selected for
the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) where she won a
$25,000 grant towards her restroom advertising pilot project.
“I tackle urban hygiene and sanitation issues using market-
based approaches improving public amenities through social
innovation initiatives with my advertising and marketing social
enterprise,” she says.
Mhambi has partnered with local municipalities, renovating
dilapidated public toilets, and charging people for use.
This revenue is used to maintain the sites, assist schools in
need of sanitation hardware and help clients get their product to
their consumers.
Mhambi also runs a hair and nail lounge and is also into
agriculture, growing button and oyster mushrooms, which
she supplies to a majority of Zimbabwe’s supermarkets and
restaurants producing over 1,000 punnets per week. She
employs 25 full-time and 12 part-time staf.

18 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

 FORBES AFRICA

UNDER 30 – BUSINESS

Roger Boniface, 29, South Africa

8 Founder: EDISIM

Boniface is the founder of EDISIM, a training provider that uses

simulation to bring real-world learning experiences to the classroom.
In less than three years, he has integrated the business simulations into
some of Africa’s top business schools. He lectures at Wits and GIBS in
South Africa and Strathmore Business School in Nairobi.
“I spend my weekends at diferent flea markets around
Johannesburg and Pretoria and there is no better way to learn about
business. My first counterfeit note experience happened at a flea
market. I got paid for something I sold with a counterfeit R100 ($8)
note,” says Boniface, also the founder of Artson, an events company
that hosts art and wine tasting experiences to explore and develop
the creativity that people often lose throughout the conveyor belt of
life. He also runs JCB, a small textile wholesaler concentrating on
the promotional market and mainly focusing on t-shirts, golf shirts
and caps. While this business has been successful for over 30 years,
Boniface has been running it since 2015. He turns over about R13
million ($1 million) a year.

Gilbert Eugene Peters, 29, Zimbabwe Sihle Ndlela, 28, South Africa
9 Founder: Spidex Media 10 Co-Founder: Majozi Bros Construction

Thisstorystartedlikeman nysuccessful and selling hot dogs on street

entrepreneurshipstories. Peters would buy and corners,” he says.
sell satellitedishestohis coommunity in Harare. The two saw a gap in the
Throughwordof mout th,this business grew until township construction
heemployedtwopeop ple.Together, they installed market.
over2,000 satellite dishes.All this before he was “We decided to become a
19years old. The demmandwaned and Peters went turnkey building contracting
into formalemploym mentas a graphic designer. business ofering services
At 21,armedwith$300, he registered from plan drawing, plan
Spidex Mediawith hthehope of addressing the submission, general
needforfasteradvvertising and design services building and renovations.
in 24 hours. So we became a one-stop
“Iwouldgo where
w I was needed to design construction business,” says
sinceIhad nooff fice, and only a laptop and Ndlela.
became
business cards.I b a CEO, finance The business grew quickly
manager,markete erand salesman,” says This construction company and their clients now range from
Peters. started from humble beginnings malls to residential estates. They
Hisgirlfriend attthetime, now his wife, and went on to become one also bought 51% of a 35-year-old
providedherentire$16 60salary from working as of the leading construction tool hire business called Hire
anice creamshop atten ndant to rent office space. companies in KwaZulu-Natal which has three branches in
Theinvestmentpaidof ff. (KZN). Ndlela co-founded the KZN. They were awarded a $105
Today,Spidex haso offices in Zimbabwe, company with Simphiwe Majozi. million project alongside WBHO
South Africa andZamb bia.It’s one of the The two met on a cold call, as a partner.
largestadvertisingcom mpanies in Zimbabwe formed a friendship and went Before joining Majozi,
withamajoritymarket t share in the financial into business together. Ndlela had been running
sector handling brand portfolios worth over “We both had a string of a successful glass and
$870million. Hehas w won12 business and businesses from primary school aluminium business.
entrepreneurshipaw ardsin Zimbabwe, a right through to high school, Together, the duo went on
businessmanof theye araward at just 25 years ranging from selling sweets, to take the construction
old, and employs 55 peeople. loan sharking, throwing parties industry by storm.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 19


Vere Shaba, 29, South Africa
11 Founder: Shaba & Ramplin
Green Building Solutions
T
his 29-year-old
has been the one
to watch since
2010, when she
was a part of the winning
team for the international
design competition on Peace
and Environmental Studies
by Nobel laureate Wangari
Maathai.
“In 2008, while still a
student, I did my mechanical
engineering practical training
at the Volkswagen South Africa
plant in Uitenhage and watched
as the rolling blackouts and
load shedding afected their
productivity. When the power
went of, the machines would
come of and thousands of
workers would sit outside in the
sun,” says Shaba.
She became an entrepreneur
out of frustration.
“The frustration came
when I kept on being put in
a box. Having graduated as a
mechanical engineer, I was
either seen as a green building
consultant or a mechanical
engineer but never both.”
She resigned from her job in
2016 and founded a company
20 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
that uses the Integrated
Green Design approach in
engineering. Now, Shaba
& Ramplin Green Building
Solutions is a multi-
disciplinary consulting firm
specializing in engineering,
green buildings and interiors
services.
Shaba was selected as one of
10 Top Women in Engineering
for the annual Standard Bank
Topco Top 100 Women in
Business & Government, Mail
& Guardian’s 200 Young South
Africans for Environment,
the Kingdom of Netherlands’
Inspiring 50 Women in South
Africa in STEM, and most
recently, has been selected
as a finalist for the inaugural
Gauteng Premier’s Women
Excellence Awards for Young
Achievers.
“I still sit in boardrooms as
a minority in the boardroom,
as the sector is still quite white
male dominated, but I know
that every day I am in the
boardroom is changing mind-
sets and creating a platform
for the future generations,”
she says.
Thomas Duncan, 28, Namibia
12 Owner: Anticor
Anticor is a water treatment and chemical specialist company
based in Windhoek specializing in products for the agricultural,
commercial, domestic and industrial markets. Duncan inherited
Anticor from his late father when he was 24 years old. The
business was stagnant and loss-making. In just four years,
he turned it around into a profitable business. The company
employs 11 people. He also owns Analytical Laboratory
Services, Namibia’s largest privately accredited and owned
laboratory which has three analytical sections, for water quality,
microbiology and food chemistry and soil. It employs 15 people.
Wesley Beneke, 29,
13 South Africa
Founder: WCB
Construction
Beneke grew up in an entrepreneurial family. His mother
taught him that running a business was possible as she was
an entrepreneur herself.
“I face hardships every single day as I am a black man playing
in the ‘white rich man’ space. The system is built to exclude
us and in most cases, my firm and I are constantly found
to be precluded from what is so easily achievable by white
monopoly. I have had various large clients not pay me and
in so doing, completely wipe out my cash flow. However, my
family and staf have stuck by me in those times and made the
mountains feel like hills,” says Beneke.
He employs 40 permanent staf, has in excess of 150 contract
staf and has deals worth over $12 million. He counts the
Western Cape government and the South African Roads
Agency among his clients.
 AdVoice BY CHIVAS REGAL

MANAGING SUCCESS EFFECTIVELY IS CRITICAL

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A
self-taught Nigerian fashion en-
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created one of Nigeria’s leading
fashion brands, HESEY De-
signs, with a strong vision of empowering
women and youth in her local community.
A self-confessed abstract thinker
Nigerian entrepreneur, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji,
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With their headquarters in San Francisco
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 17 Joey Friedman, 26, South Africa
Founder: LA Group of Companies
Growing up, Friedman watched
his father run a business and go
15 Akinwande Durojaye, 28, Nigeria
Founder: JustBrandIt
bankrupt.
“It was extremely hard for
me to adjust to receiving food
While at Covenant University, Durojaye saw the need for a donations... we lost our house
printing and branding business. He started doing business and I was not succeeding in
as an intermediary between the students’ association and school. I had learning disabilities
the print world. In 2014, he used this experience to start which were not discovered until
JustBrandIt, a printing, branding and advertising agency I was 13. This led me to feeling
competing with larger companies in Nigeria. The astute like a failure and completely
Information and Communications Engineering graduate incompetent,” says Friedman.
is also the founder of FixMyRide, a fleet management With a lot of financial
company which manages diferent taxi hailing platforms like responsibilities, he had to start thinking of ways to make money.
Uber, Taxify and Oga Taxi. It also houses an auto workshop Nine years ago, he started a business called BOBBLE, a bottle that filters
for vehicle repairs, maintenance and servicing. The name water, then a real estate agency called FRESH REALITY. Then, in 2013, a
FixMyRide was inspired by MTV’s Pimp My Ride show where bigger opportunity presented itself.
vehicles get transformed and upgraded. He employs 13 full- “I saw Lounge Around for sale and made it a priority to raise capital for this
time staf and about 210 contracted drivers. Combined, the with my business partner. I finally am able to do what I love and go to work
companies turn over $1.2 million each year. every day extremely excited,” he says.
He is also the co-founder of FueledUp, a technology-driven Lounge Around, part of the LA Group of Companies, is a premium
company where customers request for fuel and cooking furniture hire company that services prestigious events,.
gas delivery via an app. He is also the co-founder of It specializes in boutique furniture rentals and supplying custom-made
LashBells Food Company, a local snacks production and furniture and decor for a diverse range of events including exhibitions.
packaging company. “I had watched my father run businesses my entire life and felt it was my
destiny to follow in his footsteps and make a business truly work,” he says.
His company is responsible for supplying events like the Vodacom
Durban July, DStv Delicious Festival and Tourism Indaba. They also
Samuelle Dimairho, 27, Zimbabwe worked at Winnie Mandela’s funeral and the 2014 presidential
16 Co-founder: Chengetedzai
Depository Company Limited
inauguration. The company has grown revenue by 1,200%
in four years, employs 105 people and owns a 90,000sqm
warehouse.
Dimairho co-founded Chengetedzai Depository Company Limited,
Zimbabwe’s first central securities depository for the capital markets
with securities’ deposits that have peaked at over $7 billion and trade
settlement now in excess of $2 billion. The company had $1.5 million in
revenue last year. 18 Zuko Tisani, 25, South Africa
Founder: Legazy Technology Conferencing
Dimairho is also the founder of Aura Group, a management
consulting, technology and business process outsourcing services Legazy is a company that supports
company expected to turn over $2 million this year. startups in South Africa in their
Dimairho was featured in the Junior Achievement Worldwide, quest to disrupt. They partner with
2011/2012 Africa Annual report on behalf of Zimbabwe, received the world’s best to up-skill, invest in
the top ICT Company Web Developer of the Year 2011 award, was and collaborate with South African
1st Runner-Up in the Top ICT Company of the startups.
Year 2011 award category, and received top Tisani founded the company
ICT Project of the Year 2012 (Public Sector) in 2016 when he saw the dire need
award. He was also crowned the Junior for investment, training and market
Chamber International (JCI) Creative Young access for the embryonic startup
Entrepreneur of The Year 2014 and also won ecosystem of South Africa. South African startup community
the Entrepreneurs Organisation Global “The statistics released by needed the community of early-
Student Entrepreneur Award 2014. ANDE on the 86% failure rate stage investors; the world’s most
Dimairho voluntarily serves of startup businesses within the disruptive tech startups and
as an advisor to the Graduate first 18 months of starting showed thought leaders on emerging
Development Agency and Young there was a limitation on resources, disruption to be hosted in country
Entrepreneurs Sanctuary Africa, an information and access,” says for our startup community to gain
organization focused on building Tisani. investment, create partnerships
the soft skills of graduates and Legazy raised $1 million to and become as competitive as the
mentoring young entrepreneurs. He host the Web Summit technology largest technology companies
holds several accounting and business conference in South Africa. out there such as your Ubers and
qualifications. “We at Legazy believed the Facebook.”

22 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018


Gisela van Houcke, 27, DRC
19 Founder: Zuri Luxury
Hair&Beauty
Houcke was born in Eastern DRC but was
forced to flee the country and move to the
United Kingdom at a young age due to the
DRC’s political and economic instability.
She moved back to the DRC to contribute to
the growth of her motherland. While working
as the head of legal at BBOXX ltd in Kigali,
she founded Zuri as a hobby in 2015 when she
struggled to find quality hair extensions. When
she sold extensions worth $50,000 in a few
months, she turned the hobby into a business.
“My vision was to build a global platform
and brand, which would bring together
leading hair and cosmetic products, expertise,
technology and a community of passionate
customers,” she says.
Zuri Luxury Hair&Beauty is a hair
extensions brand. Their extensions are made
with 100% human Remy. Their products
include lace wigs, extension bundles, closures
and lace frontals.
By end 2016, she had sold hair worth over
$100,000 across the DRC and Rwanda online.
That year, she also raised $75,000 of equity
financing to set up a holding company in
Hong Kong, launched a supply chain oice
in Guangzhou with three employees and
opened her first store in Kinshasa. Last year,
she introduced a line of lipstick and hair
accessories.
Zuri is growing fast and claiming a share of
Africa’s big hair industry.
FORBES AFRICA
UNDER 30 – BUSINESS
20 Bidemi Zakariyau, 28, Nigeria
Founder: LSF|PR
Growing up, Zakariyau watched her
father build a taxi service and real estate
company from nothing. She worked for
him during holidays where she acquired
skills in project management, sales and
communications. Her father convinced
her to study law. She interned in law
firms for a few months but left to follow
her passion in media.
She founded LSF|PR which started
as a fashion PR agency. Six months after law school, she saw
“Securing my first client was very opportunities to scale and diversify her
diicult because I had no public client portfolio to include corporate,
relations experience; I would visit consumer and lifestyle brands. She
diferent blogs in Nigeria and look for rented an oice and started hiring
contact numbers in the article credits workers. Today, the agency’s clientele
and call the designers requesting to work consists of local and international brands
with them for free,” says Zakariyau. including Philips, Rémy Cointreau,
When the door finally opened, she Godrej, William Grant and Sons, Brown-
charged very little and worked hard. Forman, ARM, AfriOne, Ventures
Client satisfaction led to referrals and
new clients.
Platform. She employs eight women and
runs an online magazine.
Zareef Minty, 24, South Africa
21 Founder: ZRF Holidings
Minty began his entrepreneurial journey
at the age of 15 when he started his own
clothing brand, Self Made Billionaires. At
the time, the market had brands like AMA
Kip Kip as one of the only prominent South
African t-shirt brands. He saw a gap where
brands were not necessarily using the
concept of influencers and celebrities to
grow.
“I got Kenny Kunene and Lee-Ann
Liebenberg to wear my brand. Kenny
even wore my clothing in the promo of his
second season of So What on ETV. Through
these celebrities, I got media hype where
a lot of newspapers covered my clothing
brand and with that, it brought a lot of
corporate work,” he says.
Today, ZRF Holdings houses a PR
company, a clothing company and a law
firm. He was in the Mail & Guardian’s Top
200 List, released a book, is a lawyer, motivational speaker and a radio host.
“I am most impressed by Zareef’s ability to conceptualize problems, organize
his thoughts, identify important data and facts, and present a balanced argument...
he consistently displayed sound judgement, ethics, and leadership… he has the
ability to innovate,” writes advocate Barry Roux, in a letter of recommendation
for Minty. You may remember Roux serving as the defence advocate in the Oscar
Pistorius trial.
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 23
FORBES AFRICA
UNDER 30 – BUSINESS
22 Fred Apaloo, 28, Ghana
Founder: Villa Grace
This hospitality management
graduate moved back home after
studying in the US to make a
diference. For about two months,
when he returned to Ghana, he
cooked and nicely plated all his
meals.
“The motive behind that was
really to send photos to my friends
in the US, to show them that Ghana
wasn’t what they thought it was. A
lot of them pitied me for choosing
to move back,” he says.
Apaloo’s interest in creating
awareness through social media
grew when he realized the photos
were attracting a positive reaction.
He then started a brunch series
called ‘Brunch Friends’. These
were weekend brunch sessions at
his house, where he cooked brunch
for his closest friends and family
and they discussed issues faced by
the young. They encouraged him
to expand these sessions. In 2015,
he founded Villa Grace, a boutique
dining company that hosts intimate
pop-up brunches which have
quickly become some of Accra’s
most exclusive and unique dining
experiences, selling out tables
weeks in advance.
24 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
Kene Rapu, 28, Nigeria
23 Founder: Kene Rapu
Through her first product line,
‘Slippers by Kene’, launched in 2011,
Rapu became an entreprenuer who
promotes the growth of Nigerian
industry by using locally-sourced
materials to make slippers and
sandals. She says running a business
is hard work, even more so in
Nigeria.
“The odds are against us, as more
businesses are expected to fail than
to succeed. From lack of adequate
power supply, to suicient skilled
man power, to the costs and scarcity
of materials, the list goes on,” she
says, adding that it’s harder for
women.
24 Jack Mthembu, 27, South Africa
Founder: First One Adventures
Mthembu started buying and selling in
grade three. Instead of giving him money,
his grandmother would give him packets
of sweets to sell. In high school, he sold
ice cream to friends and neighbors in
the blazing hot township of Namakgale
in Limpopo. He would also organize fun
runs on his street and charge people to
participate.
His journey continued and in 2014,
while in his second year at university, he
participated in a business idea competition
hosted by the North West University
Business Development Centre. He won it
and used the prize money as capital. He
bought a camera and set up a business
in photography, corporate branding and
graphic design.
The same year, he was a runnerup for
the Nedbank Sustainable Entrepreneurship
competition, joined the Branson Centre of
“I remember on my hunt for
property for my factory last year,
I met a gentleman who made it
extremely clear he would not, under
any circumstances, rent his property
out to women.”
Rapu holds a law degree from the
University of Bristol and a Master’s
in Fashion Entrepreneurship from
the London College of Fashion.
In 2016, she was selected by the
Tony Elumelu Foundation as one of
1,000 African entrepreneurs whose
idea could change Africa, and in
2017, was listed as one of 100 Most
Influential Women in Nigeria by
Leading Ladies Africa.
Entrepreneurs and got a mentor to assist
him. “I had my fair share of disappointment
having to live seven months on my friend’s
couch in 2016, while in the meanwhile
turning down jobs on every angle. Because I
had this burning passion to get my business
of the ground and needed all the time
in the world. I also had the fear of being
consumed by corporate; amongst job ofers
I had to turn down was ABSA, Stanlib and
Liberty,” he says.
After a few months, his corporate
branding company collapsed but he had
a lifeline. He had also founded First One
Adventures, a highly-profitable organization
aimed at developing high school learners
through life coaching and personal skills
development camps. The core focus of
the organization is raising young people
to be independent thinkers. He also ofers
accounting services to small businesses.
 Alexander Knieps,
28 27, South Africa
Founder: Printulu

Reabetswe Ngwane, 25, South Africa

25 Co-Founder: KreamFields This budding entrepreneur comes
from a family of entrepreneurs.
Ngwane’s entrepreneurial journey began when she started Printulu sells commercial print
her first business with a friend. They recycled plastic products such as flyers and
bags, turning them into school bags with solar lanterns, business cards online to South
and provided them to kids in underprivileged areas. African SMEs. The company has
Unfortunately, that partnership did not last. She then started served over 5,000 clients to date.
yet another business with her sister. This time, they recycled It hasn’t always been an easy
tyre tubes to make fashionable bags. The bags cost anything
journey for the German-born
between R500 ($40) to R1,400 ($111). She also makes first-
entrepreneur. When starting
aid kit bags, respiratory bags or masks and seat protectors
for the mining and construction industries. Printulu, an investor promised
him one million dollars in
funding. Unfortunately, according
to Knieps, the conditions of the
Anelisa Mntuyedwa, contract were so unfavourable he
26 28, South Africa
Founder: Gilbert Civils
couldn’t sign the contract.
“At that time, the
development of the website,
Growing up in the rural village of self-funded, was almost done
Chalumna in the Eastern Cape Province, and I was already hiring a team
Mntuyedwa had quite an interesting to go live. I decided I am going
upbringing. She remembers chasing cattle to do this – no matter what –
and helping her parents plough corn fields with investors or without. This
over the weekend. was one of the most diicult
From about age 10, she says she had times in my life: very little
a dream very diferent from her peers. money, no support system in
She wanted to be an entrepreneur with a South Africa and numerous
business listed on the Johannesburg Stock business hurdles,” he says.
Exchange, when all her friends wanted to His success is proof it’s not
be lawyers and doctors. She was inspired Gozie Coker, 29, Nigeria
by her father and mother who had jobs but 27 Founder: Coker Creative
about the cards you’re dealt, but
how you play the hand.
always had a business on the side.
After completing her BSc Honours Coker is the ultimate planner.
in Soil Science in 2013, her parents gave “Planning events is something I have always
her R500 ($40) as a congratulatory gift. done, so much so that growing up, I was
She used it to set up Gilbert Civils, a nicknamed ‘the organ’, short for organizer. I
construction company in the Eastern Cape. derived joy planning all my family and friends’
Her services have been used by the likes of celebrations, from vacations to birthdays, and
Bufalo City and DNA Structures. even anniversaries,” she says.
She spent her holidays interning for event
companies. Soon after graduating from Baylor
University, with a degree in marketing, she
interned with Kennedy Creative, a full-service
event management company in Austin, Texas.
A year later, she went on to pursue a master’s in
Strategic Management from the Cass Business
School in London.
“I used my graduation thesis to test my
business plan for what we now know as Coker
Creative.”
A boutique event company, since its launch
almost four years ago, it has executed events
for private and corporate clients in Nigeria
and internationally. Its clients include Etisalat,
Zippy, Redrick Public Relations, Access and
Bella Naija.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 25

 30 Nataliey Bitature, 28, Uganda
Co-Founder: Musana Carts

Bitature was raised by entrepreneurs. She grew up

running around building sites, cleaning shop floors and
counting stock in the evenings. When she was on track
to study investment banking, she volunteered at a school
in rural Ibanda and realized there was another need for
business.
“Entrepreneurship provided for my family and for
the first time I saw that it was something I took for
granted. The teenage girls in the class I taught had very
simple and unambitious dreams and it broke my heart.
I knew I had to get into business that changed lives,
improved communities and gave other Ugandan girls the
opportunities I had had,” she says.
She fundraised $60,000 for building two classrooms
and an IT lab for the girls.
She later co-founded Musana Carts. These are
solar-powered street vending carts designed for micro-
entrepreneurs in Uganda. They are modular, made for
29 Adam Amoussou, 27, Benin
Founder: AMOSCONSULT GROUP
the customization of business features including fridges,
sockets and mobile money terminals. Musana Carts equip
its vendors with finance and business training and ofers
Amoussou grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. He says he a path to legalization for those trapped in the informal
always felt the pressure to succeed. sector.
“You have a standard to keep up to and in Benin, they say ‘a Bitature was named a World Economic Forum Top
man who hasn’t done more than his father has done nothing, he Woman Innovator in 2016 and was invited to present at
is a complete failure’, so I grew up picturing myself taking over the World Bank headquarters for the Spring Meetings
the family business and taking it to the next level,” he says. 2017. She also previously founded two service businesses
His journey to entrepreneurship began in 2012 while in in Kampala: Tateru Properties and Handymen Uganda.
university. “I believe because of the family I come from I’ve
“I had the highest marks in statistics so a couple of friends had the unique opportunity to be exposed to people
came to my place on weekends looking for assistance and I and institutions that can help my causes. When I was
helped, but the following weekend they came accompanied by preparing to pitch Musana Carts to President Clinton and
other classmates,” he says. a panel of esteemed judges in New York, I got to pitch to
In 2012, he started charging them for tutoring sessions. A the Prime Minister of Uganda…,” she says.
few months later, he and his girlfriend at the time, now fiancé,
launched an online clothing shop, which is growing in retail.
In May 2014, they opened street restaurants selling Kotas. The
business died because of competition. In 2015, he sold his car to
start AMOSCONSULT GROUP, a company supplying tropical
fruits to the international market.
“I noticed the infinite potential of our Benin agriculture. So
I went on and did research and found out Benin could supply
one of the highest quality of tropical fruits and products and
they were in high demand. I had the vision that soon my country
will reach food self-suiciency, be among the fastest-growing
economies in Africa and be the vegetable garden where other
African countries and the rest of the world buy good quality food
and products at a very competitive price,” says Amoussou.
The company supplies fruits and produce such as cashew
nuts, pineapples, palm oil and nuts, coconuts, shea butter and
cotton. To meet the demand, they partner with farmers, provide
them with information about the quality of fruits and produce in
high demand, purchase these from them and sell internationally.
The business has expanded into Togo and plans to open a branch
in South Africa this year.

26 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

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 Olaoluwa Samuel-Biyi, 27, Nigeria
TECHNOLOGY 2 Co-founder: SureGifts,
Director: SureRemit
Samuel-Biyi has been at the forefront of some of the
most innovative technology ventures in Africa, either as a
critical employee, investor, or entrepreneur.
With the help of his co-founders, Adeoye Ojo and
Babafemi Lawal, Samuel-Biyi launched SureGifts, a digital
shopping voucher aggregator and retailer in 2014.
“We pioneered the concept of gift cards in Nigeria and
partnered with the biggest brands on the continent such as
Game, Spar, Samsung and Jumia to power their digital gift
card programs,” he says.
Today, the company operates in Nigeria and Kenya
with over 200 retail brands and utility service providers
on their network. SureGifts vouchers are used by over
250 major companies across the world like Airtel, KPMG
and Coca-Cola for their employee and customer rewards
programs.
His company also developed a project called
SureRemit, a non-cash remittance product that will
leverage cryptocurrency to power remittances intended
for non-cash use-cases like utility payments, groceries and
medicine, leveraging the SureGifts merchant network and
other global partners.
“Again, my team finally brought Africa into the
Blockchain playing field by executing the most successful
Initial Coin Ofering (ICO) out of Africa yet, raising $7
million within two days from participants in 65 countries,
including participation from the largest cryptocurrency
fund in South Korea.”
The SureRemit cryptocurrency, $RMT, is currently on
the market. They employ 30 people
Prior to SureGifts, he managed data-intensive projects
Rivo Mhlari, 23, South Africa
1 Founder: Rikatec
in commercial planning, business intelligence, and
financial analysis at Jumia in Nigeria. He is also a senior
consultant at Venture Garden Group, advising on startup

M
hlari is a master of perseverance. When he first created investing, business risk, strategy, and finance and supports
an information management system using big data and early-stage African entrepreneurs as a Venture Partner at
artificial intelligence to solve problems for vehicles such Greenhouse Capital.
as predicting and detecting vehicle breakdowns, he
was rejected 11 times by the manufacturers and insurance companies he
approached. The rejections were his greatest motivation.
“I realized we were rejected not because what we were doing was not
novel or attractive; we were rejected because they thought what Rikatec
wanted to do was impossible. We were simply ahead of our time,” says
Mhlari.
He founded a marketing consultancy, where he hosted events
and advised small business on strategy; made money and funded the
development of Rikatec prototypes. He also made a noise about the
diiculties of support and funding for tech startups. It earned him a
R500,000 ($40,000) investment to commercially test the product in
exchange for 5% equity in the business.
Today, Rikatec simultaneously provides a connection to the nearest
help option within five minutes of breakdown detection. The company
also provides predictive maintenance for fleets, monitors driving
habits, wear and tear and uses big data and analytics to provide valuable
information that can help reduce operational costs.

STANDARD BANK PIONEERS GAME-
CHANGING AFRICAN TRADE GATHERING
BROADLY INCLUSIVE PAN-AFRICAN INITIATIVE TO DRIVE AFRICAN GROWTH
S
tandard Bank is escalating its
highly successful trans-regional
trade and business conferences
into a broadly inclusive pan-African
initiative aimed at driving collective
growth across the continent.
Announcing that this year’s Trans Regional
Conference is to be held in Lagos from 1 - 4 July,
Standard Bank will invite clients from across the
continent to participate alongside key govern-
ment officials, legislators, and representatives of
regional growth and development bodies.
Standard Bank has hosted two previous
conferences in 2016: in Accra focusing on West
Africa, and in Nairobi focusing on East Africa.
These separate gatherings brought together
clients and key Standard Bank trade experts and
client relationship managers from the countries
in each of these regions.
“Our previous conferences showed us the
scale of the opportunity for growing intra-Afri-
can trade, especially the potential for cross-bor-
der trade, to change the growth trajectory of
the continent,” said Zweli Manyathi, Chief
Executive PBB at Standard Bank.
In addition to providing critical insight into
how best to help clients leverage Africa’s full
cross-border potential, “we also realized that
increasing trade was a pan-African, and not just
a regional opportunity, for the continent,” he
added.
Standard Bank’s broad and established
footprint across the continent, as a universal
financial organisation, its sector expertise and
networked global capital market presence,
including high level access to the Chinese
banking system, means that, “gatherings of this
nature can assemble, identify and unlock key
intra-African trade and business opportunities
– on a scale wide enough to transform Africa’s
growth and development trajectory,” said
Manyathi.
On average, regional trade accounts for
about 50% of most regions’ trade flows. In Asia
- the world’s fastest growing region - regional
trade accounts for up to 70% of some countries’
trade flows. Since intra-regional trade in
Africa currently accounts for only 12% of trade
flows, Standard Bank has identified the rapid
promotion of continental trade as a key priority
in achieving the kind of growth that will trans-
form the lives of ordinary Africans.
If the continent can increase trade be-
tween African countries to the global average
- that is from 12% to 50% - the continent will
be far less reliant on global trade and invest-
ment for its own growth. This will also mean
that, for the first time in history Africa will be
Presented by:
able to set and drive its own investment and
growth agenda – independently.
By pioneering the dialogue across Africa’s
broad trade, corporate and commercial eco-
system, facilitating partnerships for business
development and boosting intra-Africa trade,
Standard Bank hopes to build the foundations
of sustainable long-term intra-African trade
growth in sub-Saharan Africa.
“An additional feature of this year’s confer-
ence will be a focus on leveraging Africa’s spe-
cial relationship with China,” added Manyathi.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China,
the world’s largest bank, holds a 20% share-
holding in Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank.
This critical institutional relationship has
resulted in various initiatives across the conti-
nent - from Renminbi trading, to Africa-China
business centers, and landmark deals – that
collectively constitute Standard Bank’s Afri-
ca-China trading corridor.
Driving Africa’s growth means not only
connecting Standard Bank clients to oppor-
tunities in Africa but also increasing general
trade between African countries. “Supporting
the growth of Africa’s broader cross-border
trade ecosystem is critical to driving sustained
growth, employment and the future prosperity
of Africa’s people” concluded Manyathi.
FORBES AFRICA

UNDER 30 – TECHNOLOGY

Isaya Yunge, 28, Yunge had a diicult childhood. His parents never
3 Tanzania married so he was born and raised an outcast. He was
raised by his grandmother and spent his childhood
Founder:
herding goats, cows and chasing birds on rice
SomaApps
plantations.
Technologies “Life was tough and hard because sometimes I
Company Limited had to miss school and spend the entire day on the
farm, so I escaped to search for my parents, both of
who by then, had their separate families which made
it diicult for me to be accepted by any of them,” he
says.
Peaceful as he was, he says he was always rejected,
whether by his step-mother or step-father. It made
his upbringing unstable and unpredictable. He had to
live from one foster family to another. He was forced
to live by himself from the second year of secondary
school. He worked after school to earn money for
food and rent.
“In 2012, I was at my lowest point and life was
hard as I struggled with basic needs, school fees and
rent. I almost gave up on education because of the
chaos around me. One thing that kept me going was
the FORBES list. As a young boy, I would hear on the
news from time to time about Africans making it on
the FORBES list and I aspired to one day be on it.”
In 2014, he became curious about the tech
industry, particularly the app business.
“I remember I started asking myself questions
like ‘if I am using Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat
for free how come these companies are wealthy and
growing in terms of revenue and user base?’ So, my
desperation to understand the industry sparked my
interest to study the digital economy and the app
business.
That year, he attended a talk about the fourth
industrial revolution, the sharing economy and
collaborative commons, by Jeremy Rifkin, an
American economist. It was airmation he would
one day solve Africa’s problems through digital
technology.
“I had to sleep in the oice for six months eating
bananas every day... It was during this time a girl I
really liked dumped me because I sounded crazy
talking about my startup,” says Yunge.
Today, SomaApps is a scholarship-matching app
that lists and matches students with thousands of
domestic and international scholarships. His aim is to
accelerate the advent of mobile software technologies,
artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things in
Tanzania. He employs 12 people.
“With SomaApps, the impact I am making
is helping students from low-income families
access fully-funded scholarships to attain quality
education around the world. Within just two
years, we’ve helped 550 students.”
Along his journey, he has collected a number of
accolades. In 2006, he was elected to become the
chairperson of the Junior Council of the United
Republic of Tanzania, spoke at the G8 Summit at
the age of 17, won the GSMA Mobile Money Africa
Hackathon as best startup in Africa in 2017, won
the prestigious Queens Young Leaders Award and
won at the Start-up Turkey Award as one of the
top three startups in the world.

Mahmood Oyewo, 26, Nigeria

4 Co-founder: RubiQube

From an early age, Oyewo participated in science fairs and always “This was in response to the complaint that many African apps
wanted to know how things worked. This inquisitiveness led him to get lost in the app stores which kept potential users from finding
start his first company, Mabtech Solutions, before university. them. We unfortunately faced the same fate as we were trying to
“I made radio transmitter circuits as a hobbyist and sold to save other African apps from, the RubiQube mobile app itself got
friends who played pranks by broadcasting messages. I also wrote lost in the noise that characterizes the Google Play and Apple App
C++ applications and sold to secondary schools. These experiences stores,” says Oyewo.
really convinced me I could create an impact with my knowledge In late 2015, they decided to pivot from a mobile application
and also make a living out of it,” he says. to the current video advertising service called RubiQube. It is an
In 2009, Oyewo and his brother, Mukhtar, built a mobile airtime advertising technology company
top-up solution. with focus on video and other
“The solution was to be tied to Globacom’s airtime APIs. We super rich media, with a goal
presented this solution to a director then and of course because we to acquire high-value users and
were young lads, we were never taken seriously.” drive customer engagement
They didn’t let that disappointment afect them. Instead, they through its state-of-the-art
registered an app development and management company called advertising services.
MobiQube. Today, RubiQube Limited
In 2012, with the intention of collating innovative mobile has worked with some of the top
applications in Africa and ofering locally relevant apps to users brands in Nigeria, which include
based on their location, they built a location-based mobile app Nestle, GSK, Visa, Zenith Bank,
aggregator. UBA and Coca-Cola.

30 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

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 Kevin Lubega, 28, Uganda
5 Founder: EzeeMoney
From as far back as his early teenage years, Lubega used every phone or formal bank accounts
opportunity he had to work with and learn from his father. wishing to receive and make
“I have greatly benefitted from watching him come from very multiple payments. They also ofer
humble beginnings to grow various businesses from the ground to pay bills, do collections, and
into multinational organizations making a profound impact on ofer point of sale money transfers
Africans,” he says. and other e-money services to
He was inspired to solve Africa’s problems through banks, non-bank corporations,
technology. To date, he has founded five companies in diverse government and NGOs.
industries, including e-commerce, real estate, financial services EzeeMoney operates in
and oil and gas. Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
“Through these ventures, my goal has been to provide Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
sustainable and lasting solutions to Uganda’s and Africa’s They directly employ 80
unique challenges.” people and indirectly about
Incorporated in 2012, EzeeMoney is a fintech firm ofering 8,000.
electronic money services to clients with or without a mobile
Leonida
7 Mutuku, 29,
Kenya
Founder:
Intelipro
Whileworking atiHub,one
of thetech hubsin Kenya,
Mutukudiscovereddata
science andits potentialto
transform theway wedo
business in Africa.
“I was excited to
see how data science
and analytics change
a business to better
Berno Potgieter & Thatoyaona Marumo, respond to users. When
6 28, South Africa I decided to leave
employment, it was
Founders: Domestly
pretty clear these kinds
Potgieter andMarumo met whilestudying atStellenbosch University. of technologies were still
They both had adream ofone day startingtheir ownbusiness.Passionate not widely in use here
about the tech industryand empowering domestic workers to find better and I was keen to step
workopportunities,theyfoundedDomestly,atechnologyplatform that up and fill this gap,” she
allows consumers tofindandhirecleaning professionals. says.
In 2015, she founded
“Initially,whenwestarted, ouroperations wereentirelyand wholly
Intelipro, a company that
bootstrapped. In December2014,westarted speakingtoinvestors.At this develops cloud-based
stage,the business had donewell indelivering lucrativenumbers.By April applications to help
2015,wehad four investors onboardand havecontinued to successfully businesses make data
attract moreinvestors since,”says Marumo. work for them. They
In June 2017,theyannounced thebusiness had secured its first roundof create advanced analytics
institutionalfunding from the IndustrialDevelopmentCorporation (IDC). solutions to help their
They haveafootprintin Cape Town, Johannesburg,Pretoria andDurban clients build a deep
andhavecreated about 1,500jobs. knowledge about their
business operations, their
Thecompany has receivedmany awardsincludingbeingin thetop
brand, their customers
fivestartupcompanies in South Africa in 2015,winner of theMTN App and their industry. Their
of theyear awardandbest consumer app of theyear in 2016,e-commerce clients include MTN,
awardsrunnerupbehind Takealot in2016,Cape Townbusiness awards’ Bank of Africa Ghana
finalist in 2016 and Africa’s most disruptive app award winner for 2016. and Revoltura.
32 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
Chris Kwekowe, 25,
8 & Emerald
Kwekowe, 21,
Nigeria
Founders: Slatecube
Slatecubehelpsjobseekers
developjob-relevant skills,gain
workexperience,andlandwell-
payingjobsthrough up-skilling
coursesandvirtual internships.
“Weaimtobridgethe gap
betweenqualificationand
employment which has,forso
long,beenaleading factor in the
highunemployment rate ofyouth
alloversub-Saharan Africa,”says
Chris.
Sincelaunchingin 2014,the
companyhas helped hundreds
of graduates get intofull-time
employment, trained over13,000
graduatesinfull-stack web
development,design(graphics
designandanimations),and
digitalmarketingacrossNigeria
andGhanaandhave7,000 active
userstaking onlineprograms.
“Tenpercentofourbetatesters
havegoneontostart their own
businessesandalso gotaccess to
fundingranging from$5,000to
$25,000.”
SlatecubewontheAnzisha
Prizein 2015,presented at
theAfricanUnion duringthe
e-LearningAfrica Conference in
2016andwasinvitedbyformerUS
President BarackObamatoattend
theGlobal Entrepreneurship
Summit in San Francisco.

Phiwa Nkambule, 26, Swaziland
9 Co-founder: Riovic
N
kambule discovered his love for
tech in 2006 fixing computers with
his uncle in a small township in
Swaziland. He got his first experience
of unlimited internet when he went to the
University of Pretoria in South Africa 2011. He
used it to teach himself web and app development.
In 2014, he moved to a quiet suburb in Pretoria
where he founded his first technology company,
Cybatar, in his garage. Here, he developed cloud
computing and Internet of Things technology,
an on-demand fuel delivery application, a social
network and a tuition crowdfunding platform.
Cybatar won Best Cloud Computing Startup
Africa at the 2015 African Corporate Excellence
Awards.
In 2015, Nkambule co-founded Riovic, an
insurance technology company. The company
provides a risk-sharing network where a group of
associated or like-minded individuals pool their
premiums together to insure against a risk. It
connects those seeking insurance with investors
who are willing to share the risk of a pay-out in
exchange for returns in the form of premiums.
Riovic was named one of the 100 Best Fin-Tech
Companies in Africa, was a nominee in the 2016
African Fin-Tech Awards and was part of the Top
26 Fin-Tech startups in South Africa according to
Ventureburn. Riovic owns fintech platforms such
as PolicyLedge, NeoMutual and Kr8iv Capital.
FORBES AFRICA
UNDER 30 – TECHNOLOGY
10 Sunkanmi Ola, 22, Nigeria
Founder: Syracuse Digital
Establishedin2012,SyracuseDigitalisadigitaladvertisingand product
developmentagency.They helpbusinessesgrowthroughdigitalengagement
marketing.SyracusecountsAdidas,Tecno Mobile,MitsubishiMotors and
Infinixamong its clients.Thecompany has reached Nigeria,Ghana,Kenya,
Ethiopia,SouthAfrica,CameroonandtheUK.
Ola also initiatedaglobally focusedstartup,Hirefreehands,throughSyracuse
Digital.It hasan African outlook,backed by aSeattle-based Blockchain venture
firm. He turns over close to half a million dollars each year.
Ola’shardworkhasearnedhim many awards.In2014,he was afinalist
forthe AnzishaAwardsforSuccessfulAfricanEntrepreneurs Under21, he
was the firstNigerianto beadmittedinto the Young Lions Planners Academy
at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and is the youngest-
ever candidate admitted into the global executive MBA program at Hult
InternationalBusinessSchool, London.
SyracuseDigitalalso wonthe DigitalMarketingAgency ofthe Yearawardat
the AfricanQualityAchievement Awards in 2015 and has had multiple features
inLürzer’s Archive.
11 Perseus Mlambo, 29, Zambia
Founder: Zazu Africa Limited
The idea for Zazu came when Mlambo was on a bus at 4AM. He met
Dorica, an 80-year-old who was traveling to sell her fruit and vegetables.
“Before then, I had never thought about how food moves from the farm,
to the shelf or market and eventually to my plate,” he says.
He wanted to make the process of selling easier for people like Dorica.
Then he realized most of them didn’t have bank accounts. As such, the first
part of problem-solving was to make sure they had simplified access to
formal financial services.
He founded Zazu, a fintech company.
“Picture this, you download the Zazu app on your phone, and you sign
up to get an account. You submit a selfie and your identification documents.
Less than two minutes later, you have an account. In two days, Zazu delivers
the card to your house/oice/farm and you can start spending. You can
finally sell things online or buy from Amazon. If you want, you can pay for
electricity/TV/water/taxes via the Zazu app or buy airtime,” he says.
For each transaction, the Zazu app categorizes it and at the end of the
month shows you how well you are managing your money eg., 36% spent on
groceries, 10% alcohol or 30% rent. If you want, you can set a budget in the
app and when you spend money, if needed, the app encourages you to save
or slow down with your spending.
“But more than the app, we also realized a lot
of people do not use banks or financial service
providers because very few people know what
they do. So we approached the Financial Sector
Deepening Zambia and together, developed five
courses around finance. We uploaded these courses
on our USSD platform and anytime that someone
dials *619#, they get taught about income, loans,
insurance, savings & digital financial services.”
In less than a month of introducing it,
they taught over 2,000 courses in one
district alone.
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 33
 Nneile Nkholise, 29, South Africa
13 Founder: iMed Tech

Nkholise was an entrepreneur since primary

school. She first sold a pig to make money for her
school fees and made more money either selling
goods or doing hair.
“I still remember when I was around eight,
some lady who owned a tuck-shop in our street
asked us [kids from the street] to go and sell
bananas for her because she had bought a lot and
no one was buying them and so they were about
to go off. I took more than anyone in our group
and somehow all the other kids didn’t know
how or where to sell. I just went street to street,
knocked on every door selling,” she says.
In 2015, she had a dream to start a medical
design, engineering and technology company.
She entered and won the SAB Foundation Social
Innovation Award. At the time, she had nothing in 2016 my business was close
but a big dream and designs on paper. to failure, because the disease
“To have people believe in us at that moment of self-doubt created symptoms
is the greatest achievement because we had so of bankruptcy, poor business
many writings on the wall telling us we cannot management, poor strategy
make it and that we were creating products that development and execution.”
can never fit into the South African market.” Nkholise stood strong and
She gambled her pension fund money from today, iMed Tech employs
her previous job and added to the SAB prize five people and primarily
money to start iMed Tech. focuses on medical prosthetic
“Self-doubt is the greatest hardship I faced and bio-implant design and
in my business. Self-doubt is the reason why manufacturing.

Kola Olajide, 26, Nigeria 14 Bamai Namata, 26, Cameroon

12 Co-founder: Bridge Labs
Founder: Maibeta
Namata grew up in the small town of Mundemba on the Cameroon-
Nigeria border. Here, he learned how to sell products and build a

O
lajide co-founded Bridge Labs
and has designed solutions
in education, marketing,
insurance and banking.
He has partnered with insurance companies
to design technology that empowers brokers
to have a stronger value proposition and ofer
more personalized products, worked with
banks and credit unions to rethink credit scores
by writing more inclusive algorithms driven by
data and built learning platforms that enable
teachers to make their content accessible
outside the four walls of a classroom.
His wit and hard work have earned him
many accolades, among them a Microsoft
technology partnership, a R500,000 ($40,000)
innovation prize at the annual SAB innovation
awards and a United Nations recognition for
best innovation in education to meet the
UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
clientbase from his mother, a petty trader.
“Ihave always been fascinated by computers and electronics.
Everyone else in my surroundings was encouraged to become
eithera teacher or join the armed forces but I always had a bigger
vision and knew long-term thinking was the way to go,” he
says.
After completing a degree in mass communication, he
tried and failed to secure a loan from family and friends to
start a business. The only other option was to work and
save money. First, he worked as a plantation laborer for
$28 dollars a month. He swapped this job with another at
a local NGO, where he worked for three years and saved up
enough money for his startup.
In 2015, he founded Maibeta.com a digital on-demand
service platform connecting people to professional technicians
for repairs, maintenance and construction jobs. The company
makes over $150,000, employs nine people, has conducted
2,300+ transactions and impacted more than 9,000 people.
Namata also received a Tony Elumelu Foundation
Entrepreneurship Programme award in 2016, Avance
Media’s Cameroon’s most influential in business award in
2017 and was one of Cameroon News Agency’s entrepreneurs
towatch out for list in 2017.

34 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

 FORBES AFRICA

UNDER 30 – TECHNOLOGY

15 Riaz Moola, 26, South Africa

Founder: Hyperion Development

While studying computer science in South Africa, Moola noticed
that over 80% of his classmates in first year failed due to a lack of
foundational programming languages.
“I initially formed Hyperion as a university volunteering
community for students studying at southern African universities,
connecting top computer science students to mentor poorer
performing students in programming via an online platform,” he says.
Hyperion then grew to be a code-review centric, mentor-led
online course platform for coding education. The company sources
and trains specialist online code reviewers, from the top 5% tech
talent in Africa, allowing them to improve educational outcomes for
students around the world.
“Hyperion has scaled human review of code at 50 times cheaper
than its current cost in the global market by leveraging African talent.
We integrate this review into mentor-led coding education programs
around the world to lower the cost of
efective software development education
as a means to solve the tech skills gap
globally,” he says.
He adds Hyperion is currently the
largest provider of coding education in
Africa and expanding into over 72 countries.
It was recently recognized as one of the
top five education technology startups in South Africa and won
second prize in the TechCrunch Pitch-Of London 2017, won first
in Facebook’s Africa Innovation Challenge award as the leading
ed-tech startup in Africa, won three funding awards from Google,
including a Google Computer Science For High School grant, and is
supported by the South African government, City of London
Co-Investment Fund, and University of Cambridge.

Leonard Stiegeler, 29, Nigeria

16 Co-founder: Zando, Jumia & Director:
Ringier Africa AG

Stiegeler attributes his entry into Africa, employing 3,000 people.

business to his mother.
“When I was 16, she suggested
I help out in a local fair trade
retail shop in our small village in
Southern Germany, where I was
born,” he says.
Selling baskets, instruments
and food from countries in Africa,
he got interested to learn more
about the continent. He visited
Ghana at age 17 and before going to
university, he lived in Uganda for
a year, working with the German
Development Cooperation on
policy projects.
While at university at the
London School of Economics and
Political Science, he was asked
to be part of the founding team
of an e-commerce company in
Cape Town. He agreed and in 2011
co-founded Zando, which then
became one of the leading fashion
e-commerce companies in South
Africa.
He then moved to Nigeria, to
co-found Jumia, now a leading
general merchandise e-commerce
company in Africa, outside of South
Later, when Jumia started to
be established in Nigeria, he was
eager to explore more industries
in the sector with an even wider
impact generated by digital. He
partnered with Ringier to launch
digital media and marketplace
companies on the continent.
Ringier Africa operates the leading
classifieds and media groups in
sub-Saharan Africa. They have
operations in Kenya, Nigeria,
17 Kofi Genfi & Nii Osae Osae Dade, 24, Ghana
Founders: CYST Company Limited
Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania and
Uganda. The company has 700 This duo founded CYST, a software innovation company that
direct employees across sub- specializes in artificial intelligence to create technology solutions
Saharan Africa and 100 million+ in 2013. CYST has a research arm called CYST Research Institute,
user reach. which focuses on artificial intelligence-based research and
development such as natural language processing. In partnership
with the telecommunications companies, CYST has access to over
15 million subscribers through its platforms. They count MTN
Ghana, Vodafone Ghana, AirtelTigo Ghana, Unity Link and Data
Protection Commission among their affiliates. It means over 15 million
subscribers through its platforms.
CYST’s flagship product, Mazzuma, is a mobile money
payment system that utilizes distributed secure infrastructure and
cryptocurrency to enable seamless payments. The Mazzuma token,
referred to as MAZ, is a key payment medium in the Mazzuma
ecosystem. Transactions made on the Mazzuma platform are
instantaneous.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 35


18 Jaun Pienaar, 27, South Africa
Founder: Apex Media
Pienaarsaysheadmireshowhis
parents worked over 40 years for
the same company but never saw
himself working for anyone.
Music was his first love. He
spent almost a year convincing
his parents to let him drop out
of high school to study music.
He later graduated with majors
in Guitar Performance and
Theory and Production from the
Campus of Performing Arts in
association with the Academy of
Contemporary Music in the UK.
His parents loaned him money
to convert their garage and
adjoining room into a recording
studio.
“I lined up a few musicians
who would need demos and reels
to come and record at my studio
and wrote a few hip-hop tracks
that would be used by a few well-
known artistes and radio stations
as part of their on-air identity,”
he says.
Apex Multimedia was
born, with his long-time friend
Kyle Engelsman. In 2011, they
rebranded the business to Apex
Media with the vision of creating
a world-class production facility
for Africa and expanded the
service offering to include design,
website development, video
36 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
production andphotography,
recruiting Devan Lowery to help
build out the visual offering.
In 2014, Pienaar met
Damon Boyd after a merger
with Omnicom PR giant
FleishmanHillard, where they
were tasked with establishing
‘ContentWorks’ - a production
hub for content in Africa for the
FleishmanHillard network. A
year later, the pair embarked
on building a business together
that focuses on delivering
industry-changing, sustainable
solutions for their clients
through platforms, products
and messaging, be it a Virtual
Reality tour, a mobile app, content
marketing, a corporate video
or digital business process and
policy improvement. Pienaar
enjoys all things technical and
loves when technology-driven
solutions deliver long-lasting
change and meaningful growth.
He was elected a World
Economic Forum Global Shaper
in 2017 and has a passion for the
enablement and advancement of
grassroots entrepreneurs, having
played active roles in Tomorrow
Entrepreneur, Suits & Sneakers,
I am an Entrepreneur and
Impello.
19 Timothy Adeyele, 29, Nigeria
Founder: Optiweb Communications
Adeyele grew up poor. His father was a painter and his mother a petty
trader. Getting food to eat was hard and they lived in one bedroom. His
parents struggled to pay public school fees of just under $1.50 per term.
“I was usually sent out of school for not paying my fees. For every
time I was sent out, I will go to a cybercafé that was close to my school
to learn how computers work. The idea of being able to operate a
computer was fascinating to me and I was very curious,” he says.
These frequent visits caught the manager’s attention.
“He then decided to teach me operations, which seemed to be the
only thing he could teach me then. I enjoyed every bit of my free lessons
with Mr. Ayo who I fondly called Uncle AY.”
The more he learned, the more curious he got. He had a dream to
start a tech company.
“A number of times, I got the opportunity to share my dreams
with older people including my parents, I was always called lazy
because they felt I was being unrealistic and wasn’t serious about life.
They usually encouraged me to forget about the dream of owning a
technology business and focus on getting a day-to-day job and at least
earn to feed,” says Adeyele.
He wanted more out of life. After his secondary education, he
got admitted into a leading ICT institution in northern Nigeria. He
struggled to sponsor himself through the training and dropped out. He
moved to Lagos and took up a job as a cement store sales attendant. He
used the little earnings to research about the technology space, send
proposals and attend business meetings.
“I faced challenges at the point of setting up my business. From
struggling to get my startup capital, pitching my ideas to various
companies only to be told ‘no’ discouraged me at some point. In fact, I
was ready to give up but something in me kept telling me to push on.”
He did until he got a breakthrough with a Globacom partnership to
found Glo Mobile School, an interactive educational SMS platform that
inspires students to learn outside traditional classes.
It opened the doorfor thebirthof Optiweb,adigitalandmobile
solutions company thatspecializesin mobileeducationalsolutions,
digital content, social mediasolutions, specialized CRBT, T,, co t
gaming, mobile insuran nce solutions,among
other services.
Optiweb has wonm many awards
including Etisalat’sMost InnovativeService
Provider of the Year,20 016, Africa’sMost
Innovative Digital Mob bil
ileServiceProvider
of the Year award and the AfricanBrand
Leadership Merit awarrd d,2017.
The company has erationsin
Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana anzania
and Ivory Coast.
Optiweb
Communications also
serves as the holding
company to the many
startups and foundation n
ns
in Nigeria and abroad.
 FORBES AFRICA

UNDER 30 – TECHNOLOGY

22 Melvyn Lubega, 28, South Africa

Founder: GO1
20 Maya Horgan Famodu, 27, Nigeria
Founder: Ingressive

Famodu founded Ingressive, a tech integration company that

provides market entry services and tech research for corporates
and investors.
“I launched Ingressive LLC to solve the funding pipeline,
redirecting global focus and capital to the continent,” she says.
Famodu also founded Ingressive Capital, a multi-million
dollar venture fund focused on early-stage African tech.
“We have worked with thousands of African tech-enabled
youths. Our client list includes over 50 investors and technology
companies. Our clients have gone on to fund more than 20
African startups. I have funded three high-growth African
technology companies, and we’re continuing to invest now.”
Last year, several of their past clients and partners became
investors in the fund, including Michael Seibel, CEO at Y
Combinator; Jason Seats, Partner at Techstars; and Gbenga
Oyebode, Founder of Aluko & Oyebode, among other top
entrepreneurs and investors. Necessity kick-started Lubega’s entrepreneurial journey; he started
his first business when he was a scholarship student in high school.
“The main school tuckshop was closed in the evenings and
over the weekend, so I saw the opportunity to run a tuckshop

211 Abraham Omani Quaye, 28, Ghana

Founder: Farm
Farmart
out of the boarding house. Luckily my need for money was met
and surpassed by my boarding mates’ desire for food and drinks,
making the business a success,” he says.
The business grew to employ a number of his dorm mates.
After completing his After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of
undergraduate degree in Cape Town (UCT), he joined the Boston Consulting Group, a
agricultural sciences, he decided to management consulting firm. He worked in 11 countries and in
go into farming. During his search some of the big global companies in Africa.
for land, he came across farmers “There was a range of problems we were brought in to solve for
these clients. A number of these challenges could be traced back to
who complained about their
the issue of companies not investing in their staff adequately.”
produce going to waste because of
He noticed a similar pattern when he had started an investment
low fresh sales. business with friends while at UCT. Many of the smaller
“To avoid this, they’ll have to companies they worked with thought they were too small to care
sell their produce off cheaply to about training and development and the bigger companies did not
the middlemen to avoid getting leverage the best-in-class tools to invest in their staff.
nothing out of their hard work. I After his time with the Boston Consulting Group, he went to the
also discovered in Ghana, farmers suffer over 30% post-harvest losses which University of Oxford where he studied for a master’s in Educational
is really unfortunate,” he says. Learning and Technology. Here, he met one of his co-founders,
Andrew Barnes.
Quaye was motivated to not just be a farmer but a digital farmer and
“Andrew had already been building websites for a number of
help other farmers have access to a ready market, reduce post-harvest losses
years and he had actually built a web design business. He had been
and increase their return on investments. He founded Farmart, an online in the learning space as well, which is how we ended up in the
farmers’ market that links farmers to households and businesses. When an same program at Oxford,” says Lubega.
order is placed on their website, they source fresh produce from farmers and Together, they founded GO1, a training solution that brings
deliver to the client. They deliver produce and groceries in Accra, Tema and together training content which is accessed through an easy-to-
Kasoa. use online platform. Today, the company is recognized as a world
“When we started the business, we didn’t have enough bikes to make leader in employee compliance, professional development and
deliveries which made us lose some deliveries and we quickly partnered on-boarding training. It is backed by investment from the likes
of Y Combinator, the University of Oxford and leading venture
with logistics firms who now support us when there’s a spike in orders. We
capitalists.
also faced lots of challenges with lack of some produce and we decided to
The company employs over 157 people, was listed in the global
start Farmart.” Disrupt100 as one of the most disruptive companies in the world
It has won recognition such as the 2017 Pitch AgriHack Africa winner by and was listed in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, based on
Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation. percentage fiscal year revenue growth over three years.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 37

 24 Cukia Kimani, 26, & Ben Myres, 25, South Africa
Founders: Nyamakop Games

Sinceforming Nyamakopin 2015,KimaniandMyres havebuilt their

studiointo one ofthe most promising emerging startups inAfricangame
development.Theirdebutgame,Semblance,hasbeenexhibitedallover
theworldatconsumershowssuchasE3,PAXEast,GamescomandEGX
inadditiontomorethanadozenintimateartsfestivalssuchasSlamdance
Film Festival,South by South West (SXSW), A MAZEand Outof Index.
They havealso participated inprestigious residenciessuch as the Stugan
retreatand‘TrainJam’.
Duringthistime,Semblance receivedcoveragein large outlets,both
gamingandmainstream.Rolling Stone labelledit “addictive”,whileThe
Guardian ascribes it as“cute”.
Commercially,theduoandtheircompany arepoisedfor success,
havingrunthe studioas aleanstartup usingtheir ownmoney,they
found early investmentinlate2016.By end2017,Nyamakophadsigneda
multi-million randpublishingdeal withrenowned videogames publisher,
Good ShepherdEntertainment andcourtedarareaccess toNintendo’s
newest console,the Nintendo Switch. The game wouldbe the firstAfrican
developed IP torelease onaNintendoplatformever.
Kimaniholds degreesin computer science,maths,anddigitalart
andwasthewinner of theinauguralAMAZE./Johannesburg awardin
2015.Also aWitsgraduate,Myresco-curatedAfricade,the firstgallery
exhibition tofocussolely onAfricanvideo games.In 2015, Myres was
23 Huston Malande, 28, Kenya
Founder: Skyline Design
named one of Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 to watch.

Malande is asmartman.Hewasrankedasoneof thetop24 students

Ink Eze, 28, Nigeria
outof about 400,000 thatsatfor hishighschool finalexamsin 2007.
Hethentook atwo-year gapyear beforegoingtouniversity.During 25 Founder: Aso Ebi Bella
thattime,he interned asacomputer repair assistant whenhe got an
opportunity tofixasend/receiveemailproblemfor abank manager. InkEzeis thefounder of Aso EbiBella,
“Thatmay beasmallproblem, but, forabankmanager,itwas anonline community connecting
actually pretty cripplingandcostly backin2008.Within 15minutesor traditionalfashion enthusiasts with
so,Ihad found out wherethe problemlay and fixed it...Hetook out his SMEsin thefashion,beautyand
cheque book and wrote meacheque of15,000 shillings,”he says. weddingindustry primarily inNigeria
Malandesays he walked out ofthereinadaze. Hehadmade15,000 with growinginterests acrossAfrica
shillingsin 15minutes.That’swhenit dawned onhimpeople value andbeyond.
having theirproblemssolved,andtheycarelittle about who doesit. “The#AsoEbiBellajourneystarted
Hestartedlooking forproblems aroundhim to solveand make withahashtag Icreated in 2013while
money.Hesawademand forblank CDs so peoplecouldstore Iwas an employee ofBellaNaija.com
information. Hebought packs at about 10 shillings each, madeaposter whereIconvincedmy employerto
advertdetailinghe could “burn”documentsonaCDat20shillings. launchathenbi-weekly,nowweekly
Within aweek, he had soldtheentire pack. AsoEbiBella featureontheirsite asit
“Sadly,Iwas asked by the ownersto stopselling the CDs,so Iquit. garneredmillionsof website views,it
They of coursewent aheadtoofferthe service… in fact,afewyears later, becamemy side hustle,” she says.
about halfthespace of thecyber caféwasconvertedinto anaccessories This fashion tech startuphas over
section.” 17 millionorganicweeklyimpressions,
Thatyear,Malande taught himselfwebprogramminganddesign, over1.5millionfollowersacross
registered SkylineDesign, got hisfirst twoclients beforethe endofthe socialmedia,whiletheirplatform,
year,andendedupincorporatingthebusiness into alimitedcompany. AsoEbiBella.com, has garneredover
Skyline DesignLtdis ayouth-leddesignfirmfocusedondesigning 600,000 page views inthe last 11
bespokewebsites andbrandsfor corporateclientssince2008. months.Thecompany has delivered
Currently,ithassix permanentemployees and 12 consultantswith campaignsandcollaboratedwith
activecontracts.Heandhispartnershavealso formed agroupof Nigerian andinternational brands
companies,four subsidiaries wereregistered andareoperationaland includingOrijin, Renaissance (now
six morebeingset upthis year. They turn over hundreds of thousands RadissonBlu) Hotelsand Unilever’s
of dollars each year. Sunlight detergent.

26 June Syowia, 23, Kenya
Founder: Beiless Group
S
yowia loves innovating. She
co-founded a social venture in
the slum area where she grew up
immediately after finishing high
school in 2013. It propelled her to discover
the power of the internet in enabling small
organizations and businesses to scale up
through online sales and visibility. So,
while in her second year at university, she
attended a Google digital training class
that sparked her interest in technology
and digital advertising. After the training,
she bought a laptop and pitched her
marketing services for free to friends.
“One of them who owned a car bazaar
agreed and I did such a remarkable job he
referred me to his friends,” she says.
In 2015, she founded Beiless,
a company that provides creative
advertising and technology solutions for
businesses. Services include online media
campaigns, social media management,
strategic online communication, digital
advertising and content creation. They
count Kikapu Online, Masaku 7s and
Tennis Kenya among clients.
Last year, she won the Global Student
Entrepreneur Award in Kenya, was
named one of 100 Brightest Young
Minds in Africa by BYM Africa 2017, was
named one of 100 Most Influential Young
Kenyans in 2016, and received the founder
of the year award nomination by The
Founder Kenya in 2016.
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 28 Abdellah Mallek, 28, Algeria
Co-founder: Sylabs

When Mallek was at university, he launched two

startups, a student mentoring platform and an e-tourism
platform, which failed. He didn’t let failure deter him.
A little over two years ago, he founded Sylabs, a startup
accelerator in the heart of Algiers, the capital of Algeria.
“This is a tech hub founded to foster the
entrepreneurial spirit among Algerians, by proposing

27 Obinna Okwodu, 27, Nigeria

Founder: Fibre
a bunch of services like trainings, working space, a
very large corporate network, mentoring, acceleration
and many more. In two years, we supported 21 small
Growingup,Okwodu spent alotof weekends at
businesses and startups to launch or grow their business.
building sites with his civil engineer father. He
developed a love for real estate, went off to study Ten of them were established in Sylabs and they created
at MIT where he was one of the co-founders of 39 full-time jobs in two years,” he says.
Exposure Robotics Academy, a six-week summer The company has five permanent staff and Sylabs can
robotics training camp that teaches secondary school reach up to 15 employees for big projects.
kids how to program robots.
“We raised $100,000 worth of sponsorship from
various companies for this and ran this program for
three years up until my graduation in 2014.”
After graduation, he worked with the real
estate team at Morgan Stanley in New York before
29 Yasmine El Baggari, 25, Morocco
Founder: Voyaj
returning home to Nigeria. He spent nine months
El Baggari is passionate about connecting Bank, research
looking for problems to solve, particularly where
people andbridging cultures. atHarvard
housing and technology were involved.
“After travelingaroundtheworld to University,andthe
“I found that the issue for most of middle class
50countriesandeveryAmericanstate, USStateDepartment
Nigerians was not solely one of availability of
welcomed in over150+homes,Iwas asaYouth Moroccan Ambassadorto
homes but that there was a big problem in terms of
inspiredtobringmy experiencestothe theUnited States.She has spoken at
accessibility. It was very difficult to find homes to live
worldthroughentrepreneurship,”shesays. international conferences,includingthe
in and it was also very tough to cough up two years’
She launchedVoyaj,anonline platform WorldEconomicForum,the MiddleEast
worth of rent upfront,” he says.
thatconnects people fromaroundtheglobe Studies Association,andObama’sGlobal
He realized this made it difficult for landlords to
for one-on-one meaningful exchanges EntrepreneurshipSummit.
make consistent cash flow from their assets. In 2016,
tofosterglobalunderstanding.Similarto El Baggari has also receivedtheRoyal
he founded Fibre, a real estate booking startup that
Airbnb,withVojaj,youcantravelasaguest AirMarocAwardfromtheAfrican
allows middle-income tenants to rent homes and
andwelcome othersasahost. Studies Association,HampshireCollege’s
pay monthly. The company employs 11 people, have
Forthepastfouryears,herreach $60,000 Awardfor Entrepreneurshipand
raised $630,000 in funding and have booked over a
has includedwork withtheWorld InnovationandtwoIngenuity Awards.
million dollars in tenant revenue.

30 Simba Mubvuma, 26, Zimbabwe

Co-founder: Lexware Inc

Mubvuma co-founded Lexware Inc., a tech company based in Zimbabwe growing as a leader
in innovative technological solutions for the legal profession in Africa. The idea of the company
began in 2014, when he and a university friend created a program called Lex Mobile, which
allowed law students to access court judgments and legislation from smart phones without the
need for the internet.
“This ensured that in a time where broadband coverage was limited and expensive, students
could still access key legal resources from their phones,” he says.
Today, Lexware focuses on increasing efficiency in legal systems, placing its clients as market
leaders in the various countries in which it operates. Over the past two years, the company has
worked with over 50 young freelance developers, creating opportunities for them to utilize their
skills in software development. They have done business with many prestigious law firms around
the continent.

40 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

 2 Maria Borges, 25, Angola
Supermodel
This Angolan beauty was the first-ever model to walk the Victoria’s
CREATIVES Secret annual show in her Afro. Borges was born during Angola’s civil
war. At age 11, her mother died. She was raised by her sister only five
years her senior. Borges started modelling for a living. She took part in
the ‘Elite Model Look Angola’ competition in 2010 and grabbed the
attention of a local model scout who placed her in an overseas agency.
With dreams of following in the footsteps of her idol, Naomi Campbell,
it wasn’t long before she started making waves on the streets of New
York. She booked 17 shows in her first New York Fashion Week season
and became a Givenchy exclusive in her second season. She has also
walked the runway for Tom Ford, Balmain, Dior, Giorgio Armani,
Versace, Oscar de la Renta and Ralph Lauren. In 2016, she became a
global ambassador for L’Oréal.

3 Herieth Paul, 22, Tanzania

Supermodel

Paul was discovered at an open call at Angie’s AMTI, a model

agency in Canada. She signed with Women Management New
York in 2010 and was on the runway to success from there.
She has appeared in Vogue Italia, where she was a cover star,
i-D, Wonderland and Teen Vogue. She was one of three models in
the Tom Ford Fall/Winter 2013 campaign, photographed by
the designer himself. She also walked the coveted Victoria’s
Secret Fashion Show not once but twice, and has joined the
likes of supermodels Gigi Hadid and Jourdan Dunn as the face
of Maybelline.

4 Eddy Kamuanga Illunga, 26, DRC

Painter

Kamuanga Illunga’s work is

1 Thuso Mbedu, 26, South Africa
Actress thought-provoking and tells
stories about the Congolese
This Wits graduate raisedSouth Africa’s flaghigh when nation’s past, present and
nominated in the ‘Best Performance by an Actress’ category at future. He explores shifts in
the 2017 International Emmy Awards, for her role as Winnie on the economic, political and
Mzansi Magic’s TV drama, Is’thunzi. She made her on-screen social identity of the DRC
debut in 2014 in the Mzansi Magic drama series, Saints and since colonialization.
Sinners. Besides Africa, the
In 2014, she had a small recurring role in yet another Mzansi contemporary artist has
Magic soap Isibaya, before landing her a high-profile role as exhibited his works in galleries
journalism student and wild child Kitso on local soap Scandal! across the world, including
Mbedu has also starred as Ipeleng in the international TV series the Saatchi Gallery in London,
MTV Shuga. the Birmingham Museum
Under the mentorship of Amanda Lane, one of South Africa’s and Art Gallery, the Royal
greatest writers and directors, she is currently working on Academy of Arts in London
developing a feature film funded by the KZN Film Commission. and the Fowler Museum in
“Furthermore, I am editing the script of a series I wrote called Los Angeles. His work is also
iDRIVE. iDRIVE, a crime action series set in the digital space. It included in several important
is fast-paced and thought-provoking and I was fortunate to film collections. Business mogul
the pilot in April with money I received from my role as Ipeleng in Charles Saatchi resold one of
MTV Shuga.” Kamuanga Illunga’s paintings
She has also made her first international debut on the Danish for $93,000. His paintings cost
TV series Liberty. It seems there is no stopping her. an average of $45,000 each.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 41

 5 Cassper Nyovest, 27, South Africa
Rapper, Entrepreneur
Cassper Nyovest, born Refiloe Maele Phoolo, loved performing
before huge crowds while in primary school, where he fought to
be on every play and show. Inspired by his late brother, Khotso
Motebang Phoolo, who was also a rapper, Nyovest signed a record
deal with Impact Sounds at just 17 years old. He produced hits like
Gusheshe, Malome and Mama I Made It. He has shared the stage
with international artists Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Wizkid
and Wiz Khalifa.
The rapper also started his own record label, Family Tree, the
same year he released his debut album, Tsholofelo. His strings of
awards include the 2015 MTV African Music Awards Winner:
Best African Hip Hop Act, 2015 African Music Awards Winner:
Best Sothern Africa Male Artist & Best African Hip Hop Award.
On October 31, 2015, Nyovest made history by becoming
the first African artiste to sell out Ticketpro Dome, a venue
in Johannesburg. He is a 2018 nominee for the BET Best
International Act Award.
6 Stacey Gillian Abe, 27, Uganda
Multi-disciplinary contemporary artist
Abe describes herself as
“reserved”. Her work highlights
the strengths and fragility of
the female mind. It attempts to
critique stereotypical depictions
of her as a black woman.
“My passion started from the
need to express myself more,
I am not an introvert but a bit
reserved,” she says.
She found it easier to express
her thoughts, document her
experiences and put down her imagination through art. It all started with
painting and drawing in high school in 2008.
“From that, I grew fond of art as a form of expression. I made a decision
to continue with it at university in 2010. A huge part of my practice now
revolves around highlighting complex situations as autobiographical
documentations of past and continuous experiences. I like creating room
for dialogue...”
In her multi-layered glass art, video and performance installations, she has
examined the unconscious thought processes to question, highlight and
raise awareness on behaviour and character that influence and make up
an individual.
Abe has shown her works for various exhibitions including at Institut
Français de Kinshasa, Circle Art Agency in Nairobi and the Johannesburg
Art Gallery.
Yemi Alade, 29, Nigeria
7 Singer, Songwriter
Alade’ssongswill makeyouwanttodance.She singsin English,French,
Swahili, Portuguese andPidgin English connectingtomost partsof
theworld. Hersong Johnnyhas beenviewedover89 milliontimes on
YouTube,competingwithinternational artistes.Shehaswonnumerous
awards,among themtwoMTVAfrica Awards.She travels the world
performing and telling African stories through song.
42 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
Falz, 27, Nigeria
8 Rapper, Actor
Although he got his big break with the song Mary Me, Folarin Falana,
known as Falz started music when he was still in school. He released his
debut album, Wazup Guy: The Album in May 2014, His second album
Stories That Touch came in 2015, while his third solo album 27: The
Album was released in October 2017. Mary Me earned him a nomination
in the ‘Best Collaboration of the Year’ category at the 2015 Nigeria
Entertainment Awards. In 2016, he accepted the International Viewers’
Choice Award from BET. He has appeared in a number of movies and
series. He is also the founder of Bahd Guys Records.
Orapeleng Modutle,
29, South Africa
9 Fashion designer,
Founder, Orapeleng
Modutle Style Avenue
This fashion designer is
quickly becoming one of
the most recognizable
names in South Africa.
He showed creativity from a young age. His mother and grandmother
used to do needle work and he joined them as a hobby. He followed his
passion and studied Fashion Design at Tshwane University of Technology.
“I then interned for various fashion houses during my years of study and
Stoned Cherie was one of them. Nkhensani Nkosi provided me with a lot
of business knowledge and skills when it comes to fashion and after that I
was amped to start my own,” he says.
He founded and established Orapeleng Modutle Style Avenue which
has gradually grown into a budding fashion empire based in Brooklyn,
Pretoria. He has dressed such names as Bonang Matheba, Thando
Thabethe, Minnie Dlamini, Pearl Modiadie and Nigerian media darling
Toke Makinwa.
Nomzamo Mbatha, 27, South Africa
10 Actress
Mbatha went from a talent search competition to being arguably the fastest-
growing brand and celebrity in South Africa. She is a television actress on
shows like Isibaya and Umlilo; a film actress on Tell Me Sweet Something,
The Jakes Are Missing, All About Love and A Hotel Called Memory. In 2015,
she joined the likes of Kerry Washington and Jennifer Garner as the face of
Neutrogena. Her career continued to grow and she caught the eye of PUMA
South Africa who signed her on as an ambassador alongside Usain Bolt and
Rihanna. In July 2017, L’Oreal South Africa signed her as their ambassador
for their haircare range. She is also an ambassador for AUDI South Africa and
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She is adored by her
fans as a style icon.
 Joyce Jacob, 28,
11 Kwesta, 29, South Africa
Rapper, Entrepreneur
Nigeria
Founder: Joyce
Kwesta is one of the biggest names in African hip hop. He Jacob Beauty
burst on to the music scene with the release of his debut single
Shap Fede when he signed to Buttabing Entertainment an Arenowned celebrity
independent record label founded by Skwatta Kamp. Since
makeupartist with an
then, he has released a quintuple platinum hit single Ngud’
eyeforstrikingdetail,she
, which is one of only two hip hop singles to have summited
the South African radio airplay chart and appeared on Sway launchedJoyce Jacob
In The Morning, topping the Top 5 Freestyles of 2017. He is Beautyin 2009.She has
an advocate for South African music, an intellectual property workedonthesets of many
activist lending his voice to the fight to protect music copyright localandinternational
in the digital age, a record label owner, hit-maker and a musicvideos,magazine
lyricist who holds the crown as not only the most-awarded photoshoots andTV
rap artiste, but also, male artiste in the history of the South commercials.
African Music Awards. He created history with his double- “Thevisionbehindmy
platinum 2016 double-album, DaKAR II (The Second Coming), brandis toempower
setting the record for the most Platinum singles in a South
African album. Kwesta was named MTV Africa’s Hottest MC of 14 womenof allages,of all
backgroundsandraceto
2017, Best Selling Artist at the 6th Annual SA Hip Hop Awards
feelbeautifulatalltimes
and received the Song of The Year Award for his Ngiyaz’fela
Ngawe feat. throughthepowerof
beautyandmakeup.Partof thatvisionis tohaveapremium line allwomen
canuse and createatruly authenticAfricanbeauty brand,”she says.
Someofhernotableclientele includesformerBritish firstladyCherie

12 Davido, 25, Nigeria

Singer, Songwriter
Blair,AfricanbillionaireFolorunso Alakija,AngelaSimmons,Alek Wek,
Angelique Kidjo and Wizkid, among other notable names.

DavidAdeleke,popularlyknownas Davido,hasscaled heights injust six

years.His firstsingle in2011plantedhim firmlyinthe musicbusiness
andDami Duro,recordedin thesameyear,wasthecrown jewelfor his
acclaimed 2012debut studioalbum, Omo BabaOlowo.It madehima
householdname.
“It waspeople like[Nigerian musicveterans] P-SquareandD’Banjwho
mademebelievethatall this was possible,”he saidinan interviewwith
FORBES AFRICAlast year.
Hehas many accoladesincludingtwoMTVAfrica MusicAwardsand
theBET Awardfor‘BestAfricanAct’. Hehasalso worked withMTN,
Guinness,Unilever and hasmillions ofviews onYouTube. Davido has
collaboratedwithYoung Thug,Future,Trey SongzandRaeSremmurd,
and has toured the world. He is a 2018 BET Award nominee.

Shekhinah, 23, South Africa

13 Safia Elhillo, 27, Sudan
Author, Poet
Elhillo is the author of The January Children, a deeply personal
collection of poems describing the experience of navigating the
postcolonial world as a stranger in one’s own land.
“The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under
British occupation, where children were assigned birth years by
height, all given the birth date January 1,” she writes in her dedication.
In addition, Elhillo received a special mention for the 2016 Pushcart
Prize, and is recipient of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry
Prize, and the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. She
has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation, and
Crescendo Literary and The Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator.
Her work has been translated into Arabic, Japanese, Estonian,
Portuguese, and Greek, and has been commissioned by Under
Armour and the Bavarian State Ballet.
15 Singer, Songwriter
After singingandperformingfor many years throughouther childhood
and early teens,you mayhavefirst seen this faceon IdolsSouthAfrica
Season 7whereshemadetheTop32.After beingeliminated fromthe
competition, shere-enteredthecompetitionthefollowingseason. This
time,the teen landed inthe Top 6.At just 17years old, shemadeamark.
In 2016,shehad twonumber onehitsinglesunderher belt – namely
BacktotheBeach, featuring Kyle Deutsch (also aformerIdols’
contestant)and LetYou Know.Back to the Beach was achart-topper
and won‘BestPop &Alternative’ at the MTV AfricaMusicAwardsin
2016.Showcasing hersong writing skills,shealso featured on YourEyes
withBlackCoffee,Breathing withJesseClegg,On It withDJ Sliqe.
In September,shereleased RoseGold, agold certifies albuminfused
withtherealities of twenty-something anxieties andvulnerabilities.
Shekhinah, bornShekhinah Thandi Donnell, recentlycompleted a
MusicPerformance degreeattheSouth African School of Motion
Picture Medium and Live Performance.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 43


Adebayo Oke-Lawal, 28, Nigeria
16 Fashion designer, Founder of Orange Culture
Oke-Lawalhasbeendesigning clothessincethe ageof10. Hefounded
Orange Culturein2011after working withseveral Nigeriandesigners to
turn hisunique vision offashion into reality.
“Thelabelis morethanaclothingline,it is a‘movement’thatoffers
universal silhouetteswithanAfricantouchtoacreativeclass of men,
translatinginto aheady mixtureof Nigerian inspiredprint fabrics,
colour andcontemporaryurban street wear,”hesays.
Hehas also workedasafashion editorfor Wow Magazine,hasstyled
numerouscelebritiessuch asKateHenshaw,Rita Dominic,Munachi
Abii,LalaAkindoju, Ice Prince andhas doneeditorialworkfor
magazineslike Vogue ItaliaandNataal.The labelhas collaboratedwith
numerousbrandssuch asHuawei, DennisOsadebe,Rokus Londonand
Maxivive.
Healso launchedasocialresponsibilityproject calledpaintingyour
dreamswerehe inspiresyoung peopleto believeinthemselves.
Hehaspartneredwith Nigerianartiste Davidodesigning alimited
edition collectionsoldexclusively atSelfridges. Amongmany accolades,
thelabelwasselected in 2015by Louis Vuitton andMoetHennesseyfor
theirfirst-ever LVMH prize as one ofthe 20finalists selectedfromover
1,221 brandsall over the worldinParis.Last year,he showed forthe first
time ontherunwaysatLondon Fashion Week. Thebrandis currently
stocked inLagos,Paris,London, NewYork, Hollywood and Kenya and
has plans to stock in many more stores.
Wizkid, 27, Nigeria
17 Singer, Songwriter
Wizkid is arguably currently runningthe worldof Africa music. The
Nigerian singerandsongwriter is spreading theAfrobeat soundto
theworld. Heco-wroteandco-produced One Dance,Drake’sHot
100-topping hit,has signedamulti-album worldwidedeal withSony
MusicInternationalandis aPepsiambassador.WizKid, bornAyodeji
IbrahimBalogun,madehismark with Holla AtYour Boyin 2010and
hassince wonmany awards,amongthemthe BET AwardforBest
InternationalAct Africa in 2012andMTVEurope MusicAwardfor
Best Worldwide Act. His rise to famestarted with singing inchurch
attheageof 11beforecollaboratingwithM.I in the award-winning
FastMoney FastCars in 2009.HenowhangsoutwithAkonandChris
Brown andhas workedwith Rihanna, French Montana, Trey Songz,
Tinie Tempah and Wale.
Koleka Putuma, 25, South Africa
18 Poet, Author
Putumagrabbed theworld’sattention withher poem Water,athought-
provoking piece of writing andchallenging performance onissues of race
and religion. She’sapoet,director,playwrightand author.Her bestselling
book,Collective Amnesia,is powerful, intersectionaltext thattacklesrace,
sexuality,class,politics,andpoetry.Author Lawrence Schimel described
it asthemost excitingbook hereadlast year.Collective Amnesia has
beenprescribed attertiarylevelandmadepart of thecurriculum.Her
poems demand justice,insist onvisibility andoffer healing.Herplays
includeUHM andMbuzeni,Ekhayaand Scoop,thelatter aretheater
productionsforyoung audiencesunderthe age ofseven. Her workhas
traveledaroundtheworld, withher poetrywinning prizes such asthe
2014NationalPoetrySlam Championship and the 2016 PEN South Africa
Student Writing Prize.
44 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
Nasty C, 21,
19 South Africa
Rapper, Producer
Nsikayesizwe David Ngcobo, better known by his stage name Nasty
C, has been rapping since he was nine years old, influenced by his
brother who was a producer at the time. His single, Juice Back, and
the ensuing remix featuring Davido and Cassper Nyovest, made him a
household name.
In 2016, Nasty C delivered his debut album, Bad Hair, and gave it
away for free. The critically-acclaimed award-winning commercial
re-release, Bad Hair Extensions, featured four new tracks, including a
collaboration with US rap artist, French Montana.
Last year, he won the Record of The Year award at the South African
Music Awards and in 2015, accepted the South African Hip Hop Award
for ‘Best Freshman’.
Currently, the 21-year-old rap luminary, who recently inked a deal
with Universal Music Group, is putting the finishing touches on his
sophomore album due later this year.
Beverly Naya, 29, Nigeria
20 Actress, Entrepreneur
Naya is an award-winning actress and budding entrepreneur. She studied
script-writing and film-making at the University of Roehampton in the
UK before relocating to Nigeria to join the Nigerian film industry.
She has acted in a number of well-received movies including When Love
Happens, Before 30, Something Wicked, Catch.er, In Sickness and Health
and The Wedding Party 1 and 2. She has also done theater in London
and Nigeria, among them Stoning Mary and Crave (Psychosis 4:48).
Naya is a brand influencer and has won many awards for her craft. Early
2018, she produced her first project under her company Be Naya LTD, a
documentary titled Skin which focuses on colourism and empowering
people to love themselves as they are.
Simphiwe Ndzube, 27, South Africa
21 Visual Artiste
Ndzube has always had a love for art.
In the early stages of his career, he told
stories inspired by the struggles faced
by township residents, specifically in
Masiphumelele where he grew up.
“I’ve always been involved as a creative
growing up, taking formal and informal
art classes, dancing, and then later going
to art school. Art School gave me the
confidence and a bigger perspective of
the art world and that’s how I went in,
often times blindly,” he says.
His work has earned him many
accolades including the Tollman Award
for Visual Arts in 2015 and a Michaelis
Prize at the Michaelis School of Fine Art.
His recent work has evolved beyond
the socio and political context of South
Africa to include influences from books
such as Ben Okri’s The Famished Road,
Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
and Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying. Now
based in Los Angeles, he has secured his
next solo show in Shanghai.
 Rina Chunga-Kutama, 29, South Africa
22 Fashion designer
Chunga-Kutamais adesignerof note.Thefounder of theAfrican
brand,Rich Factory,her journeyinto thebigworld of fashion started
as ameansto makeextramoneyto payher university fees.Today,the
Zambian-born, Botswana-raisedandSouth African-based designerhas
dressedmany celebritiessuch asSouth Africanmusician Zahara and
actresses Terry Pheto and Nomzamo Mbatha.

Kemiyondo Coutinho,
28, Uganda
Playwright,Actress,
23 Filmmaker,
Mapeseka Koetle-Nyokong, 29, South Africa
Entrepreneur
25 Actress, Entrepreneur
Coutinho is a woman of
many talents. You may recognize this face as Dintle on e.tv’s Scandal!. The award-
“As an African woman, winning actress fell in love with performing arts at an early age. She
the narratives I was fed started performing on-stage plays at 13 years old. After studying
all upheld a stereotypical, acting, she bagged a leading role in Second Chances; she also
singular story or view of appeared in several national commercials for products like ABSA,
what it means to be both Joko, Vodacom and Suzuki. In 2012, she landed a role in a stage
African and a woman,” she play called Show Off. This bubbly 29-year-old creative is also an
says. entrepreneur. She recently opened a Gorge Grab n Go Café franchise
It inspired her first piece of at the Sandton Gautrain station in Johannesburg.
work at age 17.
“My first piece of writing
at the age of 17, took those Sonia Irabor, 28, Nigeria
ideas apart and dismantled them giving voice to the women whose
concerns were not being heard. Since then, I have written more
26 Writer, Filmmaker, Actress
plays, more films, started performance platform all with the aim of After spending time as a writer and PR guru, Sonia Irabor enrolled
deconstructing the societal structures put in place to silence my at the prestigious Drama Studio London where she trained for two
narrative,” she says. years. Since then, she has appeared in a number of classical plays
One of her works was writing, directing and acting in a short film such as her critically-acclaimed work as Helen of Troy in Trojan
that deals with Ugandans’ attitude towards women wearing mini-
Women, and the Tanya Ronder play, Table, where she played three
skirts. She is also the founder of Kemistry Klass, an arts organization
aimed at using arts to create change. Here, she teaches, acts, characters in the two-hour production. She is also a screen and
directs, writes and produces projects that all aim at vocalising stage writer most recently known for her work as a co-writer on
silenced voices. the hit Red TV series, Inspector K, now in its second season. She
Just recently, she was selected as one of the recipients of Kevin is currently working on her debut feature film under her newly-
Hart’s Laugh Out Loud Filmmaking fellowship for her script on founded production company, Sonic Boom Media.
immigration in America. As a result, according to Coutinho, Kevin
Hart will produce her next film.
She has held roles in music video production, filmmaking, event Tony Gum, 22,
production and event curation. 27 South Africa
Visual artiste

Sarkodie, 29, Ghana

24 Rapper, Entrepreneur
This multi-talented creative is a
must-watch. Dubbed Cape Town’s
BornMichael OwusuAddo, Sarkodie,started outasanunderground “coolest girl” by Vogue, she won the
rapper,whichhelped himmeet withDuncanWilliams,who helped prestigious 2017 Miami Beach Pulse
Prize for her Ode to She photographic
launchhiscareer.
exhibition. She got an opportunity
Hehasbeen namedone ofthe hottest hip hopMCsinAfricaby both to display this work at the Pulse Art
MTVandTheGuardian.Staying trueto his identity,he isabigadvocate Fair in Miami. Represented by the
of Azonto,aGhanaian genresaidtohavebeenbornoutof Kpanlogo,a Christopher Moller Gallery in South
traditional dance.In2009, he releasedhis debutalbumand firstsingle, Africa, Gum’s work is colorful and
Baby,featuring Mugeez of R2Bees. vibrant. Her famous black Coca-Cola
In 2012,hisalbumRapperholic earnedhim hisfirstBET nomination. In series, and her thought-provoking
2013,he launchedhisclothingline Sark by Yas.Helaunchedhisrecord self-portraits have earned her a place
label, Sarkcess Music. In 2014,hissingleMewu sold almost 4,000 copies on the world stage with exhibitions as
on the first day of its release in Accra. far as New York.

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 45


ANATII, 25, South Africa
28 Producer, Writer, Director, Artiste
Anathi Mnyango, popularly known by his stage name, ANATII, is one of the
most sought-after South African music producers. He is an Afro-Neo Soul
artiste – also known for his multilingual complex lyrics, internal and multi-
syllabic rhyme scheme. He has worked with the likes of DJ Khaled, Erykah
Badu, Omarion, Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, AKA and other local and international
artistes. His hard work has earned him multiple national and continental
nominations and awards. He is a multi-platinum producer, has charted on
iTunes/Apple Music in over 23 countries, I was GQ South Africa’s Best Dressed
Men in 2017. ANATII is also an ambassador for the PUMA South Africa RUN
THE STREETS CAMPAIGN, ambassador for Courvoisier Lumiere and the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
29 Sasha Pieterse, 22, South Africa
Actress, singer-songwriter
One of the biggest actresses to come out of South Africa, you
may know her from her role as ‘Alison DiLaurentis’ on the
ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars. She is set to return in the
show’s spinof, Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists next year.
Pieterse is also a musician. She released four country singles in
2013. This South African-born is currently in the US version of
Dancing With The Stars.
Tania Omotayo, 26, Nigeria
Model, Entrepreneur
Omotayo is creative director of a
fast-growing fashion brand, Ziva
Lagos. With a dedicated in-house
design team, her collections are on
trend.
“Ziva Lagos is dedicated to boosting
the Nigerian trade and labor market.
Hence all fabrics are locally sourced
and the clothes designed and
produced in Nigeria.”
The brand is becoming the go-to for
the creative industry, being featured
in music videos, magazines and
even a movie. Since its inception in
December 2016, it has had a number
of successful pop-up sales. In June
30 2017, Ziva opened its first store in the
heart of Lekki Phase and launched
their second store early this year.
46 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
From the 30 Under 30
CLASS OF 2015/17
Clarisse Iribagiza, 30, Rwanda
Founder, DMM.HeHe Ltd
Three years ago, Iribagiza made it to the FORBES AFRICA
30 Under 30 list. She founded a research and innovation lab
company in 2010 called HeHe Labs. Still driving Rwanda’s
booming tech industry, she is also currently pursuing an
Photos by Motlabana Monnakgotla; Photos supplied; Photo by Y Krache; Photo by Eleanor Goodey; Photo by Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
MBA at the African Leadership University whilst raising her
17-month-old baby girl.
Iribagiza tells FORBES AFRICA HeHe Labs rebranded to
DMM.HeHe, when it joined the DMM.com Group, a leading
Japanese technology conglomerate, in 2017.
“We currently serve over two million users across Africa,
empowering businesses to ofer their products and services
on-demand and guaranteeing great customer experience
to the last-mile,” she says. Iribagiza now employs almost 50
full-time employees.
Jean Bosco Nzeyimana, 25, Rwanda
Founder, Habona Ltd
When Nzeyimana
was on the FORBES
AFRICA 30 Under 30
list last year, he was
only 24 years old.
“Being featured
boosted my visibility,
and ever since, I have
been receiving emails
and calls from people
and organizations
willing to partner with
us in many ways,” he says.
“The feature also added more credibility – an important
thing for any entrepreneur,” he tells us today.
The company he founded, Habona Ltd, ofers
afordable environment-friendly services and energy fuels
in the form of biomass briquettes and biogas waste.
“The growth has been steady but conservative, as we
want to jump high up after finalizing our research,” he
says.
Nzeyimana has also had the opportunity to be a
panellist at the Africa 2017 Business Conference in Egypt.
He has also co-founded an organization called Kitabi
Ecocenter in his hometown aimed at promoting nature
conservation through eco-tourism.
“So far this business has been self-sustaining, and we
want to build on the lessons learned to build more eco-
centres across Rwanda and beyond,” he says.
 ‘THE DAVOS OF
AFRICA’
The inaugural Africa Investment Forum in
November in Gauteng aims to accelerate
Africa’s development and close the annual
$67 billion to $107 billion investment deicit.
F
rom November 7-9, Africa Inc. will
convene in South Africa’s Gauteng
Province, the continent’s seventh
largest economy, for the inaugural
Africa Investment Forum (AIF).
An initiative of the African Development
Bank (AfDB), it was announced in May
in Johannesburg by AfDB President
Akinwumi Adesina with Gauteng premier
David Makhura.
“It will be the continent’s first-ever
investment market place,” said Adesina,
formerly Nigeria’s minister of agriculture.
“South Africa is open for business again,
and as Gauteng, we are ready to host the
forum on behalf of not only South Africa,
but for Africa,” said Makhura, calling the
forum “the Davos of Africa”.
A platform to close Africa’s investment
gap, it will be “a game-changing” initiative.
“It cannot be business as usual, it must
be business unusual,” said Adesina.
With Africa’s population set to be two
billion by 2050, its development needs will
require an estimated $600-$700 billion per
annum. So accelerated development will be
the forum’s focus.
“The forum will be 100% transactional.
There will be no political speeches. The
only thing allowed will be transactions,
transactions and transactions,” said Adesina.
In attendance in November will also be
African heads of state who will be present
as the CEOs of their countries.
48 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
BY KAREN MWENDERA AND METHIL RENUKA
IT MUST BE
BUSINESS
UNUSUAL.
In a sit-down interview with FORBES
AFRICA, the AfDB president shared more
about new investments, and the bread
baskets and Silicon Valleys of Africa:
How will AIF take Afro-optimism and
the African growth story further?
African economies have been growing
relatively well in a very diicult global
environment. Despite the global economic
downturn, in 2016, they grew at roughly
2.2%; in 2017, they grew at 3.6%. In 2018,
they are projected to grow at 4.1%. And
that’s still above the global average.
So Africa’s head is above the water. But
it’s more than about keeping your head
above the water that matters, it ‘s about
how fast you can swim. Africa needs a lot
of oxygen to do that. And that means a lot
of firepower in terms of capital to close the
infrastructure gap.
To be able to drive millions of people
out of poverty, Africa should be growing at
double digits.
To be able to do that we have to deal
with the problem of lack of electricity, make
sure there is a lot more investment to allow
trade to happen. Africa could contribute a
lot more be it rail, ports, national highways
or aviation. It has to change lives on the
ground and quite honestly, when people ask
if I am an Afro-optimist, I say I am a very
proud African.
Africa is a beautiful place and has
tremendous potential so we shouldn’t
always just talk about the potential because
nobody eats potential.
We have to unlock that potential. So that
is what the Africa Investment Forum is all
about. Be it oil, gas, minerals or agricultural
commodities, Africa is awash with rich
resources.
The question is how to turn them into
real dividends with significant amounts of
revenue that allow a better quality of life for
the people. For that, you need to deal with
the infrastructure deficit.
We used to say it is about $15 billion.
But that has changed. The AfDB recently
released the African Economic Outlook
report and the deficit is anywhere between
$67 billion to $107 billion every year, so
which means we must do a faster job
pulling capital together because the rest of
the world is not waiting.
How long will it take to close that gap?
I think within the next decade. But it’s
going to take a lot of work…

What about the youth dividend; what are
the future industries to tap?
Africa is at the very top in fintech and
mobile money… but as we look at new types
of industries, we have to look at them in the
context of the fourth industrial revolution…
I get excited when I see the youth in Africa
well-educated; they are all on social media,
know how to use apps, which means they
already have a leg up. So the key is how to
re-tool them to operate in that kind of a new
economy. The AfDB is doing that in three
ways already. First is we have signed up a
joint program with Google and Microsoft
to help develop young talented Africans
in computer technology. We as a bank are
already investing in technology parks in
Cape Verde, Angola, Kenya, Senegal, and
Rwanda. These are technology parks where
you can have the ICT industries emerge;
almost like trying to create the Silicon
Valleys of Africa.
When it comes to the new economy,
you have to start early. We have a program
trying to create 250 coding centers
in Africa where you get people with
computational knowledge to do coding
services that can help in this new world we
are moving towards. We are also investing
in universities for science and technology
across Africa to create this new scientific
human capital… We need to give African
youth the skills they need for the jobs of the
future, not for the jobs of yesterday.
What then are the new wealth
generators?
If you look at where the money is going
in Africa, it’s not actually going into oil, gas
and natural resources. Most of the Foreign
Direct Investment (FDI) is going into the
Photos by Karen Mwendera
service industry, at least 64%, and also the
financial services sector; maybe about 27%
goes into the manufacturing sector. So
these are the big sectors where you see a
lot of FDI. But there are two sectors very
important for me. One is ICT, because this
is going to be the driver of the economy.
It’s very important for countries to invest
FOCUS – AFRICA INVESTMENT FORUM
Akinwumi Adesina
David Makhura
heavily in the ICT industry to give their
countries the platforms they need in the
knowledge economy.
The second is the food and agriculture
industry. Africa has a lot of oil and gas, but
nobody drinks oil, nobody smokes the gas.
Food is the future. The size of the food and
agriculture industry in Africa is going to be
$1 trillion by 2030. This is where the wealth
is supposed to come from.
Unfortunately, in Africa, we always walk
past gold. Just imagine you are seeing gold,
and you see it as dirt and don’t recognize it.
That’s the power agriculture has… The food
business is the biggest business. Agriculture
is not a development sector, it’s not a
social sector, it’s a wealth-creating sector.
Agriculture is a business and Africa needs to
fully unlock that potential.
If you look at the amount of arable land
left to feed nine billion people in the world
by 2050, it is not in Europe, Latin America,
Asia, or the US, it’s in Africa – 65% is right
here. What Africa does with agriculture will
determine the future of food for the world.
How will Africa’s billionaires and
capitalists help achieve these goals?
If you look at the high-networth-
individuals in Africa, the majority of them
FORBES AFRICA
make their money on this continent, and
that’s already a strong signal. Aliko Dangote
makes his money in Africa.
So we are going to get them involved on
the Africa Investment Forum because it is
trying to send a message to the world that
we have African businesses that are viable
businesses making money and doing well
on the continent; so putting capital to help
them expand can help them become global
multi-national companies…
And investing in African entrepreneurs?
The issue for entrepreneurs is finding
them, nurturing them and then putting the
financial backing behind them to thrive.
Africa has a lot of young people. Every day,
I wake up I read about a young person
doing so well. So the best investment that
Africa can make is to put its capital at risk
on behalf of its young people. Because when
you see a young person walk into a financial
institution, all you see is risk, risk, risk. We
have to change that and try and see creativity,
innovation and entrepreneurship. So that
way we can put your money at risk to make
them more creative, more innovative and
unleash their entrepreneurship capacity.
That is why at AfDB, we have a program
helping to invest in the early-stage businesses
of young people... We have a program set up
with the European Union called Boost Africa
to invest in young people.
The other thing we are doing is helping
unleash entrepreneurship in the food and
agriculture industry. The bank has a program
targeted at getting young graduates, medical
doctors, engineers…who are all going to
agriculture as a business. Last year, AfDB
invested over $860 million in that program
for about eight countries. Going forward, we
expect to invest $1.5 billion dollars every year
in that program for the next 10 years.
I really think unless we change the
mindset, the labor composition of the
agricultural sector and create a new dynamic
group of entrepreneurs in the food industry,
we only will have old people left in it.
Every university in Africa needs to make
entrepreneurship compulsory.
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 49
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Enoch Gama at home with his wife Kitty; (opposite
page) The Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto
featuring the image taken by Sam Nzima

SOWETO BURNING On June 16, it will be 42 years since South African policemen
gunned down scores of schoolchildren in the ‘Soweto Uprising’. It
was a day that shocked the world and will be forever seared into
the mind of 83-year-old journalist Enoch Gama.
BY CHRIS BISHOP

H
is face contorts slightly as he,
slowly, but painfully, returns
through the murky mist of
42 years. His hands tremble
with emotion as he relives horrific images
lodged in the corners of his mind. The
birds singing in the blue sky over the idyllic
garden of his family home in Roodepoort,
Johannesburg, contrasting with the moody,
mean, streets of the Soweto of yore.
Eightythree-year-old Enoch Gama lived
the slaughter of scores of schoolchildren
on that fateful winter’s day in Soweto in
1976. It was his job to be there as a reporter
for a Johannesburg newspaper and he
had his own car. He knew serious trouble
was building. Many of the schoolchildren
involved used to call him “Bra E” and held
him in high esteem.
“I just knew the previous night the
people were uneasy as if something was
going to happen, some people didn’t
go to work. You had people like Tsietsi
Mashinini, Seth Mazibuko and other
student leaders coming to your house. I
was always ahead of what was happening,”
recalls Gama.
On the morning of June 16, Gama was
out driving through the tense streets of
Soweto and saw a big crowd approaching.
“They ran to my car. Tsietse said ‘hey!
Soweto is burning – it is bad, it is very bad,
just stay ahead of things. Hide if you can
hide because there is going to be trouble
tonight. If the police shoot, we are going
to answer with petrol bombs’. This was
something new in Soweto.”
The mood turned ugly when news
filtered through the crowd in Orlando
that police had shot dead a young student,
Hector Pieterson – a bloody killing
captured for eternity by the famous
photograph by Sam Nzima that he
smuggled out through police lines to make
the front pages everywhere from New York

52 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018


to Sydney the next day.
“When people heard it was Hector, they
were very angry. They armed themselves
with Molotov Cocktails and started
throwing these petrol bombs recklessly.
They were just mad,” says Gama.
The birds outside tweet,
incongruously, as Gama’s face darkens
with the deepening story.
“I can still see the madness in their faces
and their anger. They didn’t know what to
do,” he says.
“I saw a burning body thrown into a
dustbin. I couldn’t stand it I had to drive
through. There were moments when I
thought I wasn’t going to make it. It was
diicult to see where the students were
coming from. They were coming out of
buildings with Molotov Cocktails and some
carried dustbin lids as shields. Among the
leaders were very young people. The real
fighters were the little girls – they were
ready to die.”
Among them, Susan Shabangu, who
spent months on the run in the clampdown
that followed; like many of the survivors,
she escaped into exile to fight the struggle
and ended up as her country’s mining and
social development minister.
It was a horrific chapter of a rich
Photo by Keabetswe Disemelo / Frédéric Soltan via Getty Images
career that saw Gama, the son of a Baptist
minister, born in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal,
work his way from reporting the courts
in his hometown to working on a national
newspaper. He joined The Post in Durban
through a friend, who was a reporter on the
paper, called Duke Ncobo.
“The newspaper wanted a young cub
reporter and suggested I should write two
stories for the editor. He read them and
looked at me, and said ‘did you write this or
did someone write this for you?’ I said ‘no’.
He said ‘go to Mr Ncobo’, who said ‘I think
the editor likes you’!”
His first arrest came in bizarre fashion.
Ncobo invited the young Gama to a party
in a block of flats in downtown Durban
belonging to the leading lights of the
African National Congress including Fatima
FOCUS – 1976 SOWETO UPRISING
Meer and journalist GR Naidoo.
An elderly woman living below called
the police complaining of the noise; the
police, who suspected the party was a
front for a political meeting among people
of color, encouraged her to press charges.
They arrested 27 partygoers including
Gama and threw them in the cells.
The court case turned into farce. The
elderly lady, in her 70s, complained that the
partygoers had banged the floor above her
as they danced. In court, the judge asked the
lady to demonstrate the dance. There were
titters in court as ushers cleared the chairs
away and the lady did a high-stepping
dance. The judge ruled she hadn’t made
suicient noise to convince him, yet Gama
and his colleagues were held to have been a
public nuisance.
Gama secured a job on the City Post,
amid the bright lights and jazz of 1950s
Johannesburg and arrived at Park Station
with nothing but a suitcase. A van from the
newspaper picked him up to take him to the
newsroom buzzing with young journalists.
“You must pretend to be one of them,
otherwise they will give you a hard time,”
chirped the driver.
These were colorful and chaotic times
for young black journalists at the City
Post. A regular caller with stories was a
young and vivacious social worker called
Winnie Mandela.
FORBES AFRICA
“Winnie Mandela, she was very young,
she used to come to the oice and was
very friendly with reporters. The gangsters
respected Winnie,” says Gama.
Gangsters and guns were another part of
newsroom life at the City Post. Gangs ruled
many of the Johannesburg streets in the
1950s – the Spoilers, the Americans and the
Msomi gang.
Their leaders used to waltz in of the
street with wide-brimmed hats and long
fine coats looking more Chicago than sub-
Saharan Africa. Often, they carried small
“baby brown” pistols, sometimes concealed
in a bandage, to intimidate journalists for a
number of sins.
It could be to force them to stay away
from their girlfriends or stop writing about
them or start writing about them. Often a
gun up the nose proved mightier than the
pen, until one day.
“One day, they came and they found
the deputy editor having a meeting with
the reporters. The gangsters introduced
themselves and the deputy editor Henk
Margolis, an American brought in to work on
the paper, says: ‘Gentlemen, can I help you?’
“They pointed a gun at him, Henk noticed
this and was not scared. ‘If you think you
can intimidate me you are wrong, I was born
in Chicago, so I have no time for small fry’.
That day we thought there was going to be a
showdown. Henk grabbed hold of the leader
and pushed him outside. That was the last
time the gangs came to the oice,” says Gama
with a smile.
It turned out that thugs in police
uniforms proved to be Gama’s downfall. He
was arrested numerous times and ended
up spending nine months in prison. He
went into exile in the United States and
with his wife of 56 years, Kitty, he was a
prime mover in the divestment campaign –
encouraging US firms to pull out of South
Africa – that helped usher in the end of
apartheid.
A system that stoked the fiery horror of
June 16 that people who were there will
never forget.
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 53
FORBES AFRICA

TRIBUTE - SAM NZIMA

FAREWELL TO THE
ICON BEHIND THE
CAMERA
Sam Nzima was 42 when he shot the iconic
image of Hector Pieterson. His death, 42 years
on, is a reminder of how he forever redeined
South Africa’s apartheid narrative.
BY FRED KHUMALO

I
n human history, iconic moments are
few and memorable. And it is because
they are memorable that we can’t but
celebrate them.
For Martin Luther King Jnr, the iconic
moment was the I Have a Dream speech he
delivered during a march on Washington
DC on August 28, 1963 that inscribed his
name forever in the history books of iconic
oratory.
For the world of boxing, the moment
was when, in 1964, Cassius Clay (later
Muhammad Ali) floored the unbeaten
heavyweight behemoth Sonny Liston in the
first round in one of the most memorable
upsets in Lewiston, Maine.
For South African photographer
Sam Nzima, the historic moment came
unexpectedly on a cold wintry day, June 16,
1976.
Nzima, 42 at that time, and a staf
photographer at the premier black daily
newspaper, The World, was one of a few
journalists who’d been tipped of that
“something big” was going to happen on the
streets of Soweto on June 16.
Just how big that “something” was going
messages as: AWAY WITH AFRIKAANS;
WE ARE BEING CERTIFIED BUT NOT
EDUCATED.
It did not take long before students
started bursting forth into the streets,
singing and waving their placards.
At the corner of Moema and Vilakazi
Streets in Orlando West, they were
intercepted by the police. Bullets rang out.
It was during those few minutes of
intense drama that Nzima snapped away a
series of pictures including the now famous
image of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the
limp body of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson,
with the young boy’s sister Antoinette
crying her head of (see previous page).
Thanks to this image, the world could no
longer ignore the horror of apartheid. The
US government condemned the shooting,
and activists worldwide began lobbying
for economic sanctions, which eventually
brought the apartheid government to its
knees.
For Nzima, the picture brought mixed
fortunes: while he became an international
celebrity, at home he’d become one of
the state’s enemies. The security police
down by government edict.
In 1996, Nzima paid a courtesy visit to
the oices of the Sunday Times in Rosebank,
where I was assistant news editor.
He was almost in tears when he said:
“When we were starting out back in the late
1960s, we were not allowed to work at The
Star, which was a white newspaper. Now
you boys are actually sitting on the news
desk, assigning white reporters! Freedom
has finally arrived.”
But it was thanks to the foundations
laid by the likes of Nzima that such
transformation – albeit nascent and hesitant
– was at all possible.
Though Nzima’s 1976 picture was iconic,
Nzima did not benefit financially from its
international publication, as copyright
resided with the newspaper which
employed him.
Thulani Nzima said this week that
although it took his family 22 years to
consolidate his father’s rights to the Hector
Pieterson image, it gave the family pleasure
knowing his father lived to experience
the global recognition he received for his
selfless contribution.
Photo by Jay Caboz

to be was anyone’s guess.
When Nzima arrived at Naledi High
School around six in the morning, students
were already massed outside the premises,
preparing placards that bore such powerful
harassed him, wanting to know what had
happened to Makhubo.
Nzima had to quit his job, and run to
the safety of the homeland of Gazankulu in
South Africa. In 1978, The World was shut
In recognition of his gallant act, Nzima
was honoured with the Order of the
Ikhamanga.
Born in 1934, Nzima died on Saturday,
May 12 in Nelspruit.

54 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

FORBES AFRICA

INTERVIEW – JOYCE BANDA

WOMEN’S
LEADERSHIP
IS UNDER ATTACK
GLOBALLY
We caught up with former Malawian President Joyce Banda in
Johannesburg just before her return to Malawi after four years
away. One of four female presidents Africa has had, she spoke
about her plans but is guarded about her return to politics.

D
uring her time away from
Malawi, Joyce Banda served
as a distinguished fellow at the
Woodrow Wilson Center in the
United States, and has just finished writing
a book, From Day One, on the issues around
women and the girl child. She shares more:
What are you looking forward to and
how does it feel?
I am so happy I have done all I wanted to do
and am going home.
There’s much excitement in Malawi...
I guess I am the only one not excited… It
has been a week of hype and I am totally
surprised and humbled because I didn’t
happened to Julia Gillard. And you go to
Thailand and look at what happened to the
former Prime Minister…
I’ve been speaking a lot in the US and the
question I always ask is ‘tell me why [as] the
oldest democracy for 200 years, you have
not managed to have one woman in state
house’?
Coming back to Africa, we haven’t done
badly, at least we had four women. We went
to Beijing in 1995; we agreed that it was part
of the work plan that we are going to come
back and get into leadership.
I remember asking Mrs Gertrude
Mongella, who was the Secretary-General
of the UN Fourth World Conference on
Catherine Samba-Panza is going through
in Central African Republic; see what is
happening in Mauritius to our friend who
just left a few weeks ago. So at the end of
the day, you ask, why is it we don’t have any
more female leaders in Africa? My answer
is we have done well as a continent, we have
found ways of getting our women into state
house, but perhaps what we have to do is
learn how to keep them there. And Africa
hasn’t done badly.
Somebody asked me about feminism.
I said ‘no, Africa shall have it all; it shall
design its own because we can’t copy
what’s happening elsewhere unless we are
convinced it’s working there’. But how can
Photo by Karen Mwendera

know just how much Malawians love me.
We don’t have any female presidents on
the continent at the moment… why are
there so few women in politics?
Women’s leadership is under attack
globally. Start from Australia, look at what
Women: ‘because men are already sitting
in the seats, how can we go to parliament?’
They said ‘go and push them if you have to’.
And we went home, tried our level best and
got into leadership.
In Africa, go one by one, and check how
the [female presidents] left, go and see what
we copy other models where women are
still not getting equal pay, where women
can’t even go on maternity leave, where
for 200 years, there’s no female president?
The continent with the highest number
of women in parliament is Africa – three
countries have 40% women in cabinet. And

56 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

the time I was head of state, I took
advantage of that position to appoint
my fellow women… The advantage
of us getting into state house is we
focus on social issues; we want
people to have electricity, clean
water and fuel every day. We want
hospitals to have medicines, we want
schools to have school materials but
the challenge is how do we keep the
women in state house?
Is the patriarchal mind-set to
blame?
It is. In fact I think the death of
Mama Winnie Mandela and all that
has been revealed these past weeks
has opened the debate and women
are sitting down and saying, ‘how
could we not have seen?’ Because we
never did… That’s what her daughter
said when she spoke at the funeral:
‘why did you people wait until my
mother is gone, to vindicate her?’
That is the kind of pain women are
going through and nobody seems to care. I
don’t know why the media doesn’t seem to
dig more into this misogyny and abuse to
women leaders…
Do you have presidential ambitions
again?
No. It is not up to me. I don’t care about
going to state house… I am just going back
home.
Are you returning to politics?
I am not planning anything. From this far,
I don’t know the political landscape on
the ground. I am highly experienced in
politics. And I was very fortunate. When my
husband retired [as chief justice], I decided
I can enter politics. So I did at age 54, I was
late… the president didn’t allow me to join
the national executive committee so he sent
me down to the grass roots.
So I came from the grass roots as
a treasurer in the village. I had the
opportunity to study and I was fortunate
when elected head of women in 2003 in
my party…
What have you been up to in the last four
years?
…In the time I have been away from home,
I’ve spoken [at forums] 37 times, received 12
international awards, written two papers,
written a book, and received an honorary
doctorate. Everybody who has been with
me in the US knows I’ve run non-stop. It
has been time well spent.
At the Woodrow Wilson Centre, they
even assisted me to draw up a tool kit. I can
now go into any country and speak with
authority about how I feel women should
be treated, how the space should be created
at the table for women to participate in
leadership.
In Malawi, what are your plans for
women and children, through your
foundation?
The Joyce Banda Foundation is bigger than
Joyce Banda. I established it in 1997 when I
received the Africa Prize so it cuts across all
parties. It has 500,000 women beneficiaries
in microfinance, it has sent to school 6,500
girls, it has a sponsorship program, and a
youth program.
We have five pillars in the Joyce
Banda Foundation: one is income, we
believe that in the rural household
if there is income the woman is in
control and can provide better health
and nutrition and even send the
girls to school and will also make
decisions about her life; she can make
choices to stay or leave an abusive
place.
The second pillar is education for
the girl child, because if she doesn’t
go to school, then she is exposed to
all harmful traditions. The third is
maternal health. My research has
shown that those that have died
giving birth are between the ages of
11 to 19. So there is a connection with
education. This girl child should go
to secondary school. The four years
in secondary school is not just about
her future, it is also about her health.
The fourth pillar is leadership.
I believe we must find ways; hence my
research, for allowing more and more
women to enter politics and participate in
leadership. And the last one is human rights,
which is a cross-cutting pillar.
What is the current investment climate
in Malawi?
I believed the way I left oice, I needed
to step aside and look the other way. And
provide an opportunity for the sitting
president to freely show his capabilities. He
is my president because I conceded and I
accepted that he can become president, so
the last thing that I want to is poke my nose
into what he is doing right and not.
But I just feel sad and surprised when
they say people are going 36 hours without
electricity…
I don’t understand some of the hardships
my Malawians are facing because I say
this boat is connected when you ask about
the investment climate. Nobody is going
to invest in a country that has 170MW of
electricity. That doesn’t happen.
– Interviewed by Methil Renuka; for the full
interview, visit www.cnbcafrica.com
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 57
FORBES AFRICA
INTERVIEW – ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF
‘BE BOLD AS
WOMEN’
Liberia’s former President
and Africa’s irst elected
female head of state, recently
awarded a $5 million prize for
excellence in African leader-
ship, is opening a center for
the empowerment of women.
BY LAURA RWILIRIZA
E
llen Johnson Sirleaf has an iconic
status in Africa and the world. As
the first elected female head of
state in Africa, she served as the
leader of Liberia for two elected terms.
Those terms saw Liberia’s slow and
steady march from what was considered
a pariah state to a country with what the
Mo Ibrahim Foundation calls a “trajectory
of progress” that has helped transform its
economy, survive the shock of Ebola, and
restructure public institutions to respond to
the needs of the people.
It is only fitting that FORBES AFRICA
gets to meet the Nobel Peace Prize winner
58 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
in Rwanda, a country known for its high
representation of women in Parliament, and
where Sirleaf is awarded the Ibrahim Prize
for Achievement in African Leadership at a
special ceremony.
Q. Please share your thoughts on the
African Union (AU) self-funding reform
goal, the Kaberuka Proposal.
The dependency of the AU on external
sources has been the subject of debate for
many years, and the thinking of our leaders
is that it is better to finance our operations
by ourselves and alleviate pressure and
dictation from these external sources.
On the other hand, we know that to have
financial autonomy, every country must
be able to contribute consistently. So, the
crux of the reform is to change the payment
formula and make sure everyone knows
they have to pay their part.
When it comes to the Kaberuka
suggestion, it meets our objective of
financing our organization ourselves.
However, it does place a burden on the
poorer states... So, our position with
the Kaberuka plan is to study it some
more so when we commit, we do not fall
into arrears. We want to see the reform
implemented, and for it to include cost-
reduction in structural aspects such as
travel and positions etc., thus reducing the
burden on poorer countries.
Q: Will Africa really be able to tackle
illicit financial flows? And with women
being conspicuously absent from
financial decision-making, yet being the
greatest losers on such issues, how do we
tackle these discrepancies?
We have to become more accountable
and pass stringent mandates in institutions,
as well as instill practical capacity to
understand the complexities of these
financial transactions. Also, we must
implement a legal system that will enforce
against such flow violations.
Access for women is diicult even in
the case of legitimate flows. Even with a
growing manufacturing sector and agri-
industrial activities usually manned by
women, access is still limited, for rural
women particularly.
There is a big efort being put in by
diferent regional institutions; in Liberia’s
case, GIABA, the Intergovernmental Action
Group Against Money Laundering in West
Africa, has been analyzing the flows and
determining what is illicit.
But it is up to women to stand up and put
other women in leadership roles, because
the record is clear: women are more
credit-worthy when it comes to financial
transactions, and this suggests the more
women there are heading these institutions,
the more we can be assured that regulatory
laws will be more efective.
Q: What are your plans? How would you
encourage young women to follow in
your footsteps, or even create their own
path?
We are establishing the Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and
Development. The activities will center
around five themes that will promote
women in business, women in leadership,
women in fragile states, women in
migration, and education for women and
girls. We will use the life experiences of
Photo supplied
women who have excelled in these areas.
For the young women, I say to all, be self-
confident and pursue your goals... Let us be
bold as women.
FORBES AFRICA

HEALTH TECH

THE NEW
PRESCRIPTION FOR
HEALTHCARE: AI
Each person generates enough medical data in
their lifetime than doctors can keep up with. Is
Africa using the new tools at its disposal to assess
this data and deliver better healthcare?
BY TIANA CLINE

I
n July 2017, news shook South Africa
that there are no longer cancer
specialists practising within its
KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province. A
year later, the KZN health department is
still battling with the fact that terminally-ill
patients lack access to adequate oncology
services and, according to the country’s
biggest opposition party, the Democratic
Alliance’s KZN health spokesperson, Dr
Imran Keeka, there are only two full-time
oncologists based at Grey’s Hospital in
Pietermaritzburg.
These challenges extend well beyond
South Africa’s borders – reports state the
majority of African countries still have fewer
than one doctor for every 1,000 people.
To any modern technologist, the answer
is obvious: use every cutting-edge technology
now at our disposal such as the Internet of
Things, the power of cloud computing, and
Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find ways of
generating, collecting, and analyzing medical
data in order to solve these challenges and
deliver necessary care.
“One of the biggest challenges for
Africa is data access. For example, in South
Africa, there is a five-year lag time in cancer
statistics reporting, which prevents any
meaningful prevention strategies. IBM’s
lab in Johannesburg is using cognitive
algorithms to automate the inference of
national cancer statistics in South Africa,
which is expected to bring reporting to near
real-time,” says Gciniwe Dlamini, a software
engineer at IBM Research.
The good news for patients is that
more than 50,000 cancer clinical trials are
published annually, so there is plenty of
data. And yet as new studies and evidence
emerges, it is nearly impossible for clinicians
to stay on top of the latest cancer care data.
IBM’s Watson for Oncology can help identify
the most appropriate treatment options for
each patient and sift through the growing
amount of medical literature to better
understand those options.
In 2017, Dlamini and a colleague,
Waheeda Saib, spent time in Uganda
meeting with oncologists from other
countries to see how they used AI for better
medical care. They realized the doctors
in Africa are just as skilled but lack the
infrastructure and knowhow on the right AI
IF WE’RE GETTING
MACHINES TO
RECOGNIZE PATTERNS,
WE NEED TO GIVE
THEM ENOUGH
Photo Busakorn Pongparnit and Ipopba via Getty Images
INFORMATION THAT
THEY CAN LEARN.
tools that can help them.
In terms of cancer treatment, oicial
treatment guidelines for sub-Saharan Africa
were recently revised for the first time.
“Even though the treatment protocols
have been simplified, it’s still time-
consuming for the few and overwhelmed
oncologists in the region to navigate the
information. So, IBM Health Corps created
software that automatically and quickly takes
clinicians through the revised treatment

60 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

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FORBES AFRICA
HEALTH TECH
guidelines, cites helpful and relevant medical
literature, and generates a treatment plan.
It will be technology like this that will help
take healthcare to the next level in Africa,”
says Saib.
Daniel Saksenberg is the co-founder of
Emerge, a high-tech data-driven company
that solves complex business problems using
advanced data analytics. He believes that if
data is collected from a suiciently wide set
of suferers of a particular condition, it will
be possible for a machine-learning algorithm
to be trained such that valuable patterns can
be discerned from the data.
“Machine learning has had remarkable
success in being able to recognize patterns
in data that would otherwise be inaccessible
to human scrutiny and has revolutionized
dozens of areas of study to date. Machine
learning can deliver actionable results
substantially faster than current medical
research methodologies which are
dependent on a researcher first having a
hunch as to which therapy or treatment
would be beneficial to patients, and then
constructing a single-variable study to test
his or her hypothesis,” says Saksenberg.
Vast digital databases are required for AI
and machine learning to be efective, and
Saksenberg sees Africa being left behind
along with its endless paper trail.
“With AI, there’s a tremendous
opportunity in the healthcare sector. Why
hasn’t it kicked of in South Africa? Because
doctors in South Africa primarily record
their patient visits on paper and machines
cannot mine data of paper.”
In America, and since the advent of
Obamacare in 2009, it became compulsory
that all doctors record medical visits digitally.
In South Africa, however, doctors’ notes,
paper or otherwise, belong to the doctor and
a medial practitioner is under no obligation
to hand information over.
Yet without access to complete digital
medical records, we only get half the picture.
Saksenberg cites the example of a pathologist
who can easily pull up anyone’s blood tests or
any other data relating to tissue samples.
“The problem is that the pathologist just
62 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
gets the results. She doesn’t know what
symptoms the person had that prompted
the test, and she doesn’t know what the
diagnosis was after the test. She also
doesn’t know what treatment was given
to the person and whether they recovered
or didn’t recover and if they did, how
they recovered. It’s really a fraction of
the picture. If we’re getting machines to
recognize patterns, we need to give them
enough information that they can learn.”
Neal Goldstein is a Johannesburg-based
orthopaedic surgeon, as well as the director
of LogBox (an app idea he came up with
while working as a registrar in the public
sector).
Goldstein became amazed by
the complete lack of technological
interoperability in healthcare.
“The patient application currently
addresses the frustration of patients having
to complete demographic information on
countless medical forms over and over
again, and LogBox will allow for a robust
interoperable shared electronic medical
record,” he explains.
Like Saksenberg, Goldstein has seen how
new technology adoption is particularly
diicult within the medical fraternity in
South Africa.
“Medical professionals are busy and
often rely on “old methods” – just based on
familiarity,” adds Goldstein.
“Our approach with LogBox is to
expose trainees to our technology early on
in their training. The new generation of
practitioners mostly embrace technology
and are quite excited to use it. We plan to
be at the forefront of this new technology
drive and hopefully provide innovative user-
friendly applications for both patients and
practitioners.”
As with all people, some doctors are early
adopters who quickly work with the latest
technologies, while others aren’t.
“Most are somewhere on the spectrum
between the two extremes,” says Jonathan
Broomberg, CEO of Discovery Health.
“Globally, most healthcare systems are
moving rapidly towards complete digital
MANY SOUTH AFRICAN
DOCTORS ARE MOVING
THEIR PRACTICES
TOWARDS A FULLY
DIGITAL SYSTEM, AND
WE ARE HOPING THAT
THE PRIVATE HOSPITAL
GROUPS WILL DO THE
SAME IN THE NEAR
FUTURE.
systems. Many South African doctors are
moving their practices towards a fully digital
system, and we are hoping that the private
hospital groups will do the same in the near
future.”
The global healthcare industry is at a
turning point. For AI to fulfil its world-
changing potential, it is vital people
have confidence in its recommendations,
judgment and uses. This trust will be earned
through repeated experience, in the same
way we learn to trust that an ATM will
register a deposit, or that an automobile will
stop when the brake is applied.
We trust things that behave as we expect
them to. To establish this level of trust in AI,
systems must be accountable and developed
with the capability to explain their decision-
making process.
“We actually believe it’s augmented
intelligence, not artificial intelligence and
the real risk is the price of not knowing.
Every day, we pay the price for not knowing
what’s wrong with a patient; not knowing
where to find critical natural resources; or
not knowing where the risks lie in our global
economy,” adds Saib.
“AI is a new level of collaboration
between human and machine and will only
augment and expand our intelligence, not
replace it.”
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in kigali

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38"/%"5063*4.$0.
 MANDELA
AND THE
MAHATMA
The inaugural India-South Africa Business Summit brought
together titans of business and politics to further deepen ties
bound by two global icons and a shared history.
BY KAREN MWENDERA

G
auteng, South Africa’s richest
province, was the lead actor at
the recent India-South Africa
Business Summit (ISABS), where
Premier David Makhura called for stronger
economic ties with one of the world’s fastest
growing economies.
Hosted in end-April by Invest SA
and Invest India at the plush Sandton
Convention Center in Gauteng, the two-day
summit brought together politicians, CEOs
and investors from both countries to find
ways of improving trade relations that have
fed of warm political relations since the fall
of apartheid.
“We now need to grow together and
Ruchira Kamboj, David Makhura, Lindiwe Zulu, Suresh Prabhu and
ensure shared prosperity,’’ Makhura told Rob Davies at the opening of the exhibition at the summit
delegates from some of South Africa’s
and India’s biggest companies. “Indian
companies have been playing an important “Let us build the type of economies in had been privatized, India’s Minister of
role in the post-apartheid rebuild of the which no one is left out,” he said. Commerce, Industry and Civil Aviation
South African economy.” South Africa’s relations with India date Suresh Prabhu promised to look into the
Gauteng’s trade with India has more than back as far as 1684 when the first Indians matter, a position supported by South
doubled in the past seven years to $5.9 billion arrived during the Dutch colonial era as Africa’s Public Enterprises Minister Pravin
fueled by investments in financial services, slaves. During the struggle against apartheid, Gordhan, who now looks after South African
information technology, medical supplies, oil the Indian community established a number Airways (SAA).
and vehicle manufacturing. Nationally, trade of political groups under Mahatma Gandhi South African Trade and Industry
between the two countries has risen more from 1894. Minister Rob Davies said more Indian
than four-fold to $11.79 billion by the end of To facilitate increased trade, delegates companies can invest in, for example,
2015 from $2.5 billion in 2003, according to from the two countries discussed the the auto sector. “I think we would see a
advisory firm PwC. reintroduction of direct flights between significant contribution to what we are
Makhura reiterated that because of the Johannesburg and Mumbai, stopped in 2015 trying to achieve,” he told FORBES AFRICA.
two countries’ shared history, they should because of losses incurred by the airlines. Davies said if South Africa achieves the
build inclusive economies. While noting that airlines in India $100 billion trade and investment target set

64 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018


by President Cyril Ramaphosa for the next
five years, the country would be a “much
more attractive partner” for India and other
countries.
The summit also hosted an exhibition
attended by diferent businesses from
both sides looking to leverage from the
partnership.
One of the exhibitors, 24-year-old South
African entrepreneur Yandi Malembe,
started a natural hair care product line with
her mother. She said the partnership South
Africa has with India has benefited her
business tremendously.
“The investors who have come on board
have been able to take our business to a
new scale and even been a great part of us
rebranding and entering the market more
aggressively,” she said, adding that Indian
investors have injected as much as $16,000
in her Johannesburg-based business Earth
Hair.
“The world is moving toward a global
market and I think it’s more than necessary
for us to build these relationships so global
markets can really become more eicient
and therefore we are able to trade in an
easier way because we all have something
great to ofer, so why not share it?” she said.
According to South African Small
Business Development Minister Lindiwe
Zulu, small and medium enterprises play
a crucial role in the economies of both
countries.
“India also is looking at opportunities
in South Africa and this is where small and
medium enterprises and young people in
particular can benefit,” Zulu told the summit.
“The world is their oyster. They just
need to go out there and get it and our
responsibility is to create a conducive
environment for them.”
Photos by Karen Mwendera
From India, Professor Diwakar Vaish
brought his A-Set Robotics, which developed
India’s first 3D-printed humanoid robot
called Manav.
He also invented the world’s first mind-
controlled wheel chair that uses neural
impulses to assist paralyzed patients. And
one of his latest inventions, created alongside
FOCUS – SOUTH AFRICA-INDIA
South Africa’s Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan at the
launch of the India-South Africa Business Summit
the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, is
the world’s cheapest and smallest ventilator.
His ventilator would cost $250 whilst the
average cost is approximately $34,257.
“We are working with Invest India and
Invest SA and that is what is bringing us
together and it is wonderful to understand
people and how we can bring our
technologies to make healthcare and robotics
cheaper and empower the people,” he told
FORBES AFRICA.
Also in attendance at the event was titan
of Indian industry, Adi Godrej, who was at
the India-South Africa CEOs Forum and
happily posed for shutterbugs, and told
FORBES AFRICA: “It was very good to
see the optimism in South Africa for future
growth. There is great scope for India-
South Africa cooperation… We are always
looking at opportunities here… And the new
government change in South Africa is a
positive sign.”
Highlighted throughout the summit
was the fact that one of the key industries
South Africa can benefit from is technology
innovation. This in turn can create more jobs
for South Africans and tackle unemployment
as the world enters the fourth industrial
revolution with emphasis on technology and
automation.
The Chairperson of the Industrial
Development Corporation (IDC), Busi
Mabuza, who spoke on one of the important
panels at the summit, said that apart
FORBES AFRICA
from looking at tech and other business
opportunities between the two countries,
another important factor to take note of is
the ocean economy and its potential to help
diversify ownership.
“India exports to South Africa petroleum
products; now who is owning those ships
that are transporting that? I think women
should start getting into that space,’’ she said.
The summit saw the signing of a
memorandum of understanding (MoU)
between Invest SA and Invest India.
A second highlight was the release of The
Red Fort Declaration – The Legacy 20 Years
on, Commemoration of 20 years of Strategic
Partnership, a book authored by journalist
Fakir Hassen documenting the progress of
bilateral relations between the two countries.
There was also the release of a White
Paper setting out the substantive corporate
social responsibilities of Indian companies
based in South Africa.
According to a Boston Consulting Group
report, India is expected to be the third
largest consumer economy at $4 trillion by
2025, while South Africa provides a gateway
to the world’s youngest consumer market
in Africa, making the collaborative efort
worthwhile.
At the pre-summit dinner, India’s High
Commissioner to South Africa, Ruchira
Kamboj, was right in quoting former South
African President Nelson Mandela: “India’s
soul truly does lie in South Africa.”
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 65
FORBES AFRICA
ENTREPRENEURS – GODWIN GABRIEL
GettingTheWorld
MOOVN
Tanzanian-born Godwin Gabriel has a non-tech
background but is challenging the Ubers of the
world with a ride-sharing app of his own.
G
odwin Gabriel has always had
the gift of the gab. At 17, he
closed the biggest deal in Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania, supplying
food and beverages to a five-star luxury hotel
overlooking the picturesque Indian Ocean.
As he recalls, it all happened in a flash:
one minute he was a youngster looking for
extra income and the next, he was sat across
a table, suited and booted, having lunch with
the food and beverages manager of the hotel
and her team with only $55 in his pocket.
“I was scared I could not aford the bill.
When the bill came, it was literally 55 bucks.
I remember sweating and I was literally
getting ready to prepare to wash dishes, but it
all worked out in the end and I got the deal,”
he says of that meeting.
Then came the hard part. With no money
to pay suppliers, Gabriel had to rely on his
gab yet again to get the trust of suppliers
to deliver on credit. His natural flair for
business made his parents uneasy; fearing
he would not return to school, they shipped
him of to the United States (US) in an
attempt to get him back to his books, but it
was too late. Gabriel had already caught the
entrepreneurial bug.
For the next three decades, that gift of
66 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
BY PEACE HYDE
the gab, combined with grit, self-confidence,
and perseverance would serve Gabriel
well, driving him beyond personal and
professional setbacks to create a business
that would compete with giants like Uber
and Lyft.
Gabriel is the founder of Moovn, an
app that seeks to capture a piece of the
multi billion-dollar ride-sharing market
and that he hopes will eventually dethrone
Uber, which, over the past few years, has
experienced significant challenges. The
company sufered several allegations that
led to the #deleteuber campaign and the
resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick. In South
Africa, Uber drivers have had several clashes
with taxi drivers, some deadly, prompting
the company to hire private security forces to
protect them.
Despite these woes, Uber still has an
imposing 74% of the ride-sharing market
with operations in over 633 countries.
Regardless, Gabriel remains unperturbed.
“We are in our own lane, and before the
end of the year, we will be a complete threat
to them. They are studying us, and they
know who we are. We know this because in
the search words or key words on Google,
when someone types in Moovn, you get an
Uber or Lyft ad and it is something that is in
their metadata. So they must have put our
company’s name in their metadata,” says
Gabriel.
He believes the key to any ride-sharing
service’s success is taking care of its drivers.
To avoid the mistakes made by other ride-
sharing apps, he has redesigned his app’s
user experience to empathize with the
driver, a trick he learned in his early days in
the hospitality business.
Gabriel’s journey has been a natural
evolution marred by a series of ill-timed
events. Like the time he came close to
fulfilling his childhood dream, but didn’t.
“When I was younger I dreamed of being
a pilot; I was actually hired by American
Airlines to become a junior in their flight-
training program. Everything was lined up
to make that dream happen but just before
I reported to the job, 9/11 happened and
that was a wrap. I went back into a diferent
industry and never returned.”
Then there was the time he was working
as an asset manager. Gabriel had spent
Photo Supplied
a significant amount of time building
his expertise in the hospitality industry,
acquiring an enviable clientele that included
Marriott and Starwood hotels. But just when
WHEN UBER CAME,
AND THEY WERE
DOING WHAT WE DID
BACK IN THE DAY
WITH TECHNOLOGY, I
SAID TO MY PARTNER
‘WHAT IF WE HAD THAT
TECHNOLOGY WHEN
WE WERE DOING OUR
BUSINESS BACK THEN’?

it seemed like the world was Gabriel’s oyster,

disaster struck, again.
“It was a very strong area for me, but it
wasn’t until 2010 when the aftermath of
the economic recession was really felt and
a lot of these real estate portfolios went
belly-up. It was a really tumultuous time in
terms of most industries and I found myself
constantly working long hours and getting
burned out. So, by the time the last assets
were taken of my hands, I wanted to change
my career,” says Gabriel.
The US subprime mortgage crisis that
sparked a nationwide banking emergency left
most of Gabriel’s portfolios in receivership.
Portfolios previously worth billions of dollars
were now being sold for about $100 million,
and with that, it was time for Gabriel to yet
again look for a new industry and start all
over again. But luckily, he had stumbled on
an idea to provide a cab service to the guests
of the hotels he managed.
“Back in 2006, I started a luxury car hire
business, with a chaufeur in Seattle, for
business executives, because I had already
made access to these hotels. It was a little
side hustle that turned into a big deal. I went
from a couple of cars to 15 to 20 cars, and I
had to outsource a large volume of demand

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 67

FORBES AFRICA

ENTREPRENEURS – GODWIN GABRIEL

Gabriel demonstrating
his app

to independent operators.”
“It was one of those things that I was
always interested in, so when Uber came,
and they were doing what we did back in
the day with technology, I said to my partner
‘what if we had that technology when we
were doing our business back then’?”
For Gabriel, an MBA from the University
of Washington’s Foster School of Business
would prove instrumental in helping him to
spot the potential of technology.
“Towards the end of my course, we did a
consulting bid for Microsoft for an education
software for two of the largest economies in
the world, India and China, and I led that
project. I was exposed to technology and
I thought this was amazing. I had no tech
background and never worked for a tech
company before. I was just amazed at the
margins and I thought this is the industry for
me,” says Gabriel.
And that was how he began to look for
opportunities in the tech space. He initially
approached several developers to build
an app for him, but getting people to buy
into his vision proved diicult. So instead
of giving up, he decided to build it himself.
Hours of YouTube videos and discussions
in chatrooms later, Gabriel developed a
working prototype which he used to test the
viability of his idea.
“We had the clientele; we had the
relationships; and we had the drivers and so
I sent out a little survey to some of them and
the clients I had and asked ‘what if I created
something like this, would you be interested?’
The response was overwhelming. At around
the same time, some of the drivers were
complaining about being mistreated by some
of these larger platforms, about not being
able to earn a decent living, and working long
hours.”
That was when Gabriel decided that he
would go the B2B route instead of chasing
the consumer market that Uber was already
dominant in. In addition to being the
mastermind behind Moovn as well as its
chief executive, Gabriel sees himself as an
activist fighting to give the forgotten driver
a voice.
Moovn
diferentiates itself
by taking a 15%
commission per ride IF YOU TAKE GOOD
instead of the 25% or
more its competitors
CARE OF YOUR
take. The rationale: if DRIVERS, THEY WILL
you take good care of
your drivers, they will
TAKE GOOD CARE OF
take good care of your YOUR CUSTOMERS.
customers.
Gabriel began
by targeting hotel
partners who wanted to book rides for their
guests, which helped to drive revenue and
get the platform to where it is today. Another
way Moovn set itself apart is through a
strategic alliance with Vodacom in Africa,
which helped ofset the operational costs of
launching the app. Lastly, there is Gabriel’s
personal touch which he uses to recruit his
drivers.
“I was in the airport parking with my
laptop recruiting drivers, and sometimes I
have lunch with our ambassadors too. So
being able to connect with people and speak
to them and find solutions to their issues is
where I get most of my juice. You get to hear
things firsthand. This is where we fly, and
we are diferent from other platforms. We
don’t have to wait to hear via email but hear
it firsthand and that helps us. Whether it is
via improvement in the app or improvement
in our processes, it is easy to make decisions
right there and
then without the
hierarchy.”
The company
already has a presence
in nine states in North
America with the
planned addition of
three more states, and
an employee count
of 150 people across
its various divisions.
The company has also
expanded into Africa with a presence in
Tanzania, Johannesburg and Nairobi. It is
also present in Dubai.
The ride-sharing market has been
plagued in recent years by several
challenges, mostly from local taxi drivers
who meet the invasion of technology with
animosity, often leading to violent clashes in
some African countries. Gabriel, however,
believes it’s a matter of negotiation.
“One of the things I often say is that taxi
cabs have long existed in most countries.
Taxis cannot fulfill the public demand on
their own, however, and they depend on
the informal sector to ofset some of this
demand,” he says.
And with that, the old gift of the gab
has managed to successfully bridge the gap
between the two parties.
Next up, the Herculean task of getting
the world Moovn.

68 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

FORBES AFRICA

ENTREPRENEURS – SAVERIO CARDILLO

Photos by Motlabana Monnakgotla

YOUR WHISKEY
CAN TAKE YOU FAR
Whiskey aicionado Saverio Cardillo on
South Africa’s top tipple, and why it may be
wise to invest in a few bottles.
BY MELITTA NGALONKULU

O
n a cool April afternoon in Johannesburg, we
are at 4th Avenue in Parkhurst – a charming
suburb with stylish resto-bars, Afro-chic
boutiques and eateries spilling on to the streets
– for a rather heady experience in the middle of the day.
At the Bottega Café here, which gets full on weekends
and most weeknights, owner Saverio Cardillo is always
present. Every tipple, every bit of trivia on them is
important for this entrepreneur, and he is always on hand
to ofer customers bespoke whiskey tastings.
He pulls up a chair and gets talking animatedly about
the bottles of the fermented beverage that imperviously fill
the glass showcases lining all the walls of his café.
For starters, he says there are two ways to spell it – and
that could be a conversation starter on its own at any party.
The Irish spell it ‘whiskey’ and the Scots ‘whisky’.
“I call it the heaven journey. It is a little point that no
one knows about. Every single person that walks in here
and does not know about it, they walk in and say ‘wow!’
because it is like a little onion; you can just exfoliate all
these layers,” says Cardillo.
The restaurant is small and intimate but the umpteen
bottles of whiskey in every crevice and the cabinets behind
you make it akin to a distillery, minus the bulky barrels of
course.
Cardillo’s love for whiskey started only over eight
years ago when he was first gifted a Glen Ord by one of his
suppliers.
“I tasted it and it was phenomenal. That is how I got
into single malts and started dabbling in all the Ireland
malts...” he says.
A South African with Italian heritage, Cardillo says he
has a palate for Scottish whiskey. And for this interview
too, whiskey-tasting is a fitting prelude.
He gets us to taste the Pogues Irish Whiskey, which is
so gentle, soft and easy. My colleague tastes the Jameson
Distillery Edition with the orange, brown sugar, ginger,
peach and salt taste.
As a first-time whiskey-drinker, I now understand that
not all whiskey tastes bad, thanks to Cardillo, who knows
how to pick the right taste for every palate.
“This is what it’s all about. People come in, sit down and
drink their whiskey and they don’t get intimidated when
they come to my restaurant,” he says.
The Bottega Whiskey Club, which he started in 2013,
boasts of over 2,000 members, mostly from the financial
sector, lured to the club through word of mouth.
“We have four types of clients – those that know
nothing about whiskey and we try and educate you and try
and accommodate your palate. Then we get the guys that
have been to Scotland and have been collecting for years
and years and only buy limited editions. Then you get the
guys who buy whiskey to stock up their bars. Then you
also get the collectors that will drink their whiskey,” he
says. The restaurant has over 700 malts, which they use for
their whiskey-tasting events. They pair the whiskey with
cigars and sometimes come up with select food pairings.
Surprisingly, for a self-taught whiskey expert, Cardillo
says that he is not a collector.
“I am not like that. I am the type that needs to know
what is in that bottle. I would hate to die one day knowing
that somebody is going to be drinking my collection not

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 71


knowing what was in that bottle,” he says.
But for those that do like to collect their whiskey as a form of
investment, Cardillo believes they could earn significant returns.
“We have bottles that we bought for R500 ($40) or R600
($49) and now they are worth a lot of money. The increase in
value of the whiskey depends on if the distillery closes down. If
they are no longer making any more of it, then the demand for
that bottle of whiskey increases,” he says.
Currently, the Jameson Gold Reserve has been discontinued,
so he advises whiskey drinkers should buy as many as they can of
it, as the value of the bottles are bound to increase by 10%-15%.
“It currently retails at R893 ($73)… So you could look at
doubling your money in a couple of years. For example, the
Compass Box, they made just over 5,680 bottles; I was retailing
them at R2,000 ($163), but I see now three years down the line,
they are auctioning them and selling them at R4,800 ($392) to
R5,000 ($408),” he says.
However, a whiskey club as a business is not as lucrative.
“We turn a lot of stock [from the business], but if I had to do
it purely as a business, no, I would not make any money from it.
Not when you consider the rentals and other expenses. The club
is purely for coming to see what we have and tasting the diferent
kinds of whiskey,” says Cardillo.
There is no right or wrong way to drink whisky.
“What you like and what the next person likes are two
diferent things. You can’t get intimidated. You are only supposed
to drink the whiskey with ice or you are not supposed to drink
72 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
I HAD A GENTLEMAN
WHO WALKED IN HERE
THE OTHER NIGHT AND
ORDERED A JOHNNIE
WALKER BLUE LABEL AND
HE DRANK IT WITH CREAM
SODA. I DIDN’T EVEN
CRINGE.
the whiskey with ice. There are so many rules that are just falling
away now,” he says.
The best way to put this to the test is to pour a neat whiskey
in a glass and drink it, he adds. You will be able to taste all the
diferent aromas. Thereafter, pour yourself another glass and
pour a bit of water and you will be able to taste the barrel’s wood.
It becomes spicy as the whiskey opens up, and it becomes cloudy,
and you are able to see the oils release.
“This is why when people ask me ‘how are you supposed to
drink your whiskey’, I say ‘it depends entirely on your palate’,”
says Cardillo.
“I had a gentleman who walked in here the other night and he
ordered a Johnnie Walker Blue Label and he drank it with cream
soda. I didn’t even cringe.”
Cardillo also resells whiskey for collectors hoping for returns on
their long-held bottles.
“…[I] am a little bit sceptical about selling their collections. I sell
on behalf of them, and I don’t put my name behind it and I don’t sell
it using the name of Bottega. I let everyone know that it is somebody
else’s collection,” he says.
Cardillo receives commission from the proceeds of the sale.
“If something goes wrong with the lid or [there’s] counterfeiting
in the whiskey, or it leaks, that is my reputation at stake, and that is
what I have to be careful about,” says Cardillo.
Cardillo took his hobby and turned it into a business imparting a
wealth of knowledge to discerning drinkers, making him a limited
edition connoisseur among restaurateurs.
 A FORTUNE
IN THEIR BACKYARDS
The two 21-year-olds
dove into business after
high school in Zimbabwe,
turning bananas into a
low-cost alternative
to wheat flour.
BY KAREN MWENDERA

W
here most
youngsters
would opt for a
business degree
before stepping into business,
Ropafadzo Zimunye and Munashe
Musarurwa, both 21, did it the
other way around.
In a small town named Mutare
in Zimbabwe, just out of high school,
they looked inwardly for inspiration,
and found it in their backyards.
Today, as co-founders of Greenit
Diversified Group, they make
baking flour out of bananas. Such
unconventional thinking came
from need, and their research on
alternative foods – the future of food
in Africa.
“I think alternative foods are the
next big thing on the market because
of the way Africa itself is going,”
says Musarurwa, who is also the
operations manager of Greenit.
The two finished high school in
Photos Supplied

2016 and was dabbling with some

business ideas when they came across
alternative products for bananas.
“My partner was like ‘there’s

74 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

FORBES AFRICA

ENTREPRENEURS – ROPAFADZO ZIMUNYE AND MUNASHE MUSARURWA

something called banana flour, have you ever heard of it?’” Zimunye, “The most diicult challenge we face is that people don’t take us
Greenit’s CEO, tells FORBES AFRICA. seriously at times,” says Musarurwa.
“I was like ‘no, but let’s do it, let’s try it out’. And we have bananas in They are also more cautious when it comes to making promises or
our backyard, so why not?’” signing agreements, and have learned not to trust easily.
So the two harvested the green bananas, dried them and crushed “Everything that you do has to be written down,” says Musarurwa.
them into powder, not sure if this was going to end up as a disastrous “No matter how small it is, if you want to do something with someone,
science lab experiment. Thankfully, it didn’t. put an agreement to that.”
“It’s not something we invented, it was there traditionally. The thing is Zimunye hopes to study business management while Musarurwa
the traditional one does not outperform wheat flour,” says Zimunye. wants a marketing degree. They also plan to expand their production in
The pair played around with diferent ingredients, and permutations the alternative food sector, producing banana porridge for infants and
and combinations until they came up with a breakthrough product that adults, and diversifying to fertilizer production with banana peels.
morphed into better flour. They were also invited to attend the 10th African Union Private
Immediately, Zimunye wrote down a business plan. With their final Sector Forum in Egypt early
product, they reached out to a local baker as prospective suppliers. “Am I May. They want to expand
seriously going to use banana flour to make cupcakes?” he asked them. their network beyond
Eventually, the pair were able to convince him. The baker prepared a Zimbabwe as Africa is in
batch of cupcakes with their flour and they were a success. need of more alternative food
“We were actually surprised at how well it came out, because I was sources.
sceptical at first,” says Zimunye. Zimunye says he I THINK
They later advertised their product to other bakers, farmers and the won’t rest until he sees
community. their names on FORBES ALTERNATIVE
“We were looking for millions, and in our dreams we thought it would
happen in a day, but when we started going around telling people, they
AFRICA’s Under 30 list. FOODS ARE THE
thought we were crazy!” says Zimunye. NEXT BIG THING
Word got around in the streets of Mutare and that’s when the funding
came in.
ON THE MARKET
“We really tried to sell across the nation because that’s our aim, and BECAUSE OF THE
it’s the most diicult thing to do if you are a Zimbabwean manufacturer,”
says Zimunye. WAY AFRICA
In a country heavily reliant on imports on account of failing food ITSELF IS GOING.
production, Greenit had the opportunity to produce a low-cost
alternative food option locally. They sold their first batches at $3 for 500
grams making it the cheapest flour in Zimbabwe.
“We have now reached about 600 people in five months and made
around $800,” says Zimunye.
One of their aims is to become wheat flour’s biggest competitors. But
to do this, the boys were going to need a lot of goodwill – and financing.
Their first investment came from the $5,000 they won after applying
to the Celebration Church Mutare Padare business forum last year.
This happened to be the same church the boys first met in and
solidified their friendship.
Early this year, they won another $10,000 from the Youth
Entrepreneurs Program financed by CBZ Bank in Zimbabwe.
Despite Greenit’s infancy, the two admit they have been able to
achieve a lot. Their products now retail in some supermarkets and small
shops in Mutare.
Their priority though is to use the money to set up a factory to be able
to keep up with the demand. The duo aim to even sell their products
outside of Zimbabwe.
“Since then we have been able to produce two tonnes of the banana
flour and have sold over 1,000 units,” Musarurwa says.
But as with any business, they have had challenges, and some costly
learnings along the way. Despite their eagerness and professionalism as
business owners, they still face prejudice as young people.

76 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

FORBES AFRICA

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 STEPHEN SAAD’S
VENEZUELA
The South Africa-based Chief Executive of Aspen Group describes his
business trip to Caracas in Venezuela as going to a war zone.
Yet, it’s one of his most vivid travel memories.
BY SAMANTHA STEELE

V
enezuela left me with a permanent scar,” says
Stephen Saad, Chief Executive of the Aspen Group
since 1999.
A few days in the country’s capital, Caracas, in
an attempt to retrieve the hundreds of millions of dollars owed
to Aspen by the Venezuelan government, were like nails on a
chalkboard for the bush-loving billionaire.
The noise, the chaos and governmental apathy gave Saad
pause: “You see people, desperate people,” he tells FORBES
AFRICA. “People queuing for food, queuing for medicine... It’s
just been a total disaster, and they’ve got unlimited wealth in oil
and in natural resources and all those things. It’s so, so sad to see
that. It’s very, very disappointing. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of
lawlessness because people are hungry.”
Because of the nature of the pharma industry he is in, visits
to emerging markets are a frequent occurrence for one of

Photo of Stephen Saad by Peter Morey / Apomares via Getty Images

Africa’s wealthiest men, so he wasn’t scared in Caracas – despite
the armed guards they were forced to use around the city he
described as “like going to a war zone”.
Saad should have had a healthy dose of adrenalin when he
landed in what has been ranked as one of the most dangerous
cities in the world.
“Only the brave walk the streets of Caracas after sunset,
when the dizzying frenzy of the daytime city gives way to an
eerie stillness as residents seek refuge indoors,” described The
Guardian last year in an article detailing how the city’s residents
I HAVE DONE MANY FLIGHTS have adapted to constant fear.
Lonely Planet puts it tactfully in their opening description of
WHERE I HAVE TRAVELED the city: “Caracas incites no instant love afairs.”
INTERNATIONALLY AND Saad’s initial experiences in Caracas were foreshadowing for
the rest of his trip.
RETURNED THE NEXT DAY – He describes: “You know you get to a hotel room and turn on
NO HOTEL BED NEEDED! the TV and they normally say, you know, ‘the spa’s on the first
floor, the restaurant’s on the second floor, the gym is on the third
floor’... I turned this one on and it said ‘don’t open your door for
anyone’. It was surreal.”

80 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018


(Above and this picture)
The city of Caracas
Needless to say, this five-star hotel was not what Saad expected and,
like an ice-bath, gave him a quick reality check. He says: “So you’ve
got to a five-star hotel and some of them they don’t have milk, sugar
sometimes... It’s a five-star hotel! Now can you imagine paying to stay at
a five-star hotel and they’re battling for milk? What hope in hell has a
poor villager?”
It wasn’t the decaying architecture of the city once called the Paris of
South America that scarred Saad. It was the people and the desperation
that hung, smog-like, around the city.
“Forget about from a business perspective, from a personal
perspective, just to see when you think things can’t get any worse, you
see Venezuela, and you realize they can.”
This trip is one of the many reasons Saad treats business travel as
expediently as possible.
“I battle to get my umbilical cord to stretch too far from my home
and family. So when I travel for business, it’s extremely intense. I go,
go, go and really try and use every minute possible to its fullest, so that
I can get back as soon as possible. I have done many flights, where I
have traveled internationally and returned the next day – no hotel bed
FORBES AFRICA
EXECUTIVE TRAVEL
needed!”
In contrast, his personal holidays are all about
exploiting time with his family and the rule is “the less
Wi-Fi the better”.
He owns a private game farm next to South Africa’s
Kruger Park, called Exeter, where he revels in the
silence and the one-on-one time with his family.
“My father used to take us to Kruger National Park
annually. This inculcated a true love of nature and its
spirituality. I go as often as I can to Kirkmans Kamp
with my family. The real beauty is that there is no
shopping and other worldly distractions and you get
the opportunity to really talk, engage and listen to one
another.”
His trip to Caracas, like many business trips that
have taken him to strange places around the globe, was
related to his work at Aspen Pharmacare where he has
been CEO since 1999.
Saad was in the country meeting the Venezuelan
Finance Minister, acting as a debt collector for the
company.
He was trying to come to a mutual arrangement
in a cash-poor country that desperately needed
medication.
“I was trying to get some sort of barter arrangement,”
says Saad.
“You need the medicine for your people. But there
is a point where I’ve got to say I can’t do this anymore.
You owe us over a hundred million dollars, and are not
paying a dollar. You’ve raided our warehouse, taken
all our stock… Where does my social responsibility
begin and end with Aspen, and where does your social
responsibility, the government’s, begin and end?
“So I had those type of discussions and I said ‘I’m very
happy to give Venezuela a discount and to do whatever it
takes to make sure your people get medicine’... but there
seemed to be limited interest in resolving anything.”
He continues: “Venezuela is undoubtedly one of my
most vivid memories, because it’s just a country with
so many resources, so much potential and opportunity
and to see that a country can descend to that level of
mismanagement and the people can be pushed right to
the edge where they almost lose their humanity.
“There’s huge crime rates and people are desperate
for food. They are rushing over borders to try and get
food…it’s just, you know, mothers without food for their
kids.”
His disillusionment with Venezuela is partly because
of the impact the government’s ideology has had on the
country.
“Venezuela is often held up as the sort of
revolutionary guide you know, as to where to get to.
But it’s really, you go there and you absolutely, you’re
despondent when you leave.”
JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 81
FORBES AFRICA
PAYMENT SOLUTIONS
THE CASHLESS MARKET
Are we there yet in Africa, where in some economies, cash is still king?
BY NAFISA AKABOR
G
lobally, there’s a shift towards digital payments, which
exceeded cash payments for the first time in 2016. In
Europe, paper forms of payment (cash and cheques)
have steadily declined over the last five years, falling
from 40% to 31% of consumer expenditure. In India for example,
the government’s demonetization program removed approximately
a quarter of its banknotes in circulation, adding huge impetus to
digitization.
This is according to Visa, the world’s largest card payment
organization outside of China. The company emphasizes that cash
is still a useful payment solution for millions of people in Africa and
around the world, and in some cases, the only payment tool available.
“We don’t want to take cash away from people but instead,
promote a digital alternative, which is better, safer, reliable and a
more transparent option,” says Geraldine Mitchley, senior director,
strategic partnerships and emerging payments at Visa, sub-Saharan
Africa.
“The breakthrough for us is in mobile. While cards and bank
accounts have not reached a large portion of the population, now
everyone has a phone – possibly two or three,” says Mitchley. “This
is transformational because banks can now ofer financial products
through those devices, including payments.”
Unlike the rest of the world, in Africa, there are setbacks to going
cashless. Although a number of factors are at play, Visa says it boils
down to reach – getting more people connected to the network,
including rural communities and the underbanked, and relevance –
are digital payments relevant for consumers, and is it the best way to
pay for something?
Speaking of ‘underbanked’, First National Bank has a first-of-
its-kind mobile bank account in South Africa targeting those who
82 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
use feature phones primarily in areas where there is little to no
infrastructure but growth amongst micro-enterprises.
It allows for any South African to open a bank account directly
from their phone without having to walk into a branch – no
paperwork, no bank charges. While deposits are limited to R14,000
($1,100) a month, customers are able to send and receive deposits,
pay accounts, buy prepaid electricity or data or withdraw cash
at supermarket till points. The solution makes it ‘cashless’ and
operational from a feature phone. It remains to be seen how the target
market will take to the solution, introduced in June.
On the other side, we have the retailer or the merchant, continues
Mitchley. “Point-of-sale devices are costly and require fixed line
internet and power, which is not accessible to everyone, especially in
rural areas.”
With a mobile phone and a USSD number, or a QR code,
suddenly, a merchant can accept a payment via a mobile phone
– allowing funds to go straight to their bank accounts safely,
conveniently, and instantly, she says.
There are several apps on the market that ofer these
solutions most prominently at lifestyle markets, shopping outlets,
restaurants, and cafes, such as Zapper, SnapScan, KaChing, admyt
and Starbucks.
Additionally, merchants have various POS hardware attached
to their smartphones and tablets to accept mobile payments.
Back in 2017, Starbucks introduced its globally successful
mobile app to the local market, which ties a loyalty program
together with a payment solution. According to the company,
over 20,000 customers have downloaded the Starbucks SA app,
exceeding its 10% initial target.
Roland Ellingworth, head of loyalty programs at Taste
Holdings, which owns Starbucks, says the company does not
want to become completely ‘cashless’. “We want to drive as many
Illustration by Ronnie_21 via Getty Images
customers as possible into the mobile payment ecosystem, to
get them onto our digital platform, but we would never do away
with accepting cash.” The company’s long-term goal is to target
between 20-25% of customers for cashless transactions.
Africa is a hotbed for local innovation, and Mitchley believes
retailers play a massive role in creating a digital economy but
ultimately the economics needs to work in their favor.
“The pace of innovation is also critical. There are so many
innovative companies out there, all coming at payments from
diferent angles.”
As Africa makes progress, despite the economics, it seems cash
will remain king for a while.
FORBES AFRICA

PERSONAL FINANCE

ME MY
MONEY
Well-known South African events producer and show director
Jan Malan on his inancial blunders, the lessons learned and
how he now invests in property.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH
YOUR FIRST PAY?
My first job was as a Public Relations Manager for Madge Wallace
Models in downtown Johannesburg, back in the eighties. With my first
pay, I bought myself a motorcycle.
YOUR MOST REGRETTABLE FINANCIAL BLUNDER SINCE
YOU ENTERED THE EVENTS INDUSTRY, AND HOW WERE
YOU ABLE TO OVERCOME IT?
Not signing a contract before producing a big show in New York. The
show had a substantial budget. It took years to get over that blunder.
YOUR MOST EXPENSIVE INDULGENCE?
My beach house on the West Coast [in South Africa’s Western Cape
Province].
HOW DO YOU FIND THE TIME TO BE FINANCIALLY
DISCIPLINED?
Being financially disciplined is an integral part of my daily life.
My previous blunders have taught me never to take anything for
granted.
WHAT IS THE MOST YOU HAVE SPENT ON A SINGLE SHOW?
[I spent] approximately $900,000. The client wanted only the best of
a bevy of supermodels, with some clocking in at $25,000, and a stage
design that put top designers in New York to shame.
ART OR FASHION… THE BETTER INVESTMENT IS?
[I would say] most definitely art. Art is an investment, fashion is transient.
WHAT IS YOUR INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY?
My main investments at the moment are in property.
YOU ARE AMONGST THE POWER PLAYERS IN THE FASHION
INDUSTRY IN AFRICA AND YOU GET TO WORK WITH HIGH-
PROFILE CELEBRITIES… WOULD YOU SAY YOU RATE POWER
WITH MONEY OR SUCCESS?
I would choose success. I get more satisfaction and personal fulfilment
from knowing I did an amazing job and that I inspire people.
– Interviewed by Melitta Ngalonkulu

HOW BIG IS THE AFRICAN FASHION MARKET, AND

WHERE DO YOU SEE IT GOING?
Calculating the size of the African fashion market will take some doing!
You only have to look at the Nigerian fashion market in the last couple of
years with other economies hot on its heels.
African fashion designers have so many drawbacks to deal with,
which their counterparts on other continents don’t have. But yet it is
growing in leaps and bounds. It’s like a beautiful animal that can’t be
tamed.
Photo by karen Mwendera

There has been something brewing of late. I believe we will soon see
its full efect. Africans are rising!
When I started traveling the continent back in 1996 for the M-Net
Face of Africa Model Search, there was very little fashion design to speak
of. Today, literally every country has its own fashion platforms.
ART IS AN INVESTMENT,
FASHION IS TRANSIENT.

84 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

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 OPINION – WEST AFRICA
RAFIQ RAJI

SAVING A LAKE FOR PEACE,

PROSPERITY AND POSTERITY

M
ost Africans choice, it seems, but to begin to
probably some- address not just the symptoms of
times just won- growing insecurity in their do-
der what all the mains but its root causes as well.
fuss about climate change is. The Most recently, the eforts
planet is getting hotter, so what towards saving Lake Chad is en-
diference does it make to their capsulated in ‘The Abuja Declara-
daily lives? It has always been tion’ adopted at the International
hot in Africa. Conference on Lake Chad held
What diference would a one late February in Nigeria’s capital
to two degree increase in tem- Abuja.
perature make to a people mostly Highlights of ‘The Abuja
preoccupied with sourcing their Declaration’ revolve around
daily bread? Mention the Paris restoration of the lake, resolution
Accord, and some sentiments of security issues emanating from
would border on envy towards its drying up, and funding for
the African oicials who got to participate in the negotiations initiatives towards its restoration.
while relaxing in the fabled city, as opposed to endorsing the The most important and perhaps the most diicult is the
many laudable measures towards saving the planet in the agree- ‘Inter-Basin Water Transfer’ (IBWT) project for bringing the lake
ment. back to its earlier much buoyant levels.
But if you were to start the conversation from the palpable Incidentally, the $14.5 billion project was first mooted in the
negative efects of climate change on the ground such as drought, 1960s. Considering how little progress has been made since
floods, famine, and so on in Africa, everyone’s antenna would speaks to the diiculty of the endeavor.
probably shoot up. The plan entails diverting water from the Congo River more
A striking example is the drying up of Lake Chad in West Afri- than a thousand kilometers away into Chari River, which feeds
ca which has had debilitating efects on the countries bordering Lake Chad. Transferring water from the Congo-Oubangui-Sang-
it – Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Niger and ha Basin to the Lake Chad Basin would also have benefits for the
Nigeria, and a few further afield such as Libya, Sudan and Algeria. communities in between.
Erstwhile fishermen have had to make do with less or simply The feeder dam to be built in Palambo in CAR is expected to
change their vocation altogether. Farmers who relied on the generate at least 700MW of electricity, for instance. The dredging
lake for the natural irrigation of their farms have also sufered of the Oubangui River in CAR would also allow ships to transport
ill-fortune. goods from what is ordinarily a landlocked country. As a result ,
Consequently, as misery tends to beget more misery, criminals irrigation, drought mitigation and desertification control would
and terrorists have stepped in to fill the vacuum. be added benefits.
The cost to the lives and livelihoods of people from the more It begs the question then of how the long-sufering project
than 90% depletion of Lake Chad over the past five decades is would be able to break the jinx on it this time around.
Photo by Kypros via Getty Images

almost unimaginable. But it was not until the insecurity that it
engendered began to make life diicult in lands distant from the
banks of the lake that the authorities in the environs began to
take proper notice.
Not that eforts to save the lake had not been attempted before.
After all, the Lake Chad Basin Commission was established in
1964. But with myriad killings from terrorist groups in Nigeria,
Niger and elsewhere going on unabated, the authorities had little
On the face of it, the right measures are being put in place. For
instance, a $50 billion Lake Chad Fund under the auspices of the
African Development Bank is refreshingly assuring.
Still, the participating countries have strained finances. With
their authorities barely able to address burgeoning infrastructur-
al deficits inland, the Lake Chad issue may become yet another
African project not lacking in passionate backers with empty
pockets. Still, one should be hopeful.

86 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

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 OPINION – AFRICAN ENTREPRENEUR
VICTOR MAMORA

TO BE WEALTHY AND
WISE IN AFRICA
A
ccording to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a new
billionaire was created almost every week in China
in the first quarter of 2015. In Africa, with a similar
population figure, we are nowhere near the Chinese
wealth creation machine and yet the opportunities are compara-
ble if not greater.
To become a millionaire in Africa, the popular opinion is that
one needs to start his own business. We have therefore seen many
of our young energetic Africans setting up startups and doing so
with passion to pull themselves and their families out of poverty.
In 2009, I too joined this journey along with my cousin to
start an engineering firm. We were both tired of poverty and
excited at the prospect of forming our own enterprise.
We were so elated when we started employing tens of youth
from the Niger Delta region. We knew these boys would have
ended up becoming militants had it not been for the skills we
helped them develop. But despite our zeal and passion for suc-
cess, the business was not yielding results.
My question is, why was it so hard for us to rise to become dol-
lar millionaires despite our eforts over four years? Our corporate
dream was to build the fastest home-building company in Nigeria
and fly to every part of the world. My cousin and I had good engineering skills and the tech-
But ignorance and the limitations of the business environment nology but it did not result in a sustainable business because we
stymied our eforts to create wealth. lacked knowledge of the sector in Nigeria.
The commonly-held notion that you can be wealthy if you I, like many other Africans, have read about African billion-
start a business seems to be dying. In my quest for clarity on busi- aires such as Aliko Dangote in Nigeria and Johann Rupert in
ness and wealth, I saw many people, both young and old business South Africa, and found inspiration from their successes over
owners, who are nowhere near the money. I also saw people who millions in Africa struggling in the same sectors the duo made
were wealthy for a short season and later broke. And I asked billions over time.
myself, what is the real issue here? My key takeout is that billionaires have something many do
The first thing I discovered was that a wrong paradigm can not. The power to see beyond the physical and present time.
impede the pursuit of wealth. I discovered that a knowledge of It’s intuitive intelligence that works for many billionaires, a
the sector you want to compete in is a prerequisite if you want gift impressed upon them by mentor association and their own
to create wealth. There has never been a shortcut to successfully commitment to excellence.
Photo by Michaeljung via Getty Images

creating wealth that is sustainable. The pathway to this is busi-
ness but the fuel for that journey is wise decision-making and an
understanding of your market.
In some parts of Ohafia in Abia State, Nigeria, you cannot
speak in the village square unless you have done a good job of
mentoring and empowering young village boys to succeed in their
businesses.
This brings me to the conclusion that every aspiring and start-
up entrepreneur needs guidance and support to create wealth.
America’s billionaire President Donald Trump in one inter-
view acknowledged that the popular American preacher, the late
Norman Vincent Peale, influenced his thinking about wealth and
success.
Truly, business zeal, though crucial, is not enough.
I have come to the conclusion that a knowledge of the sector,
understanding what is required to make profit, and the ability to
do the right thing in the face of fear, are empowering habits every
African entrepreneur needs to inculcate and develop.

88 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

Advertorial BY BCX SuperSport Shootout

WHEN THE STARS

DESCENDED ON LIMPOPO
The BCX SuperSport Shootout, South Africa’s most
sought-after amateur celebrity golf event, raised
millions for the underprivileged and forged strong
relationships on the greens.
BY AVIWE MTILE

T
he 15th edition of the BCX SuperSport Shootout, held
from May 4 to 6, returned for the third consecutive
year to the magnificent Legend Golf &Safari Resort,
also known as the ‘home of the extreme 19th’, in the
Limpopo Province of South Africa.
With it came a stellar array of sport stars, celebrities, politicians
and captains of business. While camaraderie, networking and golf
was the order of the weekend, the Shootout is about so much more.
“Around 80% of the people here have been supporting the
Shootout over the years. They are top leaders in their respective
fields and it’s always a pleasure to catch up with them over a golf
game once a year,” said former South African tennis star Kevin
Curren.
Wimbledon singles finalist, Curren conceptualised the Shootout
event with support from business leader and friend, Terry Rosen- Brian Dames, Rakesh Wahi, Bobby Malabie and Fikile Mhlonto
berg 15 years ago.
Back then it was hosted in KwaZulu-Natal and supported sur-
rounding communities. Telkom and Eskom Chairman Jabu Mabuza
has been a staunch supporter of the tournament over the years.
“Terry and Kevin started something very meaningful. I can
remember the days this was held in the Drakensberg. We’ve seen
a lot of sponsors come and go, but the one thing that has stayed
is SuperSport and MultiChoice, and this has grown in leaps and
bounds. It started by just supporting a community in Estcourt and
now we’re grown to support the LIV Foundation and other charities
and children,” said Mabuza.
Now, the BCX SuperSport Shootout also supports communities
in Limpopo.
As always the tournament kicks of on Friday morning with the
Absa Superskills, a standalone competition featuring five teams of
two.The welcome dinner followed where the champions gathered
for light entertainment, networking, good food and plenty of banter. Victor Matfield, Kevin Curren and Fourie du Preez
Among the sporting legends here this year was Shaun Bartlett,

who was part of the South African soccer team that won the 1996
African Cup of Nations.
“For us sporting legends and former players, it’s a weekend
to enjoy and also mix with TV personalities and oicials from
government and enjoy the weekend. I’ve come out to play here for
more than a decade now and it’s obviously not just about the game,
but we’ve done a lot to raise funds for charity around the country. I
think we’ve raised more than R20 million ($1.6 million) so far and
look forward to raising more this year,” said Bartlett.
“Last year, I played with Mark Williams [South African footbal-
ler] and we did relatively well. I’m not sure who I’ll be partnering
up with this year but I’m looking forward to a great weekend and
playing for a worthy cause,” said Mark Fish, who was also part of
the Bafana Bafana team crowned African champions in 1996, ahead
of the event.
Saturday morning arrived and it was time for the champions of
their respective fields to battle it out on the fairways and greens.
One of the big hitters here was 2007 Rugby World Cup cham-
pion, Victor Matfield, who, together with his partner Fourie du
Preez won the Betterball competition last year.
“I was lucky enough to play pretty well last year…coming
second in the individual competition. They said to us last night no
one has ever defended their title successfully, so hopefully we can
do it this year,” said Matfield.
Champion sport stars, business leaders and television personal-
ities alike battled it out on the course, but all were looking forward
Neil Andrews, Cameron van der Burgh and Temba Bavuma
Akona and Odwa Ndungane, Shaun Bartlett and Bronson Makobela
to the gala evening at the event.
Saturday night at the Shootout is always a special afair,
because that’s when the guests show their generosity by digging
deep in their pockets to give back to numerous charities.
This year, the gala kicked of on a positive note following busi-
nessman, Selwyn Nathan’s hole-in-one on the 12th hole, which
spurred a number of businesses to collectively contribute R2
million ($163,000) towards charity. This was before the auction
began.
This year’s gala dinner paid tribute to MultiChoice’s Chief
Executive Imtiaz Patel, who was stepping down as team Super-
Sport’s captain after leading it the last 4 years.
While friendship and camaraderie were celebrated at the
dinner, the real winners were the charities with more than R2.5
million donated to them, raising the amount that the event has
generated over the years to over R23.5 million.
The entire golf event provided vast networking opportunities
and no doubt many business prospects were discussed throughout
the weekend.
“I had the privilege to play a practice round with the former
chairman of Alexander Forbes, Sello Moloko, which is good
because he’s in the private sector, and we’re now looking at future
dealings. There’s been many others. Also one has had the opportu-
nity to meet some of the previous sports personalities like Jimmy
Tau and the Ndungane brothers, the rugby players,” said Industri-
al Development Corporation CEO Geofrey Qhena.
 MORE OLYMPIANS IN
SOUTH AFRICAN
POOLS
South African swimming sensation Chad le Clos
still has plenty he wants to achieve in the pool,
but tells FORBES AFRICA he has also recently
embarked on a project he hopes will
create a new generation of Olympic gold medallists.
BY NICK SAID

C
had le Clos recently returned
from the Commonwealth Games
on Australia’s Gold Coast, where
he grew his legend further with
three gold medals, a silver and a bronze.
He has now set his sights on the World
Swimming Championships in Hangzhou,
China, in December, as well as the next
Olympics in Tokyo in two years’ time, where
he expects to face greater challengers as a
new group of young swimmers emerge.
The 26-year-old’s favorite medal from
the Commonwealth Games did not come
from his individual haul of golds, but was
rather the bronze he collected in the 4 x
100-meter medley race, which gives an
insight into his psyche. Swimming is mostly
an individual sport, but Le Clos is clearly a
team player.
“Truthfully, the best race for me was
the relay on the final day when we got the
bronze,” Le Clos tells FORBES AFRICA.
“We had guys that weren’t meant to
be swimming in those events, they were
specialists in other disciplines.
“Earlier, we had finished sixth or seventh
[in the heats], so to touch in third ahead of
Scotland in the final was amazing and it felt
like a gold medal to me.
“It was really tough, but the guys put it
together when it mattered and that makes it
really special.”
Le Clos confirmed his status as South
Africa’s premier athlete in the pool with
golds in the 50-, 100- and 200-meter
butterfly events, as well as a silver in the
100-meter freestyle.
“The butterfly treble was great because
nobody has done that before and it was a big
goal of mine. To win my third consecutive
200-meter butterfly gold was also very
special as it means I have now been
Commonwealth Games champion for eight
years, which is a big achievement.
“So from a personal point of view, I was
happy with my individual achievements,
though I also believe that we should have
medalled in the 100-meter freestyle relay.
“But it was maybe not the team that
should have gone, none were specialist
100-meter freestyle swimmers and although
everybody did great times, it wasn’t enough,
which was a big disappointment for me.”
Le Clos is already South Africa’s most
decorated Olympian with a gold and three
silver medals, a haul he is looking to add
to in Tokyo, something he says will be
increasingly diicult with a new generation
of swimmers coming through.
“You can see them emerging and wonder
how good they will be in two years,” Le Clos
says.
“There is an 18-year-old Hungarian
boy [Kristóf Milák] who is already just
one second of the world record in the
200-meter butterfly. I think I will have to
swim pretty close to the world record to get
gold.
“But it is also exciting for world

92 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

 FORBES AFRICA

SPORT – CHAD LE CLOS

Chad le Clos is thinking of

life outside of the pool and
hoping to launch swimming
academies across South
Africa, as well as overseas
Photos Gregory Shamus and Mike Marsland via Getty Images

JUNE 2018 FORBES AFRICA | 93

FORBES AFRICA

SPORT – CHAD LE CLOS

swimming and the sport. You need new

stars and as an individual, that pushes you
to work even harder. It is a major source of
motivation.”
Le Clos is no veteran, but he has already
been in the South African swimming team
for close to 10 years and is thinking of life
outside of the pool with the recent launch
of the Chad Le Clos Academy in his adopted
hometown of Cape Town.
His dream is to have academies all over
South Africa, as well as internationally, with
five more planned to open before the end of
the year. YOU NEED NEW
“It has been a passion project of mine
for the last five years and finally we have STARS AND AS
managed to get it of the ground,” he says.
“We want to start with kids as young
AN INDIVIDUAL,
as five years old, initially showing them THAT PUSHES YOU
how fun swimming can be before later on
developing individual programs that will
TO WORK EVEN
help them achieve their swimming goals. HARDER. IT IS A
“And those goals don’t have to be to
make it to the Olympics. It might just be MAJOR SOURCE OF
to swim for their school, or make it to the MOTIVATION.
national finals. But obviously it is a dream
of mine to develop boys and girls to swim
for South Africa at the Olympics; that would
just be unbelievable and something I would would do when we train for the Olympics. “There has been an amazing response
cherish for the rest of my life.” “But you would not ask that 11-year-old so far and it is the program that we will
Le Clos has helped develop the rugby player to train against The Beast franchise out. Hopefully, we will have
swimming program for the Academy, the [Springbok Tendai Mtawarira], it would be another five opening in the next six months
first of which is based in Claremont in the madness. all over South Africa.
Mother City, which he says is very diferent “So it is all about pacing the training “We will be training the coaches
to how kids are traditionally trained in correctly to ensure that our swimmers according to our program, and the hope is
South Africa. peak at the right age and continue to have to take it international, but for now we just
“I have always been of the opinion that the love for swimming. They must want to want to have it running smoothly in South
we push kids too hard in their early years. get into that pool, not see it as a chore and Africa first.”
So by the age of 17 or 18 they are burned out something they dread. Le Clos believes he has another “six or
in the pool, or they have left the sport before “We also teach the kids respect for the eight” years left to compete in the pool and
then because it is all too much. sport and respect for their coaches, no hopes one day to perhaps have one of his
“The example I always use is, if you have matter what background they come from pupils as a national teammate.
two boys, both aged 11, one is a swimmer or how talented they are. That is very “I said to my Dad [Bert] the other day
and the other a rugby player. important to me.” how it would be a dream of mine to walk
“Traditionally, that swimmer would be The ongoing drought in Cape Town has a kid to the Olympics. It would mean so
in the pool doing 65 kilometers a week, the scuppered plans for a purpose-built facility much to me. Maybe that will happen while
same training schedule as myself, Cameron for the first academy, but that will come, I am still on the national team, and we swim
van der Burgh or Tatjana Schoenmaker according to Le Clos. together, wouldn’t that be something?”

94 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018

FORBES AFRICA
SOMETIME IN AFRICA
THE CLASS OF 1976
The schoolchildren who took part in the protests that led to the ‘Soweto
Uprising’ – sometimes, you can still hear their singing and chanting.
BY MOTLABANA MONNAKGOTLA
Barney Mokgatle
I
t’s not often I find myself driving past the Hector Pieterson
Memorial and Museum in Orlando West, in Soweto, an urban
township in Johannesburg, where I live.
But come June 16 every year, I invariably steer my car to the
site, mentally revisiting the bloody carnage of 1976; the peaceful student
protest and the police firing that led to an iconic photograph the world
came to associate with South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime.
Two years ago, incidentally, one of my assignments with FORBES
AFRICA was a story on the student rebels of the ‘Soweto Uprising’.
Thankfully, the museum gave me three vital leads to help me
reconstruct the day etched in blood in South African history.
It was a Tuesday when I met my first contact, Oupa Moloto, who
was a student at the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto where it
happened. “On the day of the event, the school started a little earlier; the
mood was diferent, the students were excited but the teachers couldn’t
pick it up,” recalled Moloto of the first stirrings of the protest against
the mandatory use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in black
secondary schools.
After the interview, I visited the school and walking around, could
sense the nervous excitement of the students like it was 42 years ago. I
could hear their voices, their singing and chanting as we stood where the
last assembly was held before the shots were fired at them.
96 | FORBES AFRICA JUNE 2018
I photographed Moloto at their then assembly point and his face was
a picture of grief as his mind raced back to the tragic events of the day.
The school has been renovated since but in the older building are still
some vestiges of that time – broken windows and furniture.
A few weeks later, I met with Barney Mokgatle, another of the 1976
class, at his home in Alexandra in Johannesburg.
He too talked me through every painful detail of the uprising; he
also said Pieterson was not the first student shot at the march.
Mokgatle was one of the many who went into exile after the day.
“The police were hunting for us, we could not sleep in one place for
two nights because there were people selling us out,” he said.
Mokgatle was the right hand man to Tsietsi Mashinini who led the
march and later died in exile. He recounted their escape and journey to
Botswana through the bushes without fear of the wilderness around
them, with their other friend Selby Semela.
And then he started singing; the masculine man had a voice of the
angels. It was remarkable. As soon as the humming started, I almost
shed a tear, I could feel their struggle and strength as they dodged
bullets and teargas in the Soweto streets wearing blazers and ties,
some running with missing shoes.
But at that moment as he continued talking, they were crossing
serene bushes unaware of the hungry beasts lurking in the dark
around them, all the way to the borders of Botswana.
A few days later, we met again for a photoshoot, where a statue
of his friend Mashinini was being erected not far from the Morris
Isaacson school. Mokgatle does not come to Soweto often but when
he saw the statue, he paused, staring at it for a long time. He finally
turned and sauntered to a wall where he showed me a collage of his
two friends and himself.
This story wouldn’t be complete without mentioning my
interaction with the ‘girl’ in the iconic photograph of Pieterson taken
by journalist Sam Nzima (see pages 52 and 54).
Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla
Antoinette, Pieterson’s older sister, is 58 today. “I saw Mbuyisa
[Makhubu, the boy carrying Pieterson in the famous photograph]
coming from nowhere; I didn’t know him at the time. He was running
towards me, he passed me. I saw he was carrying a person and I could
recognize Pieterson’s shoe, I ran with him,” she recalled emotionally.
Today, as I walk the streets of Orlando, I cant but reminisce the
words of these brave people and I think of the privileges I enjoyed
growing up; being able to choose between either isiZulu or Afrikaans as
a second language in school.
Thanks to the class of 1976, we have the freedom.
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