Nolwazi* lives in a township in South Africa. She works in the informal sector and was recently turned down for a loan of $80,000.



Having heard her story, I can’t understand why she was denied the loan. And I think this is indicative of why African entrepreneurs have more advantages than ever.



If you think you’d have taken the same decision as the bank, I need to add a few more details.



Nolwazi might live in one of the poorer areas of South Africa, but she is certainly not poor. She chooses to live there as she can run a thriving backroom rental business.



She started out renting one room from her formal dwelling but now lives in a property where she can rent out 11 units at a time. She also owns a second property which she rents out to students. Her average backroom income is now approximately $8,000 per month, which is probably substantially more than the bank manager who declined her loan application.



She wanted the loan to build student accommodation on land she already owned next to a major university.



After six weeks of deliberation, the bank turned down her application.



The story doesn’t finish here because Nolwazi decided to run an experiment.



She went to a different branch of the same bank and, applied for a car loan of $80,000 for a new Mercedes. It was approved in 20 minutes.



Why would a bank prefer to lend $80,000 for something that depreciates when they could have taken the safer bet of funding a valid capital-based business enterprise?



It was GG Alcock, best-selling author of Kasinomics, who got me thinking about the answer to this question when he drew my attention to this and other stories from township entrepreneurs.



The backroom rental industry, which Nolwazi forms part of, is estimated to generate over R50 billion ($2.6 billion) per annum, as owners rent out their rooms for accommodation, storage, corner shops (spazas), garages, takeaways, workshops, hair salons, beauty parlors and other services.



Nolwazi’s story isn’t, therefore, unique. It’s an allegory that showcases how vibrant the informal sector is and why millions of Africans are choosing to stay in townships, either for cheaper rents or to run their own entrepreneurial ventures.



And it’s a story that supports my view that local African entrepreneurs have never had so much opportunity, for two key reasons.



The first is that big businesses will always find it challenging to identify and exploit the informal sector because of a mix of prejudice and ignorance.



I’m speaking from experience here, as in all of my years working in financial services, I can’t remember ever being asked to investigate opportunities in the informal sector. Instead, established businesses are predisposed to focus on improving what they have, whereas entrepreneurs are the only people looking to solve existing problems in new markets.



The second reason entrepreneurs will win in these markets is because of the democratization of virtually everything you now need to run a successful business.



This is a relatively new phenomenon which is being driven by the confluence of improved technologies, more financing options and the ability to access skilled labor from anywhere on the planet.



And if you need a guiding hand that helps you navigate every step from idea to IPO, hundreds of African-based incubators and accelerators are now designed to help you do exactly that.



What was once the preserve of the wealthiest companies in the wealthiest countries is now accessible in virtually every major African city. Simply put, if you identify an opportunity and have enough grit and determination to give it a go, it’s never been easier to convert your dream into reality.



Oh, and if you were wondering what happened to Nolwazi, I’m happy to report she eventually did receive her loan.



And no, it was not provided by one of the large incumbent banks.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="15" height="14" src="">The opportunity for African entrepreneurs has never been so great.



– The writer curates thought leadership events that help executive teams transform their organizations; visit coliniles.com

Suburb in Soweto township

New Advantages And OpportunitiesFor African Entrepreneurs

A deep horn blast was used in a slice of history at Africa’s biggest stock exchange. It was from the lungs of Rakesh Wahi, Founder and Vice Chairman of Africa Business News (ABN), signaling the opening of the bourse, as CNBC Africa crossed a new frontier in business broadcasting on the continent.
CNBC Africa – the sister of FORBES AFRICA in the ABN stable – became the first African broadcaster to beam shows from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). It came on the eve of the company’s seventh anniversary.
“It’s an exciting time; I haven’t stopped smiling since yesterday. It is to the credit of the people around you who have all done a fantastic job,” says Wahi.
CNBC Africa is emulating the example of CNBC in the United States (US), which has broadcast from the New York Stock Exchange since 1995. This move is all part of a bigger plan.
“Our vision is to be in all 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We have to be in all the major exchanges and report from the smaller ones. We need to be able to integrate all these exchanges through information flows. We need to be able to go out and educate people about what markets are,” says Wahi.
The new studio is state of the art. It includes an eight cube video wall, six interview positions and robotic cameras – which will be fully controlled out of the gallery and will minimize additional camera crew. The main anchor desk, resembling a star, is a copy of the one used both in Europe and the US.
It will host Open Exchange, Power Lunch and Closing Bell, with regular crossings to Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Botswana, Gabon and Ghana.
Jean Landsberg, the head of technical and operations for the ABN Group, traveled to New York and Singapore to check out the latest technology.
“When I traveled to the SGX in Singapore and New York, I got an idea how they put their infrastructure in place… whereas Singapore still link in to their [stock exchange], from the main studio, we will be actually running everything and all the operations from the JSE studios. So it’s a little more advanced than what Singapore is doing,” says Landsberg.
LED technology will be used to reduce the power consumption by the studio lights and the video wall. Landsberg says, as time goes by, small technological frills will be added.
The new technology is in the interest of keeping business people better informed about what’s happening inside Africa’s biggest bourse.

The First Lady of the road

On The Pulse Of The Markets

A deep horn blast was used in a slice of history at Africa’s biggest stock exchange. It was from the lungs of Rakesh Wahi, founder and vice chairman of Africa Business News (ABN), signaling the opening of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), as CNBC Africa crossed a new frontier in business broadcasting on the continent.
CNBC Africa – the sister of FORBES AFRICA in the ABN stable – became the first African broadcaster to beam shows from the JSE. It came on the eve of the company’s seventh anniversary.
“It’s an exciting time; I haven’t stopped smiling since yesterday. It is to the credit of the people around you who have all done a fantastic job,” says Wahi.
CNBC Africa is emulating the example of CNBC in the United States (US), which has broadcast from the New York Stock Exchange since 1995. This move is all part of a bigger plan.
“Our vision is to be in all 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We have to be in all the major exchanges and report from the smaller ones. We need to be able to integrate all these exchanges through information flows. We need to be able to go out and educate people about what markets are,” says Wahi.
The new studio is state of the art. It includes an eight cube video wall, six interview positions and robotic cameras &#8211; which will be fully controlled out of the gallery and will minimize additional camera crew. The main anchor desk, resembling a star, is a copy of the one used both in Europe and the US.
It will host Open Exchange, Power Lunch and Closing Bell, with regular crossings to Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Botswana, Gabon and Ghana.
Jean Landsberg, the head of technical and operations for the ABN Group, traveled to New York and Singapore to check out the latest technology.
“When I traveled to the SGX in Singapore and New York, I got an idea how they put their infrastructure in place… whereas Singapore still link in to their [stock exchange], from the main studio, we will be actually running everything and all the operations from the JSE studios. So it’s a little more advanced than what Singapore is doing,” says Landsberg.
LED technology will be used to reduce the power consumption by the studio lights and the video wall. Landsberg says, as time goes by, small technological frills will be added.
The new technology is in the interest of keeping business people better informed about what’s happening inside Africa’s biggest bourse.

FORBES AFRICA’s publisher, Rakesh Wahi, is also the co-founder and vice chairman of Africa Business News (ABN), which also owns CNBC Africa.
<div id="attachment_43" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43" class="size-large wp-image-43" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/FORBES_MAG_027-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Deal of a lifetime: Rakesh Wahi signs the FORBES AFRICA franchise agreement with Gary Alfonso, editor-in-chief; Roberta Naidoo, general manager; and Sid Wahi, project manager in attendance.</div>
<h3>As an entrepreneur in the media space in Africa, why did you choose FORBES AFRICA as your next venture?</h3>
Our vision for ABN from the beginning was to create a business media conglomerate that would have a point of presence in all African countries. The intent is to have a mechanism to aggregate real-time information from across the continent and roll it out in different media, namely television, print and online. Both aggregation and exhibition have to be carried out in tandem to make the business model viable.
The television business was set up in June 2007 with CNBC as our partner. CNBC is a global leader in business television. For the print business we evaluated several options, but the FORBES brand is the one that my partner, Zafar Siddiqi, and I pursued as it is, to our minds, the most inspirational business magazine in the world.
<h3>How did it come about?</h3>
My interaction started with the management of FORBES in June 2008. They had tried to enter the African market earlier but were not able to find the right partnership model, and hence were also waiting for the right opportunity.
As in any business relationship, there was a lot of due diligence requirements and submissions of business plans, etcetera. Our vision and our presence in the business media genre were clearly key factors, which went in our favor.
<h3>What did the process entail? Was it complicated or simple?</h3>
The process, by our own requirements, needed us to carry out an in-depth analysis of the print industry in Africa and the gaps that we wanted to fill in a market that was cluttered with a lot of other good quality products. We had to first convince ourselves that there was a demand and secondly, we were well placed to meet that demand. I allocated sufficient resources to making this initial determination.
Our initial findings were positive, with several cautions. We had to work through these red flags to make sure that we had the right answers—firstly, from the perspective of the market, and more importantly, viable commercially, keeping in mind the expectations of FORBES.
I think that in any venture, it’s important to spend a lot of time on getting the fundamentals right. The process, therefore, is not complicated or simple, but is mainly focused on being very thorough. The legal agreements were cumbersome and I had a good team, led by Gary Alfonso and Roberta Naidoo, working with me on the transaction.
While the recession delayed our plans, the real challenges started once we took a decision to launch. My son Sidharth stepped up as the project manager for the business and has worked tirelessly with the team to set the ball in motion. We now have a full team on board, with Chris Bishop leading the charge as managing editor.
<h3>Why did you see FORBES AFRICA particularly as an opportunity? Isn’t print journalism a dying breed in the world of publishing?</h3>
I would not have ventured into this business without having the synergies with our existing business. We have operating synergies in the business news genre and this was the primary consideration. Zafar and I spent a lot of time with our shareholders and management team to analyze issues and came up with a plan that we thought would work.
<div id="attachment_42" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-42" class="size-large wp-image-42" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_5509-2-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Co-founder and Chairman Zafar Siddiqi with publisher and co-founder Rakesh Wahi</div>
Keeping in mind media consumption habits of the future and recognizing that the future lies in hand-held devices, we have a strategy on building the subscription model via the internet. The shape of the final product will be revealed in the not-so-distant future and is being worked on together with our partners in New York.
<h3>What’s your vision for a media group that now owns the Africa distribution rights of two of the most powerful business news brands in the world?</h3>
Our vision remains unchanged on our ambition to be Africa’s most powerful business media conglomerate. We are expanding our geographic network and will have a physical presence in 10 African countries by 2012 and 18 countries by 2014.
We see ourselves looking at distribution as a means to achieve our goals for viewership and will be seeking partnerships on terrestrial networks across Africa, and where possible, acquire networks.
On the print side, we are interested in adding to our stable and will seek other titles that we can bolt into our business to achieve efficiencies and additional economies of scale.
On the internet side, we are building great momentum on ABN Digital (www.abndigital.com) and via YouTube, where more than one million views of our content have been downloaded. Evolution of the telecoms sector will bring about a lot of changes in the delivery of content and we are making all the necessary arrangements to be there when that happens.
<h3>What’s your view on Africa as a marketplace? And the future of the media industry on the African continent?</h3>
Zafar and I are both great believers in the African story. We have been here for seven years now and think that this has been the most incredible learning experience of our lives.
If you analyze Africa without South Africa, you will see the opportunity in every area of economic development. Media is very immature on the continent, from both a reporting and consumption perspective. The revenue drivers are tough; skills are lacking and costs are high. Consequently, there has been limited interest for media companies to push ahead on a pan-African model.
<div id="attachment_44" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-44" class="size-large wp-image-44" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/FORBES_MAG_049-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />The FORBES AFRICA team</div>
Our shareholders, like the IDC, share our vision to build the African marketplace. It is my belief that the industry needs to rally behind some common objectives of sharing and building capacity on the continent. Governments have to be active participants in the process of deregulation and being active catalysts to growth, and not become impediments to the free flow of information. Transparency is an inevitable part of economic growth and media will play an important role in shaping the opinion of constituents.
I do believe that we are already adding value to this process and hope that we can achieve all our near-term goals on the continent.
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Tag: Africa Business News

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