And so it came to pass recently that 62-year-old Folorunsho Alakija, the oil baroness from Nigeria, became known as the richest black woman in the world. Alakija, however, is profoundly uncomfortable with the ‘super-rich’ tag. She believes that she is far more than just her fabulous wealth.
Her minders who fondly refer to her as ‘Madame’, make it clear that an audience with her will be granted only if she is engaged in a comprehensive manner. Those seeking to label and box Alakija as just another rich woman in Africa are not going to be entertained.
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But her prickly attitude notwithstanding, Alakija’s extensive oil fortune has seen her morph into an instant celebrity. So much so that she has upstaged the queen of black corporate accomplishment herself, Oprah Winfrey.
‘Richer than Oprah’ screams one of the headlines that accompanied the narrative about Alakija’s life and how she made her millions. According to FORBES, she is worth about $3.2 billion. Or $2.5 billion (Forbes Nov). Other estimates put her fortune at $3.3 billion, but in October, Ventures Africa Magazine suggested that figure could be as high as $7.3 billion. This makes Alakija – at the very least – $500 million richer than the Queen of Talk.
It also means that she is the fourth-richest black person on the planet, behind fellow Nigerians Mike Adenuga ($4.3 billion) and Aliko Dangote ($11.2 billion), and Ethiopian Mohammed Al Amoudi ($12.5 billion).
The oil baroness was born into a wealthy family, so her story is no rags-to-riches tale, but the reality of her climb to the top of the oil heap is still mind-blowing. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. “God was directing us into oil production. My entry into this business was God’s own way of leading me down a particular path that had its ups and downs,” she says matter-of-factly during an interview on the sidelines of the Brics Business Council meeting, recently held in Johannesburg, South Africa.
A self-proclaimed fashionista, Alakija cuts an elegant figure in her designer duds and eye-catching headdresses. Her trademark African-inspired couture ensures that she stands out in any gathering. Preparing for the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA photo shoot, the multibillionaire confers occasionally with Amanda, her unobtrusive aide, who is a constant at her side.
Flamboyant but diminutive, Alakija was born in 1951 to a wealthy family whose patriarch had eight wives and 52 children. While she is the offspring of a polygamous father, she is undoubtedly the only wife in her own marriage.
“I am the first lady of the Alakija family,” she says, firmly eschewing the idea that her husband, a lawyer by training, would be allowed to follow her father’s example.
Deeply religious, Alakija is very much a representation of many modern businesswomen with strong Christian roots. When I ask her to contextualize her faith, she says: “God directs us to be in business. There is no church without business. Business is the concern of the church.”
And while she has gone to great lengths to showcase her generous charity work through the Rose of Sharon Foundation, details of her oil business remain sketchy.
So How did Alakija acquire her petrodollars? That’s the proverbial million-dollar question – and it still needs to be answered properly. To quote football legend Maradona, did ‘the hand of God’ set her on the path of prosperity? Or is it the less lofty but infinitely more probable case of ‘God helps those who help themselves’?
On a recent trip to Abuja, the city of federal government in Nigeria, I posed the question to some of the business people, activists and journalists I int-eracted with. How does a former secretary and fashion designer get an oil prospecting license from one president, only to have it taken away by another? My desire for a plausible answer leads me back to where it all began, long before Alakija became the woman to push Oprah off her global perch.
Determined that their daughter would receive an international education, Alakija’s parents sent her to a private girls’ boarding school in Wales when she was seven years old. Although she returned home to attend high school, it was not long before she left again, to complete her secretarial studies in London.
Alakija was back in her homeland, working as a secretary for what was then the International Merchant Bank of Nigeria. When the institution became defunct, she crossed the ocean again, this time to study fashion. It was a move that would stand her in good stead.
A gusty entrepreneur, armed with a passion for fashion, Alakija launched her own line, Supreme Stitches. She says hard work and a keen business savvy ensured that she quickly made a name for herself in Nigeria, and in 1986, scooped up an award as the country’s top designer.
Casting around for a new challenge, Alakija decided to apply for an oil prospecting license. As a close associate of the president at the time, Ibrahim Babangida, her propinquity to authority gave her a foot in the door.
In 1993, she was eventually granted a 620,000 acre plot to explore. But there was a snag. Alakija had no idea how to drill for oil. In fact, she says, many believed that nothing would come from her block because it was so far out at sea. “It was 5,000 feet into the sea. We didn’t have the techno-logy. It was a big risk.”
Today Nigeria is Africa’s oil giant, but in 1993, prospecting was still an extremely dicey and expensive endeavor. But Alakija is not someone who gives up easily. With her firm belief in God and family, she stuck it out.
“We stayed the course. We made the right connections and partnered with great people, who put Nigeria’s interests first,” she explains.
In 1996, still green but eager to learn, Alakija hired oil conglomerate Texaco. Its brief was to assess the oil potential in her granted area. After four years of research, Texaco reported back: Alakija was sitting on an estimated one billion barrels of oil.
Her tenacity had paid off. Most of her wealth can be traced back to Famfa Oil, a company she founded after the Texaco assessment. The deposit, called OML 127, currently produces 200,000 barrels of oil every day.
With access to Nigeria’s liquid gold, Alakija’s journey to riches was set on course. She describes the oil find as a “true blessing”, but concedes that it also had its “ups and downs”. Wealth brings its own challenges, and Alakija’s case, these challenges came from serious political players who ruled Africa’s most populous nation.
In many ways it is unsurprising that her newfound status as a serious oil producer would draw the attention of the wealthy and powerful. While Alakija enjoyed excellent relations with Babangida and basked in his protection and indulgence, the opposite was true of his successor. During his presidency, Olusegun Obasanjo unconstitutionally acquired a 50% interest in Alakija’s block without duly compensating her company. Famfa Oil went to court to challenge the acquisition, and in May 2012, the Nigerian Supreme Court reinstated the 50% stake. Chevron owns 40%.
Alakija is not keen to delve into the details of her battle with Obasanjo’s government, but she is forthright about her readiness to stand up for what she believes in. She says the Obasanjo regime “just took” her oil block and had no interest in negotiating with her or her family. “We were prepared to fight them because we had the law on our side.”
She speaks quietly but pointedly about how fellow Nigerians had cautioned her against taking on the government of the day. “You are really foolish, you can’t win against government” was a common refrain. But Alakija says, for her family, the choice was clear. They had to stand their ground. She recalls how many fair-weather friends “stood back and watched” while she was fighting the state to reclaim her seized assets.
“It was a real eye-opener. It made us better Christians. For every battle we fought, a better lesson was learnt,” she says philosophically.
In May 2012, with the law and the Lord on her side, Alakija’s oil shares were restored by a Supreme Court writ. The landmark decision morphed the oil baroness into another stratosphere, placing her in the spotlight, not only on the continent, but also globally.
Now a regular at the Brics Business Council meetings and other intra-African trade meet-and-greet soirées, Alakija is easily recognizable in her iconic, colorful headwraps. A member of the elite guild of Africa’s uber-rich, she is an integral part of a small coterie of business people and policy analysts are keen to parade as the drivers of the Africa Rising narrative. Their stories are compelling and signal a departure from the prism of hopeless and despair through which Africa is historically depicted.
Alakija and her fellow billionaires are the new breed of African global players. They are leading examples of progress and economic growth, and more importantly, they are proof of the handsome returns on investments available to an increasingly affluent middle class.
In a modern, democratic Nigeria, sans military dictators, Alakija epitomizes Africa’s promise. She embodies the can-do attitude projected by many of her countrymen and – women in the private sector. It is the approach Nigerians often use when they engage with business players and investors keen to exploit the county’s vast oil resources, despite its obvious infrastructural weaknesses.
Alakija is vocal about the importance of African countries shifting away from extractive-based economies. “Gone are the days of the multinationals that just take and go. Our eyes are open. We won’t allow it a second time.”
Her sentiments are strong, but some argue that it is easier said than done. Despite Nigeria and Angola’s oil-producing status globally, both countries still need to re-route crude oil off the continent to be refined.
Alakija concedes that Africa has its share of challenges. But she is opt-imistic that its political and business leaders are prepared to hire the exp-ertise, cultivate the technology and go the distance to add real value.
She is also a strong proponent of intra-African trade, saying Africans need to band together to develop their businesses and increase their market share in the global stakes.
“We need to hold each other’s hands. As Africans, the barriers are crumbling. A divided Africa is in no one’s interests. We face common challenges and for all those reasons we need to cooperate more, to trade more, to visit each other’s countries, and take hands and work together.”
She is happy that Africa’s democratization program has heralded economic prosperity and greater economic growth, not just for its uber-rich, but also for its expanding professional classes.
Her sought-after properties in Dubai and London, her private jet and her extensive high couture wardrobe have become fodder for anyone wanting to boast about Africa’s newly minted billionaires. Alakija owns five apartments, one of them in One Hyde Park in London, the world’s most expensive apartment block, according to Vanity Fair.
But in a world with finite resources, to be rich is no longer enough. Net worth has to be larger than the size of your portfolio or your bank balance, says Alakija. Even more so in the wake of the global financial crises, where conspicuous consumption invites opprobrium and scorn.
While philanthropy and charity are often the hallmarks of the super-rich, who believe they have to give back in some way, increasingly wealthy Africans know that in order to remain rich, good deeds are necessary.
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Put differently, there is a real value proposition in giving away money. It makes more money. It leads to tax breaks. For all you naysayers, just ask Bill and Melinda Gates, who are leading corporate citizens. They have not only made philanthropy sexy, but infinitely more profitable.
This is why the wealthy – even the nouveau riche – are increasingly involved in charitable trusts and donor organizations. As the affluent get richer, often at the expense of the poor, charity and philanthropy have become buzzwords for those seeking to draw attention away from crass materialism and ostentation.
This is nowhere more obvious than in countries where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots grows ever wider, and where the origins of extreme wealth are sometimes ascribed to being in the right place at the right time. Responding to my earlier question about Alakija’s proximity to power and patronage, one Nigerian social activist offered: “In my country, Nigeria, depending on whose mistress you are, you can become a millionaire in the space of a half an hour.”
Stories and rumors abound about the oil baroness’s good fortune. Her detractors in the social justice networks believe that privately wealthy Nigerians owe their largesse to their government connections, not because they are particularly competent or industrious. Others who admire Alakija’s business prowess are adamant that she genuinely cares for the underprivileged. They believe remarkable tenacity and fortitude lie at the heart of her enormous wealth.
When I ask if her extreme mammon makes her uncomfortable, Alakija responds: “My wealth allows me to reach out to others, to those in need. I am a God-fearing woman and I am not in competition with anyone. I use my wealth to touch the lives of others.”
Through the Rose of Sharon Foundation, the oil tycoon dedicates money, time and effort to ease the burden of widows and orphans. Women and their well-being are at the center of her good deeds.
“We need to understand how central women are to households and their communities. They are the ones that are putting food on the table. Their education is therefore crucial. Women can really transform a nation. Food and education are just two of the many issues that need addressing when we talk women empowerment,” she points out.
Alakija attributes her charitable nature to a lifelong dedication to Christianity. She believes she needs to make a difference by helping to educate those in need. The Rose of Sharon Foundation has chapters all over Nigeria and Alakija says she is proud of and encouraged by their impact on the lived realities of women.
“At first I just wanted to give away the money. But I then realized that whatever charity we perform, it must be sustainable. So now we assist with microfinancing, scholarships and education,” she says.
English poet and historian William Hutton once cautioned: “The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.” When asses-sing Alakija’s life story and her many, many good deeds, Hutton’s words are food for thought.
But it is French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus who nails it on the head for me: “Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”

FOLORUNSHO ALAKIJA Nigeria oil baroness

December is the month we celebrate, give gifts, and restore joy to the world regardless of religious beliefs. This year, for the first time, we will remind ourselves of Nelson Mandela, as the anniversary of his death is recalled.
He taught us much about reconciliation. But my memories of him are always infused with his laughter, his sense of fun, his delicious wit, his ability to make light of serious matters thereby bringing them into human perspective.
Most times it would start with a phone call.
“Hello Peter,” that familiar voice would boom, “how are you today?”
While always joyful to get the call, behind the happy emotion was one of trepidation: what does the old man want from me?
Bill Clinton once said – after Mandela had introduced him as one of the best politicians in the world from whom he could learn a lot of tricks – that South Africans didn’t know how lucky they were.
“Mr Mandela is a pretty good and tricky politician himself,” Clinton said with a chuckle.
“When he calls and says ‘Mr President’ I know there is a matter of State to discuss. But if he says ‘Hello Bill, how are you?’ I know this call is going to cost the United States a billion dollars.”
It sounds like bragging to say he called me often. But he did, because of my job as editor of The Star. His relationship with the media was excellent, friendly, courteous, never demanding, always suggesting.
And he did like to see his picture in the paper. At the end of one year, I presented him with a framed poster ‘page one’ made from all the times his photograph had been on the front page: 27 times in that year, making him our favorite pin-up.
Yet he still complained that we were not giving him and his political party, the ANC, the space they deserved.
“If I put a picture of you on every page, you would still want more. You politicians are all the same,” I grumbled.
“Not on the back page,” he said. “I don’t want to be with losing teams.”
He called to invite me to breakfast and I had my children with me so asked if they could come, naturally he agreed.
When he heard I had named my daughter after Helen Suzman, he told my Helen, then seven, that he hoped she would be a fighter like Suzman.
“I want to be a vet,” said my Helen matter-of-factly.
“Well, I have some cows in Qunu,” he said, “will you come look after them when I have retired to the hills?”
“I don’t think so,” said Helen, undiplomatically.
Once inside his Houghton home I told my two daughters to please play outside.
“Let them stay,” he said.
“No, they will break some Ming vase or other irreplaceable gift, they can play outside,” I said.
“I am the president, you can stay,” he told them.
“I’m your father, leave and play outside.”
“Tell your father I am also his President and am instructing him to let you stay…”
They stayed, and my youngest daughter, Julia, wandered about the sitting room touching everything as I kept a beady and rather anxious eye on her.
Halfway through our intense political discussion, she stood behind him, tugged his head backwards and kissed him on his forehead.
Astonished, he asked: “What was that for?”
She shrugged her six-year-old shoulders and said: “You looked sad and grumpy. I thought you needed a kiss.”
He loved Julia forever after. When he spotted me at functions he would call out “How’s Julia?” as his greeting.

The Day A Sad And Grumpy Mandela  Needed A Kiss

Colin Nathan is one of the few people who can say they are living the dream. As a successful boxing trainer, he wakes up every morning and looks forward to going to work.
He shares his beautiful house in Norwood, south of Johannesburg, with his wife Lara, his eight-year-old son Daniel and a new addition to the family, Jamie, who is only two months old.
After settling in at his home, we get straight to where it all began for the man some regard as presently the most successful trainer in the country.
“I was only seven years old when I started nagging my father to take me with him to the boxing gym,” he says.
Nathan brightens up and become passionate when he talks about his formative years in boxing while growing up in Cape Town. His father, Stan, was a cutman and worked with boxers like the Whiteboy brothers Chris and Derrick, Sydney Hoho and Bashew Sibaca.
At the Sea Point Boxing Club, the young Nathan fell in love with the hustle and bustle of the boxing gym. His favorite activity was using boxers’ stomachs as punching bag, and the pugilists were happy to let him as he was too small and skinny to hurt them. In 1988, while in the fourth grade at school, Nathan remembers yelling instructions at the sparring boxers, much to the amusement of everyone in the gym.
Noticing his growing passion for the sport, Stan started taking his son to work with him in the corners of his boxers. This was illegal and when noticed in 1990, Stan was forced to register him as a bucket boy. This makes Nathan the youngest bucket man in South African history.
Boxing  has always been a constant in Nathan’s life, especially as his mother, Helen, was a professional boxing judge, the first woman to hold the position in the country. Nathan’s early boxing career was not restricted to carrying the bucket. He was also given the role of wrapping boxers’ hands, a skill that even experienced trainers find difficult to master. Nathan says his most memorable family outings were going to boxing tournaments to watch epic fights like the national title bout between Nika Khumalo and Phumzile Madikane. He also never missed the boxing program Blow By Blow that was aired by the public broadcaster, SABC, on Sunday afternoons.
But boxing wasn’t Nathan’s only passion. At the age of 16, he received national colors in judo. He represented South Africa in several tournaments and was crowned national champion. Despite this, he never stopped his boxing activities. Nathan started holding mitts for boxers to hit and repaired cuts in the corner. He says this was a turning point and he quit judo as his responsibilities with the boxers mounted.
Nathan’s involvement in boxing deepened when he moved to Johannesburg in 1998 to double up as a television presenter on SABC. This led to him becoming the youngest boxing commentator in the country at 20 years of age. Another milestone was in 2000 when Nathan, at the age of 22, became the youngest South African to own a boxing gym – the Hot Box Gym in Glenhazel, a north-eastern suburb of Johannesburg.
After making a name for himself on television, boxers started approaching Nathan to be their manager. The first professional boxer in his stable was bantamweight, Andries Dick, who won his first five fights under Nathan. His second was Springkaan Khongoane who is still working with Nathan to this day. By this time, Nathan knew he wanted to become a fulltime trainer. Being relatively young, it was tough convincing the boxing fraternity that he was the real deal. Boxing authorities used to mistake him for a boxer during weigh-ins and he found it difficult to convince promoters to sign his fighters.
Around two years later, Khongoane became his first champion when he won the provincial super-bantamweight title. With his growing success, former national champions like Tshepo Lefele, Mpush Makambi and Malcolm Klassen started joining his ranks and it became more and more difficult for Nathan to keep his head above the turbulent waters. He decided to sign up with KO promotions and later with Branco Sports Productions, run by Branco Milenkovic. In 2005, he approached the biggest promoter in the country, Rodney Berman, who told Nathan he didn’t have any boxers he wanted to promote. Berman, however, had a change of heart the following year and signed up the young trainer in the Golden Gloves Promotions family. The rest is history.
“The last eight years have been nothing short of amazing,” says Nathan.
He has great respect for Berman, whom he says is one of his idols. Nathan rubbishes claims that the only reason Berman gave him a chance was because they are both Jewish. At one stage, people even said he was Berman’s nephew, especially when the promoter walked him down the aisle at his wedding.
Berman’s faith in Nathan has paid off. He has since produced world champions like Hekkie Budler, the IBO and WBA strawweight champion and the Ring Magazine’s No.1 ranked boxer in his division, and Zolani Marali, the former WBF junior-welterweight champion. He is also training the highly-rated Ryno Liebenberg who is undefeated in 16 fights.
To take his training to the next level, Nathan spent two weeks with Freddie Roach, considered by many to be the world’s greatest trainer, in his Wild Card gym in Los Angeles. So, what did Nathan learn from Manny Pacquiao’s famous trainer?
“Commitment and responsibility,” says Nathan.
He has also met and taken advice from other renowned trainers like Angelo Dundee, who worked with Muhammad Ali, and Teddy Atlas, who worked with Mike Tyson. But does he consider himself the best trainer in South Africa?
“In my eyes, yes, I think I am,” he says.
The latest success is Budler. The trainer considers Budler’s win over the dangerous Nkosinathi Joyi as his best achievement.
“Few gave light-hitting Hekkie a chance against the hard-hitting Joyi. But people didn’t know that I briefly worked with Joyi in my gym and I knew his weak points,” he says.
His biggest disappointment was when Budler lost his IBO light flyweight title, his only professional loss, by a split decision to Gideon Buthelezi.
Colin Nathan says he was the first in the country to open his gym to commercial clients. He boasts training celebrities like musician Danny K, sport presenter Carol Tshabalala and President Jacob Zuma’s son, Duduzane.
Although he now is well known in the country, Nathan has his wife and kids to ground him whenever he gets big-headed. To prove the point, he asks his wife who the best boxing trainer in the country is. With a mischievous smile on her face, Lara says “Nick Durandt?”

The Bucket Boy  Who Grew champions

Football fans are the same around the world, united by their passion for their team and their love of the beautiful game. But in Africa those passions run extremely high and can lead to over-exuberance in a bid to portray their undying love.
Millions across Africa dream of being a professional footballer, but few make it. The rest must show their love of the game from the stands. This takes form in many ways, from singing songs, painting entire bodies, blowing a vuvuzela, dressing up in colorful garb to the non-stop beat of drums.
While fans in Europe carry banners and chant their support for their side, in Africa the displays are more interesting.
In most cases, there is harmony among opposing fans, which is a particular trait of the African game. If you have ever ventured to high-profile derbies such as Nkana vs. Power Dynamos in Zambia, Kaizer Chiefs vs. Orlando Pirates in South Africa or Asante Kotoko vs. Hearts of Oak in Ghana you will find opposing fans getting along both before and after the match. This is what I love about African supporters. If, on the highest stage, only one African team remains, as was the case at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with Ghana, the entire continent will support this team. That is African unity.
Recently in Brazil, when finalists Argentina played the World Cup final against Germany, Brazilians were shouting for the Europeans rather than their South American neighbors.
Hooliganism in football is on the decrease worldwide but does still exist, largely in Europe and South America. Fans from rival teams attack each other in senseless acts of violence that have nothing to do with football and are usually more a comment on social status and a chance for the ‘ultras’ from each side to flex their muscles.
This is extremely rare in Africa, especially south of the Sahara. North African sides sometimes still have a problem with fan violence which is often politically motivated. There was the recent tragedy in Algeria when Cameroon striker Albert Ebossé Bodjongo was killed by an object thrown by his own supporters as he walked off the field at the end of a game. JS Kabylie had lost the match, despite a goal from Ebossé, and the fan frustration turned deadly.
It is also in North Africa where fans can let the spirit of fair play fall by the wayside. The use of hand-held laser pens to shine into the eyes of opposing goalkeepers and players is widespread and authorities seem powerless to stop it, though it is unclear how much effort they are putting into ending the practice.
How supporters can accept a victory created in such circumstances is beyond me, there is surely no honor in vanquishing an opponent using underhand means. These desperate measures come from the fact that, in some parts of Africa more than others, the club you support says everything about who you are and the status you carry in society.
For example, the Cairo derby between Al Ahly and Zamalek, one of Africa’s greatest rivalries, splits the city along social lines. Zamalek have traditionally held the support of the more affluent, aristocratic section of Cairo, while Al Ahly fans are more working-class. Violence is still common today.
Those are the negatives around fans from the continent, but there is also plenty to enjoy with the way in which Africans attend matches.
Away fans are rare at national team level in African football with the logistical difficulties and expense of travel on the continent. But in club football, where big teams tend to enjoy popular support from around the country, some sides appear to be playing at home every week.
Take Kaizer Chiefs in South Africa as an example, their away games are generally very well supported and the vast majority of fans in the stadium will be supporting AmaKhosi. TP Mazembe of the Democratic Republic of Congo also enjoys support across the country, home and away. In Zambia, Nkana FC, revel in packed stadiums.
This is something quite unique to the African game, as in other parts of the world there would be a large allocation of tickets for home fans only. Away supporters are segregated into small areas of the stadium. But with no segregation needed due to little threat of violence across most of the continent, tickets are sold on the open market and there are certain teams that can rely on fans to come out in numbers wherever they play.
That being said, a lot of teams from Africa are battling to bring in the crowds they once did, except for the so-called big matches. The reason for this is varied, the expense of going to a game being a major factor. Today, there are also a lot more options available for entertainment away from football.
And as ever, the numbers in the stands are reflected in the success on the pitch – people are much more likely to turn up to watch a team on a roll than one struggling for results. That is human nature.
Fans from the African continent are unique and wonderful; they bring a vibrancy and energy to matches. Without them, the game would be poorer.

The Pride And The Passion

The beginning of summer in South Africa brings warm rains, scorching hot temperatures, longer days and brighter nights. And thanks to Eskom it also brings rolling blackouts. That spells bad news from the suburbs to the mines.
On November 1, a silo which housed over 10,000 tons of coal collapsed at Majuba power station, all personnel at the site were evacuated in time and according to Utility’s Chief Executive Tshediso Matona.The collapse caused a shortage of 3,600MW. It meant people were going to work carrying irons to press their clothes and mines lived in fear of powercuts.
According to the African Development Bank, Africa’s chronic power problems are hurting 30 countries, cutting economic growth and productivity. In sub-Saharan Africa, only one in five have electricity. If the current power situation continues, less than 40% of African countries will reach universal access to electricity (when everyone in the country has electricity) in the next 35 years.
“South Africa will reach universal access to power, the time it gets will depend on budget,” says Eskom spokesman Andrew Etzinger.
Power shortages can cost up to 2% of gross domestic product, according to the African Development Bank.
One African country that struggles more than most is Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Half of the country’s 160 million people go without electricity. South Africa consumes 55 times more energy per head and the United States (US) 100 times more than Nigeria.
The failure to provide adequate electricity by the country’s state owned monopoly PHCN, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, nicknamed as ‘Please Have Candles Nearby’, has left the land in distress for decades.
At the end of 2013, Nigeria’s government decided to privatize most of its power sector and fortunes could change.
“Because power development is so difficult and requires a serious amount of political will, the reforms were stalled for years because of a face-off with labor unions. This is really a success story, in terms of the structure of the sector in Nigeria; it is now more advanced then South Africa. That is pretty remarkable, when you look at a country like Nigeria you would of not thought it was possible 10 years ago,” says Lai Yahaya, team leader to the Senior Advisors Group of Power Africa.
In June 2013, US President Barack Obama launched Power Africa, an initiative aimed at doubling electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 600 million people are without. Power Africa set an ambitious goal of more than 10,000MW of electricity to 20 million households and businesses.
This year, Obama announced a $300-million investment to connect 30,000MW to 60 million households and businesses.
Obama says that this initiative is to help Africa grow. His critics say this is merely the US trying to stay in the game as China makes inroads into Africa. Despite what the cynics say, Yahaya believes that the future of Africa’s electricity is in good hands.
“You can be fairly certain that Power Africa will succeed.”
Millions of Africans hope so.

The Problem With Power

Agriculture has become an increasingly crucial issue for African governments. Poor infrastructure and lack of long-term finance have been fingered as the culprits blocking Africa’s path to food security.
Africa’s last decade belonged to telecommunications. To achieve meaningful development, the next decade must witness massive investment and progress in the education, healthcare, electricity, water, road, rail and air transport sectors. This means economic diversification, urban decongestion and its economic gains, namely, rural development, inclusive growth, innovation, heightened productivity and spiraling employment.
Solid infrastructure will boost knowledge and agro-produce exchange between African nations.
Beyond infrastructure development and food security concerns, expanding food production will also have a positive impact on local and regional labor markets, as more people are absorbed into the agribusiness value chain.
Small scale farms produce 80% of the food consumed across Africa. Consequently, the agribusiness value chain is a short one, delivering little value to national economies. According to the African Export-Import Bank, Africa’s global share of food processing is less than 20%.
The paucity of processing, trading and retail mechanisms has restricted Africa’s agribusiness sector to the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. The current practice of just cultivating-to-sell restricts the value chain to a primary commodity-level activity. Service providers involved in input supplies (seeds, fertilizers, machinery), packaging, exporting, transportation, processing, and converting basic produce into finished goods are urgently needed to extend the value chain. De-risking the sector might also require the establishment of public and private-sector initiatives which enable farms and agro-allied concerns to access bio- and agro-technology, financial credit and risk assurance.
According to the World Bank, Africa’s agriculture sector could be worth $1 trillion by 2030 if infrastructure and financing challenges are overcome.
Slightly over 60% of all the uncultivated arable land in the world is in Africa. In Nigeria, only 40% of its 84 million hectares of arable land is cultivated. These productivity gaps can become Africa’s competitive edge.
Coming out of the 23rd AU Summit of Heads of State and Government in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last July, African leaders adopted the Malabo Declaration, reinforcing a decade-old commitment (the 2003 Maputo Declaration) to end hunger and cut poverty in half by 2025.
To meet this lofty goal, the leaders reaffirmed their resolve to devote at least 10% of their national budgets to agricultural development. Only 10 countries have so far met this target. The Malabo Declaration raises the bar of focus and commitment to smallholder farmers and rural communities across the continent, says One.org, a campaigning and advocacy group which helped to galvanize pan-African and global support for the pact.
Africa’s leaders however stopped short of agreeing on a common formula for measuring the 10% target. Whichever way one looks at this matter, the key point is that the local and international appetite for Africa’s agribusiness sector has picked up.
Embedded in the declaration are a set of risk management and strategic corporate social objectives namely, operationalization of the African Investment Bank; increased support for intra-regional trade; adoption of climate-resilient farming strategies; responsible private sector investment; youth inclusion and employment targets; and mutual accountability for results.
Hopefully, Africa’s next decade will be fruitful. Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya seem well adjusted to the nuances of commercial and small-scale farming, producing and exporting excellent quality coffee, wine, citrus, vegetables, tea and flowers.
In Nigeria, an     Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) has transformed a once comatose sector into an engine of growth. Food imports declined from $19 billion in 2011 to $4.35 billion in 2013; bank lending to the sector as a share of total loans has also risen from 0.7% to 6% within two years. Over $4 billion private sector investment commitments has also been attracted to Nigerian agriculture over the last three years.
Earlier this year, Aliko Dangote, president of Dangote Industries, reached out to Kenya for agro-expertise. The Kenyans initially hesitated, pointing at Boko Haram and Ebola as the reasons why they feared coming to West Africa. But when they were offered a remuneration package that was too sweet to refuse, they accepted the challenge. They are now supporting Dangote’s sugarcane fields in Nigeria.
Money talks and agriculture is a multi-billion dollar business.

YOU CAN GROW MONEY  AFTER ALL

It’s a windy day in mid-September and a thick band of dust encircles northern Johannesburg. Perfect weather for flag-flying and Gauteng’s biggest is billowing at Flag Craft International, which exports flags to half of Africa.
Owner Tony Hampson-Tindale is amused by a question about South Africa’s tallest flagpole at the Donkin Reserve in Port Elizabeth, which stands at 45 meters, nearly 20 meters taller than his.
“They’re at sea level. Johannesburg is 1,753 meters above sea level so ours is higher!”
Heights are important to 66-year old Hampson-Tindale. He’s conquered the Seven Summits and in a few weeks is heading back to the Himalayas to climb Ama Dablam in eastern Nepal.
In 2010, he planted the flags of his native New Zealand and adoptive South Africa atop Everest and at the age of six was inspired when Edmund Hillary first did it; but to him flags are less about passion and more about business. He’s owned Flag Craft since 1984 and exports flags, windsocks and poles to 34 countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East.
Clients include the African Union, to whom Hampson-Tindale has been supplying flags since OAU days. There are flags for conferences, bosberaads and political parties, not to mention windsocks for airports across the continent. Wind, sun and pollution are enemies of the flag: causing them to become brittle and fray. In blustery or smoggy areas, flags need replacing every six months.
On the factory floor, production staff are squeegeeing dye across screens, replicating onto woven polyester the familiar light blue, black and white of the Botswana flag – part of a big government order. Although workers here still do the silkscreen printing by hand, there’s little creativity about this job, says Hampson-Tindale.
“We are robots. We are given a specification by a country or a company and we do exactly that.”
Seamstress Roselia Sakong has been working here for 14 years, cutting, measuring and sewing flags destined to fly solemnly at military parades, be draped sadly over coffins, or waved enthusiastically at sports matches.
She says she has only one small desk flag stuck into a pot plant at home, but sewed the giant flag that flies outside her work. It’s her pride and joy.
“When I come to work by taxi from Soweto, I often point to it and tell people I made that.”
Among the company’s proudest moments was supplying thousands of flags for Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.
But Hampson-Tindale is not convinced all flag money is well spent. North Korea has the world’s third tallest flagpole at 160 meters, while the flag itself weighs 260 kilograms.
“Some governments will spend millions on flags even if their population is starving.”
Vexillologist Bruce Berry sees flags as the soul of a nation. Every morning, he raises a flag in his Johannesburg garden. One day it may be the fleur-de-lis of the flag of Quebec; the next, the red, yellow and green Ghanaian flag with its black star. There’s not much about flags Berry doesn’t know.
“Ghana was the first African country to adopt its own flag, apart from Ethiopia, which was never colonized.”
On his wife’s birthday, he flies the flag of her native Kenya. The Bendera ya Kenya is one of his favorites. There’s no mistaking the center shield and it’s a pleasing deviation from the red, black and green pan-Africanist colors.
As a child growing up in what was then Rhodesia, Berry says he was fixated with flags, but most people found his obsession curious.
When he was 10, he persuaded his father to buy him a pole, a base and a pulley and began flying flags in their garden: the old South African flag on his mother’s birthday, the Union Jack on his father’s and if they had house guests, he’d find an appropriate flag.
“We were the talk of Bulawayo,” says his sister Angela. “Every time anyone went overseas he’d ask whomever it was to bring him a flag. Eventually he had so many he had to store them in suitcases because there was no wall space left in his bedroom and my mother refused to let him hang them all over the house.”
In 1973, at the age of 12, Berry was relieved to read an article entitled: Flag-Wavers On The Increase.
“That’s when I first realized there was a name for people like me,” Berry says. “Vexillologists: ‘vexillum’ is Latin for standard and ‘ology’, the science of.”
Seventeen years later, Berry helped establish the Southern African Vexillological Association (SAVA).
One of SAVA’s first tasks was to help design a new national flag for South Africa. The primary theme had to be convergence and unification. The actual design was done by the state herald, Fred Brownell. Berry was part of the technical team.
“Usually the fewer colors in a flag the better. But this was a distinctive design because it had six primary colors. It was basically a compromise flag, with black, green and gold elements of the ANC, PAC and Inkatha [Freedom Party] and the red, white and blue of our colonial heritage.”
As the sun sets over Johannesburg, Berry respectfully lowers the flag of St David: a yellow cross on a black field. It’s been flying to honor his son, David, whose birthday it is.
“Flags are symbols of communication; they evoke emotions, be it a red cross, a swastika, or your national flag at half-mast&#8230; There’s no international law that says flags must be used, yet every country in the world has at least one. That is the power of flags.”

This Business  Is Not Flagging

As the summer heated up in the heart of Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest township, businessmen Ndumiso Madlala and Josef Schmid, brewed 12,000 liters of beer for the Christmas rush. All seemed busy with the whiff of malt and hops. Brewmaster Madlala shared his brew with the FORBES AFRICA crew. The slightly sweet, lingering finish washed agreeably over the palate of this avid beer imbiber.
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It is their first Christmas; they want to double their production; enough to get the whole of Soweto drunk until the New Year. But it has not been smooth-sailing for the duo; an in-house beer festival in October was postponed following a yard inspection by the health authorities. They wanted an oil tank to be covered at the brewery. A hiccup in the frothy beer business.
“With this venture alone we foresee a good R55 million ($5 million) per annum, and we are also planning to open another four establishments in other townships in the country. Our model is exclusively township. As I was traveling Europe when I was a student, I saw every little town had its own beer. Here townships are big neighborhoods, I see it necessary they have their own local beers,” says Madlala.
Schmid joined forces with Madlala with a vision and a passion.
“In South Africa microbrewing was very elitist and white dominated, prior to Soweto Gold. But with the great emerging and growing middle class in the townships we saw a niche market. So, we see ourselves as pioneers,” says Schmid.
The two are as different as cold beer and warm tea. Thirty-five-year-old Madlala grew up in Elandskop, a village 35 kilometers outside Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. He obtained a Master’s degree in science in the Netherlands and then worked for Africa’s biggest brewer, SABMiller, for nine years. Schmid, 44, the son of an Austrian butcher, was born to the Swedish middle class. He is a hospitality and tourism executive who came to South Africa to work.
They met through a friend in early 2012. In October, they registered the business under MadMead Brewing Co. After a two-year wait for a full license, they turned out their first batch of Soweto Gold in July. This start-up company cost investors $800,000. The Industrial Development Corporation, a government entity, also loaned the company $320,000.
“We estimated that we will brew for about seven months until we reach capacity and in that time we accumulate funds to do an expansion but there was such a demand for the beer that Ndumiso started brewing in July and we reached capacity in August. The reality is that we have hit the production peak in the first month of production. Coming from nowhere, we are the second-best selling craft beer in the country,” says Schmid.
“As an entrepreneur you are always a dreamer and it is that dream that makes you so sure that everything is going to work out. No matter how bad things turn out, the vision carries you forward,” says Madlala.
It’s been a long and winding road. Schmid and Madlala traveled to China searching for the best machinery and shipped it to South Africa, in late March.
“Ndumiso is an expert in processing; he modified their designs to work in our space and our flow and what we want to do,” says Schmid.
MadMead Brewing Co is based in Ubuntu Kraal, an entertainment venue with a restaurant, in Orlando West, Soweto. In a few months, they’ve channeled the beer through 25 restaurants, pubs and taverns around Johannesburg, including affluent Sandton, Rivonia and Fourways. They employ more than 60 people.
As the company senses demand, the names are born: Apple Ale, Cherry Ale, Orlando Stout and Weiss Gold.  In this, Ndumiso has not forgotten his roots.
“For next year we are also conceptualizing a sorghum malt maize beer which brings our traditional ways of brewing together with the Western ways of brewing… We want to put sorghum beer back in its premium space, so we want to see if we can flavor the traditional beer with pineapple. But this will be on the non-commercial scale for the guests to enjoy in-house,” says Madlala.
Soweto Gold is enjoying popularity at craft beer festivals.
“The best ego boost for us is to go to a beer festival and you get people saying this was the best beer on the market. We outsell people on price because we are a quality beer,” says Schmid.
“We have hit capacity without even tapping into Cape Town or Durban; we are only in Johannesburg for now. We are now venturing into canned beer because it is easier to package and we are modelling ourselves after American micro-brewers,” says Madlala.
He says canning of their beer will help in shipping to markets in Africa and overseas, but their first attempt was difficult.
“We had cans already out in the market but we pulled them back because we could not control the quality. The canning was done by a third party. As soon as we started our own canning line we were sold out. This has enabled us to pasteurize our product and it can stand on the shelves for at least three months and therefore makes a viable retail product,” says Madlala.
Cans could be a good move in a market that rates them above brown bottles, according to Apiwe Nxusani, a general manager and master brewer at Brewhogs Brewers, one of craft beer pioneers in South Africa.
“I personally believe there’s a market for brands like Soweto Gold to grow and compete with the commercial beers. It depends at which segment of the market they are specifically targeting as the price at which craft beer is sold at could never compete with your 750ml of Black Label, for example, as sold at the shebeens,” says Nxusani.
“The market would be the upmarket, classy and BEE guys in Sandton who want to make a statement.”
Christopher Gilmour, an investment analyst at Absa Bank, agrees that craft beer has its place.
“Craft beer, or real ale as it is known in Britain, is a small but rapidly growing industry in South Africa. Until seven years ago, there were fewer than 20 brewers, the largest being Bavaria and Mitchell’s,” says Gilmour.
He says the rest of the world is catching up.
“These beers have a loyal and knowledgeable following, quite different to that of premium beers. Pricing is often significantly higher than premium beers and reflects the lower volumes brewed and higher input costs and lower economies of scale compared to mainstream and premium beers,” says Gilmour.
Whatever the volume, Soweto is heading for a golden Christmas. Don’t let the gentle sounding name of Soweto Lady Gold fool you. This lady has a kick like a mule.

No Matter How Bad Things Turn Out: Cheers!

It’s 3AM on a Saturday and Chance Tubane and Patience Nduwawe are stepping it up on the dance floor at K-club, a popular nightspot in Kigali’s upmarket Nyarutarama neighborhood. Tubane and her brother Nduwawe show off some pretty cool dance moves, swaying in blissful abandon, just like the hip, upwardly-mobile Rwandan thirty-somethings around them.
Ten years ago, Tubane would have never imagined this moment possible with her brother. Twenty years ago, Rwanda would have never imagined this moment possible with a young population of genocide survivors. They play hard and work harder.
Along with her brother, Tubane is the founder of Tohoza.com, a successful online classifieds directory in Rwanda that’s now among the country’s top three most popular websites.
Tubane and Rwanda have one thing in common: a story of loss, struggle and triumph. A story that cannot be recounted without returning to 1994, the year the country lost a million of its people to the genocide; the year Tubane thought she had lost her family forever.
She still remembers the murky details of the night of April 6, 1994, the night Rwanda’s Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash, and her father tiptoed into the bedroom and whispered fearfully to his family: “It seems the president’s plane has crashed. Not sure what will happen now.”
Their home in Kacyiru was in the same neighborhood as the Parliament and within minutes of the announcement, was the center stage of the bloody Hutu-Tutsi crossfire that erupted.
“The shootings started right away, we heard people crying and screaming. We put mattresses against the walls and stayed in the corridor of the house,” says Tubane, who huddled with her parents and two brothers, Nduwawe and Confiance. Long moments of silence and despair followed.
“A couple of days later, one of the men came to our door and asked us to run, and I did. I ran to the church nearby, not realizing my family was not with me. I didn’t see them for months after that,” says Tubane.
The imagery continues to haunt her: her 11-year-old self in tattered clothes, looking for family, looking for food, on the run, “skipping countless bodies on the streets”, scenes even a Hollywood film will not be able to capture, says Tubane.
“There were piles and piles of bodies. I don’t know why they spared me. I escaped but thought my family was dead. I could imagine my dad being killed in his pyjamas, Confiance being killed whilst eating, and Patience killed
in silence.”
In reality, and unknown to Tubane then, they had all fled and survived, making the 150-kilometer trip in a pickup truck from Kigali to a relative’s home in Gisenyi, near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a home overlooking beautiful lakes and hills.
“I hope you were guilty guys. What were you thinking, leaving without me?” Tubane jests with her brother Nduwawe now.
It was a miracle to be reunited with her family in July when a relative found her and took her to them. The family moved to Goma to start anew, but there was more tragedy in store. Tubane’s mother, then 41, died of blood loss following surgery.
Tubane, who was always top of her class in school, was soon dispatched with her godmother, first to Cameroon, then Kenya and Tanzania, and to her aunt’s home in Belgium two years later.
Nduwawe, then 17, stayed on with his father and brother, but in 1996, on his way to Bukavu to take his university exams, was caught up in the violence in the eastern DRC, and was forced to spend nine years in the forest, his whereabouts unknown to his family.
“There were no roads, it was not possible for me to contact anyone, I led the life of a refugee in an equatorial forest,” says Nduwawe.
“I lit candles for nine years, asking the Lord to show us that Patience is alive. My prayers were finally answered,” says Tubane. A relative who had seen him helped track him down and he was able to return home to Kigali.
By then, Tubane had completed a Master’s degree in information technology and communications in Belgium. Smart, spunky and outspoken about women’s empowerment, Tubane is the epitome of the Rwandan woman today. Her brother Nduwawe is quieter in comparison.
After several entrepreneurial attempts, the siblings launched Tohoza in 2011, with only their savings. The website is an online advertising platform to help Rwandans find jobs, sell or rent homes and cars.
“We are determined to make the internet accessible to all Rwandans, including those who don’t have easy internet access and those who are not based in Kigali. We help people grow their business, and in turn, grow Rwanda’s economy,” says Tubane.
The siblings now want to replicate their success in Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania.
“Tohoza means ‘search and find’, like we did in our own life. I literally Tohoza-ed my brother,” laughs Tubane.
There is much they want to do, to change the face of online advertising in Rwanda, and also the perceptions of the country.
“One of the objectives of Tohoza is to tell a positive story, and show the world the new Africa. It is the generation after us that will make Rwanda a beautiful country,” says Nduwawe.
They have also launched a volunteer program where young people acquire practical skills on the field with them. In August last year, Tubane was honored as a young achiever by the Imbuto Foundation, an initiative of Rwanda’s First Lady Jeannette Kagame. Tubane also wants to start a foundation of her own for orphans. She only knows too well what it is like to be one.
“I have been with so many families in so many countries, but I was lucky, and always in good hands. No one harmed me.”
Tubane survived war, strife and separation. She now knows the purpose of this life granted to her.

Through  Hell To Prosperity

Nelson Mandela, the artist, was born in 2003, with an introspective set of signed charcoal lithographs, 21 in all, completed under supervision. They harked back to Robben Island.
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Pains were taken to ensure that the pieces weren’t forged. The paper he drew on was watermarked. The prints also carry an embossed stamp of two joined hands. Hours of footage were shot, showing him hard at work on the pieces, to prove that he did in fact create them.
In the South African art market, the pieces have done exceptionally well selling for around $13,300, 10 times their value on release. They are expected to appreciate over time, a rarity in African art. At a London auction, a handprint lithograph, with an authenticated signature, sold for almost $27,000.
It’s good business that has brought some problems. Almost all of this art is going to end up outside of Africa.
“There is demand, mostly from foreign collectors. Most of our sales, around 80 percent, are to international buyers,” says Andre Blignaut from the Clock Tower Gallery in Cape Town, one of the two major dealers and authenticators of Mandela’s art.
Soon after Mandela’s hospitalization, forgeries of ‘no particular skill’ were said to litter the market. Fakes were selling at $4,500 apiece.  However, significant proof, beyond the inspections of a small group of Mandela art experts, of whether the pieces were counterfeit has yet to surface.
“It’s the name behind the art, that’s why they are valuable. A lot of artists are trying to capitalize on Nelson Mandela but this doesn’t mean it’s good. Good art sells, there is a lot of poor art out there,” cautions Blignaut.
At the same time, public art is also hijacking Mandela’s legacy status. The recent unveiling of a tribute sculpture known as Perceiving Freedom on the Sea Point promenade in Cape Town is causing controversy. It is an enlarged metal and plastic model of a pair Ray-Ban sunglasses looking on to Robben Island. Critics decried the piece as ‘advertising masquerading as art’.
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Rebecca Hodes, who wrote on the offending sculpture, warns: “In consenting to its installation, the City of Cape Town has made itself complicit in the corporate abuse of public land and in the hijacking of one of our greatest national icons for private gain.”
As South Africa remembers its national treasure, a year after his death, issues of how best to preserve his legacy must be understood and then resolved.

Nelson Mandela, The Artist

Reporting on the African continent is an “extreme act of courage”, writes journalist Shyaka Kanuma in a Nieman report. The Rwandan was in exile, addressing other Nieman fellow journalists at Harvard University.
The fellowship, one of the most sought after in the world, has seen its fair share of African journalists fleeing trouble back home. Gregory Stemn was one. The Liberian photojournalist chronicled the horrors of his country’s civil war against Charles Taylor’s wishes. South African Nat Nakasa was the first black African Nieman fellow in September 1964. He chose exile to join the fellowship but committed suicide ten months later, jumping off a Manhattan apartment building, manically depressed at the thought of never returning to the country he was forced to abandon.
To be a journalist on African soil is to consign oneself to an uneasy life; be it in war zones or in fearful newsrooms. Greg Marinovich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning South African photojournalist, writing on the tribulations faced by African war photographers noted, “across&#8230; the continent, ruthless regimes bring the violence and fear to bear to suppress the truth.”
This handful of Africans, merely plying their trade on the side of reason, is often forgotten. These are their stories.
January 9, 1994: Katlehong, a township just outside Johannesburg. Gunfire crackles as dignitaries make it beyond the rusted metal shacks of what they called no-man’s land.
Jessica Pitchford was covering the township beat for public broadcaster SABC on that day. Looking into the camera she began, “at the moment, it’s quite safe here&#8230;”
The rattle of bullets broke off the sentence. Pitchford threw herself to the ground.
Ahmed Sharif, a freelance photographer, is shot next to her; dying from his injuries hours later. On the other side, her colleague Charles Moikanyang is shot in the back. She helps him from the line of fire. He survives.
“We were just part of a group of people who happened to be invading an official war zone,” says Pitchford to a magazine a few months after Katlehong.
She wasn’t happy with her story.
“I hate the way I handled this one&#8230; I should have put it in context. I didn’t even mention that a woman and child had also been caught in the crossfire&#8230; all I was worried about was getting Charles to hospital. It was a journalist’s story. A little too self-indulgent, I thought.”
Violence was playing out across the country. In the early 1990s, South Africa was at a crossroads. Political reforms made way for democratic elections to end apartheid. Nelson Mandela was President-in-waiting.
The country’s media was negotiating a new kind of editorial freedom. Journalists were dodging bullets to tell the story of political violence. It is believed that close to 14,000 South Africans were killed during the bloody transition to democracy. Katlehong was ground zero.
Monica Zwolsman was a reporter at Johannesburg newspaper, The Star; the same publication her late husband, award-winning photographer Ken Oosterbroek, worked for.
“Looking back, I am just horrified at what went on and how people lived through that&#8230; I don’t think anyone knew, and we still don’t really know, who was attacking who.”
Zwolsman was part of an innocent and confused generation of journalists.
“I don’t think we, as journalists, had the skills [to cover these events]&#8230; It was difficult trying to get a handle on what was happening. It was never a constant, it started off with pangas (machetes) and steels bars and it evolved to AK-47s.”
Oosterbroek was a leading light in the now-famous Bang Bang Club, a band of daring photojournalists working in what they called no-man’s land – between battle lines drawn in the townships. A week before the elections of 1994, a bullet stopped him forever in Thokoza, east of Johannesburg.
“Everyone knew he was dead except me&#8230; when I got there people had just ran away and I ran into the hospital and I just saw his feet sticking out… that’s when I realized [that he was dead].”
In the book that chronicled their lives out in the field, friend and fellow Bang Bang Club member Greg Marinovich, who was also injured in the carnage says, “after four long years of observing violence, the bullets had finally caught up with us.”
A willingness to pursue a story at considerable personal risk was typical among reporters. They organized in packs; groups of foreign and local journalists moved together, finding safety in numbers.
“The local journalists knew where to go and where not to go. They could read the situation, you had to get to know that and you had to look out for each other. Even today, people are so closely bonded – that group of journalists – because we worked together and we genuinely lived through some crazy times,” recalls Zwolsman.
Back in the safety of the newsrooms, editors could merely keep tabs on their reporters, says Peter Fabricius, who was an assignment editor at the Independent. He sent a number of South African journalists to conflicts at home and further afield in the Congo; it was a difficult job.
“It was pretty nerve-racking having to send people into danger not knowing what you were exposing them to.”
These were the days before cell phones. Cumbersome satellite phones were the only way. But only a few, well-funded, newsrooms could afford them.
Oppression and imprisonment are other occupational hazards. There must be few jobs in the world where you can consider yourself fortunate to end up in jail.
Seyoum Tsehaye is one of those journalists behind bars. He began his journalism career as a guerrilla with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), the armed movement that ended Ethiopian occupation in 1993.
Some guerrillas were armed with cameras and voice recorders along with Kalashnikovs. They were not objective war-reporters but they captured rare footage of battle and interviewed commanders. These fighters provided the only records of this conflict in Africa’s mysterious hermit kingdom.
After the war, many Eritrean warrior-journalists abandoned their AK-47s to staff the country’s burgeoning state-controlled media. Tsehaye was appointed the country’s first head of state television.
In the late 1990s, with fresh conflict with Ethiopia looming, Tsehaye stopped toeing the party line. He joined an “audacious” independent paper and returned to photography. He began speaking out against the renewed fighting and campaigned for democracy. He was shadowed by secret police until his arrest and detention in 2001.
Recent news of him, provided by “sympathetic prison guards”, claims his health is “deteriorating” as he is shifted from one desert prison to the other.
Still behind bars, Tsehaye won the Reporter’s Without Borders ‘Journalist of the Year Award’ in 2007.
Brian Hungwe, an award-winning journalist from Zimbabwe, is well aware of the risks of political reporting. In 2000, he broke the story of families who lost their sons in the escalating war in the Congo.
Two years earlier, Mugabe mobilized Zimbabwean troops, against the wishes of his electorate, and sent them to the DRC at the start of the Second Congo War. The casualties were considerable.
“It started with one family, their son was a pilot but they only received a knee-cap for burial. They were living in fear that they buried the wrong person,” remembers Hungwe.
Slowly, but surely, more families came forward and Hungwe began an investigation into their claims. It culminated in the “DRC War Casualties Shock” report that won him the CNN Multichoice Journalist of the Year Award.
He was meticulous, even pushing for an official government response, confident that it would shield him from persecution.
“The story was true. If you can defend the truth then you are fortified. I was lucky because the truth was on my side. Getting the government to comment was difficult. They never responded although we faxed them and phoned them as well.”
Once the story was published and Hungwe accepted his award, a senior government representative belatedly denied the story.
Hungwe’s story shows there can be triumphs, as well as danger, in African journalism.
Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist who has been in and out of prison on sedition charges, continues to push the envelope. In 2007, he founded The Independent, a Kampala news magazine. Mwenda won the International Press Freedom Award from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in 2008. He owns, edits and publishes the magazine.
“You buy the truth, we pay the price,” is the magazine’s motto. Journalists from Kampala to Katlehong will nod with a knowing smile.

The Perils Of  The Written Word

This calm encounter on a spring morning in Sandton, Johannesburg, belies a man who forged his career amid fury. He cheated death at the hands of police to capture the Soweto school uprising, surely, one of the saddest stories ever told in Africa.
On June 16, 1976, Sam Nzima, a photojournalist at The World newspaper, in Johannesburg, took a picture of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying a 13-year-old dying Hector Pieterson from the Soweto massacre. He smuggled the film out in his sock and the picture hit the front pages of the world. The police wanted to destroy it – the image destroyed Nzima’s career.
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The picture changed the political landscape of South Africa; it made a fortune for the news agencies of the world, but he got nothing from it for 22 years.  The iconic image has been on everything from billboards to T-shirts.
“The picture of Hector Pieterson destroyed my future in journalism. I couldn’t continue as a journalist because of that picture and I would never put my life in danger, I was forced to leave everything behind,” says Nzima.
Harassment from police forced Nzima to become a small bottle store owner in the small village Lilydale, in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga. It took him 22 years of struggle to get his copyright back.
“The copyright of the Hector Pieterson Photo was given to me on the November 16, 1998 by Independent Newspapers Holdings Limited and was registered with Webber Wentzel Bowens Attorneys Notaries &amp; Conveyancers intellectual property lawyers in Johannesburg on July 20, 2000,” he says.
The day he risked his life for the picture is as clear as yesterday.
“As early as 6AM in the morning of June 16, I was covering a student march in Naledi High in Soweto with a colleague Sophie Tema. We found the students busy writing placards opposing new Bantu education laws. This followed a circular sent to the schools that Afrikaans will be the medium of instruction,” says Nzima.
When the march reached Morris Isaacson High, a student leader Tsietsi Mashinini addressed students from the top of a tree saying the march was to be a peaceful, says Nzima. Shortly after, armed police arrived in armoured vehicles and instructed all to disperse. The children sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in defiance.
Nzima says the singing agitated a police commander who instructed his officers to open fire. The students ran and Nzima hid in a house.
“I got out from the house, the police had ceased firing, and I saw a little child falling down. There comes this tall boy Mbuyisa and picked him up. As Mbuyisa picked him up, I went with my camera. I was also shooting with my camera, under the shower of police bullets. Mbuyisa was running to the nearest car, the nearest press car was our Volkswagen Beetle. I managed to shoot six sequences of him carrying Hector. My colleague Sophie Tema opened the door and they put Hector inside. Hector was certified dead upon arriving in Phefeni Clinic,” says Nzima.
“I knew the police would come back for me, I wound the film and stashed it in my sock and then loaded another film. As I anticipated, the police came back and grabbed me after they ran away for some few minutes. They took my three cameras and exposed my films. When they thought they had destroyed the evidence, our driver Thomas Khoza rushed the film to The World office. The picture was published the next day.”
Nzima’s gallant work with his camera on that violent winter day in 1976 was to wreck his life. When police came knocking on his door, Nzima left his job in Johannesburg and ended up under house arrest in the remote town of Bushbuckridge, far from his family in Soweto.
“After two days I received a call from the station commander at John Vorster Square, he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Percy Qoboza was my editor at The World. He advised me to stay away from the police if I don’t want to come back as corpse.”
Qoboza told the commander to invite him, the editor, for tea instead. This led to a police instruction to shoot Nzima if they found him photographing, a police insider told him at the time.
In April 2011, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma awarded Nzima with the Order of Ikhamanga for excellence in liberal art.
“If popularity was cash, I was going to tell you I am a millionaire or billionaire. Many people know this picture but some don’t know the man behind it. I was shocked in 2010 when I was invited in Berlin at a school called Hector Pieterson Schule. The school was renamed in celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall. Germans compared their freedom to the South African independence.”
“Money was not that much, no rewards in cash but I had recognition from the state president. At the beginning I regretted [taking] this picture because this picture destroyed my journalistic career, I lost my job and my friends in Johannesburg. But now I am rejoicing because I am getting high publicity, I have become an icon in South Africa. Maybe one day I will reap a jackpot from some quarters.”
A Sam Nzima Foundation will be opened, including a school for photojournalists, in his hometown near Bushbuckridge. This is where Nzima has a makeshift darkroom that he uses to train school children in his village of Lilydale.
“After the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, I was brave enough to pick up my camera and continue where I left, but all these years I was afraid to do that. The original camera that captured Hector Pieterson is still intact; I have kept it safe in those years.”
When Hillary Clinton visited South Africa for the first time, in the 1990s, she wanted to see Nzima at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. She offered to buy the camera, but Winnie Mandela advised Nzima against selling. She said it was the property of the state. Nzima also refused to donate his Pantex camera, with 50mm lens, to the ANC Women’s League.
“I was happy not to sell it, but if it was good money she was offering, I would have been happier to sell. It’s because it’s better enjoying my life when I can than keeping the camera. One day, I will show people of South Africa that this is a camera that brought their freedom. But the person who struggled for freedom gets nothing.”
“South Africans do not value me but I do get recognition from other countries. I remember in 2011 I was invited to exhibit my work in Belgium and address the parliament in Brussels. Parliamentarians showed interest in our history and the role I played in those days.”
Despite Nzima receiving lucrative offers from overseas for the camera, he says his conscience disapproves. It lives in his museum in Bushbuckridge.
“Now I cannot sell the camera, it has become the property of the state, it is our heritage. I have to consult with the politicians for a go-ahead; otherwise I will be frustrated again. If the government officials could learn that I had sold the camera overseas, they will ask me why I did it.”
Hector Pieterson was buried at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, and a museum in his memory was built near where he was shot, in 2002. His sister, Antoinette Sithole, the girl running alongside, is a curator at the museum and Makhubo was last traced in Nigeria. He went to exile after the photograph was published.
Every year on June 16, Nzima kneels and prays for the fallen schoolchildren of Soweto. He escaped with his life from the terrible day but his career didn’t.

The Sad Story Behind  The Picture That  Moved The World To Tears

One lazy Sunday in March 1886, on a farm in Langlaagte in what is now Johannesburg, Australian gold miner, George Harrison, stumbled upon a rock by a stream that contained gold. He declared his claim to the then government and soon after the area was declared open for mining – the ‘Witwatersrand Gold Rush’ began.
The gold rush built Johannesburg and made fortunes, these days poverty is the spur. Illegal gold mining is the running sore of the industry today. Poverty recruits illegal miners to live and work in dangerous abandoned shafts. What they find is worth much more then what their unknown employer pays them. Those that risk their lives in the dark and dusty underground call themselves Zama Zama (taking a shot at fortune).
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Illegal miners have no rights to mine, but feel that the act is a victimless crime. They believe there is nothing wrong with doing what they are because they are entering the abandoned mines on their own, risking their own lives.
Illegal mining in South Africa is on the rise.
“There is very limited access and control to what is actually happening underground and very limited control over the access points because we simply don’t know where they all are. And even if we do know, in some instances the mine would pour concrete into a redundant mine shaft, like a plug. But the guys (illegal miners) will mine right next to it, they would dig down around the concrete block and access the mines,” says Ben Coetzee from the Institute for Security Studies.
Illegal mining used to have little impact on legal mining but illegal miners have now moved into working mines. Sibanye Gold CEO, Neal Froneman, says illegal mining is turning into war. His mine was once sabotaged by illegal miners over Christmas and he even admits that some of his own miners have mined illegally on their days off.
“It’s a major problem, not only in abandoned mines but also in working mines. They have become very arrogant, they’re very organized, they are armed, they are aggressive, they threaten employees and blackmail them and they are replaced very quickly. You can arrest guys (illegal miners) and they are back tomorrow or somebody else is back tomorrow,” says Anton van Achterbergh, the Head of the Legal Department at the Chamber of Mines of South Africa.
Illegal gold mining is easier than you might think.
“Gold is visible and you can find it underground. Whenever there is an explosion, there will be gold dust that will accumulate on the ground or on the floor in the tunnels and there is always water in a mine, so it effectively rinses out the dust. In many mines the gold is actually laying where people are walking,” says Coetzee.
In South Africa it is illegal to be in the possession of raw gold. The syndicate chain of illegal mining has found a very simple and effective way of trading the stolen gold. Shop owners licensed to buy and sell a certain amount of gold, buy legal gold. They then buy illegal gold and refine it – which is very easy to do – and then mix it with the legal gold. This process makes it almost impossible to identify the illegal gold. Each nugget of pure gold has a unique fingerprint that identifies the origin of that gold. When you mix it with gold from all over the world, that fingerprint gets lost.
Illegal mining is driven by a large syndicate chain. This chain consists of five levels. The first level is the illegal miners, most of them immigrants. The second level is the buyers of the gold, who also recruit the illegal miners and provide them with tools. The third level sells the gold regionally. The fourth level sells nationally and the fifth level is the international buyers and distributors.
Border jumpers dominate illegal mining. According to the Chamber of Mines, 70% of all arrested illegal miners are illegal immigrants.
“If we can solve the illegal immigrant problem, illegal mining will go away, roughly,” says Van Achterbergh.
Another issue is the weakness of the law.
“In South Africa, to be charged with theft of something, you need to be caught with the possession thereof. When the guys (illegal miners) hear you coming they run away, so how do you prove they were stealing? Same as on the surface illegal mining, unless you find the gold in their possession it is very difficult,” says Van Achterbergh.
He says there have been many efforts to educate prosecutors about the theft of precious metal, allowing them to charge illegal miners for more than mere possession. Despite these efforts, there are holes in the justice system.
“I always tell the police the prosecution is as good as the investigation. If the investigation only shows so much, then what can I do if it only shows trespassing and not illegal mining?” says Anthea van der Byl from the National Prosecuting Authority.
“Police are afraid to go into these places. I would say it needs an international intervention, not just national.”
Police are also frustrated.
“It is a futile exercise, one might say, especially with the level ones and twos (in the syndicate chain),” says Lieutenant Colonel Herman Mahlangu from the South African Police Service.
Despite many initiatives to control the issue in the country, the road to a resolution is a long and winding one. Illegal mining may be a crime for South Africa’s economy, but for the illegal miners it feeds their families. With no qualifications and no experience, they turn to the inside of redundant mines looking for gold to give them a few rands to survive. In taking a shot at fortune, few strike the jackpot.

The Golden Chain With  A Rich Man At One End And A  Fool At  The Other

Africa billionaires are lining up to put their money where their mouth is in the fight against Ebola.
At least five FORBES AFRICA cover millionaires are putting up to $50 million to fight the disease. It’s being seen as Africa solving its
own problems.
The millionaires include: Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote of Dangote Group; Strive Masiyiwa, the Founder and Chairman of global telecommunications group Econet Wireless; Patrice Motsepe, the Founder and Executive Chairman of African Rainbow Minerals; Jim Ovia, Chairman and Co-Founder of Zenith Bank and Mohammed Dewji, the CEO of Mohammed Enterprises Tanzania Limited.
The fund, called the Business-to-Rescue Fund, was launched on November 8  at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, the first meeting between the AU and the Africa’s private sector.
“Africa is becoming conscious of synergies that exist between entrepreneurship and development and Econet Wireless Group has been involved in the fight against Ebola as early as April,” says Masiyiwa.
Masiyiwa said business was affected by everything that threatens life in the African economy.
“Our focus is the economy and well-being of our generation. The African people will not allow Ebola to persist like the HIV/Aids pandemic.”
Kola Karim, the Managing Director and CEO of Shoreline Energy International, says leading billionaires have set up a benchmark fund of between $30 million to $50 million.
“It’s unfortunate that the Ebola has caused this much pain without a quick response both from governments and businesses. It is the responsibility of the governments and the private sector to make interventions when serious problems like Ebola attack the region,” says Karim.
Political analyst at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, Gideon Chitanga, says entrepreneurs are playing a role of corporate social responsibility.
“Africa has seen a surge in the number of billionaires in the past decade and it is time that these billionaires start giving back to communities where they are generating their wealth from,” says Chitanga.

Forbes Millionaires  Shell Out  To Stop Ebola

Kerryne Krause-Neufeldt was on a roll. She founded her first beauty product business at 23 and was turning over $45,000 in the dying months of her company. But she lost it all on her worst day.
“I never thought in my wildest dream that anybody would steal my company from me. Seriously, how would they get that right?” she says.
Born in Pretoria, she was raised by a single mother who ran a hairdressing salon.
Krause-Neufeldt worked odd jobs while paying her way towards an Honours degree in marketing at the University of Pretoria. From working as a sales lady at a small outdoor store, she packed her bags and left for London on a two-year working visa, to toil for a sandwich making store, Pret A Manger. She was training to be a manager for one of the stores the company was going to launch. It was here that she learned how a well-oiled, structured company functioned. But after three months, she returned to South Africa on the promise of a job.
“The difference in having worked for Pret A Manger in London and coming back to work for this company was a culture shock of note and it was a defining moment for me. I realized there was no vision. I was never going to see this marketing position,”
she says.
She resigned after five weeks and decided to start her own business – a distribution company, supplying cheap eye masks that rejuvenated the skin and removed puffiness. She called up the principle office for the eye masks in Switzerland which did not have a market in Africa.
They offered 10,000 eye masks to sell in South Africa but Krause-Neufeldt needed funding to start this business. One of her mother’s customers was a lawyer who dabbled in business from time to time. He wanted to start his own business but Krause-Neufeldt convinced him that her business idea was more viable. But he wanted 51% of the business.
“He knew I was caught between a rock and a hard place. He said, ‘I’ll give you the money but its 50/50 for the business,’ and in that moment I was relieved I could get started on the business but somehow I knew it was the beginning of the end,” remembers Krause-Neufeldt.
The lawyer funded the first 2,000 units. She hired around 12 sales reps and did all the training and focused on the administration. She also hired Peggy, her best friend, who would distribute the units to the sales reps from a factory. The sales reps earned commission on all the stock they sold, while she earned a mere salary of $275, which she felt was too little.
Business picked up and more stock was brought into the country and South Africa became one of the biggest markets for eye masks.
After running the business for close to two years, Krause-Neufeldt told her business partners that they had to inject more money into it to meet their side of the deal. They were reluctant and felt she was becoming a problem.
Then, at peak season during November, three of her sales reps picked up units worth $91,000. Peggy counted the stock and gave it to the sales reps. They should have delivered the products and returned with the cash, but they never came back.
When Krause-Neufeldt approached her business partners about it, they said that the sales reps gave them the money and that they were investigating her for fraud.
“I asked them how much the reps were giving them and they said R30,000 ($2,740). I said they have R1 million ($91,000) worth of stock. I told them they were getting nailed, but I was the enemy,” she says.
Her boyfriend was a director in the company.
“I was fighting with my boyfriend at the time and I told him he can’t be playing golf all day and take a salary. I told him to do something and he said he’d be a sales rep.”
While in a meeting a few days later, the partners asked Krause-Neufeldt’s boyfriend whether he was earning commission. According to the contracts, it was illegal for directors to earn commission as part of their pay package unless the board of directors approved it.
“We went into a meeting and that’s the only dirt they could find on us,” says Krause Neufeldt.
The partners said they were going to open a criminal case against her and the boyfriend unless she signed over her shares and released the company to them. She tried to get lawyers in but had to fork out around $3,600 upfront. Krause Neufeldt couldn’t afford this with her small salary.
“I signed my shares for nothing and handed my company to these people. I didn’t have a choice in the matter,” she says.
Krause-Neufeldt lost everything. She also signed a restraint of trade agreement. She lost her distribution agency and a local market she had personally grown.
“It was the biggest trauma of my life. To be betrayed by everyone and you know I’d get calls from salons that would complain about my reps and I wouldn’t believe them. I lived for my staff. It was devastating.”
Krause-Neufeldt, however, refused to lie down.
“I just believed failure was the inability to get up again. So I resolved to get up the next day and start another company to show them,” she says.
She immediately started working on her next business, I-Slices Manufacturing. She had come across an Italian eye mask but it wasn’t in line with the quality she wanted. So she decided to develope her own product.
She needed the technology that would make the base of her product, Eyeslices. A friend introduced her to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a research and development organization. Here she found the department that worked on a hydrogel treatment pad for burn wounds but the idea was shelved in 1993 because it couldn’t be developed further.
One day, Krause-Neufeldt met Avie Kruger, a scientist who had worked in the CSIR polymer department, and helped her to develop her products.
She started her own laboratory in a cottage on a plot in Midrand, outside of Johannesburg, but there were no standard manufacturing methods or equipment available to produce the product she wanted.
Her mentor suggested she look into the food industry and she came across a machine which had oval cut outs, similar to those of Eyeslices. She contacted Ulma Packaging Solutions, a company that packages products such as yoghurts and meat. The next morning, they arrived at the cottage and started to help Krause-Neufeldt customize her machine.
It took about one and a half years to create the perfect Eyeslices products following the seven years of research. Today, Eyeslices is a reusable stable water-based hydrogel eye mask manufactured through a physical process of freezing and thawing.
Instead of placing cucumbers on your eyes, Eyeslices does that job better and it’s a product many beauty salons have stocked on their shelves.
The United States was I-Slices Manufacturing’s first distribution country. Today, the company boasts 19 other export markets including and hopefully followed by Morocco, Kenya and Nigeria.
Krause-Neufeldt says the challenge with exporting products on the continent is that Africans want brands to be successful in the overseas market before they buy. Regulations can also be a problem.
“Every single country in Africa, the regulations are different and they’re very onerous. They’re incredibly expensive,” says Krause-Neufeldt.
But she is not giving up just yet, she plans to grow the product and take it to many countries on the continent. She hopes it will be one in the eye for cucumbers.

Tag: December 2014

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

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The Day A Sad And Grumpy Mandela Needed A Kiss

The Bucket Boy Who Grew champions

The Pride And The Passion

The Problem With Power

YOU CAN GROW MONEY AFTER ALL

This Business Is Not Flagging

No Matter How Bad Things Turn Out: Cheers!

Through Hell To Prosperity

Nelson Mandela, The Artist

The Perils Of The Written Word

The Sad Story Behind The Picture That Moved The World To Tears

The Golden Chain With A Rich Man At One End And A Fool At The Other

Forbes Millionaires Shell Out To Stop Ebola

‘I Never Thought Anybody Would Steal My Company From Me’