THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST



Harvard biology professor and serial entrepreneur Timothy Springer saw promise in a fledgling biotech firm a decade ago and made an early investment. Now, primarily as a result of that bet — on a Cambridge, Massachusetts company called Moderna — he’s a billionaire.&nbsp;



Shares of Moderna, which has a Covid-19 vaccine currently in human clinical trials, rose more than 12% this week, bucking the overall drop in the stock market. That surge has turned Springer into a billionaire:&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates he is now worth $1 billion based on his 3.5% equity stake in Moderna and stakes in three smaller biotech outfits.



“My philosophy is investing in what you know, and I’m a scientist at heart. I love discovering things,” Springer, 72, told&nbsp;Forbes. “Many scientists start companies but few are successful. I’m an active investor and also a very rigorous scientist, and that’s why I have a very high batting average.”



On Tuesday, Moderna announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-receives-fda-fast-track-designation-mrna-vaccine-mrna" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fast-tracked</a>&nbsp;its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, giving a boost to the firm’s effort to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/05/08/fueled-by-500-million-in-federal-cash-moderna-races-to-make-1-billion-doses-of-an-unproven-cure/">develop</a>&nbsp;the first vaccine for the disease. Moderna was the first company to begin human trials of its vaccine, on March 16 in Seattle, and the company’s shares have nearly tripled in value since the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11. The breakneck growth had already&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2020/04/03/moderna-ceo-stphane-bancel-becomes-a-billionaire-as-stock-jumps-on-coronavirus-vaccine-news/#4fd68c735bf3">led</a>&nbsp;to one other Moderna billionaire — CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/stephane-bancel/#22bfde4e3742">Stéphane Bancel</a>, now worth an estimated $2.1 billion.&nbsp;



Besides moonlighting as a billionaire biotech investor, Springer is a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, where he began teaching in 1977 and currently mentors post-doctoral students in his lab. In his&nbsp;<a href="https://timothyspringer.org/people/timothy-springer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">research</a>&nbsp;as an immunologist at Harvard, Springer discovered lymphocyte function-associated molecules, which led to the development of several FDA-approved antibody-based drugs. His first foray into entrepreneurship came in 1993 when he founded the biotech outfit LeukoSite, which he took public in 1998 and&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/97cda4b510240fa9f9a6839ecb306558" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sold</a>&nbsp;to Millennium Pharmaceuticals a year later in a deal worth $635 million; Springer got about $100 million of that in Millennium shares.



Springer was a founding investor of Moderna in 2010, when he put about $5 million into the company. Now, a decade later, that initial investment is worth nearly $870 million. But long before Covid-19 had emerged onto the scene, Springer was already thinking about how the company’s groundbreaking mRNA technology could help in the development of vaccines.



“We had the idea very early on that it could be used for pandemic readiness,” says Springer. “That’s why we invested in doing human trials with different influenza types, the types that are not normally seen in epidemics but could emerge and start a new pandemic. We were aware of this kind of scenario all along.”



While Moderna may be Springer’s most high-profile bet, he’s also a leading investor in three smaller publicly traded biotech upstarts: Selecta Biosciences, Scholar Rock and Morphic Therapeutic. In the cases of Scholar Rock and Morphic, Springer is also a cofounder, helping build the companies out of his scientific research at Harvard.



Unfazed by his newfound wealth, Springer still rides his bike to work every day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he conducts research at his lab. His only luxury, Springer says, is his home. &#8220;I like gardening and collecting rocks&#8230;I don’t need the money. I have an academic lifestyle.&#8221;&nbsp;



He’s also using his fortune to give back to the scientific community: In 2017, he donated $10 million to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://proteininnovation.org/about" target="_blank">establish</a>&nbsp;the Institute for Protein Innovation, an independent nonprofit dedicated to researching protein science and helping biotech entrepreneurs realize their ideas.



“I like active investing, but I also very much like active philanthropy,” says Springer. “My motivation behind [the Institute] is not only to help develop new reliable antibodies that scientists around the world can use for biological discovery, but also, it has new technology that will just allow many more discoveries to be made. It’s the type of science that is difficult to do otherwise in academia.”



The Harvard professor isn’t the only member of the three-comma-club whose wealth has been boosted by the battle against Covid-19. Some healthcare billionaires’ fortunes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2020/05/04/these-healthcare-billionaires-have-gotten-richer-off-the-coronavirus-pandemic/#b9f98161ba26">have risen</a>&nbsp;by billions of dollars since the WHO declared a global pandemic on March 11. The biotech rally could keep gathering pace as the public eagerly awaits new developments in the fight against Covid-19.



For his part, Springer is optimistic that the biotech sector will continue its rapid growth even once the pandemic is gone. “Before, we were vilified as charging too much for drugs&#8230;but now, everybody is quite aware that biotech is coming to the rescue,” says Springer. “Biotech holds great promise for new drugs, and the faith in biotech is justified.”



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/">Giacomo Tognini</a>, Forbes Staff, Covers Billionaires.

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Exclusive: Meet The Harvard Professor Who Became A Billionaire Thanks To Coronavirus

A few days before Yusuf Randera-Rees left for Oxford University, he lay alongside a pool at a game reserve, basking in the African sun. It was another rare opportunity for the Harvard graduate. He cast his eye on the people walking by.
“I know there are people here who are more talented than me, smarter than me and more talented than the people I was with at Harvard, or at least they could compete. I see these people every day and yet I’m about to go off to Oxford and these people are never going to get that chance,” says Randera-Rees.
Randera-Rees took these thoughts with him to Oxford where he met a fellow student who shared his vision. Together they conceptualized the idea for a business that would later become the Awethu Project. The company is dedicated to turning poor people into successful entrepreneurs.
In their first year at university, the two men entered the 21st Century Challenge – a business competition at Oxford University that recognizes solutions to worldwide problems. After being shortlisted for the $40,000 cash prize, they dreamed of spending it.
“We didn’t win, we were told the idea was aspirational, which really pissed me off,” says Randera-Rees.
The winning team came up with a business that used wheelbarrows to purify water for women in the villages.
Randera-Rees was unimpressed.
“You want the idea of an African women walking to the village; you don’t want the idea of Africans who can compete with you.”
He completed two Master’s degrees, in Financial Economics and African Studies, and moved back to Johannesburg where he worked on bringing the Awethu Project to life.
Randera-Rees saw a market in the many people who were excluded from becoming entrepreneurs because government funding and investors require a business plan, a certain amount of turnover and qualifications.
At 26, Randera-Rees moved back in with his parents and started the business with the $5,600 he had saved. He headed for the township of Alexandra where he promoted the company with flyers, posters and radio adverts. Within weeks, he garnered interest from more than 1,000 people. From the large pool of applicants, three were chosen.
“On a test of pure cognitive ability, compared to an American norm group, so basically compared to a world standard, these guys scored in the top three percent in the world. So they’re in the top three percent of intelligence compared to anybody else in the world and they’re sitting, not contributing nearly as much as they could.”
After a bumpy start, the Awethu Project received a $280,000 investment from financial services group Discovery Holdings and later $6.5 million from other investors. This made it possible for a taxi driver, airport baggage handler and cleaner to start businesses.
Each entrepreneur receives between $90,000 and $470,000 in co-investment from the Awethu Project. Over the years, they are guided by one of the company’s 25 mentors. After six years, the entrepreneurs need to pay the money back and also have the option to gain ownership of the company.
“First the entrepreneur earns it and then we empower… The big problem with the South African empowerment model is empowerment first and earning is later,” says Randera-Rees.
Empowerment and equality are principles Randera-Rees values. He grew up in a mixed-race family during apartheid. His dad, an Indian doctor, left the country at the age of 17, and went to England where he met his wife, a white doctor. The two moved to South Africa in 1984 where they were subject to constant discrimination. Randera-Rees’ dad worked in Soweto and his mom worked in Alexandra.
“To see their example was important to me. They did what they needed to do because they believed in it and for no other reason.”
With offices seated at the heart of Constitutional Hill overlooking the hustle and bustle of downtown Johannesburg, Randera-Rees looks down and smiles. Where some see dust; he only sees gold.

High Fives High Hopes

We need to start running this country differently,” says Arunma Oteh.
The journalists scribble and the cameras flash. Then Oteh accuses the chairman of the House of Representatives of the Nigerian Capital Market of corruption and unaccountability. This was the 2012 public inquiry into the near collapse of the Nigerian Capital Market.
Oteh has been the director general of the Nigerian Securities Exchange Commission since January 2010. She believes there are no sacred cows in the dispensation of justice.  This conviction has driven the reformation of the Nigerian Capital Market.
“I was brought up to always stand up for the right thing, even if it means standing alone. For me, it was standing up for the right thing in spite of the costs. I was angry that a system that is so well endowed was being led irresponsibly. I have had the power to make choices over the years – we all do. I have always chosen excellence over anything else. I had built an international career, reputation and standing for 22 years anchored on this. I knew there would be risks that I would be misunderstood, but I also felt the benefits to society far outweighed any costs attached for me.
“If I didn’t do it, who would?”
It was one of many questions Oteh pondered upon her appointment, and in her role as chief regulator of Nigeria’s Stock Exchange.
“I wanted to contribute my own bit to realizing Nigeria’s potential. I believed Nigeria was a well-kept secret that was often misunderstood in terms of its opportunities and potential. There wasn’t a good understanding of the role the capital markets played in transforming the economy – I was prepared to change this,” she says.
With a vocabulary peppered with words like transparency, good governance and accountability, Oteh fought market rigging, the pumping and dumping of shares, and wash sales. She steered the Nigerian Capital Market towards demutualization and capital adequacy.
“I was bent on creating a broader understanding of the value of a world-class, functioning capital market in the transformation of the economy. Wealth is in very few hands. What the capital market does is to create an opportunity for fairer equitable wealth distribution. This can only happen under a thorough structure. I wanted to set an indelible example for the Nigerian public sector. Integrity is so crucial while developing this framework, however, and it was important to rebuild investors’ trust and confidence in the system again,” says Oteh.
This is nothing different from how Oteh normally operates. As a high school student she wanted to become an inventor, but graduated in computer science from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her first corporate job involved being responsible for corporate finance at a stockbroking firm. She completed her MBA at Harvard Business School and worked for the Harvard Center for International Development. In 1992 she joined the African Development Bank (AfDB) as a senior capital investment officer and group treasurer, responsible for fund raising and investments in international capital markets. Oteh was appointed vice president for corporate management at AfDB in 2006.
How does one keep this track record? Oteh believes she has happened upon the right opportunities. She wants more women to access these structures.
“I think a lot of women have exceeded expectation in Africa, in terms of commitment and approach to their jobs.”
Oteh believes the challenge lies in women being equally involved at different levels of decision making. Girl must have access to the same opportunities as boys, so these opportunities are later present in the workplace. Creating a meritocracy in the workplace, where the best suited and qualified individual gets the job, is vital. Successful women should focus on developing upcoming leaders. Women should pave the way for younger women to climb the corporate ladder, through mentorship and coaching. Oteh wants to develop the entrepreneurial spirit among women.
“A number of women helped and supported me in my journey too. They believed in me and instilled the notion that the sky is the limit. You can really go as far as you want to go in life.”
Women also face a lack of access to finance. These are economic issues that act as deterrents to the growth of the economy.
“I believe when given the right opportunities, women excel at their respective roles,” says Oteh.
She has won the admiration of many, especially after ruffling a few feathers, but Oteh faced much resistance in the reformation she championed.
“Some people preserve the status quo because of the benefits the status quo has for them – we can change that. There are no countries that have taken the bold steps we have made in the financial sector in the last few years. It was interesting to see the public opinion on this too. I think people realize that Nigerians are good people who like the right things to be done. I think we just need to stand up more for what is right,” she says.
Her resilience and cutthroat decision-making have earned her the title of the Iron Lady.
“This is not a negative tag for me. The only other person I remember being called that, was Margaret Thatcher, and I found her to be a bold, decisive transformer, who influenced the UK economy positively. She fought fiercely against the status quo. So, if leading change, being passionate, resilient and decisive about a great course is what makes me an Iron Lady, then I proudly raise my hand up high to that tag.”
The Nigerian Stock market crashed from a peak of N12.6 trillion ($78.7 billion) in March 2008 to N4 trillion ($25 billion) in 2009. It has recovered since and closed at N13 trillion ($81.2 billion) in late 2013.
Oteh did not become an inventor, but she is re-inventing a system that was once tainted.

The Iron Lady Who Stood Alone

The accidental economist: Dr. NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA

About 20 months ago, when Harvard-educated but little-known Inati Ntshanga was thrust into the position of CEO of South Africa’s state-owned regional airline, very few noticed.
One of the main reasons, of course, was that 18-year-old South African Express (SAX) had always been in the shadow of its bigger and much older brother, South African Airways (SAA), which has been a dominant force in the continental airspace for more than 75 years. So much so that SAX’s resilience has gone largely unnoticed, notwithstanding the fact that in its short life, not only has the airline survived several one-time competitors that have since gone under, it is now also debt free.
<h3>Now SAX wants to conquer Africa.</h3>
Whereas SAA has gone, cap-in-hand, to the South African government to beg for R6 billion to fund operational costs, its growth strategy and fleet renewal, SAX will be using its own balance sheet to raise the R4.5 billion it intends to spend on 15 new aircraft for its new growth plan. Seven of the aircraft have been delivered, while the rest will arrive between now and 2015 to coincide with the end of current leases of the “oldish” aircraft that the airline still has on the tarmac.
Most of SAX’s old fleet was acquired when jet fuel was in the $20-$30/barrel price range, airline industry analyst Linden Birns points out.
“With fuel today soaring above the $130/barrel mark, the economic model for these planes no longer holds any validity. Not only are they unable to generate sufficiently low seat-mile costs—the standard measure of the cost of production in the airline industry—but they are also rapidly losing their residual book value as demand for these aircraft in other markets has fallen off a cliff.”
In addition to several domestic routes—Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, George, East London, Kimberley, Pietermaritzburg, Upington and Phalaborwa—SAX also flies to neighboring Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“All of them are profitable,” according to Ntshanga. He is now adding Malawi, Ghana and Uganda to the list and is in negotiations with several other African countries that subscribe to the idea of “open skies”.
While the continent has been slow to embrace open skies—an international policy concept calling for an easing of restrictions, for the liberalization of rules and regulations and for minimal government intervention in the airline industry—Ntshanga says those who have already done so are seeing the economic benefits.
He points to the latest International Air Transport Association (IATA) report, which analyzed the relationship between a country’s level of connectivity to the global air transport network and its level of productivity and economic growth, across 48 developing and developed countries during a 10 year period.
Not only is aviation a major industry in its own right, employing large numbers of highly skilled workers, the report said it is also an essential input into the rapidly growing global economy. The study found that greater connections to the global air transport network can boost the productivity and growth of economies by providing better access to markets; enhance links within and between businesses; and provide greater access to resources and international capital markets.
Noting how air traffic demand increased as economies grew, the report concluded that global economic growth has been a key driver of growth in air traffic demand.
<h3>This has not been confined to</h3>
North America, Europe, South-East Asia, Australia, Latin America and India, Birns points out: “If you want [further] proof of this, just look at
how the size of the South African domestic market grew with the advent of our low-cost airlines, kulula.com, 1Time and Mango, in the 2000s to see how the liberalized regulatory environment gave rise to mushrooming growth.”
&nbsp;
<h3>THE PROBLEMS OF THE AFRICAN AIRLINE INDUSTRY</h3>
The rest of the African continent, though, is uniquely different, something Ntshanga is ready to concede upfront, if not to acknowledge that his ambition could even be thwarted by it.
SAX’s home base, South Africa, and the other countries the airline has been flying to until now adhere to high safety standards. The same can’t be said about many of the other countries on the continent, where carriers are notorious for their tendency to skimp on safety. The most recent IATA statistics reveal that in 2010 Africa had 7.41 accidents per million flights, the worst among the world’s regions and 12 times worse than the global average of 0.61.
Other common complaints usually cited by established airlines’ indifference to Africa are:
&#8211;              too few airports;
&#8211;              inadequate investment in infrastructure;
&#8211;              inconsistent government policies and laws.
Birns explains some of them, and their impact: “The artificial barriers to market access, known as the Bilateral Air Transport Agreements, which are applied in Africa, should be reviewed and liberalized. These agreements currently prescribe which airlines may operate on given routes, the number of flights each airline is permitted to operate on the route, and in some cases, even stipulate the maximum weekly or monthly capacity each designated airline may put into the market. The net effect is that airfares on intra-African routes remain artificially high. And with the global and regional economies under pressure, fewer people can afford to fly. If free or freer competition was permitted, fares would come down and the market would grow exponentially.”
&nbsp;
<h3>THIS IS AFRICA’S NEXT BEST AIRLINE</h3>
“But the challenges do not mean it can’t be done,” Ntshanga says. He has confidence that he’s doing the right thing and is poised to strike gold.
The reason for his calm confidence, and some would say rather rapid expansion?
“Africa is, in fact, low hanging fruit for us… Our market research says we’ll be profitable within two months—and that’s even before those markets reach maturity.” Besides, the economist-by-training reckons, Africa is poised for unprecedented levels of growth, even though that’s admittedly off a low base.
Birns says SAX’s Africa route expansion strategy is “a good one in principle”, but to be sustainable it requires focus on markets with sufficient demand for business and tourism traffic.
That word—focus—is what Ntshanga says SAX swears by. “We have a very good, tried and tested model,” he says.
SAX doesn’t have its own distribution and handling systems but uses SAA’s for a fee. A lot of other services, including ground handling, are outsourced, leaving the airline with a staff complement of only 1 100.
While others still prefer jets, Ntshanga says SAX is opting for 50- to 100-seater aircraft that use turbo propellers but consume relatively less fuel, are as quiet as jets, are just as fast, and are more comfortable. Add to that the fact that the destinations the airline flies to are within a three-hour distance to and from South Africa.
“The lure of money, which often looks like easy money,” is one cause, Ntshanga believes, why other airlines fail. “You won’t catch us flying long routes, or very busy routes where we are a small boy playing with the big boys. We focus, we don’t straddle,” he says.
Birns believes SAX “never competed directly” with Nationwide, Velvet Sky, Sun Air, Flitestar or Phoenix—all of which went under—but was competing against SAA and Comair (the BA and Kulula operations) and 1Time. “It’s precisely because the high-density mainline routes are so fiercely fought over that SAX deliberately operates on different gauges and networks to the others.”
Birns thinks Velvet Sky went out of business “largely due to its failure to have sufficient economies of scale to offer a comprehensive domestic and regional service. Nationwide failed, not because of the engine incident and subsequent grounding—these were factors, but not catalysts of the failure—but because once it resumed operations, the shareholders and management failed to appreciate that they needed to invest heavily in restoring brand credibility and market confidence. They assumed, wrongly, that they could simply pick up where they’d left off and all would continue as if the crisis hadn’t happened.
“SAX is feeling the same economic pressures as every other airline around the world, ie. rampant fuel prices and soaring user charges, levies and taxes. We would be naïve to think these won’t negatively impact SAX’s bottom line. And like every other airline, SAX will want to invest in the latest available technology to help it keep those additional costs in check,” he says.
With humility, but also with authority, Ntshanga goes back a couple of years, before he was appointed CEO. Then, he was part of a crack team that achieved an important strategic tilt—developing and implementing strategies that led to the doubling of revenue and saw SAX become solvent for the first time since the airline’s inception 18 years ago. And that’s when everyone got up and noticed.
Ntshanga believes it’s a matter of time before others see that SAX is no longer the Cinderella operation that was established back in 1993 by black investors Thebe Investments (51%) and a Canadian consortium (49%), only to be sold to the government a few years down the line because it wasn’t doing that well.
Back in the day, SAX would fly to Bloemfontein twice a day. Today it flies there 10 times a day as well as to destinations across Africa dozens of times every month.
“This is Africa’s next best airline,” Ntshanga says.

Every Cloud Has A Golden Lining

Amolo Ng’weno always wanted to be a doctor. But when she went to college, it all changed. At Harvard University in the Unites States, Ng’weno, a then 20-something ambitious Kenyan girl, became fascinated with computers and everything they could do—especially transmitting information. Overnight, she fell for the new, wide world of technology.
“My first experience with computers was at a US trade exhibition when I was in high school, but I didn’t actually get to use a computer until I got to college,” she says.
<div id="attachment_304" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-304" class="size-medium wp-image-304" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Amollo-028-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Amolo Ng&#8217;weno</div>
Luckily, Harvard had a course for every student to learn the rudiments of computers.
“This experience totally changed my perspective on the tools for getting any kind of work done and has shaped my career ever since.”
Ng’weno studied psychology and social relations at Harvard, but the computer bug had bitten and not even a master’s in economics and public affairs at Princeton University, or working for the World Bank would get in the way.
Fate took a hand through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the east coast town of Cambridge. Here, two fellow Kenyans—Ayisi Makatiani and Karanja Gakio—had developed a similar obsession. So, when the three met one evening, breaking bread and sipping black coffee at a small café in Cambridge, the idea of an online news service was mooted. It began on an internet community, hosted at MIT, called KenyaNet. In 1994 it became Africa Online, the internet giant that lives to this day.
“We saw the utility of local news to the African diaspora and we thought the opposite would also be true; people in Kenya would want to communicate with the world and know what was going on internationally,” recalls Ng’weno, who quit as an economist with the World Bank in Washington to help set up Africa Online.
“It was the very early days of the internet in the US and although we were ambitious for our company, we didn’t dream it would change all our lives the way it has.”
As the internet boom kicked off, Africa Online shifted focus from providing news to connecting Africans to the internet. In 1995, it was bought by Boston-headquartered International Wireless, which became Prodigy. That year, Ng’weno was sent to launch the Kenyan operation, becoming the first internet service provider (ISP) in East Africa’s largest economy. A year later, perhaps after proving herself as start-up honcho, she was moved to Côte d’Ivoire to set up a subsidiary.
Africa Online was on a roll. It expanded to Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, with the three coffee drinkers from Cambridge in charge. It acquired several ISPs, such as Pipex Internet Solution (Swaziland), Net2000 (Kenya), UUNET (Namibia) and Swift Global (Uganda).
In 1998, Prodigy sold the company to African Lakes Corporation, a British investment firm that was diversifying from agriculture and mining. For a while, the company traded on the London Stock Exchange, enjoying favor from investors, then listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange in 2001.
As the new century turned, the internet (dotcom) bubble burst, wiping out many companies around the world and leaving erstwhile eager investors in the red.
“The company needed additional cash for growth which could only be supplied by international investors,” says Ng’weno, who won’t reveal what stake she held in the company, in a country where too much wealth is frowned upon.
“At the same time, the internet bust and investor jitters about Africa had really hammered the share price of our UK parent company, The African Lakes Corporation, forcing its management to de-list from the London and Kenyan stock exchanges.”
In 2001 the three founders exited, with the company firmly in eight countries and the largest ISP in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa.
<div id="attachment_303" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-303" class="size-medium wp-image-303" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Amollo-035-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Surveying the scene: Amolo Ng&#8217;weno looks over Nairobi&#8217;s bustling city</div>
Six years later, in 2007, South African fixed-line telecommunications company Telkom SA bought Africa Online Limited from African Lakes Corporation for £10.32 million ($15.8 million). The ISP, which had been running at a loss, had just started to make some profit, but it was not enough to raise the necessary capital to take full advantage of the opportunities in Africa’s fast-growing telecoms industry.
Ng’weno left to work for a number of organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Now, aged 46, Ng’weno is trying to make a comeback in the industry where she made her name, at a time when many would be slowing down.
In April 2011 she launched a business process outsourcing (BPO) company in Kenya, just a month after leaving Bill and Melinda Gates. Digital Divide Data (DDD) Kenya blends a for-profit technology business with social welfare.
“We’re a social enterprise,” she said recently in an interview at her office on the seventh floor of Paramount Plaza in Nairobi.
“Which means, while we’re a for-profit company in Kenya, we also have a social mission which is to give young people from disadvantaged backgrounds a path out of poverty.”
Most of DDD Kenya shares are owned by the US NGO, also called Digital Divide Data (DDD), which received a grant of $895,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation to bring its social enterprise model to Kenya. DDD has invested in an information technology services business that targets to train and employ 300 youths from slum areas in Nairobi.
The grant is part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Poverty Reduction through Information and Digital Employment (PRIDE) program. PRIDE is working in Africa to foster and scale up a new arm of the outsourcing industry called “impact sourcing” by supporting projects aimed at creating jobs for the poor.
Ng’weno, who is managing director at DDD, says the organization hires young people from Nairobi’s vast slums to deliver high-quality BPO services. There’s also a team of deaf people working as digital management operators.
“Our staff works with us half day and go to tertiary education the other half day,” she says. “It’s a model that has worked well for DDD in Asia, where our staff typically graduate from their university education, and from the company, after four to five years.  When they graduate, they are on a path to careers in IT and other fields that would have been difficult for them to access without our support.”
From 35 workers at inception, DDD Kenya has grown to more than 100.
“We don’t think profit is incompatible with achieving a social mission. We actually believe the profit motive is an important one—and the only way that we can grow our business sustainably so that we can fulfill our goal of providing employment and career development to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. If we don’t make a profit, we can’t deliver on our mission,” says Ng’weno.
It is this social enterprise that has anchored Ng’weno’s second coming on the internet platform, albeit at a more advanced level. The company is championing digital marketing by helping organizations use the internet to grow their brands and markets. Recently, the company became the first in the region to be certified by Google to offer advisory and technical services for the search engine giant’s AdWords advertising service. Ng’weno says DDD Kenya has a growing number of clients in Kenya drawn from various sectors including tourism, real estate and financial services as well as big clients across Africa and overseas.
Digital marketing covers a broad range of channels marketers can use to communicate with their customers. It could be anything from email, desktop text and banner ads, social media marketing or mobile and text ads.
But it is the banner ads placed on websites that have been attracting the attention of marketers and brand managers lately. With more than 25% of the 44 million people in Kenya online, according to the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), advertisers are increasingly realizing that they need to fish where the fish are.
“The internet has become an integral part of everyday life in Kenya and Africa and it’s changing the way people work, shop, look for information, communicate and meet people,” says Olga Arara-Kimani, Google Kenya’s country manager.
“This, coupled with the fact that advertisers are increasingly looking for mediums that deliver high, measurable returns on their investment, has led to higher proportions of ad spend going to online channels.”
A number of big businesses in Kenya are advertising online. Kenya has one of the highest internet penetration rates in Africa and emerging markets, currently at 25% and growing at 17% annually. About $8 trillion exchanges hands each year through e-commerce, but only a tiny fraction of that is in Africa. DDD Kenya hopes to increase this figure.
“Because it’s so targeted, this kind of online marketing is cost-effective. Many people want to get into digital marketing because it’s possible to know exactly who you are targeting.”
DDD Kenya recently diversified into electronic books. It is already digitizing reading materials for the government-run Kenya National Library Services, with a number of other projects in the pipeline. It’s betting on e-books and hopes publishers will buy into the idea.
“The Kenyan education system seems to give us a great pool of candidates, despite having gone to schools that are not seen as being high achievers. Our staff speak, read and write good English, which is important for all our international and many local clients.”
Harking back to the days when they set up Africa Online, Ng’weno says technology has come a long way on the continent. The infrastructure has improved dramatically, especially with the arrival of undersea cables.
“However, it’s still not clear to me why the entire internet slows down in the late afternoon (especially on Fridays),” she says.
For Ng’weno, training at Harvard, the world most prestigious business school that has produced some of the world’s biggest entrepreneurs played a part in shaping her into a shrewd entrepreneur. “Harvard is a great place to be challenged and to grow intellectually,” she says. “I’m sure it has contributed to my life in many different ways, which is the purpose of a good university education.”
Tenacity appears to run in the family. Her father, Hillary Ng’weno, was the owner and editor of the Weekly Review, Kenya’s first independent news magazine. He was a ground-breaker in lively and objective journalism. Ng’weno had a degree in mathematics and nuclear physics from Harvard. Fleur, her mother, is a naturalist and expert on bird life. She ran the Rainbow Magazine for children in the 1970s and 1980s.
So what does it take to be a great entrepreneur? Amolo Ng’weno says it is simply taking advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself and surviving disasters, so you are still there to fight another day.
In a patriarchal society like Africa, where men dominate business and leadership, success stories like Ng’weno’s are rare. You may wonder if being a woman has worked against her in business.
“People usually think it would be a disadvantage. But I’d say I was raised to see the potential in each individual, regardless of their sex or social background. And I think that’s what I’ve also found in my dealings with others.”
Tall and endowed with an African female figure, Ng’weno does not cut the image of a tech nerd. She’s easy in her attire and conservative in her use of jargon. Unlike the noisy tech types Ng’weno, who loves horses, talks as if it is not her job to be audible, yours to listen carefully.
On a warm Wednesday in Nairobi, she paces in her hi-tech office to oversee the Kenya National Library Services e-books project is completed on time. She is undeterred by road construction noises outside, which includes a huge trench outside her office building. It means she has to park her car 300 meters away and walk through the mess of rubble, earth, man and machine.
“Right now I’m too busy for hobbies,” she says when asked if she finds time for leisure. “Given the Nairobi traffic situation, maybe I will say, sitting in traffic listening to radio while doing email on my laptop computer. Our car was imported from Japan and can only get two stations so I listen to Ghetto Radio (a Nairobi radio station that broadcasts in local slang known as sheng) a lot.”
To succeed in business, she has learnt to turn what is perceived as her weaknesses on their heads. It all depends on how you look at strengths and weaknesses, she says.
“I am frequently told I’m impatient but I regard this more of a strength than a weakness. Similarly I can be detail-oriented and meticulous, which my staff complain about, but I think I’ve found a line of work in which that is, again, a strength rather than a weakness. Overall, I think most attributes can be strengths in some circumstances and weaknesses in others and the trick is to find the right combination.”
With a meticulous eye for detail backed with zeal for results, it is surprising that a team with Ng’weno on its side could go wrong. Yet, while running Africa Online, she realized that even IT wizards can make terrible miscalculations.
“We had acquired a company in Zimbabwe but we failed to take into account that our corporate cultures were very different,” she recalls. “Their IT people could not get on with our customer service people. Within a month most of their staff had resigned, taking with them most of their customers.”
Africa Online ended up paying money in Zimbabwe but getting next to nothing in return. “This,” Ng’weno says with a shy smile, “was a big lesson in thinking about corporate culture issues.”
Many more big lessons surely await the comeback kid in Kenya’s tough and competitive digital world.
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