Maryam Ali Maiyanga is happy to be reunited with her family. It was a tearful reunion in October 2016. She was among the 276 girls that Boko Haram militants abducted from a government school in Chibok in northeastern Borno State, Nigeria, in April 2014, sparking a worldwide plea for their rescue and the social media movement and Twitter campaign #BringBackOurGirls.
Things have significantly changed for Maiyanga since that unfortunate night. As she holds her 10-month-old son, it is apparent that life will never be the same again for her.
“I am happy to be alive and reunited with my family. For the families of my sisters still missing, don’t lose hope, they will also be found,” says Maiyanga via a translator over the phone in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
Her discovery comes after 21 of the abducted girls were freed following negotiations brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the government of Switzerland.
Boko Haram, colloquially translated to “Western education is forbidden”, has claimed over 15,000 people and displaced some two million over the past seven years as part of its bid to establish an Islamic state in the north, according to Reuters. Its eradication was one of the main cornerstones of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s election campaign in 2015.
“This is positive news for our missing girls but the battle is far from over. The world should not rest until this injustice is laid to rest and all our girls have been returned to their families,” says Sekina Abdulai, founder of the Chibok Community in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
The release of the 21 girls although positive, is a bitter reminder of the fate of the other missing girls, some of whom are presumed dead, according to Abdulai.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, disclosed to reporters that the release of the girls was due to the persistence to close this negative chapter in the nation’s history.
“The circumstances behind the release of the girls are still unclear but it is believed that some large sums of money was exchanged as well as the release of some Boko Haram fighters,” says a source in the Office of the National Security Advisor (ONSA).
Fatima Alhassan’s daughter, Aisha, is still missing. When she heard about the release of the 21 girls, she took a bus from her hometown in the northeast to Abuja in the hopes of finding her in the group.
“A friend of mine told me some girls had been released and even though they did not call me, I decided to come and see if my daughter was here. Unfortunately, she was not but I am hopeful that like these girls she will return to me,” says Alhassan.
That reunion might be more imminent than she thinks.
“We are currently in talks with members of the militant group who want to negotiate the release of the girls. They say they are ready to talk if the government is willing to negotiate and it is our intention to do whatever we can to get these girls back,” says Garba Shehu, official spokesperson to President Buhari.
According to Shehu, 83 more girls are expected to be released in the coming months if negotiations with the militants remain positive.
For now, the government is unwilling to disclose what the militants want in exchange although sources close to the government believe there is a financial incentive on the table.
The focus now is the rehabilitation of the released girls. That task falls on the shoulders of Eleanor Nwadinobi, the women and girls’ manager of the Nigeria Stability and Recognition Programme.
“These girls have suffered a terrible ordeal and our rehabilitation efforts need to take a focused individual treatment approach. We have to provide trauma-counseling sessions, health-screening tests as well as ensuring that these girls have the best tools to successfully reintegrate back into society,” says Nwadinobi.
A source close to the current negotiations of the 83 girls disclosed on condition of anonymity that “given the current plight of the Nigerian economy, it is in the government’s interest to at least deliver on President Buhari’s bold claims of eradicating Boko Haram which his whole campaign was built on. To this effect, they will pay whatever amount and negotiate with the terrorists to get this type of good PR”.
According to Reuters, the 83 girls were with the faction of Boko Haram under the control of figurehead Abubakar Shekau who has split from Boko Haram after disregarding new instructions from Iraq and Syria naming Abu Musab al-Barnawi as its new leader for West Africa.
“This infighting might be the best opportunity for these poor girls who have already lost two years. If Shekau remains defiant, he risks being alienated from the group and therefore he needs more allies. I would imagine negotiations will include returning some of his loyal fighters back to him to help him regain his command,” says Frank Adu, a security consultant working in Abuja.
No matter what the reasons are for this apparent divide, the return of the 21 girls is symbolic of hope and an end to the torment and pain endured by their families. For those still missing, the battle lingers on. For now, hope is the only thing they can hold on to.

NIGERIA-UNREST-ISLAMISTS-CHIBOK

The Chibok 21

Its 6AM and Clive Makumbe just arrived in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. He has traveled 300 kilometers, from his small farm in Masvingo, just to withdraw money. Banks in his town are dry as Zimbabwe suffers cash shortages. When we bump into each other, this is the sixth bank he has tried to get money from.
“I am preparing for the planting season because that’s how we survive. I ordered farming supplies but I haven’t been able to make payment for over a week because there is no money, that’s why I decided to take a bus and come here,” says Makumbe.
Once again, he is out of luck. This bank has money, but he can only withdraw $100 per day. He needs $2,200 to pay a supplier.
His only hope is mobile money.
“I am going to ask friends to lend me whatever they have, so that I can give my supplier at least half of the money I owe, so I can begin working. I know if they send it via EcoCash, I will be able to get it because EcoCash always has cash, unlike the banks.”
Like most mobile money services in Africa, EcoCash helps the unbanked save and move money through their phones.  According to Makumbe, in Zimbabwe, it’s better than a bank.
“Banks are unreliable. It’s so bad that we can’t send money out of the country even via internet banking. You have to do long applications to even be able to do that. Most of our suppliers are out of the country and paying them is a nightmare and some of them don’t want to do business with us anymore.”
With EcoCash, Zimbabweans can withdraw money from any MasterCard ATM in the world, they can make payments to one another through the mobile service and they often have cash available for withdrawal. Now they can also save some money on their phones.
“Zimbabwe has a poor savings culture. People don’t trust banks. A decade of hyperinflation left people’s savings in bank accounts wiped off to almost zero and now with bond notes coming, the same will happen.”
With EcoCash’s mobile wallet, which already has more than 1.5 million customers earning interest on all amounts starting from as small as $1, Makumbe says he and his friends always know they have money that they have access to when needed.
“We have a club of six where we each contribute $50 a month. We can track all transactions through our phones and when we need the money, at least there is a guarantee that you can get all of it without limits. We plan to buy groceries and share them at the end of the year,” says Makumbe.
“Group savings culture for specific purposes or asset investment is a common phenomenon in Zimbabwe, but the target segment is largely unrecognized and underappreciated. EcoCash Savings Club is intended to reward this diligent savings behavior, as well as become an enabler for access to other services, such as mobile credit. It also offers an opportunity to extend EcoCash mobile money agency businesses to groups of people that are creditworthy, but have been long marginalized,” says Natalie Jabangwe-Morris, Chief Executive of EcoCash.
Mobile money services thrive in most parts of the continent.
According to Sebastian Wolf, a Uganda-based economist for the International Growth Centre, the increase in mobile money transactions has increased the rate at which money is used as well as the money multiplier.
“This has made inflation in East Africa more difficult to predict and would argue for choosing inflation targeting over reserve-money targeting in East Africa. In terms of inflation, mobile money seems to bring gain without pain,” he says.
By making small commissions on millions and millions of transactions, mobile money is big business in Africa. Data also shows big opportunities for boosting financial inclusion among women and poor people, according to the Global Findex.
For MTN, a South African mobile service provider, the product’s revenue increased by 40.8% and performed well in Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda and Benin. Although successful in most parts of the continent, mobile money has failed in South Africa. MTN has pulled the plug on its local mobile money business. The problem is three quarters of South Africans have bank accounts. Vodacom also scrapped its M-Pesa service in South Africa after a disappointing take-up among users.
“Vodacom’s decision is based on the fact that the business sustainability of M-Pesa is predicated on achieving a critical mass of users. Based on our revised projections and high levels of financial inclusion in South Africa, there is little prospect of the M-Pesa product achieving this in its current format in the mid-term,” says Shameel Joosub, Vodacom CEO in a statement.
It was a smart decision.
Earlier this year, Vodacom only had 76,000 active users in South Africa compared to 9.7 million mobile money users across Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho at the end of 2015. Revenue from M-Pesa in the financial year 2015/16 grew by 19% to R1.63 billion ($114 million), while Vodacom’s group revenue climbed 7.5%.
“We remain of the opinion that opportunities exist in the financial services environment and we will continue to explore these,” says Joosub.
And they are.
In other parts of the continent, Vodacom is trying to squeeze more revenue out of the financial service sector by encouraging users to sign up for M-Pawa, a mobile banking service. Already, it says, 15% of its money base is signed for M-Pawa. In Bangladesh, the fastest-growing financial services company is a mobile money provider called bKash. Less than four years after launching, it processes about two million transactions per day, with a total value of nearly $1 billion each month.
“By 2030, two billion people who don’t have a bank account today will be storing money and making payment with their phones. And by then, mobile money providers will be offering the full range of financial services, from interest-bearing savings accounts to credit to insurance,” says Bill and Melinda Gates in their annual letter.
With mobile money, people like Makumbe may not need to go back into town ever again.

Banking At Your  Fingertips

On a bright summer morning in the leafy Johannesburg suburbs, investigators from the Hawks – South Africa’s FBI – knocked on the door with a summons for the country’s Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. He wasn’t there and his family rang him to say there was a brigadier on the doorstep. This just two weeks before the crucial medium-term budget statement. A delicate budget that the ratings agencies will scrutinize as they ponder whether to downgrade South Africa’s economy to the dreaded junk status; a move that could mean higher interest rates, inflations, and more economic misery for an economy that’s already been 12 rounds with Mike Tyson in his prime.
“Not having found me at home, they proceed to go to the Treasury and I am not sure what happened there. Given the fiscal austerity, they might not have been given a cup of tea,” says Gordhan wryly.
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“A date has been set to collect my fingerprints, they have been in the system for a long time, I suppose they need to freshen it up in some way. But this is a moment when South Africans should really ask themselves who are the Hawks, or these few people in the Hawks, really serving, where do they get their political instructions from and for what purpose? All we are trying to do within the Treasury is represent South Africa, make sure we manage its finances properly, present the best foot forward we can on behalf of the country and do that which is right whether it is in respect of university fees or more housing to be built or more money to be made available for the right kind of procurement purposes or anything that a treasury does in a normal country. It looks like we are in for a bit of excitement going forward.”
This was the avuncular Gordhan at his dry best at a Gauteng Province event, in Johannesburg, a few hours after the summons landed. The former Communist Party member is used to blows in a lifetime in politics. He became active in politics in the late 1960s and spent four years in the political underground operating around his birthplace of Durban, on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
Gordhan was an unlikely revolutionary; he trained as a pharmacist, but lost his only job in the trade through his political activities. He spent the rest of the struggle in politics and was detained by police a number of times.
“I have known him through the liberation struggle for many years and I have never heard anything critical of him in all that time,” says Denis Goldberg, one of the men who faced the death penalty with Nelson Mandela in 1964.
Between 1999 and 2009, Gordhan was the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service in the healthy years when the government used to take out advertisements to trumpet how the increasingly efficient system was gathering ever more revenue. It is from this abundant time that the fraud charge emanates.
On November 2, Gordhan will be charged, along with former colleague Oupa Magashula, with the misuse of public funds, said to be around R1 million ($71,000), in granting his former deputy, Ivan Pillay, early retirement, in August 2010. Lawyers say the case is wafer thin, but the very fact that a finance minister will stand in the dock will be enough to cause disquiet among foreign investors watching from afar.
The markets plunged on the day. The rand fell more than 3% within minutes of the announcement by the NPA.
Shaun Abrahams, the head of the NPA, has given Gordhan, Pillay and Magashula an opportunity to make representations to review the decision to prosecute or not. Magashula and Pillay have done so.
“I am currently considering the aforementioned representations… I have learned, through media reports, that [Gordhan] does not intend seeking me to review the aforementioned decision, I nevertheless invite [him]to make representations… by no later than 17h00 on 18 October 2016,” says Abrahams in a letter to Gordhan’s lawyers.
Gordhan refused. He says he has no confidence in the NPA’s willingness to give him a fair hearing.
“We have seen the letter by Freedom Under Law and the Helen Suzman Foundation dated 14 October 2016 in which we were copied. We invite you to withdraw the charges against our client in the light of the grounds set out therein. Our client does not intend to make representations to you for the considerations previously articulated,” his lawyer, Tebogo Malatji, of Gildenhuys Malatji Inc, said in a letter to Abrahams.
Political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi believes November 2 is merely the beginning.
“I think there will be additional charges. I think this case is far from over,” he says.
Matshiqi believes the rule of law is important and scoffs at the picture portrayed in the press of this being a case of good and evil; fiscal discipline versus the removal of a minister to ease access to  state funds.
“I think the only thing we can quibble about is who, of the two, is the less evil. As far as I am concerned these are two wolves in sheep’s clothing. The only difference is one has better quality sheepskin.”
CEOs took out full page advertisements in newspapers in support of Gordhan; everyone from the Chamber of Mines, to Gauteng Premier David Makhura, to the short-term insurance industry, made statements backing the man.
Marches are also planned and hopes fanned that one of Africa’s biggest economies can paper over the cracks in time to avoid the dreaded downgrade at the end of the year. The reality is the damage has already been done.

Protect Yourselves At All Times And  Come Out Fighting

Nandi Mngoma recently wed her “best friend” and South African celebrity-musician Zakes Bantwini (Zakhele Madida). This followed speculation about her pregnancy and a classic reveal when, dressed in a figure-hugging white dress, she showed off her baby bump on the ramp at the opening of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Johannesburg. The songstress and presenter also wowed United States’ fashion critics at the 2016 BET Awards in a monochrome mermaid dress from her own fashion line, Colour. E! News even wrote: “Work that dress.”
Mngoma, who also has a new song, Fly Away, with DJ Kent, reveals more to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA:
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1As an entrepreneur, why fashion?
Mainly because I feel like even from ancient African times, we as a continent have always been creating and inspiring the rest of the world and I want to continue this and share my creativity. It’s a challenging industry but one that I feel we as Africans need to own and be more business-orientated with. As a business, it’s not one in which huge amounts of money can be made but one with which you can potentially make a significant impact, which is why I started Colour.
2What’s your most treasured piece of clothing and why? My mother gave me a Zulu beaded necklace which means the world to me. I travel with it and it’s always received with interest.
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3Who are your favorite designers, and why? Carolina Herrera – she’s in her 70s and still believes in feeling good as a woman and making other woman feel beautiful. I’m inspired by her and how she embraces the aging processes and how she makes females feel beautiful, no matter their age or size.
Victoria Beckham – as she is also a media personality. I admire her transition from Spice Girl to respected designer. I have studied her and have been impressed with how willing she has been to listen and learn and be a student and that’s exactly what I have done.
Chanel – in terms of being daring and taking risks. Coco Chanel was very daring – she took a tweed jacket which was traditionally for men and made it something women could wear.
And lastly, the late Oscar de la Renta – simply because his designs were just beautiful!
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4If you were to design an outfit for one person in the world, who would that be?
Rihanna – I would love to put her in a jump suit that we have designed, possibly for one of her music videos. I think that it would look great on her!
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5Your proudest achievement so far…? Just being able to inspire people through what I do, expecting a baby, being a wife and family person and still continuing with my career. Also being at a point where I can embrace who I am. I believe that you can be career-orientated and a great mother. I watched my own mother do this and I want to do the same.
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6You are in entertainment; what qualities have you had to adapt to be a fashion entrepreneur?
The entertainment industry prepares you for a lot and there are many qualities and skills which I have used in my fashion career. I have found the fashion industry to be much more detailed and organized compared to the entertainment industry.
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7Success is…?
Knowing God.

Nandi-etch

‘Would Love To Put Rihanna In  A Jump Suit’

One of the oldest members of Vakhegula-Vakhegula, a soccer club in South Africa’s Limpopo province, is 85-year-old Gavaza Mathebula. This football club is like no other. Also known as ‘soccer grannies’, the club consists of 13 teams, all of whose players are elderly women.
To celebrate women’s month in South Africa, the United Nations (UN) even organized a friendly soccer match between themselves – an all-female soccer team – and Vakhegula-Vakhegula (meaning ‘grannies’ in Tsonga) on August 12. The grannies lost, but overall, they had won hearts even before they started.
Speaking before the kick-off, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, said sport is usually associated with younger people but projects like Vakhegula-Vakhegula ensure everyone is involved, no matter their age.
On the pitch was 68-year-old Annah Kgofolo, a grandmother of nine, who has been leading  one of the club’s 13 teams since its inception in September 2012. She says playing soccer has immensely helped her and her teammates.
“When we go to the clinic for check-ups now, we find that we are fine, and able to live healthy and do household chores,” she says. They sometimes even play against opponents as young as their grandchildren but are often undermined.
“We have won about three matches so far,” says Kgofolo.
At the end of the match with the UN, the grannies lost 1-0, but the UN signed off with high praise for them, saying they see the ageing population as contributors to the development, and whose capabilities can add value to the society and the country’s policies and programs.
Vakhegula-Vakhegula was started in Limpopo by social worker Rebecca ‘Beka’ Ntsanwisi in 2003, and since then, other villages around the country have encouraged their senior citizens to take up soccer to stay fit.
“Our hope is to play against African countries and to at least be ranked in the top numbers. So far we have played with Zimbabwe,” says Ntsanwisi.
Even a documentary, Alive and Kicking: Soccer Grannies of South Africa, has been made on the soccer grannies, and it has received international attention, scooping several awards. According to the film’s makers, over 40 informal teams have been created across the country.
Representatives from the UN say the growing number of women and grannies playing soccer in various communities testifies the advancement of gender equality in the country as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.
This is especially pertinent as women often stop playing sports to conform to tradition and stereotypes.
Before launching Vakhegula-Vakhegula, Ntsanwisi, a 48-year-old mother of two, had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Her community work and frequent trips to the hospitals made her realize there were “a lot of sick elderly women” who needed help.
She would ask them where they experienced pain. The grannies would point to sore areas on their bodies and that made her realize they needed exercise to combat chronic illness.
Ntsanwisi’s doctors would also goad her to exercise to keep fit and not just depend on pills. This led to her inviting the older women in her community to be part of a soccer club so they could exercise together.
Soccer was the perfect choice for Ntsanwisi because in other sports like netball, players are required to jump.
“Jumping wouldn’t really help them, but soccer is a kicking and running sport. They run which helps the whole body,” she says.
When they are not dribbling or shooting goals, the grannies are making a living selling fruit and vegetables on the streets, or are domestic workers and pensioners.
Their soccer routine involves training twice a week, from 4.30AM until 6AM, after which they head home to commence their chores or get ready for work.
In an area where teenage pregnancy, poverty and unemployment is rife, Ntsanwisi says it is the norm for grannies to look after their grandchildren, but the soccer grannies simply “refuse to babysit”, which then discourages teenage pregnancy.
Vakhegula-Vakhegula is a great example of promoting healthy living among elderly women but it goes beyond the soccer field.
The club is also involved in charity work in their communities aiding poverty-stricken families and granting bursaries to disadvantaged students.
Twice a year, several teams in the club compete in the Top Eight league, also formed by Ntsanwisi in the hope of upholding club morale. In 2014, five grannies from the club joined the festivities of the Soccer World Cup in Brazil.
“The soccer-playing grannies are professional and very busy. We are like Banyana Banyana,” says Ntsanwisi, who is also a radio presenter on a local radio station, Munghana Lonene FM.
Just before entering the pitch, the grannies encourage each other with their vibrant singing. In their native Tsonga, they chant ‘when we get along, we make miracles’. Grandmothers kicking around on a football pitch. To the onlookers, that’s miracle enough.

Granny-team-011

Grannies  Having A Ball

It was Ernest Hemingway who lured Dan Olofsson to Africa. “I read all his books,” says the Swedish technology entrepreneur who heads the consultancy Sigma, and they lodged in his imagination.
So when he and his wife, Christin, decided in the early 2000s to build a winter home someplace warmer than their native Scandinavia, they considered the Caribbean but eventually set their sights farther south. “There’s fantastic wildlife and nature in South Africa,” the 65-year-old Olofsson says. “You don’t have that in a lot of places.”
Their plans grew to include a guest lodge at what is now the well-regarded Thanda Safari Private Game Reserve, which opened in 2004. (“Thanda” is Zulu for “love”.) Soon after, the Olofssons set out to acquire a private-island counterpart to their safari lodge and settled on one in the Shungi Mbili Island Marine Reserve in southern Tanzania. After years of negotiation and sustainability-minded construction it was rechristened Thanda Island and welcomed its first paying guests in August. The property, which has five bedrooms and rents in its entirety for $10,000 a night (for up to 10 people), is roughly 20 acres ringed by coral reefs in protected waters that teem with sea life, including whale sharks, dolphins and five species of turtles. The closest inhabited land is Mafia Island, home to more spectacular marine life, trustworthy dive centers and traditional villages. Thanda Island’s hospitality director, Antigone Meda, likens it to Zanzibar 30 years ago – and while Zanzibar now has 200-room hotels, Mafia has about 200 hotel rooms. (Thanda guests who don’t helicopter in from Dar es Salaam fly to Mafia, where Thanda staff greet them and ferry them over in a sleek mahogany boat that would do James Bond proud.)
The Olofssons envisioned the island as a private paradise where they could escape with their three children and eight grandchildren. But the Tanzanian government wouldn’t let them buy it unless it would contribute to tourism in the country and protect marine wildlife. The couple complied but remained committed to building a private family home. And here they were inspired by another 20th century American icon.
“We were at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port around the Fourth of July three or four years ago,” Olofsson recalls. “Looking around, we liked the New England style. Our South African property is more Zulu style. Here we wanted something different, and we decided on New England.” The resulting house on Thanda, with its white wainscoting, peaked rooflines and pastel palette, mixes the American and the Scandinavian, with a few African flourishes like bird’s-nest lamps in the living room and colorful fabric on the chairs in the library.
<div id="attachment_32044" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32044" class="wp-image-32044 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FO091316_019.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="768" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FO091316_019.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FO091316_019-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FO091316_019-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FO091316_019-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FO091316_019-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />Water world: The exotic rim-flow pool on Thanda Island was designed by owner Dan Olofsson, who has a degree in engineering</div>
The design is intentionally hard to classify.
Olofsson invested millions – “Less than 10,” he clarifies, though he is unsure of the exact amount – to build something that exists in very few places in the world. That’s in addition to the island itself, with its perfect white sand and clear turquoise waters just feet away from the house.
The Olofssons were very hands-on with the villa and two freestanding beach bandas (open-air bungalows, which allow the island to accommodate groups of up to 28 people), with Christin designing the interiors and Dan, a civil engineer by training, collaborating with the architects.
He was also the visionary behind the villa’s most striking feature, a glass rim-flow swimming pool that gleams with blue mosaic tiles and rises up from the deck to form a luminous cube. “This pool was quite exciting to design,” he says. “I felt like I was just out of university, even though that was 40 years ago.”
The food is far better than might be expected in such a remote location. Much of it is caught nearby. Staff will harvest some of the abundant oysters on demand and serve them with champagne.
While importing luxury foods and wine comes with a carbon footprint, the island was designed to be self-sufficient. It’s constructed with sustainable materials, and there’s a field of solar panels and a desalinization plant. The house and all its infrastructure were also built in such a way that would allow them to be taken apart and leave no trace on the island.
That eco-consciousness is important to Olofsson, who has invested heavily in conservation in the marine reserve. Thanda is working with the Tanzania Marine Parks department and a leading NGO, Sea Sense, on research projects involving sea turtles, whale sharks and coral reefs. It’s a continuation of the commitment Olofsson, the biggest Swedish philanthropist in Africa (and plenty generous at home), made when he established the Thanda Foundation in South Africa in 2005. Among other achievements, its Star for Life arm has put 110,000 children through HIV-prevention education programs.
“We are at a point in our lives where we’re able to give back to society, and I think when you’re there, you have to do it,” he says.
While Thanda has made a point of hiring most of its staff from Mafia Island and is working to improve education there, marine conservation is the main focus. Not that guests would suspect that much of the wildlife is on the endangered species list. There are frequent turtle and dolphin sightings on the boat ride from Mafia, and it’s not uncommon for guests to find themselves swimming among half a dozen whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea.
That, it turns out, is Thanda Island’s greatest luxury: the access to such an ecosystem – and a solicitous staff to make it easier to commune with it. (They’ll even drag a copper bathtub onto the beach for a sunset soak.)
“Being a big family on an island to yourself,” Olofsson says, “there is a special feeling to that.”
And if it’s a rainy day, there’s still plenty to enjoy – Thanda Island is home to what was the largest Hemingway collection in Sweden, now sitting on shelves spanning 20 feet in a clean, well-lighted place.

FO091316_018

Isle Of You

Rakesh Wahi, founder of the Johannesburg-based ABN Group including CNBC Africa, FORBES AFRICA and this magazine you hold in your hands, has been a leader in media, IT, telecoms and education. Also based in Dubai as Chairman of CMA Investment Holdings, prior to moving to the UAE, Wahi served in the Indian Armed Forces for about nine years, and was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal by the President of India in1985, for distinguished services to the country in peacetime.
Wahi has built companies in over 22 countries, employing a little over 1,000 people. It’s his vision to set up educational institutions in Africa; the first of which he launched in Ghana in 2013.
Here, Wahi tell us about his debut book, Be A Lion, which will be unveiled at the finale of the 2016 CNBC Africa All Africa Business Leaders Awards in Johannesburg on November 11.
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<h3>A few words on the book&#8230;?</h3>
It’s about people and the impact they have had on me. I think this entire journey I have made is about how people have influenced me. First, on your way up, it’s your parents who are your greatest influencers as that’s where you get your identity from; and then, over a period of your lifetime, it’s the people who come into your life and make an impact, some positively, some otherwise. And that is the greatest experience you can talk about.
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<h3>Why the fascination for the lion?</h3>
Every human being is inspired by animals, be it rhinos, elephants or gorillas. For me, the fascination has always been the lion. It’s something that’s inherent and perhaps speaks about my character in many ways. A lot of the conversations in the book are extrapolated towards the king of the jungle, the human jungle.
<h3>Do you often find that business can draw lessons from the military?</h3>
Absolutely! You will find that a number of army officers have made great business leaders; the reason is that the core of any business is people, and the one thing the military teaches you is to look after these assets. And right from the day I joined the forces to when I left, the only thing ingrained in me was how to motivate people towards a common objective. Military officers know it’s important to look after their people, starting with basic things, such as making sure they got hot food, they wrote home, they went to pray&#8230; These are the softer things of life that business sometimes tends to forget. The army teaches you these core values. And that’s the inherent need in business. If somebody is working for you – even if it’s one person on the job – you have to be there with him.
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<h3>While in the army, you once almost stared death in the face. What was that experience like?</h3>
It was a defining moment in my life. I was about 23. We were on a specialized task force in India’s western front. I was electrocuted and they couldn’t revive me quickly; I was clinically dead. And then my second-in-command saw my fingers move. I came to in 24 hours, and although they asked me to go home to rest, I returned to my troops in 72 hours.
But I realized at that young age that life is not something you take forgranted, therefore, whatever you want in this world, you have to set out to achieve it. At the end of the day, you are either there or not there; if you are not there, and if there are unfulfilled dreams, they will always be unfulfilled. You must always set out to do what comes to your heart.
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<h3>Your advice to entrepreneurs in emerging markets…?</h3>
If there is one lesson you will learn in emerging markets, it’s patience. Always remember to look at business for the long-term, make sure you have ticked all the right boxes, do your homework – don’t take short-cuts. When you go into these difficult regulated industries, people will tell you ‘we can fix this and that’. I have never ever gone to Mr Fix-Its. There is no quick-fix solution for setting up sustainable businesses and the reason for that is there are a lot of variables and if you haven’t set your foundations strong, you open yourself up to retroactive actions that result in many issues including corruption. And people talk a lot about corruption in emerging markets. But the businesses that we have been in, for the last 26 years, we have never once had to pay anybody to do anything for us, and the reason is that we have taken our time setting them up and making sure our foundations are strong.
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– Interviewed by Methil Renuka; Read more about Wahi in the November 2016 issue of FORBES AFRICA.

Rakesh-1

5 Minutes With Rakesh Wahi

More than 22 million people in Africa have diabetes; equivalent to the population of Angola. It’s a startling enough statistic, and South Africa’s First Lady Bongi Ngema-Zuma is championing the fight against this silent killer, through the Bongi Ngema-Zuma Foundation.
It’s a hot Sunday afternoon in Waterkloof Ridge, east of Pretoria in South Africa, when we meet Ngema-Zuma in her mansion. She settles in her lounge singing a church song and wearing a black dress and beaded necklace.
Diabetes has been close to home for Ngema-Zuma; she lost her mother and aunt to the disease. This led her to start a foundation in her mother’s memory; she had battled with diabetes for nearly three decades.
“I come from a family that is highly affected by this disease. When my mother gave birth to my younger sister, she had gestational diabetes. But it went away. And then in 1973, when I was in grade one, she was diagnosed with type two.
“At the time I did not know what diabetes was or to read the correct glucose levels. But I observed how she changed her lifestyle. She had the disease for so many years, and was never on insulin because she was active and [watched] what she ate,” says Ngema-Zuma.
In 1982, her mother’s condition got worse, she went blind in a way, and the disease also led to a sore between her toes; and the doctors had to amputate a toe.
“They had to cut off her foot as well&#8230; we knew she wasn’t going to make it. She said the day they start cutting her body, we should allow her to rest in peace.”
The Bongi Ngema-Zuma Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2010, the same year she took to the spousal office, aims to fight diabetes.
“Before I started the foundation, no one was speaking about diabetes, I had never seen an advert about it which meant there was not much being done about it, so I thought it was the right time,” says Ngema-Zuma.
The foundation encourages people to test early.
“By the time you start seeing symptoms it means that the disease has been in your blood for a long time, now the signs are indicating that your body is deteriorating. And if complications start to show, it might be too late. People should test so that they can prevent it from progressing, and adopt a healthy lifestyle,” she says.
Considering her family history, Ngema-Zuma acknowledges she is not prone to the disease, which is why she is an advocate for it.
Ngema-Zuma is the fourth of five wives married to South African president Jacob Zuma, a role that is not easy.
“As the first lady I had to understand that the public voted for my husband to be president, not me. Thing is, nobody trains you for what people expect from you, and sometimes expectations can be too much. The best is to know who you are, what you want to achieve and just focus.”
She uses her office to empower women and children, and for rural development.
“It is sad that in more than 50 countries, I’m the only first lady who speaks about diabetes.
“I know that while I’m in this office, I have a little amount of influence to say something and make change,” says Ngema-Zuma.
Ngema-Zuma is also a member of the International Diabetes Federation. When not buried under paperwork in her office, she travels overseas, in the United States, to give talks on education and healthcare development.
Her dream is to open a diabetes center of excellence.

IMG_60951

Using Her Good Offices

It’s a rainy afternoon when we arrive at Nkomo Primary School, in Mnqobokazi, a small village within Hluhluwe town in northern KwaZulu-Natal, a province in South Africa.
The school’s 51-year-old principal, Nomusa Zikhali, approaches us with a smile and a gentle handshake as she welcomes us to her office in a school she first started for a handful of students under four hulking trees.
Zikhali was born and bred in this dry corner of Mnqobokazi. Teaching was always her passion.
“When I was young, I used to play school with my friends and I was always the headmaster. I used to love being a teacher or I’d be a social worker because I loved working with people,” she says.
Zikhali had it tough growing up. She ran away from home, as her father wanted to marry her off at the age of 16.
“I left school in standard eight because my father believed I was old enough to get married. He wanted 11 cows, so I was supposed to get married to a man with five wives,” she says.
Her older brother suggested she relocate to big city: Johannesburg.
“He also didn’t like the idea of me being married at a young age, so he wanted me to go and stay with him and his girlfriend, who worked as a domestic worker in Johannesburg,” says Zikhali.
“I was scared and confused; I didn’t think I would survive. I didn’t even have an ID or passport, so I had to hide at the house where my brother’s girlfriend worked. I sometimes felt lonely and intimidated by the huge buildings, big city lights and busy lifestyle.”
Even here, life was not easy but she managed to survive for two years.
Zikhali and her brother’s girlfriend sold street food – fat cakes and polony – in Ellis Park, commuting by train every morning. Her R500 ($37) profit bought her a ticket to return home. It also brought her face-to-face with her future husband. He benevolently offered to pay for the 11 cows her father wanted.
“On my way home I met my future husband on the bus; when I told him about my story, he offered to pay for the cows.”
At 18, she got married but personal tragedy was in store. Tears well up in her eyes as she relates the story of her two-year-old son’s death in 1994.
“He was burning, I went to the clinic and the nurses told me that they only treated emergencies on weekends. I was turned away and at night he got worse, he had a fit and died on a Monday morning before I could return to the clinic. I couldn’t accept his death, I almost went crazy,” she says.
She channelled the pain into completing matric. She couldn’t go to university because she had to take care of her mother-in-law who had had a stroke.
Because of her love for mathematics, she volunteered at a school as a teacher for seven years without pay.
“I decided to register part-time at the Rand Afrikaans University for a teaching course through correspondence,” she says.
She noticed that the nearest school was 20 kilometers by foot, so she wanted to build a school nearer, and approached the education department, which approved her proposal, but didn’t have enough money to fund it.
“I started the school alone in a hard-to-reach area where I was supposed to walk and cross a flooded river with a handmade boat with 35 children every day.”
She had to move to a rondavel [an African-style hut] on the other side of the bank for two months.
This made teaching difficult as nature continued to conspire against her.
The floods worsened, and the number of students in her school shrank from 60 to 25.
Zikhali was forced to look for a better, safer location. The site she finally settled on only had trees but no brick-and-mortar infrastructure, whatsoever. But under those four majestic trees, she set tables, wooden mats and a stove where she cooked meals for the children.
“I decided to make one of the trees my office; whenever you came to the school you would wait for me in my office; and I used the others for grade 1, 2 and 3. I was the only teacher and had to teach the different grades at the same time,” she says.
Zikhali asked the Africa Foundation, an independent non-profit organization, for classrooms; they built two.
Sixteen years later, the school has 20 classrooms, 860 children and 26 teachers. Zikhali also opened a center for orphaned and vulnerable children.
“I decided to do some home visits after school and saw that the situations at their homes were not alright. There are some children who have bad mannerisms; I don’t push them away, because it’s their way of crying out for help, there’s usually a story behind a child’s behavior.”
Khumbulani Ngwane, a 30-year-old plumber and electrician who was taught by Zikhali, recalls how learning under the trees taught him perseverance.
“The situation was difficult, especially on rainy days; sometimes we’d bring planks and used them as chairs and others would sit on dirt. But that whole experience taught us to never give up in life. As much as we were learning from text books, we were also trained on how to handle life problems.”
Ngwane’s parents died when he was young; his mother was shot by robbers and his father passed away following an illness. Zikhali took him as her own.
“She’s an amazing person,” says Ngwane. “She basically raised me and opened so many doors for me and others in the community without expecting anything in return.”
Zikhali plans to retire in 2020 and continue with her community projects.
Hopefully by then, her rain cloud will have a silver lining and her children a roof over their heads.

Nomusa-Zikhali-130

Classes  Under Rain  Clouds And Trees

They say ideas can strike at any moment. For South African Robyn Smith it was a London beauty store that inspired her to start a R41–million ($3-million) online African business.
“I was looking to buy a night cream for myself. I’ve got a background in marketing, so I didn’t want to be duped into buying the best creative agency advertising it; I wanted to buy the best product.”
“It was the first time I started looking at the ingredients’ list to find that the ‘natural night creams’ that I was picking up didn’t have a single botanical name in the listing. Some didn’t even have ingredient lists.”
So Smith founded her own, called Faithful to Nature, a South African online health shop. It sells anything from lipstick and underwear to spices and chocolates; so long as they are natural, organic and ethically sound.
“When you’ve got an infant industry like this it’s frustrating on the one hand because you are dealing with so many teething issues and on the other it’s exciting because there is so much opportunity,” she says.
Few people would have heard about ethical consumerism when Smith started her business. But, eco-friendly alternatives are on the rise.
“When I started in 2007, there was this misnomer that if a product contained aloe vera it was natural and organic. It didn’t matter what it was preserved with. There was a completely wrong idea on what actually constituted a natural organic product.
“When I got back to South African soil, and started looking for natural and organic stuff on the shelf, I realized there was no structure to the industry at all.”
Right up until 2012, Smith felt like she was chasing shadows, she calls them pink fluffy clouds. She was R2.5 million ($184,000) in debt; experts told her to run for the hills. She also faced divorce.
“When we got divorced, I had a 16-month-old baby, I didn’t own a car, I didn’t own a house, I had a business that was millions of rand in debt. My family couldn’t financially back me. My parents actually took a R500,000 ($37,000) mortgage on the house to keep the business going.”
“I didn’t have a choice but to turn the business into a profitable enterprise.”
Now, Smith is reaping the rewards of hundreds of hours spent scrutinizing the ingredient labels on products and ignoring the naysayers.
“I believe in 10 years, it’s going to be, you go and buy me a shaving cream and it will be organic, it’s a no-brainer. Once you start using natural organic products, you can’t go back.”
Smith’s ticket to success has been strict quality control. If new research shows that a product isn’t safe, she has to be brave enough to take it off the shelf, even if it’s a best-seller.
“I always had a very strong ethical compass. Even at school, I was always getting into trouble for being outspoken on the right thing. It didn’t necessarily make me quite popular,” says Smith.
“Ingredient integrity isn’t a static product. As more interest grows, more research is done on it.”
Smith’s warehouse can take 400 orders per day and delivers across the country. So determined is she to keep the company environmentally friendly, she reuses packaging from suppliers for her own customers.
“You can imagine; there is a huge amount of packaging coming into the business. Sometimes we will send out an order in a box that was actually used to bring in stock. So, it isn’t this beautifully branded Faithful to Nature box, but it’s the right thing to do. On the box we will write ‘reused box, please recycle me because I want to be in a bag next time’.”
With stock lining the rafters of her warehouse, and packages going out by the truckload, Smith is going to be a busy bee, the naturalists would be happy to let her buzz.

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Back To Nature: Why Even Lipstick And Shaving Cream Should Be Organic

When Maria Hiwilepo was seven years old, she would walk barefoot six kilometers to school. In those hot days, meandering between bush, trees and mud, she would look up to the sky and see a different world. Airplanes, with their engines roaring high above her, were a rare sight in the bush village of Ohainengena, in northern Nambia, far from technology and the modern world. For Hiwilepo, the sky and the world beyond her small village held inspiration.
“It was a childhood dream. I always wanted to fly. I grew up with a curiosity. How did they work? How did they stay up there? Why up there? Where I grew up, it was very prestigious to be a teacher or a pastor or a nurse. I would see helicopters, I would see things flying and hear their sounds,” says Hiwilepo.
This is the remarkable story that took Hiwilepo out of the Namibian countryside and into the world of fashion and flight. She turned her dream into reality and became an international commercial pilot, flying the planes she saw as a child. That’s not all.
“It was a different world, of what I know the world to be now&#8230; It would be perfect to live in a world where I could fly my own aircraft, land it, go to a shoot, and then fly home again,” she says.
Hiwilepo’s village was so small she could tell who had gone to school by their footprints in the sand.
“It was always just hot. I remember the heat because I remember always been so thirsty walking home from school,” she says.
“I really loved school. I remember refusing to get out of bed to help clean the house, but if my dad woke me to go to school it didn’t matter. Up ‘til today I love to learn.”
When Hiwilepo finished school, she was 15 years old. She had a scholarship waiting, and was on the cusp of reaching her dream. Then they told her she had to be 18 years old to become a pilot. Hiwilepo went off to the University of Namibia to study computer science and economics instead.
It was here that modeling, which she had been doing since she was 10 years old, paid off, when she won the Miss University of Namibia pageant, which gave her a year’s free tuition. Walking down the runway turned into her second dream. From there, she stepped into the international limelight as a finalist in the 2008 Face of Africa.
“African families think modeling is more of a hobby than a career. It’s important to go to school and get the paper that says you can work as this and in the meantime you can model. My parents believed this was a hobby.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32028 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/0021.jpg" alt="" width="712" height="950" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0021.jpg 712w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0021-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0021-600x801.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0021-225x300.jpg 225w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px" />
Around Cape Town, Hiwilepo uses her model name Amira Eli. She is now the up-and-coming fashion model who has walked the catwalks for designers like David Tlale.
“[Tlale’s shows are] always an entrance. The choreography is always so wow. He has that energy.  I remember a show I did with him and the pair of shoes I was to wear went missing. [Tlale] grabbed a pair of size three, and I’m a five, and shoved them on. I was in pain the whole away down to the run way. When I was on the runway, I couldn’t feel the pain, I forgot all about it.”
It’s an even tougher life flying planes from Windhoek to Frankfurt, but Hiwilepo does it in style, with a pair of the trendiest aviators on hand. She is also one of the rare few female pilots that can fly an Airbus A330 and a helicopter.
“I’ve done flights, where the entire cabin crew is girls. I’ve also done flights and I’m the only girl. Back then it was worse, but it is a male-dominated industry. The stereotype is: people prefer older pilots over younger pilots; men over females; and white skin over black. It’s there, it will always be there. But if you choose to let the stereotype consume you, then you are a victim. I wasn’t raised like that.”
And how does Hiwilepo juggle her two very different lives?
In between shifts, Hiwilepo flies down to the boardwalks of Cape Town to pursue her budding model career. It is the reason why FORBES WOMAN AFRICA is able to meet up with her off the runway and in a coffee shop at Greenpoint, in Cape Town. She dressed up for the occasion – her helicopter jumper suit was in a handbag next to her, just in case, she says.
“In my mind I have already landed before I have even taken off. I’m at my best when I am prepared. Am I well rested? Am I fit physically? That’s me preparing for my flight. With modeling, the preparation is different. I have to look my best, I have to take care of my life and I have to look my best.”
Of all the places, Hiwilepo rates Cape Town as the most beautiful. She may not get as much time here as she likes; by the next day, Hiwilepo was piloting an Airbus to Frankfurt; living her dreams over the skies and on the catwalks of Africa.

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Landing An Airbus A330  And The Best  Modeling  Assignments  In Africa

When I ask petite Memory Banda whether she is married, her answer is an emphatic “No!”
It’s a loaded question for Banda who has spent the past few years of her young life campaigning against child marriage in Malawi. She has come to the Social Good Summit in New York in September to talk about Girls Empowerment Network Malawi (Genet) and Let Girls Lead, the organizations she works tirelessly for to stop child marriage in Malawi and beyond.
But she doesn’t have long to talk to me: She’s about to meet First Lady Michelle Obama, which she’s really excited about.
“Of course I have intentions to get married one day,” a vivacious Banda, who is almost 20, tells me. “But only when I’m done with school.” She’s keen to talk too about the career in communications – or possibly law – that she’s hoping to pursue but her current mission is more pressing: to stop child marriage in Malawi, a country with one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world.
Although the situation has improved there, with the banning of the practice in February last year, it is still commonplace for Malawian girls to marry very young. The legal marrying age is now 18, but with their parents’ consent, they can still marry as young as 15. Banda’s own sister was married at 11 to a man in his 30s and she now has several children. Some of her cousins too are in a similar predicament. And despite the legislation, child marriage continues – if under the radar.
“When I saw my peers, I was not impressed with the life they were living,” says Banda. She knew from the outset that she wanted a different path for herself and for other girls in her country and on the continent.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32025 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Memory-with-member-of-parliament-2015webready-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Memory-with-member-of-parliament-2015webready.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Memory-with-member-of-parliament-2015webready-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Memory-with-member-of-parliament-2015webready-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Memory-with-member-of-parliament-2015webready-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Central to child marriage is the brutal traditional practice of kusasa fumbi, which takes place in southern Malawi. This involves the sexual initiation of young girls at a special initiation camp in their village by an older man known as a “hyena”. The man has sex with them and teaches them how to pleasure their future husbands.
“Of course, it’s not his or her first time. And little is known about him. He could be infected with HIV,” says Banda. This practice robs the young girls of their childhood. When they come out, they soon get pregnant or married,” she says.
It’s no surprise that Malawi has one of the highest rates of maternal deaths in the world. What’s more, 10% of the population is HIV-positive.
But thanks to the efforts of Banda and the advocacy organizations behind her, the new legislation was passed. Other steps have also been taken to spread the message and change attitudes. Much work has been done with rural chiefs to put a stop to the kusasa fumbi tradition as well as child marriage.
Several years ago, over 200 girls who were trained in the Chiradzulu District of southern Malawi to persuade 60 village chiefs to make and enforce by-laws to protect girls from early marriage and sexual initiation. Now men who marry girls under the age of 21 must pay penalties to the chiefs in the form of goats or their land. Parents who allow or promote marriage of their under-age daughters are also penalized.
So far the efforts of Banda and her colleagues have largely paid off.
“Two or three years ago it was really bad. But there has been a lot of change in different communities,” she says.
Now, initiation camps have become a “positive” educational experience, where no “sexual cleansing” takes place and where girls learn about their bodies.
It’s no surprise that economic drivers are often behind the choice of young girls – or their parents – for early marriage.
“When you encourage girls to stand on their own they will ask you, ‘but where will I get the money?’ says Banda. “But I grew up with nothing. Still, I was able to move out,” she says. “I challenge that thinking and I encourage them to think not just of now but of the future.”

IMG_2019

Malawi’s Other Banda

<h2>‘The Crisis Could Be With Us For The Unforeseeable Future’</h2>
The tear-inducing image of a young boy washed up on a beach in Turkey last year dominated headlines for weeks. His small, lifeless body had finally presented the true picture of the greatest crisis of our times. His death became a metaphor of the desolation and helplessness faced by the millions forcibly displaced.
The boy was later reported to have been on a boat with his family from his hometown Kobani in northern Syria, a country torn apart by war for years. He was one of 11,000 children reported as displaced every day, the victims of forced migration.
His father would later explain to reporters that their boat suddenly capsized as they were making a final and desperate attempt to escape the conflict-ridden state by sea.
This illustration is but one of many that has continued to grab headlines over the years. The refugee crisis is real and the biggest casualties are children.
Antonio Guterres, the former United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), highlights in the UNHCR Global Trends 2014 report: “We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before.”
Children form an overwhelming majority, at least about half, of the world’s total refugee population upwards of 60 million.
Chaos has long descended on the world but the lack of political will by global leaders is robbing children of their childhood, families and identity.
On a recent visit to Johannesburg, British politician, activist and author, Professor Peter Hain, the Lord Hain of Neath, said the refugee crisis is a calamity for women and children.
“This global phenomenon capitalizes on the shortcomings of states, adequate political standards need to be established in order to create change,” he told FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
While governments are not as willing to initiate processes to mitigate the rising numbers of refugees, particularly children, Amnesty International earlier this year conducted the Refugees Welcome Index; the global survey revealed that government refugee policies and citizens are on opposite ends, with the important call to integrate the refugees into economies.
The fight continues for children, though. They are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation in unfamiliar, often crowded conditions they have no control over.
Mosa Moremi, national child rights and advocacy advisor of SOS Children’s Villages South Africa, tells us processes to integrate children into society are very difficult.
“In my experience, sometimes children are brought into the country by parents who have migrated and then they are later abandoned. They are left with nothing.”
She highlights that giving these abandoned or unaccompanied children adequate care becomes challenging and the system is riddled with layers of red tape.
Professor Hain echoes this sentiment, stating that the crisis which manifests in “a seemingly impotent international system led by the United Nations could be with us for the unforeseeable future”.
It’s no comforting thought that one estimate suggests that 80% of the world’s refugees are in developing countries and yet less than 9% are hosted by six of the world’s richest nations. And, the rise of right-wing populism ideas, as Professor Hain stresses.
This means that many will continue to face racism, xenophobia and discrimination, imposing an unprecedented new burden on children who often have little understanding of the social, political and economic discourse of a society.
In the pages that follow, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA speaks to three young migrants in South Africa, who now live in a limbo, hurt and homeless.
<h2>Sarah (16) and Kudzai (15) Mathe</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32018 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
One night in 2009 when Sarah and Kudzai Mathe, nine and eight respectively, were asleep after another long day selling tomatoes, onions and fruit, their stepfather returned home drunk as he did everyday but this time, he attempted to rape them.
Sarah was able to break free from his grip. She grabbed all her courage, and the money she had saved on the day with Kudzai, and together, they ran, not knowing where they were headed.
As they ran, Kudzai looked back. In the blackness of the night, she could see the house their mother raised them in fade into the distance, never to see it again. The girls had spent their early years with their parents in a small town in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“Our parents got divorced when we were still young. Our stepfather didn’t even hide that he didn’t love us,” they say.
Shortly after their mother’s new union, they stopped attending school.
“He told us he didn’t have money to pay for school fees and that’s when we started selling fruit and vegetables on the street.”
Whilst other children walked to school or waited for the bus in the mornings, Sarah and Kudzai would set up their stall.
“The other kids would laugh at us because we wore rags and sometimes had no shoes.”
Things got worse when their mother fell ill and passed away in 2009.
“There was no longer place for us in that house. Our stepfather just brought in different wives every night and spent most of the money we would make.”
The day after they ran away from home, as they wandered the streets, Kudzai suggested they go to South Africa.
“I heard about it and thought we could get on the bus and just go.”
They arrived at a bus station and spoke with one of the drivers who directed them to the bus that would take them to South Africa.
“When we got onto the bus, the driver asked us how much we had and I pulled out all of our savings and he grabbed it and said we should find seats,” Sarah says.
“We were so hungry and the lady we sat next to on the bus gave us an apple each. We ate them like we’d never eaten before.
“After a few hours, the bus made a stop at Beitbridge; the driver told us to get off and that he would be back for us.”
They waited for the bus driver for two weeks. He didn’t come back for them. And they were only nine and eight years old.
When it dawned on them that the bus driver was not going to be back for them, they found work handing out flyers to travelers passing by the border bridge. They were paid R30 ($2) each a week and saved that up to pay malaicha, which Sarah explains means carriers. The malaicha would help them get to South Africa.
“We paid the R200 ($15) we’d saved and we were on our way.”
With Sarah and Kudzai were five other men.
“As we walked through the forest and then the Limpopo river, what scared us the most was that any one of the men could rape us, we were the only girls and the night our father almost raped us was fresh in our memory,” recalls Sarah.
Kudzai does not say much apart from a nod or a sigh throughout the interview. But she says now: “We really thought South Africa was so far.”
After over 12 hours of walking, they found themselves in Messina, the northernmost town of Limpopo.
“We looked for work but no one would hire us.”
In time, they found an old woman who paid them R50 ($3.6) a month to clean and do the laundry. “It wasn’t that hard for us because we were used to working.”
They used the money to pay for a lorry ride to Johannesburg in September 2009. They were two of the lucky ones. When they got to Johannesburg, they were directed to the Methodist church in Braamfontein. They have since been moved and “life is good”.
“We are back in school and I love maths but I’m not that good at it,” Kudzai giggles.
“We also have each other and that’s what matters,” says Sarah, her smile brightening up a face hardened by experience.
<h2>Maqhawe Garikayi (17)</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32019 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
When Maqhawe Garikayi was arrested by border security for attempting to illegally cross over into South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2012, he was not discouraged. Shortly after he was released, he tried again, and succeeded. He was 13.
Four years on, Garikayi barely looks up as he tells his story.
“I never knew my birth mother and I don’t know if I have any siblings. All I had was a stepmother who saw me as her worker, not her child. She just didn’t love me.”
Garikayi couldn’t get along with his her. At the age of 13, he was questioning his existence and toying with the idea of running away from home. Thoughts of where he would run away to and how he would survive were secondary as survival instincts compelled him to get away from what he describes “a toxic environment”.
As a young boy who was not attending school and knew no stability, he was left with little choice.
“I left home with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. I had no money. I had no documents. I heard about South Africa and how it was the land of milk and honey so that was where I was going to go.”
The second time he tried to cross the border illegally, he was able to sneak past security.
“After [hitch-hiking], I walked through a forest and then through the forceful waves of the Limpopo river. I just followed other groups of people I assumed were also on their way to South Africa.”
Trouble awaited young boys like Garikayi in Messina, where he was robbed of his clothes, and beaten. He had to cover his nudity with a discarded blue overall he found.
“I cried, I thought I was going to die.”
Garikayi mustered strength and made his way to a filling station in Messina. He spent the night there and the following morning, wandered into a suburb and knocked on doors for food and some clothes. Eventually, he was handed a pair of blue shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. After a few days, he was able to make his way to Johannesburg, in a pick-up truck.
Garikayi remembers spending almost eight months on the streets, surviving on whatever he could find in trash bins.
“It was funny the way I always found KFC in the bins, a lot of people wasted that,” he says with a hint of a smile.
Garikayi has since been taken in by an organization that is currently sending him to school, clothing him, feeding him and ensuring he has a warm bed to sleep in every night.
His dreams of being an accountant and having a family of his own have a fighting chance but he sobs and whispers: “My greatest wish is for a mother, I don’t know why God gave me this life.”
&nbsp;
<h2>Wasithanda Hadziperidzega (21)</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32020 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
On April 28, 2014, Wasithanda Hadziperidzega decided to leave home in pursuit of a better life, a life he thought he would find in South Africa.
But sadly, the journey and destination were a far cry from his dreams.
Originally from Ghana, Hadziperidzega moved to Zimbabwe to live with his mother, a single parent raising four young children, a common scenario in the African narrative.
His mother worked in the public sector and could not afford a decent living.
Many, if not all public service employees, were left for weeks and even months at a time without income, left to live at the mercy of a government mired in turmoil.
“My mother would never tell us that she was struggling financially but I could see; I can see things.”
One day, at the age of 18, Hadziperidzega left home as he did every day for soccer practice. After the game, he listened to his peers talk about how tough life was in Zimbabwe.
He made up his mind.
“… The grounds [were] the only place we could talk about the country’s situation and Mugabe. It was safe. After we talked, I decided then that I was going to leave. All I needed was $53 for a passport and $30 for the bus,” says Hadziperidzega.
He never returned home.
Hadziperidzega remembers it took him no longer than five minutes to decide his new fate. The task was now to make the money.
He had heard about how he could collect a small fortune in Mashonaland West, another province in Zimbabwe. The opportunity presented itself in the form of an illegal gold mining job. The word out on the street was that it was lucrative. After months of struggling to infiltrate a mine called Toppers, he was finally in.
“All I needed was a hammer, a short chisel and that torch you put around your head; it’s dark in those mines, there’s no sun,” he laughs, but there’s pain in his eyes.
After months of hard and treacherous work in the depths of Zimbabwe’s gold pits, he was able to save up $120.
He applied for his passport and used the rest to buy a bus ticket to South Africa.
“I arrived in South Africa at around 11PM at Park Station. Have you ever been to Park Station?” he asks. “There is a huge waiting area and I just sat there and pretended to be waiting for someone.”
People came and went fetching their relatives who had come through from different parts of the continent but no one came for Hadziperidzega. And it was the dead of night.
He hides his sorrow with a nervous chuckle, saying: “I knew no one was coming for me but I was just being silly and hoped someone would fetch me but I knew no one, I didn’t even understand where I was, all I knew was that I was in South Africa.”
For days, Hadziperidzega wandered the streets of Johannesburg looking for some validation that he had found in South Africa the social and economic salvation he couldn’t find in his home country, anything to convince him that he had made the right decision.
All he would encounter were other young foreigners collecting rubbish, “looking horrible”.
Nothing was easy to come by, not even scraps of food.
“I would eat anything just to make my tummy happy but not my tongue,” he shrugs.
Over the past two years, he has moved jobs trying to earn a decent living.
He says he has survived police harassment and several death threats because of his nationality.
But Hadziperidzega has not stopped dreaming.
His mind in still in the football fields of Zimbabwe; and he hopes to one day become a soccer star.
“I definitely don’t want to further my education, my whole family is educated and look at them, they are all poor and they will die poor. When you have money everything is easy and that’s all I want,” he says in conclusion.

refugee-child-015

A Lonely  Planet For The  Child  Refugee

<h2>Q&amp;A With… Busi Mabuza</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32015 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Busi-Mabuza-0371-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Busi-Mabuza-0371.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Busi-Mabuza-0371-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Busi-Mabuza-0371-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Busi-Mabuza-0371-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
<h4>IDC Chair Busi Mabuza on diversity and development.</h4>
<ol>
<li>
<h4>There are many female executives at the top at the IDC; how is the organization driving gender to resolve challenges in the African economy?</h4>
</li>
<li>The pleasing part is that the more we improve, the more we see opportunity to get better. Just over half of our staff complement at the IDC is female. We have focused on nurturing talent in a fair and equitable manner. The CEO [Geoffrey Qhena] pays specific attention to promoting equity in the management and executive levels of the organization. My interest is to also ensure that our professional level, which is our natural leadership pipeline, continues to be representative.</li>
</ol>
<h4></h4>
<ol>
<li>
<h4>How does the IDC develop female entrepreneurs and ensure they contribute to the economy and nation-building?</h4>
</li>
<li>The funding of women-owned business is one of our specific corporate key performance targets which we monitor and report on. This has focused everybody’s mind and is an integral part of our conversations at board meetings. We recently hosted a conversation session with women entrepreneurs specifically focusing on manufacturing. Management is now synthesizing the very constructive inputs received. We aim to be an accessible funder and to be one of the first ports of call for entrepreneurs requiring funding in our areas of focus.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Zama Luthuli</h2>
Past the tight security at the Industrial Development Corporation’s (IDC) stately headquarters in Sandton, Johannesburg, and up a couple of floors, we meet Zama Luthuli as she steps out of one of the glass-enclosed offices. She is slender, in a striped skirt and killer heels; one could have easily passed her off as a model.
Luthuli laughs when you suggest this. She has considered becoming a model and owning her own makeup and clothing line, she admits, so we are not far from the truth.
At 40, this self-confessed fashionista is the IDC’s youngest executive. As Divisional Executive: Corporate Affairs, she holds a critical role. This is evident when she points to the files she has in front of her, of entrepreneurs the IDC has developed. She speaks animatedly about them. This job, clearly, is more than a job for her.
“I see it as a contribution to the continent,” she says, which makes the long hours and lengthy Exco meetings worthwhile.
“It’s something bigger than us, it’s about other people. We work long hours, we get so tired but we look at people’s businesses and see the impact in their lives, and then the long meetings no longer matter.”
The IDC is a 75-year-old national development finance institution in South Africa set up to promote economic growth and industrial development.
Luthuli was only 37 when she assumed an executive role for the first time, in her previous job, at PetroSA. She joined the IDC in July last year, working with four heads in marketing, CRM, CSI and facilities management. Her work is in perfect alignment with her goals.
“A woman’s role is in the kitchen? A woman’s role is in bigger kitchens nowadays, [kitchens] that make stuff, create stuff and create employment,” says Luthuli, referring to the umpteen factories and industries that women lead today.
It’s a far cry from when her mother struggled to send her to university. Born in KwaZulu-Natal, Luthuli worked very hard in order not to disappoint her mother, and graduated in communications.
Thereafter, she says she was always fortunate finding employment.
That’s also because she was willing to take risks. “I always knew I wanted to be in a corporate environment.”
But she has a piece of advice for young people. “If you want a job, make one,” she says.
“With challenges, you learn, you grow, you adjust. There will be a woman who has been there before, so rely on her skills. It’s important to have a mentor. You need to understand the lay of the land, understand the organization.
“And always look for a business opportunity in what you do while you are employed. There are so many creative ideas we encounter on a daily basis. Whilst you are working, work on your dream, work on an idea, have a back-up plan.”
What are some of the most offbeat entrepreneurial ideas Luthuli has seen come her way?
“We find quite a few blueberry farms in South Africa!” she offers.
A single mother, with two girls aged 13 and nine, Luthuli says it’s important to rely on support systems. She took up an MBA degree after the birth of her children. But in the end, it’s about finding what works.
“Balance is something you create that’s relevant to your own situation and environment. Balance is also taking into account your own personal journey at a given time.”
The articulate executive says she has gone through enough pain and loss in her life that she knows it’s teaching her something every day.
“Our challenges may be different but let’s not dim our lights, let’s help each other,” says Luthuli, and you know that’s exactly what she’s doing at the IDC, lending her creative energies and late hours for Africa and its people.
&nbsp;
<h2>Lizeka Matshekga</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32014 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IDC-046-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Ten minutes into the interview and it’s easy to tell Lizeka Matshekga is a soft-spoken powerhouse. While that may sound an oxymoron, this is a person with enough years in the financial services industry and multiple accolades in her trophy cabinet.
“I don’t want to call it success,” says Matshekga, with a quiet confidence.
“I am hungry. When you have hunger, you keep growing. I am hungry for information and knowledge. It has nothing to do with success. It’s really about wanting to know more every day.”
Matshekga has been with the IDC for 10 years, and is the Divisional Executive of Agro, Infrastructure &amp; New Industries.
With a master’s degree in Development Finance from the University of Stellenbosch, an honors degree in Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management from the University of Cape Town, and a BCom degree from the University of Western Cape, she has had 22 years in the financial services sector, in areas such as investment banking, treasury, turnaround and restructuring management, BEE financing and post investment management.
Last year in November, at the IDC, Matshekga scooped four awards, the most anyone won that year.
From Gugulethu, a township in the Western Cape, she stumbled into finance studies quite by accident.
“I wanted to be a scientist or doctor. I applied for BCom by mistake. My mother asked me to try it for a week, and I loved it! It was in my destiny.”
Matshekga’s mother, now 68, was a domestic worker who raised the children on her own.
“I had no access to bursaries. It was my twin sister’s biology teacher who helped me get the R1,000 ($73) registration fee for my BCom. It’s people like that I am grateful for today because he saw something in me. That’s the seed I needed.
“I always have this notion that your circumstances do not define your future. Almost every black child has faced poverty in childhood. In Gugulethu, most kids didn’t have hope. I was hungry to make a difference.”
She came to Johannesburg, which further fueled the hunger in her. Matshekga worked with Standard Bank Corporate Merchant Bank, and was with the National Empowerment Fund for three years. She joined the IDC and “has not looked back since”.
“I have been through the entire investment cycle at the IDC,” she says.
In 2011, she was asked to head up forestry within the IDC. She had never been exposed to the sector or been “a deal-maker”, so she thought: ‘how do I start?’
The unit was at its lowest in terms of performance when she took over, going up to “Top 5 in operations in the front office” by the end of the year, remaining that way for a while. Soon, Matshekga was also asked to take over the green industries sector, now called industrial infrastructure. Her mantra?
“I create an environment for my people to feel they are adding value and can be creative. It’s not my way or the highway&#8230; I also don’t limit myself to my focus area, I always look for things beyond my zone.
“I always tell youngsters at the IDC that your mentor needn’t be a senior, your mentor could be a peer. When you have friendships, let it add value. Don’t be shy to ask a team member. There are no stupid questions. You always come out of that engagement empowered.
“I always use the tested approach,” she says. “The IDC has invested so many development tools in ensuring where I am today.”
She is passionate about the new emerging industries of the future, and believes it will be her legacy.
A mother of three children, aged 16, 11 and three, Matshekga puts in enough late nights, knowing the larger purpose of her work. Thankfully, she says she has a supportive husband, which helps as her diary is more hectic than his.

IDC-039

Going Above And Beyond

There is blood on the office floor and from a corner, comes a whimper.
“Sorry,” says Zimbabwe-born Jessica Folkertsen as she dabs tissue paper onto the hind leg of a fierce-looking dog to contain the bleeding.
“He was bitten and is leaking a little,” she says clinically.
Anyone else in her position might have panicked but not Folkertsen. She knew Ninjo, her Belgian Malinois who was born in Sarajevo and had done duty as an IED (improvised explosive device) tracker in Afghanistan, was tough enough to handle the injury.
But this was something he had brought upon himself.
Ninjo was ambushed by a feisty German Shepherd named Feya, who was on leave from her day job tracking rhino poachers and had only wanted to play.
Ninjo was not quite as keen and when he refused to give Feya what she wanted, things turned nasty. Folkertsen understands all this because she is the boss. And no, this is not an alternate universe where humans have turned pets into hired help.
Folkertsen is one of the founders of the Save Our Legacy (SOUL) Trust based in the Matopos, about 35 kilometers south of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. The organization is involved in wildlife conservation with a focus on saving the rhino. That’s why the dogs.
The German Shepherds, who Folkertsen describe as “very intelligent dogs who love working”, are trained to work alongside human trackers to find poachers, ideally before, but sometimes even after they have committed their crime.
<div id="attachment_32002" style="width: 690px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32002" class="wp-image-32002 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2-680x1024.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2-680x1024.jpg 680w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2-300x452.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2-600x904.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2-199x300.jpg 199w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2-768x1156.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Feja.-Reward-stage-after-a-track.2.jpg 1344w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />With Feya</div>
The idea is that dogs can find scent in grass or granite rock, a feature peculiar to this area. They operate as a team and Folkertsen bands them together.
She spent eight years in the United Kingdom (UK) working with dogs and learning to train them for tracking. Ninjo was her partner. Although she did important work training military dogs, the longer Folkertsen was away from home, the more she wanted to return.
“I started becoming a keyboard warrior. I was on Facebook getting unhappy with how things were going in Zimbabwe and that people didn’t seem to be doing anything. Then I thought instead of complaining, go home and do it,” says Folkertsen.
Even though going home meant going back to a country with a stagnating economy steeped in political instability, Folkerstsen decided it was time for her and Ninjo to make the move.
“I looked at the pros and cons of the UK and of Zimbabwe and realized I wanted to deal with the cons of Africa and Zimbabwe as opposed to the cons of a first world country.”
She had a passion for animals but needed funding and people to help fight the cause and then thought of the dog-tracking idea.
She approached the Bubye Valley Conservancy in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe, who had received a sum of money from an American hunter who wanted to help, and agreed to let her use the cash to buy the first three dogs, all from Holland.
Then, Folkertsen teamed up with Barney O’Hara and Kyle Good, a couple with more than 40 years of experience in wildlife between them and who run a guest farm in the Matopos. They offered her use of some of their land to build kennels and coach dogs. And then, she had to find handlers.
Folkertsen put out a call to locals, to whom she offered training and employment. She received several responses. Through a careful selection process, she chose four young men, all under 25, and spent three months upskilling them and overseeing their bonding with the dogs who would become their Ninjos.
“The relationship between a handler and a dog is vital,” Folkertsen says. “The dogs have got to want to work for you so the stronger that relationship is, the harder the dog is likely to work.”
In early July, their education was complete and pairs went out on their first mission at Bubye. They spend three weeks in the conservancy followed by a week off.
When Feya found herself in a sticky situation with Ninjo, she was off that week. The pair made up soon after and Faye has since returned to work. She has not caught any poachers yet but Folkersten is sure she will, or even better, her presence and that of her dogs, will deter them.
“Just the threat of the dogs being there is a help,” says Folkertsen.
While SOUL takes its first steps, Folkertsen is already thinking of expanding. She hopes to have tracker dogs all over Zimbabwe and eventually even move into detection.
“We could train dogs to find rhino horn, ivory, drugs or explosives and if people wanted protection dogs, we could do that,” she says.
No doubt all of them will come across Ninjo and some of them may even become his special friend.

Tag: October 2016

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

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Grannies Having A Ball

Isle Of You

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Using Her Good Offices

Classes Under Rain Clouds And Trees

Back To Nature: Why Even Lipstick And Shaving Cream Should Be Organic

Landing An Airbus A330 And The Best Modeling Assignments In Africa

Malawi’s Other Banda

A Lonely Planet For The Child Refugee

Going Above And Beyond

Saving Rhinos, Using Military Dogs