Entrepreneurship has been bandied around as the solution to Africa’s development and so in the spirit of the narrative, I decided to hear entrepreneurs’ experiences from other African countries. Speaking to Tawanda Kembo from Zimbabwe and Nathan Lee-Winans Annobi from Ghana.
Tawanda describes himself as a fourth-generation entrepreneur and one of Africa’s foremost cryptocurrency experts. Tawanda started Africa’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Golix in 2014. Nathan on the other hand is a serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of PaySwitch, a fintech company in Ghana. My conversation with these two gentlemen was revealing and refreshing.
Asking about their views of entrepreneurship and its impact on the continent, Tawanda and Nathan both agreed that it is indeed a game-changer, albeit seeing it through slightly different lenses. Tawanda made reference to the improvement in the quality of life because of the increased number of small businesses in his country. Nathan, although, agreeing with Tawanda, highlighted that while improved lifestyles could be a good indicator for the benefits of entrepreneurship, he questioned the superficial nature of such improvements, because, according to him, you see an increased number of flashy cars, but the roads are bad – do we then say Africans are truly thriving? Another highlight of the conversation for me was each person’s perspective on entrepreneurship – where Tawanda was of the opinion that entrepreneurship is a science which can be taught and literally can be learned from the school of hard-knocks – essentially alluding to the notion that anyone can be an entrepreneur.
Nathan however, had a dissenting opinion, sharing that, perhaps being from the pre-millennial generation, who tend to be a bit more cautious – not everyone can actually be an entrepreneur. His point is that an individual may read books and try to adopt the same methods as another successful entrepreneur and still not thrive as that entrepreneur– thus he would argue that it’s not so much a science and actually a skill that is innate in people. That said, he believes with the evolution of technology, almost everyone feels like an entrepreneur.
To corroborate Nathan’s view about technology and entrepreneurship, incidentally, he and Tawanda play in the technology space and judging from the number of young people that I know that have started their own businesses either from paid employment or fresh out of school, they all tend to be CEOs /Founders of their tech companies. With this, one is forced to wonder if technology is a driver of entrepreneurship and if so, is it sustainable, given Nathan’s view that it is an inborn skill vis-à-vis the high business discontinuance rate recorded on the continent.
Going on to understand some of the key challenges entrepreneurs are faced within their respective countries, in Zimbabwe, it would appear that cultural stigmatization from failing once at a business is a major factor that prevents people from venturing into starting their own business. Additionally, some of the government policies in Zimbabwe are obsolete and don’t reflect the modern era. While in Ghana, they have the right policies, implementation is the major challenge.
With some of these insights, one can agree that Africa does have the talent for a thriving entrepreneurial landscape and as the challenges are somewhat similar across the board, the concerted efforts of all the relevant actors and a shift in mindsets will be useful to foster the game-changing benefits we would like to see on the continent.
To listen to the full conversation with these amazing gentlemen, please visit episode #8 on our podcasts page.