Authored 7 books. Serial Entrepreneur. Innovation Enthusiast
‘Damn those Nigerians; Indians; Chinese; Zimbabweans etc. making money in our country’. These are the usual words echoed by natives referring to foreign business people.
Irrespective of where in the world, natives tend to always moan about foreign businessmen in their homeland.
If I were to migrate to another country, Read more
We are popular for our rich minerals ores and yet still the poorest continent. Take it back to the 1950’s; and bring it back to today (2010); we are still the historical underdog. We have less to show for our garden’s produces.
Remember the ‘opium wars’ between China and England caused by England refusing to trade their gold reserves (stolen) for china’s tea; opting to trade opium (drug) instead. Yet Africa’s GDP in 2010 still relies on exporting raw mineral ores.
So why is it that Europe and America; who don’t have that much mineral ores still the world’s economic leaders? The answer t is what I call ‘soft product innovations’. That is software; gadgets; clothing etc.
China and Japan have got the best of all trades; manufacturing, assembly and technological innovations. Its high time Africa consolidates its efforts and catch up. Imagine the millions of Rands that leave Africa through international clothing brands.
These are the times to be exploring those innovative ideas. Mighty is experience mixed with inexperience! Young kids have ideas; and the experienced know how put together the script.
(Part two to follow)
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Brand Africa to me is about Africa, her features, character, her children and most importantly her future. Brand Africa is concentrated efforts aimed at marketing Africa through her strengths, thus remedying her weaknesses and strengthening her vulnerabilities.
It’s the attitude that each and every African should carry. A concept which I think all African children need to be made aware of at an early age.
www.brandafrica.net (founders Brand Africa) says brand Africa is: “is an African brand-driven initiative to proactively drive Africa’s reputation, image and competitiveness”.
Poverty, human rights violations, religious wars, corruption, precious minerals, diversity, racism; are some of the issues synonymous with the continent. And we know which need to be eliminated and which harnessed.
We need to make this brand Africa not only desirable to the foreign world, but importantly to us Africans. My dream is for Africa to have its own business culture. We have chased westernization of Africa and in the process forgot that, like the western world, we too can and should contribute in elevating world standards and innovations.
What is it? When a foreign enterprise ventures in foreign territories, it would have done research on that particular area. That is, research on the area’s business culture and mood (promulgations, constitution, social facts etc). So what is our business culture as Africans? Read more
