Success in business | Facing our mistakes

Peace Steemians,

I want to talk about one of the biggest mistakes businesses make when starting in Africa...

.....and how many of us still think this is the way forward to succeed....

Let me share a couple of quick real-business stories I encountered on the large growing market in Africa.

An Indian firm opens a manufacturing plant for packaging in Rwanda, this was a couple of years ago, invests about US$ 1 million only to find that business is not moving. The company is sitting on its packaging, although Rwanda has a huge demand for packaging. 'Our time will come' were the disappointed words by the director when we met.

An experienced Middle Eastern firm is opening a supermarket chain with several outlets in West Africa only to close its shops down because they were simply not performing. Huge amounts of money went down the drain!

A Diaspora entrepreneur from California ships US$100,000 worth of medical products to Mali only to find that they were still sitting there a year later after all products expired.
She lost all her money!

Seriously, my list of entrepreneurs, business owners, and companies that invested huge amount of capital and failed DESPITE their 'market research' could go on and on.

There are many.

Yet we still believe, one needs huge amounts of capital in Africa to make it.

In fact, we believe that we can only be taken seriously as entrepreneurs and business owners when we move in with a big box of money.

As if this was the 'real deal' or the best strategy to own big market shares.

But this is simply not true.