I recently read a
very inspiring article on doingbusiness.org that highlighted the successes of seven African women entrepreneurs: Kah Walla from Cameroon who started her own management consulting firm, Rwandan Janet Nkubana who owns a handicrafts business , Aissa Dionne from Senegal who began her own interior design company, which provides jobs for over 100 people, Sibongile Sambo from South Africa who dived head first into the male-dominated arena of aviation to start her own aviation company, which currently has an annual turnover of over $5 million, Zoe Dean-Smith from Swaziland who is a partner in a large homeware company, which employs 731 Swazi women, Tanzanian Dr. Victoria Kisyombe who defied all odds to start her own financial services firm, and Ugandan Janet Omalla who started Delight Ltd., a juice manufacturing company in Uganda, which now employs 450 people and has an annual turnover of $3.9 million!
Although all these women are in very different fields, a common thread they share is their drive, passion and persistence. Each woman began with a small idea and big dreams, and all faced many hurdles. Dr. Kisyombe was working as a vet when her husband died unexpectedly. As was the custom, her husband's family inherited everything and she was left with nothing except for one cow that her husband had specifically bequeathed to her. Read more about her in the article to find out how she turned one cow into a multi-million dollar company. Anyway, after reading through each inspiring story, I came up with three things that I think were fundamental to their successes:
1.
Expertise: They all started businesses in areas/fields they already had in-depth knowledge and experience. For example, Aissa Dionne worked for years as an artist in Dakar and thus had knowledge of the art and design industry in Senegal before she started her own company.Those who hadn't worked in the area they were interested in made sure they did their research. Sibongile Sambo, for instance, had never worked in the aviation industry, although she had always been interested in this area. To lay the groundwork for her company, she made sure she did her homework by attending airshows and researching aviation-related business plans.
2.
Courage: They saw opportunities where others saw obstacles...sort of like the glass being half full vs. half empty concept. When Kah Walla first began her business in Cameroon, her office was her family home and she and all her employees earned the same salary of $200 per month, as everything she had was being pumped into the company. Julian Omalla was working as a small-time trader when she entrusted all her savings to her business partner to invest. He disappeared with her money and she was left with absolutely nothing. Where other women would have quit at this point, Omalla used this as an opportunity to start over.
3.
Determination. Every single one of these women faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But they had a dream and they pursued that dream with a passion and fierceness that pushed them into success.
On that note, BBC carried an article
on a young Ghanaian entrepreneur, Naana Adjei, who quit her job on Wall Street in New York to start her own business in Ghana.
Would you have the courage to leave a well-paying job to venture out on your own?
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