“Third World problems require Third World approaches towards providing a solution”

That statement up there will help you as an entrepreneur to stay away from years of fruitlessness. This piece I’m going to analyze deeply will open your eyes to the skeleton of business and give you key insights on why you should either quit or start your company.

Firstly, this piece is directed at Africans and anyone who wants to do business in Africa. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or you’re already running a startup, then we need to take it from the scratch. This will be detailed.

1. What is Africa?: Before you go into business, you need to make proper and detailed research because running a business is not the same as writing a final year project. Often times, I meet with acclaimed entrepreneurs and they haven’t understood what and how their ideas relate with Africa. You just have an idea and the next thing, you’re developing a solution for it.

I spent a year on research before creating a MVP (minimum viable product). This is not to boast and it could be way lesser for you, rather it is to cement the fact that you need to do your assignment on research and not build based on assumptions. I would not begin to explain on how you can weigh your idea if it’s reasonable from scratch but this is also another angle to do so.

So what is Africa really, let’s talk. My answer; AFRICA IS A THIRD WORLD CONTINENT.

The earlier you understand this, the better it is for you. Now, let’s move a bit further to more analysis on what is peculiar about Third World countries or a Third World continent. You may not like the fact, but I’m really sorry, I’m trying to save your company right here. The reason I decided to do this piece is because everyone is jumping into tech in the name of; the future is A I, Robotics and all.

While, it is true, it is also true that the future we’re talking about is 3 decades away at the least if we don’t get facts right. If we keep hallucinating about where we are. This is just a little bit of digression before I return to the main point and I’m going on these corners so you’d understand pure business.

Never at any point compare Africa to the western world. We are way behind them and I’m not being pessimistic, I am trying to save your company. I am not trying to make us look inferior, I am presenting the reality of our current state.

Let’s throw the dice and play the game. 

What can you say is peculiar about Third World countries?

Poverty!! Lack of development as well!!

What I’m trying to do is to give the breakdown for you. Now, let’s break this down a little bit further. I will take Nigeria as the case study seeing I reside in Nigeria. Nigeria is said to have over 180 million citizens, according to the national bureau of statistics. Let’s hold that to be very true.

We have over 60 percent of this population to be youths and the rest adults and youngsters. Quick digression again, can you remind me what your business idea is about? Oh good. I will use an example.

Going into edtech. We are in what we call the edtech boom. The system of education is so bad that it is one of the major causes of unemployment in Africa. Education in Nigeria has not incorporated technology which means someone else, a private body needs to step into the game seeing the government is pretty slow about this. Good idea right?

So we have a problem. The problem is we have about 80 million youths who are in Nigeria and over 14 million are unemployed. There’s a huge gap between the world of work and the youths so let’s provide a bridge right. Now here’s where the problem comes in. Stay with me. An entrepreneur who has done proper research will come up with accurate statistics.

Let’s analyze it;

• There’s huge unemployment in Nigeria because of the wide gap between the world of work and youths.
• Internet penetration is high in Nigeria with over 20 million active monthly Facebook users in Nigeria, over 14 million on YouTube, over 14 million on Instagram, over 7 million on Twitter. This “means” people are using the internet well.
• Smartphone penetration is pretty high in Africa and by 2020 from statistics, African youths will be able to afford a smartphone and have access to the internet as well.
• There are so many skills to learn in this century that can be learnt online.
• Learning in universities is pretty expensive and cannot be easily affordable by all.

I have presented a problem right here and there’s a solution to these problems. An online platform for learning will be the perfect solution. It offers some concrete solutions

• Convenience
• Affordability
• Ease of access to relevant courses
• Flexibility in learning and easily updatable

From this pitch deck, we have a good business plan and we can start a business hoping we’d have millions of the youths who are online using the platform. Now, that’s where the problem is. You have provided a solution to the problem but it is entirely different from building a business around it. I will give insights to this later.

From this pitch deck, we can say the market size is about “10 million users”. However, it is not true if you look at your business plan from the angle of What is Africa? The real market size is less than 1 million people. Way less!!

The real problem is that while we say that the market is ripe, the people are not.

Understanding this as well will help you put your company in proper perspectives. Remember I am still explaining what Africa is, I have not begun analysing how to build a real business from a problem you’re solving. Solving a problem doesn’t make you a successful entrepreneur. Building a business around the problem you’re solving does and only a few know this.

Let’s quickly talk about E-commerce in Nigeria once again. We have seen major companies close down in the E-commerce line. The reason is not far-fetched, while we can bellow all around that the market is ripe, are the people itself ripe?

We are not. How many people trust online transactions? Our parents? Me? Don’t just talk about me because I have been disappointed three years ago and it was due to late delivery of a product I ordered for my bestie on her birthday which was delivered two weeks after the set date. Well, that was three years ago and I’ve never trusted the platform to the point of ordering from it. Forget about the company’s name. Let’s talk business, I’m not done.

Who do we blame? The company? Well, yes, true. However, I believe you’ve not forgotten that we have not forgotten that we are talking from the angle of Who is Africa. Africa is a Third World continent and go check, poverty ravages these countries that their road networks are really bad. Now that they have built an e-commerce platform as a solution, the real problem still lies in the fact that the customer base will reduce because of logistics issues due to the fact that this is Nigeria.

Did you look at it from this angle? You have solved the problem but we need to keep this solution running as a business, you need to reach 10 million customers monthly to meet your target so as to please investors but based on these setbacks because it is Nigeria, you can only reach 2 million customers, how do you get to 10 million customers?

If you cannot get to 10 million customers, how do you make the revenue of 10 million customers even while it’s just 2 million customers you have access to? Now, this is business but do you know?

I have so many issues to address which is why I need you to watch out for this space and you can reach out to me if you want to talk real business and need help (business deals only, not mentorship or free advice please).

I am not laying all these points to discourage you from starting a company, it is to open your eyes that there is more to running a business than solving a problem or using high tech. I’d still address why some tech start-ups are wasting their time running in Africa or how they can navigate with patience and still scale but let’s go to the next point.

What Characterizes Third World Countries?

If you’ve not accepted that we’re a Third World continent, then please stop reading. Go start your company anyways. For those who are still with me, let’s talk about what characterizes Third World countries and which businesses thrive.

Back to Nigeria as a case study, we have a huge population of the poor and middle class than the wealthy. I have no statistics for the numbers, forgive me but there’s a wide gap. If we have the middle class so much, what products or services do you think will sell?

Needs!! That’s all

• Food
• Clothes
• Beverages
• Children stuff
• Transportation
• Health

For these points mentioned, there’s the place it applies to the middle class and another for the high class.

When it comes to food, Nigerians will firstly go for need. Fine, let me say the majority of Nigerians which happens to be the larger number. We get food because we want to stay alive. This means that garri sales, rice sales, beans, yam, etc will never stop as long as Nigerians remain Nigerians.

We (the majority) do not care about pizza or cold stone. We care but we cannot afford it so it becomes a want. The need market is the largest market in Nigeria, and Africa. Go check.

If you open a store that you have Gelato for sale, you’d have customers but I bet you, you can never build a billion dollar company from it in Africa. I have not taken Gelato before and I hope one of you buy me one, but I feel it will be pretty expensive. The middle class can still afford pizza, cold stone. I think they make up the majority of the consumers.

What characterizes the African market? Have you made your research in line with your company? Don’t just build out of optimism, build out of data and facts. It’s good to build for the future, but if you don’t understand business, you might not be able to lead your “potential customers” from the past to the future. They’d forever remain in the past. You need to either bring the future to them or lead them to the future.

So when building a business, the safest businesses to build are Third World businesses. Businesses based on “Now Problems” and not future problems. You cannot be Elon Musk and survive in Africa.

I have been able to explain why you need to understand who Africa is and what characterizes Africa. I’d write another piece on how we can integrate tech appropriately into businesses in Africa.

The future of shopping is immersive. As the customer experience shifts towards a personalized augmented one, various brands and startups are leading in this redesign.

Obsess, a startup recently launched a virtual shopping mall that will allow customers shop online by exploring virtual boutique stores. The stores which are created in Computer Generated Images product offerings include beauty, fitness, travel, wellness and more. Consumers can surf the stores through their smartphones, view 3D rendering on products and leverage Augmented Reality to visualize them in the real world.

French beauty giant L’Oreal will offer Chinese consumers the ability to virtually test lipsticks, eye shadows and other products from Armani Beauty through their smartphones and also take screenshots, save photos as well as share images to social media platforms via AR technology from L’Oreal’s Modiface on We Chat.

Walmart has filed a patent to offer its customers an immersive shopping experience at home that will allow them to wear a pair of VR glasses paired with sensor laden gloves that detect shopper’s movements and provides real time feedback while smart robots at it’s remote fulfillment centres will react to shopper’s virtual movements and pick and pack items. Its smart shelves are equipped with sensors to monitor inventory in real time and can detect when a product is removed, changes in temperature, moisture, etc.

Nigerian Luxury hotels, E-Commerce stores, Automotive, Fashion and Beauty, Health and Fitness outlets will have to redesign their customer experiences to a personalized, experiential, immersive one as the customer of the future will not need to be physically present at their locations to experience and purchase their products. Just imagine customers of Olori cosmetics, a proudly Nigerian brand for the African woman, and Innoson Motors, Jumia and Konga, testing their latest products as well as shopping in AR.

 What values do you think can help you stand out? Thinking right? .. Ok let me help you with these three values that can make you stand out. Do you stand out of the crowd, or you just follow what’s in vogue? Is there that special trait in you people look up to? Is there any you wish you can build up? Values are what make us unique in our own way, it makes us stand out and respected by others. Have you ever imagined a society without morals and values, where people are left to their will? How safe would such an environment be?  I will be discussing three very important values that make you stand out in every aspect of life in this article, they are as follows: Integrity, hardwork and patience let’s get to it. I will be delving into what these three values actually are, how you can imbibe them and instances you might have carried out the better part of them without even knowing you did, so as to encourage you to continually strive towards getting better. 

Three Major Values

1. INTEGRITY

Integrity is one very important value one should have. According to these words by Bob   Marley “The greatness of a man is not how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively”. How do you know you have integrity? Do you maintain the same standard when no one is watching or you act with high pose and integrity only when people are watching? There are several instances where you can display true and sincere level of integrity, I will be mentioning a few in this article:

WORK: We all have different roles at work, let’s take for instance you are in charge of a grocery store, you have at your disposal figures you can manipulate and pin it down on the accountant or any other worker, your true test of integrity comes to play when you refrain from such act and do what is right not minding the benefit that came with cheating.

Your true test of integrity comes when you are faced with tough decisions and refuse to compromise no matter the circumstances. Or have you been ever tempted to implicate an innocent colleague at work all because you can’t stand them, and your conscience pricked you and you restrained from it. Do you keep to time and do whatever is given to you with full seriousness. Being at the right place, doing what you have to do give you high regard amongst your colleague at work. When people cannot trust anything with you, then there is a serious question on your integrity, people are naturally more drawn to people that are reliable, reliability and integrity of individuals have been tested over time. Little do some people know that characters at first are like strands, they later become cables, the acts you do daily becomes a part of you with time, also with business associates can they trust you, can your partners in business trust you with their funds and investment.

INTEGRITY AS A SOCIETAL NECESSITY: Have you ever considered driving carefully always and how impactful that would be, a lot of accidents today in the society resulted from reckless driving or drunk driving. Do you obey traffic lights? , One would wonder what impact proper driving has to do with the society at large, can you count how many families has been put in mourning as a result of deaths caused by rough drivers or drunk drivers. Also volunteering in the society, of course we have part time volunteers that help with the less privileged or elderly ones or injured in the society, but there are some individuals who are very consistent in the volunteering act, reward or no reward, they selflessly carry out the act to give back to the society at large, that in itself is integrity. Doing simple acts like helping elderly ones cross the road, constantly using the trash bin when on the streets, giving out helping hands to the poor and needy around you are simple acts of kindness and integrity. Going shopping and taking what is not yours because the shop owner is not looking is not only theft but lack of integrity. The society as a whole accords great respect to people with high level of integrity. Take for instance you are a mayor in your community, will you siphon funds meant for community development to enrich yourself, have also learnt true test of integrity is known when you are in power, as you can do and undo.

INTEGRITY IN THE HOME SETTING: When kids offend parents, its normal to scold them, but there are times we go to the extreme in scolding them and end up hurting them, its takes integrity for parents to apologize to their kids when they hurt them, and when they do that’s real maturity. Apologizing to our loved ones when we offend them prevents hurts and rancor and that’s a true sign of love, it truly takes integrity to sincerely do that. This act allows the kids to easily open up to their parents and foster children – parent relationship. Couples owning up to their mistakes and accepting correction takes courage and integrity, it depicts selflessness and humility. These not only help keep the relationship going, it helps the couples feel more real and sincere with each other. The home setting is a very integral unit of the society; children can learn true integrity in character from their homes, thereby making them better individuals when they get out there, breeding them up with the right values is a necessity.   

2. HARDWORK

Hardwork is the necessity for success that cannot be argued anywhere, I have not seen any great man or woman who got to the heights they were, without hardwork. If there is any value you must possess to enable you stand out, it should be hardwork, it not only earns you admiration amongst those around you, and it guarantees you success. But as much as hardwork is a very good value to have, I strongly believe in intelligent hardwork, it is one thing to work tirelessly on a task without focus but with so much energy and it’s another to divert such energy into the task with so much focus, the results are definitely glaringly different. Another point of note is consistency, when you are consistent with your acts of hardwork and sacrifices; it opens greater doors of opportunities for you in life.

Most people fail in life as a result of laziness, though not many even realize they are lazy. Continually giving excuses to complete tasks, been pessimistic and always procrastinating are real signs of laziness, while hardwork depicts the exact opposite, greater heights and opportunities are attained with hardwork. The truth is, if you make hardwork a necessity, you gradually begin to see yourself improve in your endeavors in life and it finally becomes a part of you. As Colin Powell rightly said, there are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation; hardwork and learning from failure. There is no shortcut in life; short cuts can shorten your life. We all have dreams, but not everyone eventually achieve theirs, you can continue to dream and fantasize about your goals and visions, the earlier you set out to it with action and focus, the faster your achievement rate.

Back in my high school days, after the final semester in my second year, I realized my grade points skyrocketed, so I asked myself what I did differently that year as against the previous one. I realized I stayed up at night to study, reduced partying and joined some extra tutorial classes, maximize my time and schedule, it showed more effort, better results, since then I decided I was always going to give my best to whatever I find myself doing as that was the only way I could be outstanding. Hardwork does not kill, instead it makes you better and more efficient.

3. PATIENCE

Patience is a very rare virtue. Its takes a lot of courage and perseverance to be patient on anything in this life but it pays on the long run. Patience reveals a lot of things to us as time passes; it proves a lot of things with time. You can claim to truly love someone, but only time can tell if you do, as there would be trials and temptations only patience can tell if the love would last, that’s why there seems to be lots of divorce cases today, a lot of couples have lost the needed patience and perseverance necessary for marriages to work, or for relationships to thrive, they don’t seem tolerant of each other any more. Most times we give up on our dreams, not knowing how close we are to breakthrough, because we gave up and were not patient enough.  This virtue helps you to continually rise up after failure, knowing full well, that with every next attempt, success is close.

Patience and perseverance is truly the key to renowned success. Patience continues to keep hope alive and that all would work out well finally. We can’t live through life without ups and downs, it is been patient that shows we truly have high moral standards, because when things get really uncomfortable, that’s what we need to pull through. We are in a generation, where we want what we want almost immediately, we don’t normally have the patience to wait, but been impatient causes you to make bad decisions, causes unnecessary worry and stress, take acts or steps that might put you in danger and its very harmful to your relationship and person. Patience is self – control in itself and helps you to control yourself around others no matter how excited or angry you are at them, this helps to preserve your relationship with others.  It prevents you from jumping into conclusions when matters arise, you develop an in-depth listening ear and this helps to make the best of decisions.

Great things take time to materialize, let’s take for instance you want to start up a commercial liquid wash company, you don’t just snap your fingers and everything comes to be, you start with a planning process, procurement of materials and buildings, technical trainings and a lot more, it could take years before your ideas come into reality, several years later when you are invited to a business morning talk show on Television and you are asked how you got there, or what the journey was like, you can proudly tell your story and the challenges you might have encountered so far and the lessons learned along the way. If you lack this value, you can inculcate it, by practicing it, refusing to vent and lash out at any discomfort encountered, keeping hope alive and never giving up on your dreams is one way to make patience an attribute you possess. From today henceforth, promise to take life easy and live each day at a time. 

CONCLUSION

These three values mentioned above can help anyone stand out in the society or in any situation today. Make integrity a part of you, be the change you want to see in the society it all starts from you. Hardwork and diligence can never be replicated in any form, you can only achieve your dreams if you focus and continually work tirelessly without giving up towards it. Patience like I said earlier in the article, continually breeds hope, it not only gives you calmness and peace of mind, it eradicates needless worry and stress, have at the back of your mind that life is full of its challenges and we can only overcome if we are truly patient, the hurdles would be surmounted and you will definitely smile again ask yourself this, of all the worry you put yourself through, what solution has ever come out of it.

To stand out amongst the multitude you have to always and continually be of the best behavior. Living a good exemplary life requires lot of discipline and commitment and these values mentioned in this article is a must have for anyone. The bottom-line is every of our actions should be impactful and with high standard of moral and values, we never know who is looking up to us, this helps to pass the right message across especially to the upcoming generation. Live a life that counts, be a plus to your generation.