Can I become Rich in Africa? Part 3.

5 things you need to become rich in Africa:

Before you continue, please read Part 2, Part 1.

#1 Start a business

Wishing to be rich without starting a business first is like wanting to win a lottery without buying a ticket first. Come on! You need to put a service or a product on the market. What it is, is up to you. Just make sure its something people wish to have, want to have, need to have or must have. One proverb goes like this, ‘if you hang out around the barber shop long enough, soon or later you’ll get a hair cut’. Another goes like this, ‘opportunities are like hot girls, they choose ready boys.’ I bet the last proverb inspired you to start a business. One last thing, don’t forget to build a company around your business. It helps in business scaling, diversification and management.

#2 Business Common sense

You read it right. Common sense. See, in the world of business, what goes on in your own mind must be aligned or for the best in sync with what is going on in the minds of people around you. i.e. Stakeholders. Normally motivational speakers advise people not to give a damn what other people think about them. Well, my friend, in business, it is the exact opposite. You have to care what other people think about you, your product, service and company.

It should be apart of your basic understanding to be eager to understand your stakeholders: Know what they want, when they want it, how they want it and why. As long as your senses will be capable of depicting, processing and responding to stakeholder’s fundamental needs, success in business is guaranteed.

When people think about business in developing countries, they don’t value the importance of efficiency and excellency perhaps because they hold a negative lowly image of stakeholders dwelling in such undeveloped regions. They are wrong. Right? Because human needs are universal. The same needs and demands a millionaire dwelling on the 5th avenue Manhattan, New York has are exactly the same needs and demands a street hawker dwelling on the 5th street of a slum in Sierra Leon has. Therefore, make no doubt about it, if you want to be rich Africa, you must possess the basic level of common sense which seeks to understand stakeholders and is eager to act on their needs with excellence and efficiency as much as you’d do it in Manhattan, New York.

#3 High Performance

High performance is perfectly elastic to business success. Let me break it down for you, a little upward change in performance leads to a drastic improvement in business success. The opposite is true. A slum in Sierra Leon has the potential and capacity to look like 5th avenue, Manhattan-New York if only entrepreneurs of that slum can raise their performance level to that of entrepreneurs on 5th Avenue, Manhattan. If on the other hand, entrepreneurs on 5th Avenue, Manhattan can fail to maintain their higher performance, lo and behold! count 30 days and 5th Avenue Manhattan is a slum. Do I have your attention now? Great. I’ll go right ahead and share with you the ABC of high performance;

A- high performance in business preparation.

B- high performance in business launch.

C- high performance in business execution and management

D- high performance in product/service initiation, production, packaging and promotion.

E- high performance in customer acquisition, service and retention.

F- high performance in revenue generation and cost management.

#4 Effective Business Strategy

What you do might be amazing and on demand but how you do it determines your business profitability. Business strategy is initiated and ends inside the business yet it shapes and directs what comes out. If how you do what you do inside the business is not effective, what comes out of your business won’t either.

Price strategy. You must make a choice to sell expensive and earn huge profit on a single product or sell cheap and make a little profit but on thousands or millions of sold products. For your information, the latter is more sustainable than the former. Chinese products are selling big on every corner of African market because they are affordable. Chinese sellers are smart and patient enough to sell cheap but sell more for a long time to all people.

Production strategy. The Chinese are perhaps able to sell cheap because they also produce cheap. Meaning that, you must care to attain efficiency in product/service production. Make sure your employees and yourself are giving their best and only their best at work. An unproductive labor is first to raise production cost and if productive first to cut it.

Operations strategy. What drives daily operations inside your business? Is it a detailed continually-updated schedule or does it depend on today’s weather? Is it a list of S(systematic)M(measurable)A(achievable)R(realistic)T(time bound) goals or is it mere brainstorming?

Promotion strategy. How will targeted clients know and find your product/service? Are you developing ads and promotion material or are you praying for clients? Well, if it is the latter, I got news for you. They won’t show up. Even pastors at church ask their members to bring their friends next time.

#5 Consistency

Do you remember how you were born? Good. That’s exactly the process a business goes through before generating exciting profits. There’s a distance to cover between birth and maturity. The only difference with business being that you can choose to cover that distance by jumping, walking, running or flying through. In other words, the time it takes you to move from business birth to business maturity depends on your internal development capacity and above all else on your personal and employee productivity.

To cement the importance of consistency which also entails persistence to your success in Africa, I’m going to teach you how to pray every morning before going to work. Don’t mind your religion, it still works;

“2 rats fell in a bucket full of milk.

the first rat immediately lost hope, stopped trying, drowned and died.

rat number 2 said to itself ‘damn it! I ain’t dying today.’

it decided to hang on tight on the top of the bucket and started kicking its tiny legs around.

it kicked and kicked. kicked it kicked.

eventually the milk turned into butter.

and the 2nd rat survived.

Dear almighty! just like the 2nd rat, damn it! I ain’t failing today.“ Amen.

Part 4. How can I become rich in Africa. — 5 business ideas you can start in Africa and be rich:

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Editorial/ Yewe Yewe