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23/09/2017

My week in New York
__Change begins with us, whoever and wherever we are. Let's not wait around for .

As many of you know, each year in September, leaders of governments gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Whilst big headlines are often reserved for the political gatherings at the UN headquarters, did you know that hundreds of other meetings also take place in the city that same week, amongst business leaders, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, civil society, and media? They are also critically important!

My own focus at UNGA 2017 was on four things:

# Education for children who are not in school.
# Securing support for Africa's smallholder farmers.
# Entrepreneurship and employment for Africa's youth.
# Investment in Africa.

I arrived Saturday night to allow for some quality time with my family who live in the US. My wife arrived with her own delegation for meetings on issues she's involved with. I do manage to have some business meetings or drop in to see business partners, but it's not my main focus.

# Each day started with my daily "quiet time" around 4 am. (I'm never too busy to spend time on what matters most). This is followed by my daily 30 minutes in the gym. Exercise is important to ensuring high performance and concentration. Emails and phone calls with company executives are ongoing. I never allow my work to fall behind.

Here are some key highlights from my week at UNGA this year:

# Meetings with other UN Education Commissioners to review progress on our work. We all take this very seriously. Learn more at Educationcommission.org.

# A working session with Richard Branson and a group of young global leaders doing amazing things around the world. Over the last 11 years, Richard Branson and I have collaborated on a number of global initiatives. Can you name at least three?

# Melinda Gates asked me to serve with her and another global leader, as co-chair of a new initiative called Pathways to Prosperity Partnership. The other co-Chair is the highly dynamic minister of Finance from Indonesia, Sri Mulyani Indrawati. I'll tell you more about this soon.

# Issues around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their implementation are very important to me. My main involvement this year was with a Gates Foundation initiative called . Check out one of their reports here, "The stories behind the data" ... http://www.globalgoals.org/goalkeepers/datareport/

As the main driver of this initiative, Melinda Gates brought together some really impressive young leaders, and young at heart, to attend. Justin Trudeau of Canada, President Barack Obama and Bill Gates all made some great presentations.

# As Chair of AGRA, I attended many key meetings with African and global leaders. The highlight was a breakfast I helped organize along with Bill Gates and his team. It was hosted by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, and attended by several African leaders including President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Edgar Lungu of Zambia and others whose countries are recognized as champions of the African Green Revolution. This really well-attended event was hugely important, as we discussed ways of tracking progress in Africa's agricultural transformation.

# Michael Bloomberg and Aliko Dangote invited me to participate in the newly-established Bloomberg Global Business Council. (Unfortunately, I had to juggle attendance at Goalkeepers meeting, both so important). I was a speaker at the inaugural summit, probably the biggest business event at UNGA'17. It was for the big guys in business, and also attended by some of the top political leaders in New York. https://gbf.bloomberg.org/council/

# Each day were numerous breakfast meetings (often intense intimate discussions). This is the business end of what goes on. Key leaders and their staff sometimes spend months arranging these meetings.

# There were also several dinners with key leaders and their delegations. A few times, I attended two dinners in the same evening. My highlight this year was a small dinner with President Barack Obama. I also spent time with old friends like Ambassador Andrew Young who has mentored me for 25 years.

It was quite a busy and intense four days. I hope my sharing it with you here gives you some ideas how not just governments, but also business, NGOs, and others in civil society can (and must) all come together to work for the good... Ready to join me? Let's talk.

End.

Image credit: Jake Lyell - Children in Malawi at UNICEF center for orphaned and vulnerable children.

09/09/2017

"Nothing turns on this" (Part 3)
__What do you do if you find out someone paid a bribe?

Let me tell you what I did... We lost a deal because some senior state government officials wanted almost $10m in bribes. They were quite clear that if we did not pay we would be thrown off the deal. I refused to pay! So we were thrown off the deal.

Soon they approached a big international competitor for exactly the same deal. It was announced with a lot of fanfare. I knew there was no way that deal could have been concluded without those bribes being paid. I put a team on it to collect evidence... It was a deep, deep dive! (I had all the information including the fancy corporate structures they had put in place to make it look legitimate.)

A few months later I went nuclear: There is a law in the United States called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA"). If you mention that to the directors of any major global corporation, people will start shaking, if they have been misbehaving! (The United Kingdom has a similar law called the British Anti-Bribery Act.)

I wrote a letter to the US Justice Department and offered my evidence, including details about the demands for the bribes, dates, times, and records. They took quite a while to get back to me, and when they did it was a short letter simply thanking me for the report. Then one day a friend who worked for this big international company called: "All hell has broken loose here! The US 'Feds' have apparently opened a full investigation on that issue!"
. .Next week I'll share with you a few more highlights (and lowlights) on this matter. When it comes to stopping corruption: 'sFutureTurnsOnThis!

If you are a civil servant or minister and you are fond of asking for bribes, particularly from international companies, let me warn you that laws are really being tightened globally. You and the company paying you bribes can end up being picked up by Interpol next time you are traveling somewhere! It happened to someone I know.

I know a few guys in hiding who cannot step outside their countries anymore because they are under FCPA investigation. The days of Swiss bank accounts and lavish spending abroad are coming to a close. All it needs is some "lowly" civil servant to pass on some key documents and you are finished, my friend.

Nothing harms our countries more than this kind of high-level corruption. It's not hard to do what I did. And let me tell you, people were very keen to pass on information to me. As a "whistleblower," you will be protected if you approach such organizations, but you must have real evidence and not be trying to settle your own scores, otherwise you will be the one in trouble.

!

To be continued...

Image credit: I ran into TD Jakes in Ghana yesterday!

02/09/2017

"Nothing turns on this" (Part 2)
__You can overcome adversity.

If you have just failed your exams, lost your job, or had a setback in your venture, I want you to declare: " . It will not change the outcome concerning my destiny." Then get back into it, and don't give up... Believe me, you are not alone.

Most of you know that in 2001, I set up a consortium to bid for one of Nigeria's first two mobile licenses. We had 22 investors, including ourselves. Each held a stake between 1-10%. This was a huge project and the license alone cost us US$285m. I ran the entire project and provided over 200 people to help set it up.

After we launched the network within the required six months, I had the great privilege of making Nigeria’s first GSM phone call (to the regulator) to say, “We’re live!”

It was meant to be the crowning achievement of everything I yearned to see -- so many Africans working together not just to build a network, but also help build a nation. Alas it was not to be.

After less than 12 months, our consortium had a major dispute, even though we had succeeded in setting up the country's first mobile network. Today is not the day to re-litigate that dispute. For now, just accept that I didn't agree with some of the shareholders, and they kicked me out of the business and changed the name of the company.

Not long after kicking us out, the majority of our partners decided to sell the business to a group from the Middle East. Although I offered them $1,5bn for their shares they refused. Under our agreement they were required to sell to me. (We call it the right of first refusal).

After failing to get an urgent hearing in Nigeria, we rushed to a court in the U.K. The judge there refused to entertain our request and referred us back to Nigeria! He went so far as to say we had no right to approach a British court: "This matter is for the Nigerian courts. You must go there!"

Our opponents were jubilant.

"See you in Nigeria," they chimed, "in 10 years!"

"A case like this could take 20 years in most African courts," said one of my lawyers quietly. "You should consider giving it up."

As we left the court I did not say a thing. I just got into a cab and went back to my hotel. There I locked myself in my room for several hours, and prayed.

Afterwards I said to my team: "Nothing turns on this. Let's go back to Nigeria. We shall win there, because the God I serve will give me justice anywhere on the face of this earth."

It took several years to get judges in Nigeria to begin reviewing our case, but eventually we won, in every court, before Nigerian judges. In the end, after 10+ years in court, an international tribunal comprising a majority of Nigerian judges ordered we be compensated for hundreds of millions of US dollars for the refusal to sell us the company in the first place. It was the highest financial settlement in African business history.

We were paid our money and we invested it in other areas of our business including Kwesé TV, which now boasts Nigeria as its biggest market.

Remember I said: ?

The battle in Nigeria, like the battle in Zimbabwe before it, is not the way I would have chosen for the best training for me as a business leader, but in the end, that is what it was. And as my Nigerian friends would loudly declare to me: "We thank God!"

What is happening in your life?

Can't find a job?
!

Someone treated you really badly today?
!

Bank turned down your loan application?
!

You can get up from whatever situation you find yourself in. You can overcome adversity. You can "speak your truth, even if your voice shakes"...

In the final part of this series I will tell you how the issue returned to the British courts. What happened this time will blow your socks off!

To be continued. . .

Image Credit: Shetzers Photography

27/08/2017

"Nothing turns on this."
__Through all the noise, quietly discern what really matters.

Those who work with me have heard me say, time and again: "Nothing turns on this." Let me share with you where it comes from:

In 1995, after waiting for nearly two years, we finally managed to get a hearing before the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe, the nation's highest court. It was a daunting moment to see those esteemed judges in their gowns and wigs sitting before us!

The Minister of Telecommunications was represented by one of the most celebrated barristers in the nation's history, an advocate called Chris Anderson SC.

I was represented by a South African advocate and constitutional expert called Wim Trengove SC. He was considered one of the most brilliant legal minds, and also represented President Nelson Mandela when he came out of prison.

Finally we had our day in court! Chris Anderson went first. He referred me as "the prince of freedom of expression," but it was not meant to be complimentary! He attacked me personally and viciously. I was totally shocked as he questioned my suitability as the holder of such a license.

It was relentless and my wife sitting next to me began to weep silently. Some of my supporters in the gallery were shaken but most just prayed.

Although I was not being cross-examined, he would often turn towards me with a menacing sneer on his face!

Sitting behind Advocate Trengove, I began to write furious notes denying these false allegations against me. To my surprise, he just never seemed to care about what I was giving him! The attacks continued for almost the entire first day.

During the break I confronted my lawyer: "You really must defend me! You have not interjected once to challenge these lies he is saying against me!" I complained bitterly. "This guy wants the judges to think I'm some kind of crook, and even a risk to national security!"

Then Advocate Trengove said something that changed my life forever:

"Nothing turns on anything he has said up to now. I'm not here to defend you personally; I'm here to win a constitutional matter over freedom of expression. As long as he continues on this line, you will have your license." And with that he politely excused himself and returned to attend to his papers.

The following day Advocate Trengove laid out the constitutional case in a quiet tone, never once raising his voice. There was no jeering or sarcasm, just a polite deferential style.

You could almost feel the force of his humility.

__Lesson #1: Advocate Trengove stayed laser-focused on his objective which was to win a Constitutional Court case. So many people easily get sidetracked by things that are not central to the issue at hand.

I watched as each of the judges wrote copious notes. It lasted less than two hours.

Then finally the Chief Justice spoke for the first time: "If we rule in favor of your client, what order would you like to see?"

"I would like to confer with my client your honor."

We were given a recess and we drafted a single paragraph: "Econet shall have the right to move traffic within, into and from Zimbabwe."

The judges passed it around. Chris Anderson read it, and looked down to the floor.

The case was over. Within months, the court upheld our application. It would be another two years before we opened our doors to the public, but every time something was done to delay us again and again, those words rang in my heart:

__"Nothing turns on it."

A key thing I learnt from that particular experience is that it is important to focus on the "substance" of what someone is saying rather than the "form" (style of delivery). If someone comes shouting and screaming or hurling insults, learn to ignore it, and extract substance (if there is any).

I also learnt that the most effective people are not necessarily those with soaring rhetorical style or have the best command of English or any other foreign language.

# In life you will always be confronted by situations in which people will seek to provoke you or even try to detract you from your set purpose.

# You must train yourself to have such a presence of mind that provocations do not force you to lose your cool.

If you are going through a tough time right now, turn to someone next to you and say: "Nothing turns on this."

End.

Image credit: Ubuntu Hope

23/08/2017

Keep your eyes open for the by-product
__One new thing leads to another...

Before I get started on this post, let me remind you that the clock is ticking if you want to participate in our $200,000 competition (Go to win.kwese.com). You never know what's possible unless you try! I remember in 1993 sitting down to develop my first business plan for mobile phones. I was trying to borrow money from a local bank...

All we knew at the time was that we were trying to replace the fixed line phone with a mobile phone, so the only change we could see was the "mobility," which was itself revolutionary!

I know this sounds funny, but the common wisdom at the time was that most people would keep their phones switched off, and would only switch them on when they needed to make calls. There were newspaper articles in which people complained about how rude it was for people to answer their mobile phones in public!

As mobile operators we saw Voice Mail as being very important, but the challenge was: How would people know if they had a call when the phone was switched off?

So someone came up with the idea of a "short message" to inform people that they had a missed call... that's all it was meant to be!

SMS began to evolve until people used it to send messages to each other, and it evolved further and further... until it gave birth to the email in the age of the Internet!

Today most mobile operators generate more revenue from what we call data or broadband than from voice calls!

__What's the moral of the story today?

# In whatever business you are in, there is an "SMS type" by-product just waiting for you to discover it, and which could become the mainstay of your business in the future.

It almost always begins as something small and seemingly inconsequential. Your job is to spot it... and to do so before others do!

I haven't asked you this lately, but you've heard me say it time and again: What do you SEE? You don't have to tell us here, just keep those eyes open for by-products and more...

Now I hope you saw last Friday that we launched our long-awaited "Kwesé GoGettaz" competition where we're looking to give two winners $100,000 investment each into their social or for-profit venture, as well as work with me and our team in our Kwesé offices in Johannesburg for two weeks in January 2018. Please note:

# We decided to give you a little more time. The deadline to complete Quiz #1 is now Friday 1 September. I want you all to have a very good shot at the Grand Prize... Keep trying!

# Start and complete the quiz. I know thousands of you are visiting our sites to do your homework. Remember: for you to actually win, you must complete the quiz.

# Only your overall score on ALL four contests score matters. To proceed past Stage 1, you must complete all four quizzes. However, if you didn't get full scores so far, that's just more reason for you to dive into the next three. Don't be disappointed. Stay in the game!

# Women stand an equal chance. So far only 22% of those participating in the quiz are women... Remember, the two grand prizes will go to one man and one woman!

# Have an ongoing venture. As I've written before, we will not accept pitches for "ideas" for the Grand Prize. However, you don't have to run an already-registered business or non-profit to qualify (although that's fine). You need only have an ongoing venture, for which you have clear intentions to formally register should you win the grand prize.

Unlike in business, this contest is FREE and there's nothing to lose by trying.

It's your choice: stay on the shoreline or start swimming?

End.

20/08/2017

Your turn...
___Kwesé competition launches today!

Have you been doing your homework? I hope so, because today is finally the launch of our Kwesé Inc competition, open to people from anywhere in the world, an opportunity to compete to win a $100,000 investment into your business or not-for-profit organization, and spend two weeks interacting and working with me and our team at Kwesé offices in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The two people selected to win this competition (one woman and one man) will become inaugural Kwesé Entrepreneur Fellows in January 2018.

The competition has been designed for contestants to apply some of the lessons learned on my page over the years, including:

1. The importance of research and doing your homework.
Only contestants who take a close look at our Kwesé websites and Apps, and have studied my Facebook posts, will be able to answer all the questions correctly.

2. Attention to detail.
Remember: you must complete all FOUR quizzes in Stage One to be eligible to win one of the two $100,000 grand prizes. If you miss competing in even one quiz, you won't be eligible to move to Stage Two. There are no exceptions. Carefully read and agree to the Terms and Conditions before you get started on the first quiz.

3. The 3Ps: Product. Process. People.
If you become one of our Kwesé Entrepreneur Fellows this year, you'll have full exposure to learning about Kwesé Products; the Processes we have built for our customers throughout Africa to enjoy our amazing premium and exclusive content; and, to meet the talented, visionary People on our team.

4. How to pitch to investors.
Only 10 finalists will win the opportunity to pitch their business or organization (either for-profit or not-for-profit) via 2-3 minute video. Everyone else on this platform can analyze and vote like the "sharks" on "Shark Tank" for the finalist that impresses them most when they view their pitches (and to learn from the experience of being on the Shark side of the tank)...

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

A new quiz will be posted each Friday at noon (12pm), Central African Time for the next four Fridays. The first quiz is live NOW. The last quiz will be posted on Friday, 8 September and close on 15 September. Note: each quiz will close when the next one opens.

# You can (and should!) refer to the relevant Kwesé site or App (as well as my previous Facebook posts) in the process of researching answers and completing the quiz.
# You can take as long as you need to complete each quiz, but the faster you are at each one, the better your chances of making it to the top 10.

We've talked a lot this year about swimming with sharks. Now is finally the time... Are YOU ready to jump in? If so, please do your homework, then follow this link to: win.kwese.com for the first quiz.

Let the battle begin!

End.

16/08/2017

The biggest secrets for turning your small business into a big business (Part 3)
__When you get knocked down, get back up.

Sometimes in life, you get knocked down by something you do not expect, despite all your advance planning and hard work. It can be heartbreaking. In London last week at the IAAF World Championships, a virus knocked several athletes out of their events. Some had trained for years and even decades for that big day, then didn't even get a chance to compete and lose... they had to watch from the sidelines, even worse!

A few athletes came back to win glorious Gold Medals after years of injuries. Others were expected to get the Gold in historic races but didn't, maybe getting "only" a Silver or Bronze... And then there's what happened in the last race of the great running legend Usain Bolt... who just literally got knocked to the ground by a hamstring cramp as I was starting to think about this next post.

Life when things like this happen can be heart-wrenching.

The choice of what you do next is what ultimately determines your destiny -- whether in business, in sport, or wherever you are or do in life.

Sometimes it's entirely out of your control, like an illness or injury, drought or earthquake, or even a war. Other times, it's you and you alone who made a wrong judgment call.

The late writer Maya Angelou once said something like this: "You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated."

# Never let yourself be defeated.

If you want the "thrill of victory" as the old saying goes from the Wide World of Sports, you have to be prepared to bounce back from the agony of defeat, time and again.

If you choose to turn your small business into a big business, one thing I can guarantee is that things will not always turn out like you planned, and things will definitely go wrong from time to time. You may lose for a short while or even for a long while, but...

# Never let yourself be defeated.

The main difference between most of the greatest characters in history and everyone else? The choices they made after they got knocked down.

Notice I keep saying the word "choose." Getting back up is a choice. "Course correcting" when you need to, is a choice. Giving up is a choice. Innovating is a choice. Remembering that your business must have a life separate from you, like we talked about a few weeks ago, that is a choice, too...

What do YOU think are main differences between a business destined to stay small and one that eventually grows huge? I can tell you one: Mindset.

__If you get knocked down, you must choose to get back up:

# Re-do your homework.
# Seek advice from credible and trusted people, and don't just listen to what you want to hear.
# Reflect and re-analyze.
# Extract the valuable lessons learned.
# Dust yourself off, if you haven't already!
# Then move forward, onward and upward, this time with more wisdom and experience.

This is how you will transform your small business into an institution.

To be continued. . .

07/08/2017

The biggest secrets for turning your small business into a big business (Part 2)
__Our ultimate objective as entrepreneurs is to turn our businesses into institutions.

All around us are businesses that have been around for decades, and some even for hundreds of years. The entrepreneurs who built these businesses are long gone, yet the companies continue to innovate by generating new products and services, sometimes expanding into humongous organizations.

Many of the founders would be totally astounded if they were ever to return and see what they started!

How do these companies survive and thrive without their founders?

__These companies have been able to re-invent themselves continuously and find new entrepreneurial leadership to take them forward.

As an exercise, why don't you draw a list of companies that you deal with, or know that have been there for a long time. Ask yourself, "Who started this company?"

All these great companies were once started by young entrepreneurs just like you are right now. Long before they became global economic powerhouses, young entrepreneurs toiled for years to get capital, to hire people... Well, to deal with all the challenges YOU are dealing with right now!

Have you ever stopped to imagine just how much profit companies like Coca-Cola, Barclays Bank, Boeing, Mercedes-Benz, and many others have generated since their founders died?

___Where do those profits go now, since some of their founders no longer even have heirs to the great wealth machines they created?

These giant companies are listed on stock exchanges in the country of their founders, as well as other global exchanges. Their shares are now mostly owned by pension funds, and insurance companies, as well as private individuals. You might even be enjoying some of the profits through your pension fund, or insurance policy!

You'll often hear politicians from the countries where these companies come from talk proudly refer to "our" companies or "our" national assets, or "our" champions... and let me tell you, those politicians will go out and fight for those companies to ensure they're successful, because they know they bring lasting prosperity and national prestige back to the mother country.

__Africa has to build its own, just like China, India, Brazil and many others are now doing. We have to build and support our own wealth creation machines -- companies that will fight in the global market place for us, even after the founder has long gone. And we have to do this without protectionism and xenophobia.

There are a number of simple things we have to do. Here are just a few:

#1. The entrepreneurs who build these companies must build them for the LONG term. This means we (as entrepreneurs) must first allow the business to become separate from us (as I said in Part One of this series). Then allow the business to become an institution that could function effectively without us (as founding entrepreneurs).

#2. We must allow our businesses to hire professionals (some of whom will be entrepreneurs themselves).

#3. We must ensure the company has an institutional DNA that allows it to grow even without us as founders.

This calls for citizens to see beyond the entrepreneurs who set them up. This isn't easy in Africa, because our historical experience was from multinational companies that we saw as belonging to others.

__It calls for a change of mindset towards our own companies, particularly by policy makers.

For example, you might not like the flamboyant guy who runs around with a flashy car, but what if he leaves behind your country's own Apple? (There were a lot of people who thought Steve Jobs was arrogant and anti-social when he was alive, but let me tell you, the American economy is oiled by billions generated today by the company he left them).

We must think beyond the individual who sets up and runs a business (even if we don't like their lifestyle or political views). Our common "wealth" will come from our ability to support the institutional development of our own African companies!

At the national level, we must start looking at the businesses created by our entrepreneurs, irrespective of their size today, as "national enterprises." There should be no difference between so called "private" enterprise and a state-owned company. They are both national enterprises, even if they are foreign owned (100%).

(I don't teach politics; I teach economic national prosperity.)

As an exercise today, I would like you to list some national and pan-African businesses that you believe are or will become our future African champions. I want to see a minimum of 10 such companies from you!

One day you will be as proud of an African company as China is proud of Huawei and America is of Coca-Cola.

To be continued. . .

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