mahawa kamara

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mahawa kamara I bring the tools, mindset, and process to guide your next move.

Business Strategist | Founder of Soap Connoisseur & Connoisseur Consults
I help entrepreneurs and small business owners gain clarity, restructure their strategies, and confidently grow.

On Saturday 12 December, The Capital & Business Lab comes to Freetown, the room where Sierra Leonean business and diasp...
08/09/2026

On Saturday 12 December, The Capital & Business Lab comes to Freetown, the room where Sierra Leonean business and diaspora investors sit at one table and do the actual work: how capital really moves here, and how to build a business that can receive it.

Not a conference. Not panels. A half-day working lab.

Three gateways. One working session each:

→ Capital gateways — how to structure what you already have

→ Business protection — a live business health diagnostic. You leave with a real assessment, not a certificate.

→ Market gateways — how to get seen and grow in this economy

You'll also hear the first findings from our field research: 100+ Freetown business owners, one question — how does money actually move through a business here? The pattern was loud: cash-rich, structure-poor.

We are not asking you to believe in Sierra Leone. We are showing you how to operate in it.

📅 Saturday 12 December · 10:00 am

📍 Lagoonda Resort, Aberdeen, Freetown

Registration is live — all the details at the link. Or comment SEAT and we'll DM you everything.

https://lnkd.in/eCKzbjVy

20/08/2026

LIVE TODAY on Gem Media 🇸🇱

We are joined by Mahawa Kamara, Founder of Connoisseur Consults Sierra Leone.

Mahawa works inside businesses across Freetown, building the operational systems that decide whether a business survives and grows. She works closely with diaspora owners running businesses from abroad, and she has a direct message for anyone who has sent money home and watched it disappear.

Her view is that Sierra Leone does not have an investment problem. Capital already comes in. What is missing is the structure to absorb it and turn it into something that works.

We will be talking about why businesses here work so hard and still struggle, what happens to money once it arrives, and what actually makes a business survive.

Tune in 9 PM UK Bring your questions.

17/08/2026

Spending is easy. Anyone can spend.

Deployment is different. Deployment is what the money becomes once it lands.

The money arrives on a Tuesday. What happens on Wednesday? Who touches it, who decides, who records it, who answers for it.

That is the difference between spending capital and deploying it. 🇸🇱

I didn't start out in business. I was a social worker in the UK.Which is a stranger route into business consultancy than...
16/08/2026

I didn't start out in business. I was a social worker in the UK.

Which is a stranger route into business consultancy than it sounds, except social work teaches you one thing above all others: look underneath the presenting problem. The thing in front of you is rarely the thing that is actually wrong.

I came back to Sierra Leone and started doing the obvious thing that almost nobody does. Going into businesses and finding out what was actually happening inside them.

Hundreds of conversations later, the same pattern kept appearing. Businesses with real potential, real effort, often real capital, quietly failing for reasons nobody was naming.

That is why I do this. Not because I love spreadsheets, though I do. Because somebody has to look underneath. 🇸🇱

The business structure you need to survive in Sierra Leone is not the one in the textbook. 🇸🇱I keep meeting businesses t...
15/08/2026

The business structure you need to survive in Sierra Leone is not the one in the textbook. 🇸🇱

I keep meeting businesses that bought the system and never used it. Paid for the software. Wrote the procedure. Hired the consultant. And nothing changed.

Because the problem was never the system. It was adoption. And adoption in Sierra Leone is not a software question, it is a cultural and operational one.

Six slides on what actually holds a business together here, from working inside them.

It's not taught at Oxford. I said what I said.

15/08/2026

"So are you saying we shouldn't chase investment?"

The opposite. Chase it. Raise it. That work matters, and I'd never knock it.

Just don't stop there. Raising money is an achievement.

Making it work is a different discipline entirely, and we have built a whole ecosystem around the first one and almost nothing around the second. 🇸🇱

14/08/2026

Stage one is capital mobilisation. Getting the money in.

Remittances. Investment funds. Angel investors. Development finance. Grants. Loans.

It's a good conversation and a necessary one. Without capital, nothing starts.

But it's one stage of three, and it's the only one anyone talks about. 🇸🇱

06/08/2026

I spend a lot of time talking about what goes wrong. So let me say the other thing clearly.

You can absolutely do business successfully in Sierra Leone. I work with businesses doing it every day.

It just doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen on hope. It happens when there's structure underneath.

The narrative needs to change. Not to "it's easy," but to "it's possible, and here's how." 🇸🇱

Everyone is talking about how to get more investment into Sierra Leone. Almost nobody is asking what happens to the mone...
04/08/2026

Everyone is talking about how to get more investment into Sierra Leone. Almost nobody is asking what happens to the money once it lands.

Capital already comes in. Diaspora remittances. Investors. Development finance. Grants. What is missing is the operational capability to absorb it and turn it into a business that actually works.

Sierra Leone doesn't have an investment problem. It has an absorption problem.

Starting Thursday, 6 August, I'm running a three-part LinkedIn Live series: The Absorption Gap, why investing in Sierra Leone is not the same as doing business.

Here's the premise. When money goes into a business, it has to travel through three stages. Almost everyone camps on the first one and ignores the other two. That's why so much invested capital disappears.

Part 1, Thu 6 Aug, 7 pm: Getting the money in
Part 2, Thu 13 Aug, 7 pm: What happens when the money lands
Part 3, Thu 20 Aug, 7 pm: Did the money actually work?

Because Sierra Leone doesn't have an investment problem. It has an absorption problem. And I'm going to show you exactly what that means, one stage at a time.

Three Thursdays. 7 pm UK. Live, with Q&A. Follow along



https://www.linkedin.com/events/7487578771194155008?viewAsMember=true

This Saturday. 🇸🇱If you're building a business in Sierra Leone from abroad or you've tried before and watched it fall a...
16/07/2026

This Saturday. 🇸🇱

If you're building a business in Sierra Leone from abroad or you've tried before and watched it fall apart the moment you left this session is for you.

90 minutes, free, live. The legal setup, the financial structure, the systems that let a business run without you standing over it.

And how to protect your investment from the theft and loss that so many diaspora founders have been told is "just part of it."

It isn't just part of it. It's what happens when there's no operating system underneath the business.

That's exactly what I'll show you how to build.

Saturday 18 July, 11am UK. Free to register and you'll get the replay even if you can't make it live. Link : https://www.connoisseurconsults.com/how-to-build-a-business-in-sierra-leone-from-abroad

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