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| iHub Kenya |
Njeri Rionge had
asked me to speak about the private equity and venture capital industry in
Africa - which I write about on www.africa-assets.com - and the nascent ICT
industry in Kenya at her Ignite 'Scaling Your Business Upwards Summit' last
week in Nairobi.
I
gave the participants a short overview of the private equity sector and looked
at some of the issues that particular affect SMEs considering that kind of
investment. Making the link to Kenya's nascent ICT industry, I argued that I
expected to see far more traction in those companies who don't get that much
enthusiastic media coverage, and who also don't run from pitch event and
competition to the next.
I actually
suspect there may be an inverse relationship between IHub-related buzz and the
potential for PE/VC investment. My Africa Assets partner Rachel cited a speaker
at the DEMO Africa investor roundtable that also took place in Nairobi recently
(how do people get any work done with all these conferences?): 'There's hype
and then there's business.' Rachel found that 'The event was well-attended, but
the message was clear: Nairobi's Silicon Savannah' is in
desperate need of a large dose not of money, but of modesty.'
I keep coming
back to this subject: a lot of policy discussions, whether on government or on
donor level, had focused, and continue to focus on, entrepreneurship. Of course
this is necessary to develop an economy; there is no question about that. But I
find that there is often very little thought as to whether entrepreneurship
really is for everyone. In the past, vast aid programmes concentrated on
fostering 'income-generating projects' at the so-called 'grassroots' level -
are these necessarily enterprises or, as Tom Dichter once called them, survival
activities?
These days, much
attention by do-gooders is given to turning smart youngsters with laptops into
tech-preneurs. Is this realistic? Not every mobile app is actually a company,
nor is every techie an entrepreneur. Yes, the idea of building a website on
your kitchen table that later becomes a global enterprise with more profit than
Kenya's entire GDP is alluring - but how realistic is that? I find in much of
the foundation, World Bank and other funding that goes into this sector, there
is very little attention being given to the old-school approach of, yawn, being
employed.
This
is not an either-or question. There's nothing wrong with entrepreneurship - the
more, the merrier. But even if you end up being an entrepreneur, or plan to do
so, there's an enormous lot to be learned from working in a company that can
make you a better entrepreneur: technical skills, people skills, management
skills and, if you're with the right company, work experience in other
countries and cultures. And if you happen not to be entrepreneur material, then
you want to be an employee who's skilled and in demand.
So now, ladies
and gentlemen, hold on to your sofa, clutch your pearls, grab your coffee mug
tightly, because I'm going to do this: I'm going to stop the snark for a moment
and say something nice. No, really. Because I found some encouraging corporate
initiatives recently:
SAP, for example,
have committed to training 100 'bright but underprivileged students' to become
certified SAP software engineers. SAP will do this in partnership with the ICT
Board and the Multi Media University.
Oddly, there was
a bit of a flap on the KICTAnet mailing list about this - what about
open-source software, what about local solutions, what about brain drain? Yes,
what about it? Hell, training for 100 kids out of tens or hundreds of thousands
who are looking for a job? In an area where they can work globally? What are we
even arguing about? Here's what I find important: 'The programme will seek to
substantially improve the employability of young, bright university graduates.
' Employability
is good. Actually, employability is great, especially if it's global
employability. You prefer open-source software? Knock yourself out - train 100
kids. 100 kids are a drop in the Indian Ocean. And since listers also
complained about expensive foreign consultants being flown in, surely this is
the way to go if you want to make sure that this kind of work is done by
Kenyans, whether here or abroad (one woman's brain drain is another woman's
remittances).
I
also really like the Equity Bank scholarships. Equity Bank recently published
the list of students they support and the universities they send them to: it's
an impressive selection of some of the most respected universities like Harvard
and MIT - and interestingly also Ghana's Ashesi University.
A Forbes article
says this about Ashesi's founder, Patrick Awuah: 'He first thought he would
start some sort of business to help economic development; but when he visited,
he noticed his experience being educated at Swarthmore and working at Microsoft
built critical thinking, leadership, and practical skills that were missing
from his secondary school peers who stayed.'
Sending people to
university (or SAP trainings) will obviously not be the only way of building an
economy, but I really like these initiatives to make sure that young Kenyans
get some of the best of what the global economy and global corporate have
produced. And I have no doubt that many of them will turn these opportunities
into gains for Kenya.
By Andrea Bohnstedt
The Star Kenya