Change the entire World through Novelty
Some good time back, at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, a team of scientists led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) scientist Professor Vivian Alberts achieved a breakthrough after 13 years of long research. The breakthrough invention by Professor Vivian Alberts formerly at the University of Johannesburg, which uses a micro-thin metallic film, has made solar electricity five times less expensive than solar photovoltaic cells. For the first time, solar electricity is economically feasible and cheaper than coal. Global sales for solar panels are forecast to be over $200 billion by 2020.
The great Professor Vivian Alberts strongly believed in the future of alternative energy sources, particularly the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. He should lead Africa’s solar strategy and also set up Africa’s Solar Institute.Besides conducting fundamental material research, the group with the great Dr. Alberts has also developed the unique ability to produce and evaluate completed solar cell devices and mini-modules. This applied field of physics is relevant from an academic as well as an industrial point of view. The group actively collaborates with various national and international groups and receives financial support from the NRF and Volkswagen Foundation in Germany.
A Silicon Valley is nothing more than a refugee camp of revolutionaries who couldn’t get a hearing elsewhere. Young African entrepreneurs from all walks of life, must try their hands at just about everything, and they must learn this at an early age and the sooner they learn how to turn anything into an opportunity the better it is for all of Africa. Young people must be encouraged to venture into new frontiers, without the fear of punishment because of failure. They must know that within failure lies the next opportunity that could possibly change the entire world through novelty. African entrepreneurs must be independent thinkers with an inner believe in their own abilities to create and initiate opportunities beyond the ordinary. “What we need is not an economy of hands or heads, but an economy of hearts. Every employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will actually make a genuine difference.” Gary Hamel, 2002, Leading the Revolution
The refugee camp of revolutionaries called the Silicon Valley brings dreamers, thinkers and fenders together. Like Europe, America, India and China Africa has plenty of dreamers and thinkers, but Africa doesn’t have its own team of independent venture capital firms that is African in character and globally experienced. “Over the past four quarters—even as the depths of the nation’s economic problems became evident—venture capitalists invested more than $7 billion in seed and early-stage companies in more than 1,400 deals, according to the MoneyTree Report from the National Venture Capital Assn. and that’s more money raised by young companies than in any calendar year since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001”, wrote John Tozzi, 2008 December, BusinessWeek.
The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have the infrastructure and experience to set-up venture funding agencies in Africa. These irrelevant and outdated agencies must take a different view to partnering with the African continent; they must prioritize the development of an entrepreneurship culture in Africa. I agree with President Jacob Zuma as he addressed the General Assembly of the UN this week, he said that they are irrelevant. Somehow it seems that those who manage funding in Africa use the same funding models that get used in Europe or America. Financial assistance for entrepreneurs in a primary and meaningful way represents an opportunity for the United Nations and the World Bank to re-invent itself and in the process assist Africa with lasting entrepreneurship development for the continent. Africa’s economic development needs huge amounts of capital from venture funding agencies that are based on the African continent.
The role of venture funding needs to be viewed based upon the future focus business entities that mushroomed into global success stories in the United States, Europe and Asia. The illustrious list includes Microsoft, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Nokia, and Apple. Africa’s think tank on entrepreneurship must take a closer look at business industries such as waste management, solar and wind energy and the wide list of biotech firms involved in areas such neuropsychiatry, nephrology, immunology, and cardiology. If the international agencies lack the political will to change the face of Africa, role players on the continent must engage media groups like BusinessWeek and private equity investors firms in the United States to stimulate entrepreneurship amongst the local and of critical importance is to need to set-up regional equity firms in Africa?
CapStar, a 47-employee bank founded in Nashville in July, raised an initial $25 million from private equity investor Corsair Capital and an additional $62.5 million in common stock. The bank, which claims to be the highest capitalized start-up bank in Tennessee history, focuses on small and midsize businesses, commercial real estate, and personal banking. It estimates bringing in $1.2 million in revenues in 2008. Regional blocks such as the South African Development Community (SADAC) need to identify a pool of young regional equity funding specialist with the view of educating them through private equity firms like CapStar.
One of the United Nations and World Bank success stories is found in Nigerian amongst the waste. Cows to Kilowatts have found a clean way to convert slaughterhouse waste into bio-fuel for household cooking and electricity. Instead of smelly, inefficient traditional waste-treatment methods, Cows to Kilowatts offers a bio-reactor system that turns organic waste into cheap, non-polluting fuel. As a bonus, the system churns out environmentally friendly fertilizer from the remaining sludge.
The Cows to Kilowatts partnership built its first plant in Ibadan to treat slaughterhouse waste with a $500,000 grant from the U.N. Development Program.
The company then raised an additional $200,000 from a World Bank competition and used it to build a bio-reactor to generate electricity from cassava waste in the Nigerian city of Ilorin.
The Ibadan plant, which generates around 1,800 cubic meters of bio-gas per day, already provides affordable cooking gas to 5,400 homes. The plant is expected to be profitable within two years. The initiative is also reducing pollution inside the homes of poor families because the cooking gas it sells is cleaner than commonly used fuels. Now, Cows to Kilowatts is raising money to replicate the Ibadan plant in other African cities in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and South Africa. Cows to Kilowats made international headlines when it was named as one the Tech Pioneers chosen by the World Economic Forum.
The global film industry is one of the biggest money spinners that have so much potential for young African producers, directors, script writers and actors. African cinema despite all its beautiful landscape, wildlife and safaris are ignored and under-utilized. Public interest in African movies is not growing at the rate it should. The limited exposure and financial support African producers, directors and actors get from government agencies and private sector investment on the continent is to detriment of Africa and its people. ‘Bollywood’ is a major force in the global movie industry for the Indian government, private investors and media has taken the time to create Superstars out of the local Indian actors. ‘Bollywood’s’ run-away success formula is built around culture, tradition, diversity, plenty of dance and a simple story line that speaks to the billions of Indians in India and the rest of the world.
African governments must think about the entrepreneurial benefits for Africa when it comes to movies, in other words, they must think what return on investment would be forthcoming for the continent, how many jobs it would create for the locals. Movies are a powerful tool of marketing and promoting a loving and peaceful Africa. Africa’s movie strategy should focus on setting up animation studios, promoting the majesty of the African continent, the people, culture and everything else African that is majestic and beautiful.
Global sport can be viewed as one of the biggest money making industry, tennis, soccer and even athletics is experiencing phenomenal growth in Europe and America. Poorly skilled and under qualified sports administrators are appointed by their political masters to ensure the political goals are achieved as priority number one while the national standard regresses. Priority number one for any sports administrator must be the improvement of the performance of our African athletes and sports stars.
In a nutshell, this means the appointment of the best candidate capable of achieving the desired priority of making African sport the best in the world. African governments must invest vast sums of money in development of African sports administration as a commitment to unlocking entrepreneurial opportunities for Africans in Africa. African superstars need to be managed by African Sports Administrators who like the superstars pour money back into the continent and the empowerment of its citizens.
Every year billions of rand’s are bumped into the field of health and medical research in countries all over Africa by American and European companies. They conduct studies on various diseases that include Malaria, yellow fever, East African sleeping sickness, and lethal HIV/AIDS. The data and findings they extract from the costly research, becomes the birth place of new patents in the medical world. Africa is the incubator of the world’s pharmaceutical and medical world; with the trail and test that are conducted these firms are in position to create new medicine for an ever growing patient that include Malaria, yellow fever, East African sleeping sickness, and lethal HIV/AIDS. As is the case in mining African, entrepreneurs must seize the opportunity within the fields of health and medicine. African entrepreneurs cannot wait upon governments who have failed to provide even the most basic of health services for the millions of poor people. American and European companies think about creating new products for new consumers which equals entrepreneurial thinking. Let’s act and think entrepreneurial, Africa.
The emerging view from leading climate change scientists is that we have a window to commence effective action against climate change and finding alternatives energy sources without harming Mother Earth. Energy security and climate should be dominant features of public discourse and entrepreneurial thinking in Africa to promote entrepreneurial innovations that shape our collective contribution to the global effort to promote sustainable growth through cleaner energy. I am watching with abate breath on the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting findings regarding humanities contribution to global warming. Infect, it’s already known that it’s “Extremely likely” that humans contribute 95% to global warming. Friday just gone by, a report by the world’s most renowned scientists regarding the current state of climate was released.
Two Live-Fuels based in the United States is one of several companies trying to produce low-cost bio-fuel from algae. Why algae? Since it grows in water, an algae farm doesn’t eat up valuable farmland like corn, which is used to make ethanol. And because it grows through cell division, algae can be harvested every few hours—theoretically yielding as many as 20,000 gallons of oil per acre, per year. In fact, it appears that algae can generate more biomass—and oil—than nearly any other vegetation. Africa has loads of algae farms waiting to be harvested, if entrepreneurs are not guided in this direction Africa could end up buying alternative energy from the West in the future. Let us change our world through originality, freshness and imagination.
Anthony Phillip Williams
Editor: SMME XCLUSIVE MAGAZINE
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