AFRICAPITALISM- LIVING THE  AFRICAN                                  DREAM

 

Launching the initiative in the year 2010 the originator of the word AFRICAPITALISM and president TONY Elumelu Foundation Mr. Tony Elumelu said “that is the heart of Africapitalism: long term investments that creates economic prosperity (a commercial objective), as well as social wealth.” The concept with its root from a proven business tycoon is extremely important to be considered as it is for functional evaluation to see how well it has fared since its inception.

Taking a look at his work “africapitalism- the path to economic prosperity and social wealth” Elumelu states “Let me be clear. I do not suggest that entrepreneurs should build companies in Africa or that capitalists should invest in Africa out of goodwill, in essence because they are the economic equivalent of Father Christmas. I suggest that Africa offers compelling economic and business opportunities that can, at the same time, meet a range of social objectives. In fact, over the past decade we have seen that, in many respects, private sector development has much greater potential to improve self sufficiency and prosperity in both the economic and social spaces of Africa than charity and development assistance ever have, or ever could. Unfortunately, the story heard about Africa is more often about the charity than the prosperity, something we hope to dispel through our words and our actions.”

Stemming from two words Africa and Capitalism Africapitalism has always proposed hope to the ever increasing faith of the average African that has every iota of belief in his or her action geared towards the advancement of Africa both industrially socially and capitally, from the stories of Simdul Shagaya who with the mentality of building Nigeria’s version of amazon.com started konga.com an online retail outlet from relatively nothing to the emerging giants of the various online business outlets the word africapitalism might not be familiar with everyone but an unconscious resonation still rings and vibrates around to exude the awakening of an emerging company of entrepreneurs that would portray Africans not as the previously manacled slaves but frontiers of a 21^st century business hub .

 

So truly what can africapitalism offer beyond the publicity it has brought? just as we look at its prospects and the opportunities it presents when followed not as other government policies  that has been talked about religiously but as a lifeline and panacea for making Africa a home of productive investments let us consider the following facts.

THE MTANGA FARMS IN SOUTHERN TANZANIA, EAST AFRICA

 

 

 Based on Elumelu’s concept ‘’the idea of Africapitalism gains resonance, validity, and momentum. It exhorts Africa’s entrepreneurs to join the campaign and put their ingenuity and innovation to work in order to be amply rewarded. It invites investors — foreign and domestic — to be forward-thinking and look for long-term investments where doing well delivers value to the bottom line.”

So in other words it promotes the concept of financial and economic responsibility amongst Africans and enables a right thinking frame of mind enhancing our abilities and promoting the concept of thinking out of the box so that we get to know that the era of we waiting for foreigners to come and fix our economic needs like job and wealth creation and not just that where everyone clusters around a business idea because of its numerous pecuniary potentials is now moribund.

This is an era where even a little business initiative with the right goal can create a lot of economic traffic once it is backed up with proper concepts can meet the needs of the teeming population thereby creating jobs and even creating a market where none existed before. Individuals taking maximum advantage of the already laid down advancements coming into Africa like the recently launched $100 million entrepreneurship grant by the Tony Elumelu Foundation to build a new Africa where we do not depend on charity to survive but promote productivity to improve because the destructive effect of charity is that it recycles poverty.

Hence, beginning from the smallest of all opportunities to start up a business the goal behind it should not be a short distant aim of making profit but that even the space be maximized so that through it many can put food on their table not only through charity but by employment of labor because when ideas like these are been promoted then truly we can have an Africa we can call our own.

 So from story of Jack Ma who left teaching English language to become one of the world richest men establishing Alibaba a Chinese online business, Africans can come not just by creating a market but can arrive at the center stage of creating a new need for the world at large. Enough of the slave mentality where we expect others to come and fix the state of our environs for us because the perils of colonialism has been like apparitions haunting the development of Africa where what we have as natural resources are best known in their crude forms to us than the refined products we import after exporting them.

 Hence in conclusion the concept of capitalism promotes we seeing Africa as a fecund land of many opportunities and then actively investing in them to make it a better one which posterity would never fail to reward our actions because in the taking of giant steps towards advancement it is better to see the glass half full rather than half empty. Happy Sunday