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In few weeks, I will be traveling to South Africa, as part of the international speakers in Tech4Africa. While in South Africa, I expect to experience this trend: young men hoping to make money through entrepreneurship. They want to establish companies, become moguls and have good lives. Of course, I am a believer in entrepreneurship, and have written extensively on that in many works, including one in Harvard Business Review that was well received.
Entrepreneurship is a new development model which organizations like World Bank, UN and IMF are aggressively pushing across Africa. In Kenya, with the arrival of mPayment system, everyone is praising the government because easy payment will offer a new vista in entrepreneurship. The thinking is like this: as the nation has more entrepreneurs, more jobs will be created, and more economic growth experienced.
What if I write that Africa does not need more entrepreneurs? Are these entrepreneurs truly inspired or just young men without alternatives than starting companies? Do they know that more entrepreneurs may not, necessarily, signal good things for a nation? The more entrepreneurs a nation has, the more you can figure out that country is poor! That Nigeria has more artisans and entrepreneurs than U.S. does not make the nation better. Most times, opening these companies is a sign of desperation than a mission to make a society better.
When a young man is not educated, he has no other option than to go into business since that is the only option to make a living. It does not mean that is the best thing that can happen to a society. Most of the subsistence farmers, artisans and others in the informal economy are not entrepreneurs, they are people that want to hang on and just survive. I will prefer a banker that finds an opportunity in selling vegetable, resigns, and begins that business, than a young man that never finished secondary school selling one.
The development organizations while making a valid point that entrepreneurship is a vital instrument for wealth and prosperity must emphasis what it can offer any society. Of course, these organizations are more focused to get people to help themselves than building and expanding an economy. Nigeria’s economic growth is not going to come from the entrepreneurs – not anytime soon. And scholars need to make these distinctions.
The big companies will continue to hire and drive the GDP growth. The startups where they survive rarely do much – they hire people, but how many? The big companies are the major drivers in expanding the GDP. We have had hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs before the boom of the telecommunication sector in early 2000s. Until those big firms came in and put money in the economy, our GDP did not make any progress. If Intel decides to invest in Nigeria, the impact could be more than what one million entrepreneurs in the nation could generate. That means we need to pursue those big firms if we want progress in the country.
It remains an illusion to graduate from an African university and go straight to business, without working to build networks and get experiences. The students cite Bill Gates and recently Mark Zuckerberg, as motivators. Little did they know that the secondary school that Bill Gates attended was far better than any university in Africa, at least in computing, then! That before 1975, Bill Gates had access to computers with people that could teach him computing – how many companies or schools in Africa, then, had one computer as an asset? Mark in his case attended one of the best secondary schools in the world and was good for Harvard University. In secondary school, he had access to create a million dollar product, before Facebook, that many companies wanted to buy, but he turned the offers down. If you imagine them to be dropouts, you are wrong. They are prepared and educated to succeed and any student that is mimicking these guys in Africa is not living on reality.
Guys get education and get some experiences. Then think of startups. Do not graduate and start hanging around hoping to hit big. Get a job FIRST. Work for someone, at least five years. Learn how companies function. Learn how your managers make decisions. You need to be ready because when you start, it is possible, you will not have money to hire all these experts. So, you will become the “experts” in these areas. That means you need to be prepared.
What Africa needs is to make sure that we have fewer entrepreneurs and train people to have choices in life. We need to improve our education so that when people graduate, they will have choices. Those choices will include being employable and of course, going into business. They need to be equipped so that we do not have poorly prepared entrepreneurs. The fewer entrepreneurs I see in Africa, the better it is for our competitiveness. Why? The best skills and networks are still obtained from working for others and unless you have worked before starting your business, your startups may never be tier 1. Yes, getting yourself employable by others is one reason why your business could succeed. We must make a distinction and make people aware that more startups collapse in Nigeria than succeed.
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Good perspective.
“I have never allowed my eduction to interfere with my schooling.”-Mark Twain.
Mr Ekekwe, I do not like the tone of your article at all. It is Africans like you that bring shame to our continent. You delibrately insult the system in other to get a gig to speak at a show or conference. I would write an article on my blog soon about you and people like you. Your kind that is only interested in insulting Africa so that you can be called to speak at conferences and improve your profile. You have written everywhere on the internet that you have 4 masters and 2 Phd’s. Yet, you have not told anyone what you have achived by this outrageous pursuit of education. Your inferiority complex made you pursue degrees like there was no tomorrow and now you want everybody to do the same thing. We Africans are aware that our universites are trailing behind but this does not mean that you should rubbish us and our minor accomplishments especialy if the goal is to gain web credence. I have already started writing my article about you and your kind. The world would be better if everyone knows the truth.
Thanks Tunde, this is Bode, the Senior Editor of Tekedia. We will be happy to publish your piece unedited on tekedia. We are waiting for your URL.
But note that Tekedia has a policy not to attack people; we share ideas here. We will not insult you and please do not make any idea personal.
Hope to read from you.
Hey Tunde, you seem to have missed the whole point. On Dr Ekekwe, do not go there because you will destroy yourself.
Ekekwe was from FUTO – he was best in his class and very bright. In FUTO he founded his 1st company, FUTO Bubbles. He had jobs as best student b4 graduation. He left them to find Ultinet systems. He later moved to DIamond Bank and working full time got 2 masters (UNICAL and FUTA) and started his 1st phd. As Phd student in Johns Hopkins, he was running two companies AFRIT and Fasmicro. he is a Professor in Babcock Uni (Nigeria) and Design Manager in a Fortune 500 company. He has written many books. one won book of year award.
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ekekwe is a young man who has demonstrated himself in business, education and industry. you need to be careful how you write about b/4 you seem to come as a bad guy.
i do not understand why you should not be proud of dr ekekwe. check your head. do you know he authored Nigeria’s visioon 2020 – microelectronics area? and he has a patent on robotics.
this is my mentor and please stay away. if you want more, i can prove why he is a legend to me and many others. if you know what it takes to wrire in HBR, you will be happy you can read him free.
hahaha – Tunde, you have not met this guy. He is the humblest mammal in the world. If you know Ndubuisi, you will fall in love with him. He is down to earth despite his pedigree. In 2009, he was in UNILAG to run some microelectronics workshops – all free. I attended the program. Ndubuisi spoke for hours with no note. There were equations from his brain that I did not know people could memorize. The good stuff is that when he was done, he helped us. Prof Ekekwe helped me on my final year project . He visited 23 universities and 42 small companies. See the photos here http://afrit.org/si.aspx
The Ndubuisi I saw has no inferiority complex. He was simply a bright guy that could do anything better than Tunde Ademola. I swear that if you come to school, he will beat you, company, he will and you have no chance.
My problem with him remains which is that he needs to relocate to Nigeria because we need people like him to build Nigeria. This article is what we need. do not be confused when govt gives N50k and ask graduates to go and build companies as they do in rivers state.
Tunde,
do not attack people, make your case without ad homen. hope to read your rejoinder and pls post the link. also, if you want to know about the author, you can find out.
Very informative, fresh and provacative. It is possible that if the government understands this, we can get policy right. Nice perspective from one of Africa’s top minds.
Thanks for being blunt in sharing this valuable information. Your article resonates with my own experience at working at the grassroots for five years before understanding how things work. Pursue a masters in governance and sustainable development to contribute to capacity building at the local level.
At least for Africa this is very helpful. Nowadays we are hearing young people blaming themselves for spending some time studying because they think it doesn’t get them anywhere. Education then experience is the route then everything else will come afterwards.
Aww! Mr. Tunde missed the point by a wide gap. What Dr. Ekekwe is emphasizing is education, quality education. Whether it is certificated or not is irrelevant.
True entrepreneurs are highly informed people with high level of creative and leadership energy.
They are a class of people who cross-pollinate ideas and transmute them into elevating values and thus push the frontier of civilization.
Without the rigours of true education of the mind, society is robbed of the true entrepreneurial class, and this is true.
I have not met Dr. Ekekwe personally, but I have kept track of his achievements in the world of entrepreneurship and education. Lets say he has done well!