AFRICA: Open for Business by Carol Pineau

AFRICA: Open for Business by Carol Pineau

The founder of the Ruff ‘N’ Tumble children’s clothing line in Nigeria admits that combating corruption is a problem. ‘When you don’t know the rules you don’t know you are doing wrong,’ says Adenike Ogunlesi.

For Mohammed Yassin Olad, the founder and Chief Executive of Dallo Airlines in Somalia , ‘corruption is not a problem—because there is no government,’ he laughs. Somalia ’s new government, following the country’s civil war, has yet to take up residence and remains in exile in Kenya .

Never heard of these companies? Well, if you lived in Africa you might have. They feature in a remarkable new documentary Africa: Open for Business, filmed by CNN contributor Carol Pineau, the director and producer. The hour-long film offers inspiring stories of successful African entrepreneurs and private investors who are making good. It shows another reality of Africa beyond the images of disease, famine and poverty perpetuated in the Western media.

The film illustrates that Africa is viable, has capacity for good business, and can compete in the global economy. There is another side of the coin which rarely gets reported, Pineau believes. So she set out to do so. She gained funding from the World Bank to make the film, which was shown recently at a ‘Business Action for Africa’ conference in London, organized by the Commission for Africa . There were calls at the conference to ‘shock people with the good news’ coming out of Africa .

Mrs Ogunlesi founded the brilliantly-named children’s clothing business, Ruff ‘N’ Tumble, in Lagos in 1990. It has become a great success story and exports along the West African coast. But it is not looking to expand outside the continent as the African market is so huge. African children are demanding the Ruff ‘N’ Tumble label on their clothes the way kids in other continents look for the Nike tick on their trainers.

Daallo Airlines in Somalia began with a single Cessna aircraft in 1991, following the collapse of the Somali government. ‘Even in war and chaos business goes on,’ says its founder Mohammed Yassin Olad. ‘We don’t make a profit within Somalia but outside, to the Middle East and Europe (including Paris and London ) connecting Africa to the global village.’

The cell phone network Vodocom Congo , based in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, claimed 850,000 subscribers when Pineau filmed its founder, Alieu Conteh, in August 2004. By July 2005 it had grown to 1.2 million customers. The company, launched in 2003, has half of the country’s market share and employs 350 people, with a knock-on employment effect that benefits 5,000 people. ‘When I make money I reinvest it back in the country,’ says Conteh. Cell phones are now so popular among villagers that one city doctor told him, ‘Everyone is calling me from the villages.’

Homegrown, based in Naivasha , Kenya , exports 13,000 tons of flowers and other produce a year to UK supermarkets. A jumbo jet flies out every single night with 40 tons. Within two days of being cut, fresh roses are on sale in Marks and Spencer in London . The company, which employs 7,000 people, provides a market for 800 Kenyan growers, and is committed to ‘corporate social responsibility’ in its treatment of its employees and suppliers.

Pineau’s film also features Pictoon, an animation studio in Dakar, Senegal; the Shining Century garment company in Lesotho, which exports clothes such as the Old Navy and Footlocker brands to the American market; an adventure travel and tourism company in Zambia; a hip coffee house in Kampala, Uganda that features tropical-flavoured coffees and caters to the city’s young, free-spending Ugandans; and a diamond polishing company in Botswana, the world’s biggest diamond producing country.

They may be a random selection of companies. But the film shows images of a continent that is striving to take care of itself, to build a middle class, and to find African solutions to African problems. ‘The whole purpose of the film is to change perceptions and encourage investment,’ Pineau says. Moreover, she feels that the West has something to learn from the African experience. Each of the companies she filmed knows how to look after its employees. They pay their workers above average wages and ‘have all thought through how to take care of their people: the extended family. It is something Africa could teach the rest of the world.’

www.africaopenforbusiness.com