Last Monday, I delivered a speech on this topic at the Lagos Oriental Hotel venue for the the official launch of African Entrepreneur magazine. In a room filled with entrepreneurs, I took a moment to allow the picture of my audience to sink in before uttering any word. I looked around and I could see frustration on the faces of many concerning the plight of their ventures in the African market, specifically Nigeria. When I decided to speak, I chose my words carefully.
I spoke of my last visit to the venue of the launch. It was for NigeriaCom 2015 and in addition to my roles as a speaker and moderator, I was also one of the judges at the competition for tech startups and the eventual winner, a pharmacy startup, won an all-expense paid trip to South Africa. While listening to the pitches, I got a firsthand experience of the mindset of a typical African entrepreneur.
I’ve come to understand that every African entrepreneur believes his venture would shake the world and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars even when no prototype has been made yet; they give conservative figures for market potentials which is why you will hear statements like “I just want 3% of Nigerians to use my product and I will be making billions of dollars every month”. In other words, African entrepreneurs are hyper-optimistic.
While I’m all in support of being proud of your venture, you have to be realistic while doing it. I recommended optimo-realism which simply means being realistic with your optimism.
It is rather sad to note that in spite of the numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs in Africa, very few of them are satisfactorily performing – most are struggling to survive. And while I tried to exonerate the government, the fact still remains that it’s more of the responsibility of the entrepreneur to ensure that his company survives than the government to provide ideal conditions for startups to thrive. But the government could do a lot by ensuring that life is not made unbearable for entrepreneurs and taxation is reasonable.
But for the entrepreneurs who often blame the government for their woes instead of apportioning some of the blames to themselves, I believe it wouldn’t be a good story to tell the future entrepreneurs that you couldn’t succeed in entrepreneurship because the government did not support you – especially in the same country that continues to churn out successful entrepreneurs including fine artists and bread sellers.
But we cannot keep quiet on why the government needs to be pro- and not anti-entrepreneurship. They should know that entrepreneurs are not sitting on top of millions of dollars. They need all the support they can get instead of sapping them dry and demanding unnecessary registration documents from them.
I believe we all have roles to play in order to perfectly enthrone African entrepreneurs in the global polity considering the numerous opportunities available for them, everyone needs to be ready to help and the entrepreneurs must take their venture very serious and be ready to go all the way to be successful. Anything apart from these are just mere child’s play and epic time wastage.
