I’m a captain* of a boat sailing through dangerous waters around the African coast. My job is a hair-raising one. There are violent storms to weather; rocky outcrops to navigate past; pirates to rebuff and these days, even missiles to avoid.
Perhaps most hazardous of all, my crew becomes demoralised at times, fearing an attack of a monster from the deep, a Kraken, and might even threaten to mutiny.
How do I cope? A lot of it’s about understanding my boat, sailing knowledge and navigation skills; the rest is in the mind. And I never stop learning on the job.
This is a metaphor: the boat is the business of an entrepreneur in Africa, and the hazards are the multiple challenges that entrepreneurs face. There are more and more of us at sea these days: it seems a large proportion of the population spend our lives on the water! As Dr Yessoua Kouassi of African Futures and Innovation at the Institute of Security Studies says in an interview with the Dolphin Bay Brief: “Entrepreneurship is increasing in Africa, and the continent is on the startup map.”
Why steer our own ships? The continent has a young population which is driving innovation; access to technology is increasing and, with limited job opportunities even for millions of young graduates, African youth are turning to entrepreneurship to create jobs for themselves, explains Dr Kouassi.
Some captains I meet at port these days are becoming aggressive with their compatriots. Erupting quickly into anger, they are throwing a few punches at the quays, having all-out brawls in bars, and always insisting that other captains are at fault. I can’t blame them entirely. The pressures are huge and don’t seem to be diminishing.
To hop out of our metaphor and quote Dr Kouassi again, most African countries – except South Africa, Rwanda, and North African countries – are at the lower end of the World Bank’s Doing Business index, which measures the ease of doing business in countries. Infrastructure is poor, especially that providing power, transport, and communication, so it’s hard for us entrepreneur-captains to reach the people who buy our ship’s produce, even using digital media.
Only about 57% of Africa’s population has access to electricity, compared with more than 90% in comparable regions such as South Asia and South America.
I’m at sea right now as I write this reflection. Below decks, I hear my crew’s murmurs increasing in volume, reaching a high pitch of anxiety. They’ve been speaking for days of a massive Kraken that could swallow them in the strait between two rocky outcrops, which will be difficult enough to navigate even without their fear. They’re sounding a little mutinous, to be honest – I’ve heard some mumbling that we should turn the ship around to avoid the danger entirely. But that would be a much longer route and so expensive that this voyage might become unprofitable, and I know we’re capable of navigating this challenge if we do our jobs properly and work together.
Anyway, I’ve never seen hard evidence that this particular Kraken exists – even though I can’t discount the possibility entirely.
What to do? I need to harness my team’s energy with all the leadership skills I can muster. This means giving them a forum to speak and listening sincerely; making sure my solutions address their fears; hammering out the details as a team; and prioritising the most constructive of these. This, while reminding them what our mission is about, the value it has to their families and communities back on land, and what they will learn from confronting rather than avoiding any Krakens that come our way.
It means channelling all that fear into positive action, rather than panic; demanding and uncertain work for a captain certainly, but essential.
The crew has concrete reasons for being on edge. There was even more corruption at port than usual, with officials on every quay demanding money, making everybody irritable. Politics back home is very volatile with elections coming soon, and everyone’s a little wary of the outcome.
“Entrepreneurship is increasing in Africa, and the continent is on the startup map.”
Many shipowners had planned on building new fleets, which would have given jobs to my crew’s family members, but finding finance is so hard these days that the new plans are not materialising. The economic outlook is not rosy.
Is there reason for hope? Yes, says Dr Kouassi. Africa is set to grow faster than any other region except Asia in 2024. “The continent will account for 11 of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies this year.”
The top 11 African countries projected to experience strong economic performance are Niger (11,2%), Libya (7,9%), Rwanda (7,2%), Cote d’Ivoire (6.8%), Ethiopia (6.7%), Benin (6,4%), Djibouti (6.2%), Tanzania (6,1%), Togo (6%) and Uganda at 6%.
Sadly, the impact of this high growth on poverty and the reduction of income inequality will be limited, as before.
“The quality of growth matters more than the quantity,” Kouassi explains. “The extractive industries are the leading sources of growth for most African countries. However, this sector is capital-intensive, non-intensive in skilled labour and … unlikely to crate the large-scale jobs needed.
“Africa needs to transform its economy to ensure more inclusive economic growth.”
This includes instituting policies that are more favourable to us sailing captains, providing funding opportunities, and fostering an environment conducive to innovation.
That’s all on the macro scale: there’s not too much that us seafarers can do to change it (however, see the story above for some inspiration on your power to forge the future). What we can change is ourselves, which makes a massive impact.
Personal initiative – being self-starting, proactive, and persistent – is consistently related to business success, researchers at the University of the Western Cape found in a 15-year research project. “This means that whenever a business owner uses a reactive strategy with no proactivity and no planning, they will be more likely to fail. Business owners with high personal initiative are more successful,” they concluded.
Other influencing factors are innovativeness and the ability to set and implement goals. The research was conducted among South African entrepreneurs, but almost the same results were found in Zimbabwe and Namibia.
We’ve navigated the rocky outcrop, found no Krakens, and we’re sailing on feeling a little tired but massively relieved. This is the deal, I realise – sailing was never an easy career choice – but this time, at least, I remembered to keep my perspective.
So far, this perspective has saved the profitability of this voyage – and the sanity of my crew.
* Please note that this metaphor is fictitious. The ship’s captain does not represent any real person, at Dolphin Bay or elsewhere.
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