Are You an “Exceptional Leader”?

Are You an

 “Exceptional Leader”?

Exceptional leaders are absolutely essential to an organization’s success, but what makes leaders exceptional? Leaders in this category have three to five identifiable, outstanding leadership strengths. Unfortunately, a “fatal flaw” – a negative behavior that impedes a leader’s effectiveness – can undermine even good managers. Therefore, before undertaking self-improvement, leaders must eliminate flaws that can have a devastating impact on the perception of their overall effectiveness.

The steps to fixing a fatal flaw are hard but effective: acknowledge and understand the flaw, set up a “measurable” program for change, say you are sorry to anyone you’ve harmed and ask forgiveness, request assistance, and give yourself an award when you succeed. After addressing fatal flaws, focus on your biggest strengths and work hard to improve them. Even if you have no single, particular area of excellence, you can become

a more effective leader if you build one profound strength. People who lack leadership strengths but who work to become great in one area generally move from around the bottom third to near the top third in leadership excellence.

Strengths over Weaknesses

Until recently, common wisdom dictated that leadership development programs should concentrate on eliminating weaknesses instead of trying to improve strengths. However, focusing on weaknesses does not make people great leaders; it just brings them up to a baseline, a starting point. All organizations have just-OK leaders. These run-of-the-mill executives do everything all right, but they don’t do anything really well. Commonplace leaders make commonplace teams; ordinary leaders produce ordinary organizations.

co:-] 2013-05-01 09:06:49 CEST

Leadership development’s focus on strengths instead of weaknesses began with management expert Peter Drucker, who first wrote in 1967 that leaders should focus on what they do best and improve in their high-competency areas. He was the first to champion “strengths-based” leadership development. Just as being positive about your work is more effective than being negative, people are more forcefully motivated when they focus on boosting their strengths instead of dredging up their faults. Research shows that people who attend to their strengths rather than their weaknesses are more successful at conquering the challenge of changing themselves for the better.

Next we will look into What Exceptional Leaders Do for Their Organizations!!

 

From the book: How to Be Exceptional

Drive Leadership Success By Magnifying Your Strengths

by John H. Zenger, Joseph R. Folkman, Robert H. Sherwin Jr. and Barbara A.

Steel

How you feel about your products or services 

Determines your sales!

 

                 Love what you're doing when you're selling a product/service. The popular image of a salesperson as someone willing to "sell at all costs" is not the reality across the board in sales. A good salesperson loves sales, is motivated by what they're selling, and transfers this enthusiasm and belief to the customer. Indeed, the customer is given options, including the one to walk away, in order to avoid such undue pressure. 

                 Learn how to listen to customers and to read their body language. Avoid interrupting or disagreeing with a customer, and provide your customer with space to talk. Know how to interpret a customer's folded arms, eye contact, and manner of standing toward or away from you. Make the customer comfortable and you're off to a good start in selling your product.

               Be knowledgeable about the product/service. There is nothing more infuriating to a potential customer than to come across a half-hearted salesperson who claims uncertainty about what the product can and can't do, what it's made from, and what happens when things in it stop working. It is absolutely vital to know your product range inside out and if you do not know something a customer asks of you, let them know you'll find out and get back to them as soon as possible.

               Help the customer see the perks. As well as getting good product information to the right people, it is important to translate the product's features into benefits for the customer, thus making it easier for them to buy.

• Have you used the product, tested it, tried it out, or worked with it--whichever is relevant?
• Do you feel comfortable about being able to talk to a customer as someone totally familiar with the product?
• Ask yourself one simple question: Why should a customer buy my product/service? If the only answer you can come up with is "So I can get paid," you're selling the wrong product 

               Ensure that the product/service has been adequately explained. Good product information, including retail packaging, is important. Lots of salespersons and sales managers don't like to admit that sales can be completed by product information. They like to think it is their personal charm, intelligence, and determination that closes sales. For the most part, that is bunk. Not only can sales be made by product information, most sales are made this way. And this is more true today than in the past because of the proliferation of "big-box stores" and other forms of product sales without the benefit of interpersonal relationships.

• The product information should be informative, true and complete. Ideally, it should give the prospective buyer all the information they need to buy on the spot.
• For most prospects shopping without assistance, clear and easy to understand information, as described above, is important.

               Make the benefits of the product/service loud and clear. Besides the actual utility, beauty, or even fame of the product/service, what are you offering above and beyond? Make it clear to the customer what key benefits the product brings to them, such as guarantees, warranties, and after-sales service.

 

By: CudaKid, Orwellian, Harry White Dewulf  

(http://www.wikihow.com/Sell-a-Product)

 

To our shareowners:

                  As regular readers of this letter will know, our energy at Amazon comes from the desire to impress customers rather than the zeal to best competitors. We don’t take a view on which of these approaches is more likely to maximize business success. There are pros and cons to both and many examples of highly successful competitor-focused companies. We do work to pay attention to competitors and be inspired by them, but it is a fact that the customer-centric way is at this point a defining element of our culture.

                     One advantage – perhaps a somewhat subtle one – of a customer-driven focus is that it aids a certain type of proactivity. When we’re at our best, we don’t wait for external pressures. We are internally driven to improve our services, adding benefits and features, before we have to. We lower prices and increase value for customers before we have to. We invent before we have to. These investments are motivated by customer focus rather than by reaction to competition. We think this approach earns more trust with customers and drives rapid improvements in customer experience – importantly – even in those areas where we are already the leader.

                      “Thank you. Every time I see that white paper on the front page of Amazon, I know that I’m about to get more for my money than I thought I would. I signed up for Prime for the shipping, yet now I get movies, and TV and books. You keep adding more, but not charging more. So thanks again for the additions.” We now have more than 15 million items in Prime, up 15x since we launched in 2005. Prime Instant Video selection tripled in just over a year to more than 38,000 movies and TV episodes. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has also more than tripled to over 300,000 books, including an investment of millions of dollars to make the entire Harry Potter series available as part of that selection. We didn’t “have to” make these improvements in Prime. We did so proactively. A related investment – a major, multi-year one – is Fulfillment by Amazon. FBA gives third-party sellers the option of warehousing their inventory alongside ours in our fulfillment center network. It has been a game changer for our seller customers because their items become eligible for Prime benefits, which drives their sales, while at the same time benefitting consumers with additional Prime selection.

                               We build automated systems that look for occasions when we’ve provided a customer experience that isn’t up to our standards, and those systems then proactively refund customers. One industry observer recently received an automated email from us that said, “We noticed that you experienced poor video playback while watching the following rental on Amazon Video On Demand: Casablanca. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and have issued you a refund for the following amount: $2.99. We hope to see you again soon.” Surprised by the proactive refund, he ended up writing about the experience: “Amazon ‘noticed that I experienced poor video playback…’ And they decided to give me a refund because of that? Wow…Talk about putting customers first.” [Here's the original article.]

When you pre-order something from Amazon, we guarantee you the lowest price offered by us between your order time and the end of the day of the release date. “I just received notice of a $5 refund to my credit card for pre-order price protection. . . What a great way to do business! Thank you very much for your fair and honest dealings.” Most customers are too busy themselves to monitor the price of an item after they pre-order it, and our policy could be to require the customer to contact us and ask for the refund. Doing it proactively is more expensive for us, but it also surprises, delights, and earns trust.

                           We also have authors as customers. Amazon Publishing has just announced it will start paying authors their royalties monthly, sixty days in arrears. The industry standard is twice a year, and that has been the standard for a long time. Yet when we interview authors as customers, infrequent payment is a major dissatisfier. Imagine how you’d like it if you were paid twice a year. There isn’t competitive pressure to pay authors more than once every six months, but we’re proactively doing so. By the way – though the research was taxing, I struggled through and am happy to report that I recently saw many Kindles in use at a Florida beach. There are five generations of Kindle, and I believe I saw every generation in use except for the first. Our business approach is to sell premium hardware at roughly breakeven prices. We want to make money when people use our devices – not when people buy our devices. We think this aligns us better with customers. For example, we don’t need our customers to be on the upgrade treadmill. We can be very happy to see people still using four-year-old Kindles!

                              I can keep going – Kindle Fire’s FreeTime, our customer service Andon Cord, Amazon MP3’s AutoRip – but will finish up with a very clear example of internally driven motivation: Amazon Web Services. In 2012, AWS announced 159 new features and services. We’ve reduced AWS prices 27 times since launching 7 years ago, added enterprise service support enhancements, and created innovative tools to help customers be more efficient. AWS Trusted Advisor monitors customer configurations, compares them to known best practices, and then notifies customers where opportunities exist to improve performance, enhance security, or save money. Yes, we are actively telling customers they’re paying us more than they need to. In the last 90 days, customers have saved millions of dollars through Trusted Advisor, and the service is only getting started. All of this progress comes in the context of AWS being the widely recognized leader in its area – a situation where you might worry that external motivation could fail. On the other hand, internal motivation – the drive to get the customer to say “Wow” – keeps the pace of innovation fast.

Our heavy investments in Prime, AWS, Kindle, digital media, and customer experience in general strike some as too generous, shareholder indifferent, or even at odds with being a for-profit company. “Amazon, as far as I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers,” writes one outside observer. But I don’t think so. To me, trying to dole out improvements in a just-in-time fashion would be too clever by half. It would be risky in a world as fast-moving as the one we all live in. More fundamentally, I think long-term thinking squares the circle. Proactively delighting customers earns trust, which earns more business from those customers, even in new business arenas. Take a long-term view, and the interests of customers and shareholders align.

                        As I write this, our recent stock performance has been positive, but we constantly remind ourselves of an important point – as I frequently quote famed investor Benjamin Graham in our employee all-hands meetings – “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” We don’t celebrate a 10% increase in the stock price like we celebrate excellent customer experience. We aren’t 10% smarter when that happens and conversely aren’t 10% dumber when the stock goes the other way. We want to be weighed, and we’re always working to build a heavier company.

As proud as I am of our progress and our inventions, I know that we will make mistakes along the way – some will be self-inflicted, some will be served up by smart and hard-working competitors. Our passion for pioneering will drive us to explore narrow passages, and, unavoidably, many will turn out to be blind alleys. But – with a bit of good fortune – there will also be a few that open up into broad avenues.

                      I am incredibly lucky to be a part of this large team of outstanding missionaries who value our customers as much as I do and who demonstrate that every day with their hard work. As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1.

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

April 2013

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-letter-to-shareholders-2013-4#ixzz2QdLoq9JM

 

Building Growth Step by step

Building Growth Step by step

  American agricultural economist, Theodore William Schultz once said, “If you don't grow you die” this is as true as the sky is blue. DHL Retail East Africa believes in helping people grow and becoming there best. To do this, one must first organize their house be investing time into building systems that will do the work for them. When it comes to giving excuses, excuses can be endless:

• “No one can do a job as good as you!”
• “There isn’t enough time to systematize!”
• “It only takes you minutes what it takes an employee an hour to do, and they still mess it up!”

However, luck of organization systematization may be the cause of luck of growth; one needs to first stop making excuses and start create growth.(Mike Michalowicz)

Here are six steps to take, right now, to create growth and become the best:
1. Start at the finish line. What do you want your customers to have? What can you do to customers absolutely enchanted? Once you know what they want and what will winner your customers, then you can get to work on building a system that delivers just that.

2. Map the big steps. Create an action plan. What will it take to get to the finish line you defined in Step 1? When planning, start at the finish line and working your way to the starting point. Alan Lakein said it best: “Failing to plan is planning to fail”

3. Divide and Conquer. Now that you know the major steps, break each one down into actionable pieces. In other words, what is required to reach your goals and targets? When you break down each step, make sure that the steps synchronization with the steps before and after.

4. Create checklists. Checklists have proven to be the most effective method of ensuring that all the correct steps get completed in the right order. If checklists are good enough for airline pilots and doctors, then they should be for you. Create checklists for each step you have defined.

5. Test and measure everything. You can't change what you don't measure, and you can't tell if a program or strategy is working if you are not faithfully testing, measuring and tracking your results.

6. Always improve. Once you have measurements and tested them, the fun part comes into play: improving by try new things. When understand that perfection does not exist, only improvement you will always find a way to improve.

Remember, in order to create growth and become the best you have to create a repeatable process that people can do and deliver identical result every time–especially when you are not there. Don’t try it or put for later, do it know and grow.

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.

If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

 

Nairobi Slums' "Millionaires"

Nairobi’s slums, home to an estimated two million poor people, are — unknown to many — lucrative havens where some enterprising Kenyans rake in millions of shillings.
Most of these people have taken advantage of the huge demand for housing and the sheer numbers to make a fortune.

Slumlords lay a claim on dozens of single-roomed houses, built using rusty mabati or mud, for which they earn attractive returns.
Some, however, sell all manner of consumables and take advantage of the numbers to make their money.
Tenants pay rent ranging between Sh700 and Sh2000 a month, depending on accessibility and the proximity to basic extras like toilets, bathrooms and water.
Daivid Karanja owns 47 such units in Mukuru Kwa Reuben village for which he lets for Sh1,300. His tenants use commercial toilets about 50 metres away, which charge Sh8 for a shower and use of the latrines.
“Landlords here do not provide toilets, the rent is only for the house,” said Mr Karanja who has lived in the slum since 1996, adding that the commercial toilet facilities remain open from 5am to 10 pm.
His monthly rental income from the houses alone is Sh61,100, comparable to revenue from letting four two-bedroom apartments in Nairobi’s middle income neighbourhood.
Farming fortune
He, however, admits that he does not know whom the land he has built his houses belongs to.
Nearby, Stephen Kamanga is tending to his five dairy cows and four piglets.
Mr Kamanga gets about 30 litres of milk per day from the three cows, which he sells to his neighbours at Sh35 for half a litre.

His daily income from the milk is more than Sh2000, which translates to about Sh60000 a month.
That is besides the income from selling of piglets and male calves.
“I have bought my farm in bits from neighbours who are willing to sell” said Mr Kamanga, a retired mechanic who feeds his livestock on waste from vegetable vendors.

There are tens of Kamangas in this densely populated slum, where some of his neighbours across the river live on the upper floors of two-storeyed shanties and keep dairy animals on the ground floor.
Across the city in Kibera slums, touted as the largest informal settlement in Africa where close to a million people reside, Justus Mulwa would easily be among the biggest slum lords.
His monthly rental income is over Sh150,000 exclusive of taxes from the 88 single rooms that he owns.
The rental houses are spread among several villages of the expansive slum, from the more affluent Laini Saba to the poorer Silanga, where he lives.
“I want to build 14 more on this space,” said Mulwa while pointing for a space that on the last row of Silanga village.
He would easily pass for any slum dweller with a misery income going by his dressing, old clothes and torn plastic sandals.
“You have to look like every other person to make it here,” he adds in explaining his humble lifestyle even when he is among the people with the highest incomes in the city.
As a supplier of electricity, Mulwa’s present monthly income is more than twenty-fold the country’s minimum wage, which the majority of his tenants hardly earn.
The massive housing development of the wider Langata area has helped in the drying up of the Nairobi Dam, previously a massive water body where in the 1980s families enjoyed their weekend outings, but now play host to a big part of Kibera.
Just like in Mukuru, Mulwa’s tenants use commercial toilet facilities which charge Sh5 per visit while amenities like water and electricity do not come as a package with the house.

Tim Nyaoma, a graduate from a middle level college who has failed to secure a formal job, is one of the suppliers of electricity in Tetra Park village in Mukuru.
He says that the energy trade is tightly controlled by cartels all over the slums.
“Not anyone who can supply electricity, it’s a tightly controlled business,” said Nyaoma who has about 30 clients so far whom he charges Sh300 a month. “Others control more than 100 connections.”

The illegal connections are tapped from the three-phase power lines that run across the city on about a ten-metre wide leave way.
Tim represents millions of college graduates who had hopes of finding a stable job but have now been pushed to earning a living from illegitimate means.






Original From "The Standard Group (Digital)"

Africa has the ideas but lacks the resources to fund them, says Swiss entrepreneur !!

Jean Claude Bastos de Morais is a Swiss entrepreneur and investor who has founded a number of businesses throughout his career and has a specific interest in Africa. He is the chairman of the advisory board of Quantum Global, an international asset management group that he founded in 2003, and is an advisor on African financial markets. In 2008 he founded Angola’s first investment bank, Banco Kwanza Invest, and in 2010 he formed the African Innovation Foundation which focuses on driving African-led development through fostering innovation.

Jean Claude Bastos de Morais

How we made it in Africa asks Bastos de Morais to tell us about what his expectations are for Africa in 2013 and which industries on the continent he thinks investors should be looking into.
Briefly tell us what Quantum Global Group does in Africa.
Quantum Global Group offers a one-stop solution for emerging markets, with a focus on the African continent. We have a highly skilled team with a strong African experience, coming from various industry sectors and nationalities. Therefore we successfully provide African market-anchored insight for institutional clients including sovereign wealth funds and national banks.
Internationally, Quantum Global is a group of companies focused on corporate finance, asset and private wealth management, real estate project management and investment advisory. We create a bridge between wealth and appropriate investment opportunities for central banks and sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions, corporate investors and high-net worth individuals in emerging markets in Africa and around the world.
What importance do you think Africa holds in 2013?
Africa’s growth is set to accelerate over the long term, following a decade of strong performance despite socio-economic and political instability. As Europe and the US are struggling to restart their economies, the World Bank estimates Africa’s growth rate will exceed 5% in 2013 and banking penetration is growing around 15% each year. These are all indications that Africa is taking off economically.
My experience on the continent tells me that opening the door to private-equity investment on the continent has incredible potential to fuel African growth and global economic gains.
In your opinion, which African regions/countries and industries should international investors be looking at?
Sub-Saharan Africa has in recent years rebounded sharply, supported in part by the global recovery but mainly through developments on the domestic front: output estimated to have expanded by almost 5% on average year on year.
Across Africa there is considerable unrealised potential that can be maximised by international investors. From infrastructure and real estate to agricultural development and manufacturing, Africa presents considerable opportunities. Africa could become one of the world’s opportunity hubs.
You started the African Innovation Foundation. Why do you think it’s important to invest in innovation in Africa?
I am convinced that the best way to build Africa’s capacity is by investing in innovation and creating an environment that promotes entrepreneurship. The African Innovation Foundation was established exactly to do that – support innovation and sustainable development in Africa. Today, we support home-grown innovations but also facilitate technology transfer and promote the exchange of ideas and collaboration among researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers.
A key flagship programme of the foundation is the Innovation Prize for Africa, which is focused on delivering market-led solutions that will move the continent forward. My experience as an investor tells me that seed-funding good ideas can fuel progress – that is what the prize does. We find good ideas, provide them with financing, but also connect them with marketing experts, investors and others who can help them grow their business.
It is my dream and vision to boost the growth of small and medium-sized companies in Africa in the years to come and the Innovation Prize for Africa is an important vehicle to support that idea.
How do you think Africa can reach its full potential? What needs to happen?
My time on the African continent has taught me that there are no shortages of good ideas, but a lack of resources to fund them. I believe that the best way to build Africa’s capacity is to invest in local innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to open doors to venture investing across the continent in order to build African economies from within and reduce dependencies on aid.
Tell us about Banco Kwanza Invest and the investment trends have you noticed in Angola.
Banco Kwanza Invest is the first investment bank in Angola, operating since 2008, and focused on private equity, corporate finance, merger and acquisitions and other financial services.
We have observed the Angolan market closely over the last few years. Inflation was dramatically reduced and gross domestic product increased. At the same time commercial bank lending and government bond rates significantly decreased. All of this has a very strong effect on business and investments.
We believe that the Angolan market needs more venture investing in order to have a much better debt to equity ratio, to leverage their operations. The interesting areas which we see are agriculture, infrastructure, service industry, manufacturing and hospitality.

Originally From How We Made it in Africa