Want To
Make Money In Africa? Start by Solving Any of These 8 Serious Problems....
When you look at Africa, what
do you see? When most people look at Africa, there are two very strong but
opposite images that emerge.
=Some see a continent that is full of problems –
unemployment, disease, hunger and insecurity – a place where everything is
wrong and nothing works.
=Some others see a land of vast opportunities and
untapped potential. Optimists like to describe Africa as the “world’s last
frontier” of lucrative business
opportunities.
While the ignorant and fearful see a dark and unpromising continent, smart entrepreneurs
see the amazing business opportunities that lie beneath all of Africa’s
problems.
This article looks at eight serious problems in Africa that hold
lucrative business opportunities and will make money for entrepreneurs who can
unlock them.
Looking
for serious problems around you and thinking of interesting ways to solve them
is one of the most effective methods of finding high-potential business ideas.
Problems are blessings in disguise and every successful entrepreneur knows this
secret. It’s no surprise that ‘problem solving’ is the top recommendation for
finding business ideas in our popular article: 3+ Guaranteed Ways
to find Profitable Business Ideas in Africa.
The most lucrative
opportunities in Africa are not in its crude oil, precious stones or timber.
No! Africa’s biggest jackpot lies in finding solutions to many of its serious
and pressing problems.
Anyone who can find solve the problems you’re about to
read stands the chance of making money in Africa. Here they are:
#1 -
Hunger
Hunger is one of Africa’s biggest and most serious problems.
Images of hungry and starving African children often make the headlines in our
daily news and have come to represent the face of our continent. Despite having
more than 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, a conducive
climate for agriculture, and an overwhelmingly young population (more than 60%
of the African population is under 25 years old), millions of people on our
continent still go hungry. Presently, Africa does not produce enough food to
feed itself and has remained a net importer of food.
With one of the world’s fastest growing populations, many
African countries spend billions of dollars every year importing basic food
products to meet local demand and consumption. Our continent’s population
(currently at over one billion) is predicted to rise to 2.3 billion in less
than 40 years. With all these mouths to feed, agriculture is more than likely
to become a booming industry in Africa’s future.
There are several reasons for the hunger on our
continent. Apart from hunger which is induced by conflicts and natural
disasters (like drought and floods), Africa’s failing agriculture industry is
arguably the root cause of hunger on the continent. Agriculture, which used to
be a booming and attractive industry, has been abandoned for white-collar jobs
in the cities. At the current migration rate, more Africans will live in cities
than in rural areas in the next 30 years. With decreasing interest from
ordinary people and low investments from both the business community and
governments, the current state of Africa’s agriculture industry makes it unable
to produce the amount of food needed to feed a large and fast growing
population.
There
are several lucrative opportunities for entrepreneurs who start businesses, no
matter how small, that help to solve the hunger problem in Africa. The high
demand for food staples is leading to interesting opportunities in vegetable farming, cassava farming, livestock farming (fish, chicken, pigs, ostrich, snails). There is also a huge potential for businesses like animal feed production that support the agriculture industry. In fact, there are
several business ideas in the Agriculture and Food section of smallstarter.com that will interest you.
The opportunity in Africa’s hunger problem is simple:
Food is a basic need and a matter of survival. You can hardly ever go wrong
with food in Africa!
#2 -
Unemployment
With
one of the world’s youngest populations, Africa’s large and growing pool of
unemployed labour is one of its biggest problems. Young people, many of who are
physically and mentally capable, cannot find the jobs they need to earn a
decent income for their upkeep and basic survival. Depending on whose figures
you’re looking at, the unemployement rate on our continent is huge (up to 50
percent).
Since
jobs must exist before people can be employed, does it mean that there are no
jobs in Africa? Of course not! In fact, Africa’s economy has been growing
steadily for over a decade and six of the ten fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa. A growing economy is often
a clear sign that more jobs are being created. However, the main problem with
the job market in Africa is that it is largely disorganized. It is quite
difficult for businesses and employers to find potential employees with the
right skills, education and experience for the positions they want to fill. To
a considerable part, Africa’s unemployment problem has to do with information
sharing rather than total unavailability of jobs.
Several
smart Africans are already rising to the challenge of solving our continent’s
unemployment problems. In Kenya for example, three ambitious entrepreneurs
started M-Kazi, a
mobile phone-based job recruitment service that allows job seekers to get
information about available job vacancies and helps employers to target the
right talents. This SMS-based information service is used by thousands of
Kenyans on basic mobile phones with no internet capability which are still very
popular in many parts of Africa.
In
Nigeria, Jobberman.com,
which was started by three university undergrads in 2009, has become Nigeria’s
Number One job search and recruitment portal. In a country where more than 40
million able-bodied people are unemployed, Jobberman.com is helping millions of
people to find their dream jobs. Seeing the huge potentials in this business
model, Tiger Global, a New-York based fund with investments in Facebook and
LinkedIn became an investor in Jobberman.com in 2011… a little less than three
years after it started! The service now has a subsidiary in Ghana and plans to
roll out across Africa in the near future.
Apart from providing critical information services that help employers and
potential employees to find each other, there is also another angle to the
unemployment problem in Africa - unemployability. Many of the people looking
for jobs on our continent do not have the required education, training, skills
and experience that make them desirable for employment. Businesses and
entrepreneurs who can offer solutions to this problem in the form of skill
acquisition programs, education and training are very likely to enjoy huge
benefits.
#3 –
Diseases
Despite having less than 15
percent of the world's population, Africa alone accounts for nearly 24 percent
of all diseases that occur in the world. Apart from poor access to essential
medicines and vaccines, low quality healthcare, malnutrition, and poverty, our
continent’s tropical (warm) climate favours the breeding of disease vectors
(like mosquitoes which cause malaria). In addition to these factors, the rise
of chronic diseases like heart attacks, cancer, respiratory diseases and
diabetes is causing more deaths in Africa every year.
According
to a recent WHO Report, infectious diseases are the leading
causes of sickness and death in developing regions like Africa. Of these
infectious diseases, malaria, HIV/AIDS, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal
diseases, and measles make up more than 90 percent of over 10 million
disease-related deaths that occur in Africa every year. Most of these diseases
can be treated with the right drugs.
Africa’s
serious disease problem has led to a huge and rapidly growing demand for drugs,
medicines and other pharmaceutical products. The size of Africa’s
pharmaceutical market is expected to reach nearly $45 billion by the year 2020
and entrepreneurs like Uganda’s Emmanuel
Katongole are
already taking advantage of this huge opportunity. Both giant drug
manufacturing companies (inside and outside Africa) and small neighbourhood
pharmacies are reaping huge benefits while they help to fight and reduce
Africa’s huge disease burden. Our detailed article: ’Drugs and Medicines – How to tap into the million dollar market
that helps to fight diseases in Africa’ takes a very close look at
the opportunities in this sector.
#4 –
Education
The standard of education in
many parts of our continent has deteriorated very badly. Poor access to quality
education at all levels – from basic primary education to university – is
another serious and nagging problem across Africa. The poor quality of government
education and low investment in the education sector has put it in a state of
crisis in many African countries. Because many Africans understand that
education is one of the few bridges out of poverty, millions of poor families
on the continent are desperate to find good schools for their children.
However, the existing schools and training facilities are both unaffordable for
many people and not even enough to cater to the needs of Africa’s large and
rapidly growing population.
To
solve the problem of inadequate opportunities for affordable quality education,
some entrepreneurs on our continent have come up with interesting solutions. Omega
Schools, based in Ghana, is a chain of low-cost private schools that
offers basic primary education to children in poor families for an incredibly
low and affordable fee (less than $1 a day per student). Bridge
International Schools in
Kenya uses a similar low-cost model to provide affordable education to
thousands of children in East Africa for less than $5 per month per student.
Before these amazing businesses started, it was thought impossible to educate
poor people at a profit.
#5 –
Electricity
Some
people say that if you look at the African continent from outer space at night,
it looks empty and pitch black. Maybe this is why the rest of the world refers
to Africa as the ‘dark continent’. The poor supply of electricity to support
everyday needs like lighting up bulbs, pumping water and charging mobile phone
batteries is a big and very serious problem in many parts of Africa. In many
countries on the continent, less than 20 percent of the population have access
to electricity; the situation is much worse in rural areas where fewer than 5
percent are connected to the electric power grid.
Electricity
is such a serious problem for Africa that the growth and prosperity of its
economy and the convenience of our daily lives depends on it. Did you know that
all the 48 countries of Sub-saharan Africa (with a combined population of more
than 750 million people) generate roughly the same amount of electricity as
Spain (a single country of less than 50 million people)? Africa arguably has
the worst electric power infrastructure in the world with the lowest scores in
power generation, consumption and security of supply! (source: WorldBank).
The
explosion of mobile phone use
across Africa has increased the demand for electricity and escalated the
seriousness of the problem. In many countries of the continent, people have to
travel several kilometers to find the electricity they need to charge their
phones which they depend on for communication with close family and access to
business-critical information (like fertilizer or farm crop prices).
Entrepreneurs
like Tanzania’s Patrick
Ngowi are
seizing the lucrative opportunities in Africa’s electricity problems. By
focusing on solar energy, which is freely and abundantly available
in Africa, Patrick has brought electricity to thousands of homes in his
country. To date, his company (Helvetic Solar Contractors), has installed more
than 6,000 small rooftop solar systems in his country and four other East
African countries – Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. These rooftop solar
products are used to light up thousands of houses at night. As a result,
students can read for longer hours and do their homework while thousands of
mobile phone batteries can be charged.
#6 –
Waste
Africa is losing its natural
beauty and environment to different forms of degradation especially solid waste
pollution. According to the World Bank, Africa generates about 70 million
tonnes of waste (both solid and non-solid) every year. As the income and
spending power of the average African continues to rise, more goods will be
consumed leading to even more waste. The volume of waste generated on our
continent is expected to double in the coming years as Africa’s economy becomes
more prosperous and the size and population of its cities explode.
Apart from the dirty and
unsightly look that heaps of waste are giving to several cities across Africa,
poor waste management is closely related to, and largely responsible for, the
outbreak of diseases. Apart from its undesirable effects, the way we handle and
treat our waste will play a very significant role in managing Africa’s natural
resources in the future. Recycling waste (like kitchen waste, paper, plastic
and metals) helps to reduce the pollution in our environment and provides jobs
for thousands of people on our continent.
To
tackle the menace of plastic waste in Nairobi (the Kenyan capital), Lorna
Rutto, a former banker decided to start a small plastic recycling
business. Her business uses plastic waste collected from dumpsites and garbage
cans across Nairobi to manufacture fencing posts. These posts, which are used
to fence houses and forest reserves, are becoming a preferred alternative to
timber. So far, her innovative business has created over 7,000 fencing posts,
500 new jobs, generated more than $150,000 in yearly revenues, saved over 250
acres of forests and removed more than 1,000 tonnes of plastic waste from the environment.
Another
interesting business that is solving the problem of waste disposal in Africa is DMT
Mobile Toilets in
Lagos (Nigeria) – one of Africa’s most populated cities. In its bid to reduce
the public disposal of human waste, this business provides affordable access to
toilet facilities in public spaces (bus parks, events, etc) across Lagos. To
date, this company has manufactured over 3,000 mobile private toilets. It
produces about 200 units every month for sale and for hire across Nigeria and
in the West Africa region.
#7 –
Transportation
With millions of human cargoes
and goods that are moved around in villages, towns and cities across Africa,
transportation has become central to the functioning of Africa’s economy and
basic survival on our continent. With very bad roads, poor transport networks,
absent rail lines and weak water transportation, the options for moving people
and goods around on the continent are quite limited.
Although
the roads are bad, people and goods still need to move around. With a
population that is growing faster than anywhere else on earth, transportation
remains a problem of the present and future for Africa. In spite of its
challenges, smart entrepreneurs are rising to the occasion to solve everyday
transport needs for millions of Africans. Motorcycles, taxis, buses, trucks and
ferries are some of the ways of tackling the transportation problem. In our
very revealing article, ‘Moving people around - 5 Profitable businesses you can start to
solve Africa’s human transportation problems’, we looked at the
available and booming transportation options on the continent and how you can
make a business out of them.
#8 –
Shelter
After
food, shelter is arguably the next most important necessity in our lives.
Shelter in this regard refers to housing accommodation, office space and public
buildings. The growing migration of Africans from rural to urban areas is
putting a lot of demand on available housing in the cities and towns. Another
factor responsible for the shortage of housing accommodation in
Africa is its fast growing population. By
2050, the number of people on our continent would have grown to 2.3 billion;
this would mean that the current housing problem could worsen in the near
future if nothing is done to solve it.
Seeing
the huge opportunities and potentials in our continent’s housing
problem,entrepreneurs like Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, who is currently Africa’s
richest man, has been making very significant investments in cement production,
a very critical material in building construction. Other building and
construction materials like wood, glass, aggregates and steel have become
hot-selling products. We took a close look at the lucrative potentials of this
sector in our article: ‘Building and Construction materials – 9 Hot selling products
that can make you money in Africa.’
Individuals, businesses and
governments are making huge investments in Africa’s real estate market. Smart
entrepreneurs are buying up undeveloped land around major cities in a bid to
build their own houses and possibly earn rental income from tenants who need
shelter too. Other popular real estate investments are in office spaces and
shops for traders.
Do you
still see problems instead of opportunities?
Africa is full and overflowing
with amazing potentials for people like you to make money. The challenge is
that most of these opportunities are buried inside tough and challenging
problems. It’s the same with everything in life. It is the same with finding
gold, diamonds or crude oil; there is usually a lot of hard and dirty work
involved. Somebody has to dig or drill many metres into the belly of the earth
to find these precious resources. It’s also the same thing with Africa’s
problems. If you want to make money on our continent, you will need to roll up
your sleeves and solve a serious problem. The tougher the problems you solve,
the more money you are likely to make!
This article is intended to
open your eyes to the possibilities around you. Have you noticed a serious
problem or suffering lately in your environment? What have you been doing about
it? Nagging? Complaining? Blaming the government? Well, you now know you should
change the way you look at and react to problems. Problems are huge
opportunities to make money. Find one and fix it!
