Indholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2022 i Forbes Africa

FOCUS | THE GAMBIA AWAMARY LOWE-KHAN WAS JUST 23 YEARS old when she became a Chief Financial Officer. It was a determination to succeed and give her son “the world”, as she now puts it, that drove her career to early heights. Years later, she leveled that energy at another challenge; technology entrepreneurship. For over a decade now, she has been working in the industry via PointClick Technologies which she co-founded with her husband in 2007 in Raleigh, North Carolina. This among a number of innovation projects led her back home to The Gambia, where she not only established the African off-shoot of PointClick Technologies but also The Woman Boss, a female-focused organization tailored to women and girls in the country looking to make their way in entrepreneurship and technology.…

DOJA CAT Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, known professionally as Doja Cat, is an American rapper by birth. Her father, Dumisani Dlamini is an actor, composer and film producer best known for 1992 South African film Sarafina. THE WEEKND According to Revolt, Abel Tesfaye, popularly known as The Weeknd, is the son of Ethiopian immigrants. In an interview with Pitchfork, Tesfaye discusses how his Ethiopian upbringing shaped him artistically. “My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house. They would drink coffee, eat popcorn, and listen to the music. It’s such beautiful music, but I didn’t realize how beautiful it was until I left that head space. That’s why I feel like my singing is not conventional.” TINASHE…

DISTINGUISHED BUSINESSMAN DR REUEL Khoza strikes an initially unassuming impression; despite a CV and business history that includes a litany of high-profile chairman- and directorships, as well as an extensive academic background and awards, including most recently, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the All Airica Business Leaders Awards, his humble, questioning nature is demonstrative of his unique leadership style. “There’s an old proverb,” says Khoza in an interview with FORBES AFRICA, “…if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The oft-repeated phrase nevertheless sums up Khoza’s approach to business and leadership, a philosophy he gained an awareness of from early childhood, where he and his cousins would alternate the days minding the family cattle so each child could take turns to attend…

FORBES LIFE | DESIGN THE MOST ENJOYABLE PERIOD WAS WHEN seeds were germinating,” wrote Kenneth Kaunda in his autobiography, fondly remembering life as a young man on the family farm. “All this meant real hard work, but it was all my own and I simply loved it.” In 1964, the year he became Zambia’s first president, Kaunda opened The Africa Centre in London’s Covent Garden, described by regular patron Desmond Tutu as a hub of cultural activity for “all who are Airicans, and all those who have a care for the interests of the continent and its people”. Opened as a charity in an 18th century building with a lease gifted by the Catholic Church, the Centre became an incubator for the propagation and exchange of intellectual and creative dynamism;…

- The writer is Chief Executive Officer with the Australian Institute of Management WA MOST OF US will relate to being asked to take on extra work to help out from time to time - though we would find it hard to imagine getting an extra day’s paid leave each week. Yet this is exactly what is happening in Britain, where what is being touted as the world’s largest trial of the four-day working week has officially kicked off. There is only one problem well, a few actually. Just months into the trial and alarm bells are sounding louder than Big Ben’s bongs as workers fall foul of trying to cram five days of work into four. Conversations around the four-day work week have been reignited by the pandemic, with…

Why is Vitality Health International (VHI) embarking on an Africa strategy? Before I answer the ‘why’ I would like to take the opportunity to share a little more with you on the ‘what’. Vitality Health International was established last year and is the most recent expansion for the Vitality group, which brings both the Vitality Health Insurance product as well as the unique Vitality wellness programme to the rest of Africa We have launched VHI to enable us to bring this novel private health insurance solution and wellness programme to meet the unique needs of our home continent’s people. Vitality has more than 20 years’ experience, in 38 countries worldwide with over 27 million members - we believe that the time is right to expand our innovative, globally recognised, shared-value…

BANTU CONTINUA UHURU CONSCIOUSNESS (BCUC) Their songs are as long as their name. Getting together in 2003, the band of seven from Soweto has slowly crept into the mainstream. They sing in all 11 official languages of South Africa, self-described as Afro-psychedelic in sound, infused with shebeen and church songs, mbaqanga; all with a rock and roll undertone. BCUC has performed in Australia, France, Denmark and Zanzibar. They have a tour in Europe in 2022, headlining at MUSICPORT in the UK, and are releasing their fourth album this year - their best, according to lead vocalist Nkosi Zithulele. “In South Africa, we are so diverse. And our music is so diverse. I would love for us to just stick to the expression, because you know, it’s art, it’s a craft.…

GROWING UP IN AUSTRIA, JOHANNA OMERE’S life revolved around making things from scratch. Her family carefully baked their own bread, molded their own chocolate, and held the earth close to their hearts at their organic farm. It was a lifestyle inspired by food science and a passion for doing good for their bodies and the world. Having spent 14 years in Tanzania, Omere has brought this natural zeal straight to the doorsteps of Tanzanians with her social enterprise, I Am Organic. Omere and her business partner, Jacqueline Namfua, now run an organic restaurant and shop with its own local supply chain, creating an ecosystem that comes with its own unique challenges, but also a renewed sense of hope. “Local value addition is one of my bigpassions… to fix systems that…

CONTRARIANS | ERNST THOMPSON AND ROBERT BERNATZEDER MEAD IS THE FIRST ALCOHOLIC DRINK connected to humans and is thought to have originated in Africa some 20,000 years ago, but along with the Vikings and other medieval marauders has largely been surpassed by modern equivalents. That is until now. Made from fermented honey, mead is growing in popularity again thanks in a large part to the television series Game of Thrones and the throngs of its followers who lap up every detail of the show to replicate in their daily lives. “Many people in South Africa don’t know what mead is, despite the fact it is a real African drink,” Dr Ernst Thompson, owner of Cape Town Meadery, tells FORBES AFRICA. “It is massive in the United States. Popular culture has…

ENTREPRENEURS | WODE MAYA AT JUST 23 YEARS OLD, AMERICAN YOUTUBE megastar Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has reportedly amassed over 10 billion views on his YouTube channel, and taken home a staggering $54 million in 2021 by posting hilarious and philanthropic content. In 2019, CNBC reported that a survey done by Danish toy-maker Lego found that about a third of children aged between eight and 12 dream of becoming vloggers or YouTubers; the survey polled kids in the United States, China and the United Kingdom. But that trend has now slowly also made its way into Africa And young content creators on the continent are glued to their monitors and screens to catch up on all the social media action and monetize it, just like their global counterparts.…

A SPECTACULAR sequined bodysuit supports a giant, furry, multi-colored eye, like the cyclops emperor of a 1970s funk planet. The gender-amorphous head of a clay-rendered sentinel is crowned with either bird of prey or paradise, and stands alert on black toes that are delicately, unmistakeably feminine. A young African woman, resplendent in scarlet and indigo, reclines like a callow deity before a backdrop of the names of tribes taken in the slave trade, written in gold. To walk through the In the Black Fantastic exhibition, running through to September at the Hayward Gallery in London, is to be taken on a journey through the black imagination unlike anything ever encountered: a startling, challenging, deeply inspiring immersion into the grotesque, the beautiful and the otherworldly. “There’s a really interesting cultural shift…

- The writer is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg and author of the upcoming book, Heat Our World: Securing Sustainable Future In Africa UNIVERSITIES are integral to society and at the forefront of knowledge creation. With multiple mandates to fulfil, often, it is interpreted as merely teaching and learning spaces. But confining the mandate to just teaching and learning is a narrow construction and conceptualization of a university. To illustrate, the research mandate of a university is far-reaching, with the potential to break new frontiers in knowledge, create new disciplines, break cross-disciplinary boundaries and critically advance society where possible. The complex relationship between higher education and society must be strengthened. At the heart of this research is a focus on collaboration, in our context, pan-African research…

WHAT’S NEW FRONTRUNNER WHO’S NEXT LEADERBOARD AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE FIGHT FOR BASIC human rights for the people of Cameroon is Cameroonian Maximilienne C. Ngo Mbe, recently honored with the prestigious 2022 Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights Award. In an interview with FORBES AFRICA, Ngo Mbe speaks of her early motivation to take to defending human rights: “My father, being a teacher, saw his rights regularly besmirched and violated… He received a miserable salary and on top of that he had to wait months to receive it What’s more, the working conditions were difficult It is all this situation that pushed me to fight since my childhood for the respect of teachers’ rights.” Ngo Mbe, Executive Director of the Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (REDHAC), says receiving…

COVER STORY | AFRICAN MUSIC “Alexa, play the most popular song in Africa at the moment” “I’m sorry I don’t understand your request at the moment.” “Alexa, why not?” ‘Because all music coming out of Africa seems to be popular at the moment!” N OW, WE WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF ALEXA actually said that, would we? The truth is that the African continent seems to be where all the action is when it comes to art and artistry at the moment, and everyone from Beyoncé to Usher to David Guetta want in. When you think of African music, the thought of affiliating the continent’s industry with just American rock bank Toto’s 1982 classic Africa has long gone. We are now seeing African artists take the global stage, literally, storming on to…

BRANDVOICE WITH JOHNNIE WALKER When Zambian hip hop star, Cleo Ice Queen, signed to Johnnie Walker as a brand ambassador in 2022, she joined a cast of top talent such as Nigerian star Burna Boy, producer Don Jazzy, SA rapper Nasty C and K Pop star, CL, all of whom have collaborated with the iconic brand. Underlining her credentials as a boundary-pusher and creative powerhouse, Cleo - who released the country’s first female hip hop album, “Genenice”, back in 2015 - also became the first Zambian artist to sign to Def Jam Records Africa facilitated by Johnnie Walker through their collaboration. She has also gone on to win Best Female (Southern Africa) in the All Africa Music Awards held in Lagos earlier this year. As a brand that values forward…

IN THE HILLY SUBURBS OF ITAEWON, SEOUL, dozens of restaurants dot multi-story buildings, bringing flavors from all over the world to one of the trendiest districts of South Korea’s capital. On one particular street drifts a nostalgic yet distinct scent for native South Africans - the smell of a braai, meat grilling on a fire, at Braai Republic. The restaurant’s co-owner Roddy Bancroft laughs at hearing a familiar accent on the phone when I reach out to him, and I feel an odd sense of comfort being almost 13,000km from home and hearing a fellow South African voice. The South African entrepreneur had his start in Seoul in the way that many of his fellows do, filling the burgeoning market of English Foreign Language teachers who can be found across…

MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS aren’t learned in the classroom. In 2003, the year after Houston money manager Perth Tolle graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio with a degree in finance, she spent a year in Hong Kong living with her father, reconnecting with her Chinese roots. On a visit to Shanghai, Tolle befriended a woman named Maggie. Both were 23 years old, but her new friend’s dark backstory shocked Tolle. While Tolle had enjoyed a typical suburban upbringing in Plano, Texas, Maggie lived in the shadows. She had no birth certificate, no school or hospital records and no safety net. To the Chinese government, Maggie didn’t exist. She was one of tens of millions of kids victimized by the Communist Party’s one-child law, in effect from 1980 through 2015. Because…

FORBES LIFE | AFRICAN WEDDINGS DR NOXOLO KHANYILE KNEW IT was not going to be an easy undertaking by any means. “Both my partner and I are Zulu,” says Khanyile, who married her husband, Silo, in a traditional ceremony in South Africa in March this year. “One needs to understand that it is a process [when you get married], it’s not just one celebration, it’s numerous celebrations. Multiple customs need to be followed. “Every little girl, or at least most girls have this idea of what they want their wedding to look like, how they would want their dress to look, how the decor should be…So, I think at the back of my mind, I already knew how it should be.” Although Covid-19 “condensed” a lot of her plans, including…

ASHLEY DU PREEZ HOPES TO BE THE striker to solve Kaizer Chiefs’ scoring woes in the new 2022/23 DStv Premiership season but is traveling a path that has tripped up a number of promising players in the past. The speedy forward was in excellent form for unfancied Stellenbosch FC in the last campaign, catching the eye of a number of clubs. It was fallen giants Chiefs who captured his signature as they look to restore former glories and win a first trophy in seven years - the longest barren run in the Soweto club’s illustrious history. On the face of it, the move looks a good fit, Chiefs have lacked pace in their forward line for a few seasons and Du Preez has certainly improved in the last 12 months.…

Making headlines in the fashion landscape in South Africa and beyond, Gert-Johan Coetzee has proven himself a national treasure, with a brand synonymous with world-class style. Coetzee has styled the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Kourtney Kardashian, Cardi B, Kelly Rowland, as well as Lizzo: bringing his unique interpretation of South African fashion to the world for the past 12 years. Following the successful showcase of his AW22 collection in partnership with Zebra Square Gallery - traders in classic and modern super-cars and dealers in Chopard timepieces, located in Hyde Park Corner - Coetzee is showing the world all that he has to offer and more. Gert-Johan Coetzee’s merchandise is available on Shopgert.com. It has become an global sensation through its limited-edition drops, partnering with powerhouse brands like Barbie and McDonalds.…