The African SME ‘Curse of Success’

Every time I read the story of Macdonalds starting out as a backyard food kiosk or Facebook starting as a college class socializing App, Disney, Amazon, Apple, Google all starting out as humble establishments in their entrepreneur’s garages (Apparently a basement garage appears to work some magic…), I often wonder why in Africa we don’t have as many successful businesses dominating the globe.

I’ve listened enough times to the narrative of how difficult it is to do business in Africa, but I guess our Small and Medium sized enterprises need to look more inward to break this spell and take their footprints to the furthest of frontiers.

Having been a business journalist and communication consultant for some time now, I have often observed what I’d call the ‘Curse of success’ that bedevils many African SMEs. When many are established, the brains behind them were so eager and anxious to prove their concepts, as I suppose happens world over, but as soon as they register a certain level of success, when their annual revenues hit between $1-10 million, many over-revel in this milestone, after-all this comes with a comfortable lifestyle and lots of recognition in the business and political circles. As a journalist I often found it was 10 times easier to secure an appointment with leaders of leading conglomerates than leaders of these SMEs who appear somewhat overwhelmed by their own success.

I guess to break this ‘curse of success’ African entrepreneurs must find a way to sustain the hunger and passion of success that originally set them off on the entrepreneurship path and gave them their early wins, they need to keep focus and remind themselves continually that having a footprint in 5 leading cities in their countries is good, but then there is the whole country, continent and globe to be conquered. Please share this with an African SME you’d wish to see conquer new heights, also please let me know a few African SMEs that greatly inspire you, thank you!

@KaaraWainaina