Supporting our own
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Hello and welcome (belatedly) to the long weekend.
Three or four years ago, over a couple of beers, I was chatting to someone from MTN’s marketing team, about how Americans support each other and how it helps their businesses grow. We talked about how the likes of Nike, beyond sports stars, have US music and pop culture celebrity endorsements, which provides a global cool factor and helps build their success. His idea was that local brands need buy-in from local celebrities, supporting them freely. As I was editing Brainstorm at the time, we had previously featured a story about local footwear brands Drip and Bathu, and the discussions moved to these two trendy sneaker brands.
Founded by local entrepreneur Lekau Sehoana, over a few years, Drip grew from a township startup to having a footprint of branded stores in leading malls across the country selling its colourful tekkies. I’ve read the recent news stories about Drip’s troubles, but the reality hit me this week, when scrolling through Twitter/X, to see an ad for an auctioneer firm, which was promoting the liquidation sale of assets from Drip. It’s a sad tale, but I understand Sehoana has tried to relaunch a footwear brand, called Drip Sportif. And hopefully this time it works out.
I was reminded about the Drip conversations by this week's episode of ITWeb TV, which features Sanele Simmons II the CEO and co-founder of MallForWomen. Asked by our host Nkhensani Felicia Nkhwashu about Shein, Simmons mentions that e-commerce and platform businesses can help empower local people, creating jobs, and that we should support our country’s own enterprises. A noble sentiment.
Following the ejection of SA’s ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, over the past few days, the political relations between the US and SA are taking a new, uncertain direction. But that hasn’t stopped US tech companies from continuing to pump investments into SA. Admire Moyo , our news editor, has weighed in on the matter here. It’s backed up by the fact that this week Google officially opened its local cloud region, and announced plans of how it hopes its ecosystem will create 300 000 local jobs.
While SA’s political representatives might be finding diplomatic relations tricky at present, it seems Zambia is flying high, having secured a $120 million grant from the US for digital transformation.
Until next time...
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