About Nigeria
Nigeria is home to 170 million people. Half are under the age of 19. Some of the most hard working, trustworthy and spirited people in the world are from Nigeria. They are eager to learn, grow and to work hard in order to provide for their families.
But corruption, high bank interest rates (24% - 26%), lack of knowledge, education, facilities, infrastructure, connections and basic opportunities has created 61% absolute poverty and 24% unemployment rate with over 50% of Nigerian youths unemployed. The
gap between the rich and poor is astronomical.
Companies, governments and private institutions do not invest in its most important asset, its people. The media only focuses on the negative side of this wonderful country rather than the positive side. This creates a biased view for people that has not
personally lived in Nigeria. KFC is considered a luxury, Bottled Water is unaffordable by most and computers/Laptops are out of the question.
We believe very strongly that "creating new jobs", "investing in people" and portraying the "good side of Nigeria" is key to alleviate this chronic problem.
Truth is, the problem is astronomical. But we don’t focus on that! Instead, we focus on what we can currently achieve in front of us, however minor it may seem in the big picture. The bottom line is, we are already creating change and impacting lives as
I write this and we hope that legacy will pour onto other people for generations to come.
What are we doing?
We strongly believe the best way to create change is to "create new jobs", "invest in people" and "portray an unbiased positive side" of Nigeria.
Our plan is to lease and renovate a rundown 34 room guesthouse so people can patronize it. Doing so will generate income that will be invested into developing our interns/employees/unemployed people which will open new job opportunities for them.
The 10 year contract with the current lessee will expire in May. He had failed to look after and maintain the guest house. As a result of 10 years of negligence, the guesthouse is in a very shabby state.
The guesthouse is located in an area called Agege, a prime location in Lagos for the locals where you will find few to no foreigners.
There were alot of people interested in leasing the guesthouse. But the local wealthy woman landlord favored us over the others because she liked what we stood for. She was more interested in making the area a better place.
We have signed the contract and have paid 3 years of lease in advance. And we have just enough money for very minor renovation.
Although we do have some investors willing to invest with us, we did rather invest the profits in interns and employees instead of paying out equity.
We have been doing business in Nigeria roughly since 2011. In all those years we have identified certain guiding principles that we know are effective.
How are we doing it?
- Start a business and Create New jobs -- An organization can either rely on continued donations or it can be self-sustaining through doing business.
As entrepreneurs, we strongly believe business plays the most important role in creating impact. People need jobs. Businesses provides jobs. As a result, people will follow and listen.
There are millions of unemployed people in Nigeria. We find people that are eager and willing to learn.
The biggest blocking point for most Nigerians is very limited access to credit and cash. Bank interest rates are prohibitively high sitting at 24% on average. And even if an ambitious local entrepreneur can show the bank a highly profitable business model,
the likelyhood of a bank supporting that venture is extremely low.
Enter foreign investments. Foreigners have easy access to cheap credit and cash. But few will ever want to venture into Nigeria and start a business and for good reasons too. Nigeria is indeed not an easy country to live in. And often times, life is harsh.
Traffic there is some of the worst in the world and the city is congested with people. One has to be very tough minded to live there. But foreign investments is key and that is how we got started in Nigeria. Through foreign investments we built a profitable
trucking business that has created 12 full time sustainable jobs in total.
We have travelled to Nigeria over 100 times since 2010. We feel like it is our second home. And if one wants to effectively start impacting lives there, one needs to live there and start a business. And we're doing just that!
Renovating this guest house and opening this business will create many new jobs.
- Be part of the community -- Simply starting a business and creating new jobs is a good starting point. But to really create meaningful impact, one has to go the extra mile and actually live in the country, be part of the community, build
strong relationships with the locals and lead by example. This creates a positive atmosphere of trust amongst the locals and foreign investors alike.
By setting an example, foreign investors trust the country more and are more confident to invest into the country. In the long run, this cycle this will encourage ambitious foreign entrepreneurs to come to Nigeria and start a business themselves.
By being part of the community our employees are also encouraged to push harder to build themselves up.
- Build and nurture trust -- One of the biggest reason why business ventures are never realized in the country is the lack of trust. Nigeria has a bad reputation in the media and people only ever know about Nigeria through the news. The
truth is Nigerians can be some of the most trusted, hard working and passionate people on the planet. We have seen it with our own eyes. And one of our mission is to portray the positive side of Nigeria and encourage trust among the locals and foreigners.
As we continue to build relationships and provide inspiration in many ways, we build solid trust.
- Identify the right people -- Many people are lazy and many are simply looking for free money. We identify eager and ambitious people and provide them with the required knowledge and mentoring. We do not believe in mass random teaching
but rather focus on a limited number of eager individuals to maximize their potential. They can either continue to work for our company or move onto bigger corporate jobs or even start their own business.
- Provide knowledge and mentorship -- Some people are looking to start their business and don’t know where to start while others are looking for guidance. We always encourage our employees to learn and grow. We provide the required knowledge
and mentorship they need to succeed. We also seek to connect local entrepreneurs with a successful foreign or local entrepreneurs. Mentorship is one of the most effective ways to learn. Unfortunately, most people has extremely limited access to quality mentors.
We seek to bridge that gap. We also plan to provide economical laptops or in-house computers for our interns and unemployed with free 24 hours internet so they could study online.
- Building a community accountable to each other -- By building a community that is well connected with each other, the community tends to be more responsible. Being part of the right community provides a huge opportunity to learn and do
business. It also creates greater accountability amongst themselves. As a result they're more focused towards achieving their goals and receive moral support in times of hardship. Our hope is that this will organically grow.
- Create quality connections between the ambitious and potential investors -- Most local entrepreneurs have no valuable connections or basic opportunities to ever realize their dreams. They don’t even know where to start. There will always
be investors willing to invest in Nigeria. By providing the right knowledge and mentorship, ambitious entrepreneurs can effectively design a good business plan that an investor may be interested in. We plan to connect local entrepreneurs with local and foreign
investors.
- Investing in people -- The most important thing we can do is invest in our employees/interns and people. A significant part of our profits have been going into developing people and paying for knowledge and tools essential for people to
better their lives.
What is the Impact?
By adhering to the above guidelines, our hope is that it will create a small social and economic momentum where knowledge, positivity and trust flourish. Our hope is also that new businesses will be created by the locals employing local talents.
It only takes a few people and a willing heart to start a small change.
We are deeply passionate about the hopes and dreams of the people there. And with your help, we can accelerate and maximize our collective visions for people with little to no opportunities at all.
How it all started? Whats our Story?
Our romance with Nigeria started around 5 years ago when we noticed that people were getting wealthy from doing business in Africa. We were looking to start a business so that we could one day quit our jobs.
People always told us to never trust an African, be careful of Africans, they are professional scammers, they are dangerous, Africa is boring, Africa is dirty, you will get sick in Africa, you will lose everything if you go to Africa etc etc.
We reasoned if this is indeed true, then why are people getting wealthy from doing business in Africa?
So we decided to go to Nigeria. We looked at Nigeria and we could see opportunities everywhere. It was a land flowing with milk and honey. We knew we could definitely start something there. But we also needed to find people we could trust.
We met Charles Peter Ovat and Matthew Adeleke while they were working in a Hotel. Matthew was a waiter. Charles was a Duty manager.
We shared with them our vision of doing business in Nigeria. They were very eager. They too wanted to leave their dead end jobs to become entrepreneurs.
At this point, none of us had much knowledge about business and finances. We had never been trained nor encouraged to do business.
We started slowly and cautiously. Our first 2 years were marked with uncertainty. We experimented with trying to get into the oil business and failed. We looked into importing rice and clothes and that too failed. The reason we mostly failed was due to corruption.
Importing rice and oils into Nigeria is expensive as you need to pay as much as 40% import tax. The only way to get around that is by paying under-table which we did not want to due to our moral obligations to the country. Although Nigeria offered many opportunities
to do business, actually doing business there was not easy at all.
At that time Charles and Matthew had not left their jobs yet. And we kept travelling to Nigeria a few times every month. We were searching for that one right opportunity to break into the business scene. That opportunity came in haulage (logistics) business.
On the onset the business looked very promising but what we were about to face would be the most challenging 2 years of our lives.
We have documented our journey in great details in the forum here that went viral. Please read it. I'm sure you will enjoy it.
http://www.nairaland.com/1868454/foreigners-doing-business-nigeria-failures
Needless to say, the learning curve was huge. And as we grew so did our troubles. By this time Charles and Matthew had quit their jobs and worked full time with us. These 2 years were filled with fears, sleepless nights, frustrations and burnouts. At one
point we were on the brink of shutting down our business. We made alot of newbie mistakes along the way. But somehow, we pushed through and finally came out strong.
One thing that really touched us was how Charles and Matthew had stuck with us in these hard times. They were sometimes not paid their salary in full for upto 2 months. We ourselves didn’t see any return for over 5 months. The journey had brought us even
closer. The journey had also taught us that Nigerians can be trusted as much as any other people on the planet.
As we started to meet with some success, we also noticed there were eager people all around us looking to start a business but had little to no opportunities at all. We took a few people under our wing and mentored them. They now have a truck of their own
that are generating good profits for them. They also created 8 additional jobs in total.
We realized that people were in need. And helping them and seeing them grow gave us more satisfaction than doing business itself. That’s when we realized that the heart of our vision was actually being a social enterprise.
We had decided that we were going to invest in people so they could one day invest in others as well.
What your support means to us?
Many people come to Nigeria simply to make money. But they hardly ever invest in building people up. We have a deep desire to touch at least 200 lives in our lifetime. As of now, most of our profits from our trucking business goes back to our employees.
We have invested the rest into acquiring the guest house. Our only road-block at the moment is to properly renovate it. With your help we can quickly renovate the guesthouse and start hiring employees. With this initial fund, this project will become self
sustaining.
Where will the money go?
1) Full painting of the property: 400,000 NGN
2) Replacement of tables and chairs at the bar: 300,000 NGN
3) Replacement of beds and mattress for 34 rooms: 1,270,000 NGN
4) Brand new bed sheets X 100 pieces: 100,000 NGN
5) Replacement of toilet pots for 34 rooms: 130,000 NGN
6) New PLASMA TV for the bar X 2 units: (change) 156,000 NGN
7) Air Conditioning Units for the bar X 2 units: 260,000 NGN
8) Electrical wiring work for bar, hall and 34 rooms: 75,000 NGN
9) Workmanship and Labor costs for whole property: 40,000 NGN
10) TV in the room X 34: 1,308000 NGN
11) Fixing of water fountain: 25,000 NGN
12) 10 Eco Computers, educational tools, training fees: 1,170,000 NGN
13) Miscellaneous expenses: 50,000 NGN
Total 5284000 NGN
Note -- 1 $ (United States dollar) = 198.5 NGN (Nigerian Naira) as of now.