Two Truths and a Lie About Africa (part 2)

March 27, 2023 – Last week we played “2 Truths & A Lie”. Which two statements below are true and which is a lie?

1. The designer of the interior of the Mercedes S-Class coupe was born and raised in Congo-Brazzaville. True or false?

2. The humanoid traffic robots installed in 2005 on roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo were designed by an all-female engineering team. True or false?

3. In 2011, an African woman won the Nobel Peace Prize. True or false?

Drumroll please….

1. True. Steeve Burkhalter from Congo-Brazzaville is the designer behind the interior of the Mercedes S-Class coupe. He also designed the interior of one of Lufthansa’s VIP aircraft.

2. True!  Thérèse Kirongozi, motivated by her brother’s death in a traffic accident, is the inventor and lead engineer of the all female engineering team behind the traffic robots in the DRC.

3. False. In fact, two women from Liberia were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for the peace movement that brought about the end of the Second Liberian Civil War: peace activist Leymah Gbowee and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Who’s Who

And there are many more talented, energetic, brilliant and game-changing Africans. For a great overview of Africans the world should take note of from all walks of life, check out New African Magazine’s “100 Most Influential Africans 2022”  or the Africa Report’s, “The 100 Most Influential Africans”.

Cosmopolitan Africa

For something that highlights a few, shall we say more “cosmopolitan” Africans, we can turn to Netflix, and its first original African reality show, Young, Famous & African. Around the globe, people’s eyes were opened to a very different and probably unexpected side of Africa as the series followed the lives of celebrities from across the continent.

ABCs & Virtual Tours

To help clients know Africa, I take them on a virtual tour of the continent using my extensive personal photo archives. I show the oil and gas companies the coast of Mozambique. For the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) companies I share photos of the modern multi-story shopping malls, neighborhood shops, the local tuck shops in the front of someone’s home, and of course the ladies selling airtime under the blue umbrellas. I also show them what the last mile delivery really looks like and what the solutions are to get there. I show them the different cold-chain solutions that are available in the countries that they want to operate in. It’s fun showing them a fully automated warehouse in Cape Town, like none they ever thought they would find on the continent of Africa. I show my clients borders between countries, some of which are super high-tech modern, while others are literally just a rope that denotes the border.

And we talk through the ABCs of investing in Africa: Appetite (how hungry are are you? A starter? A 5-course meal?), Bandwidth (what time and resources are you ready to and will you need to invest) and Capital (cultural, social and economic).

If you’d like a virtual tour of Africa and to talk through the ABCs to help determine if and where your company should invest, please reach out to me.

I’d love for you to join me in Africa’s growth story.

You can also pick up a copy of my book, Africa: Open for Business, in print, audio or ebook form on all Amazon sites to discover why now is the time to invest in what I call AfriCAN – the can-do continent.

 photo: Netflix