A New Friend

I just got back to the office from lunch, and as I was heading back, with my bananas in hand, I decided to stop into one of the local barber shops. I needed a haircut, and I know I’m going to be busy this weekend, so I figured I’d just take care of it now.

As I was getting my haircut today, I had the good fortune to meet a pretty inspiring dude. His name is Gift Kampule, and he is the owner of the shop I went to today. Gift started this shop back in 2001 after having worked as a supervisor in a printing shop in Blantyre. He finished school and then started working with this company until he left because of “some problems”.

When I asked Gift why he prefers to be self-employed rather than work for a company or government, he said this (paraphrased).

“People think that, just because you finish school, you have to work for the government, or some company, or an NGO. I left in 2001 from Blantyre Printing and started this shop in Chileka. In companies, you might work, but the company might not be able to pay your salary all the time. They might pay you 8000 MWK in 30 days. Owning my shop here, I can get much more than that, I always have cash.

You go into town and you see people begging all over the place. This is not good. Just because they can not find a job does not mean they can’t work. They could be farming, or finding other businesses to do.

So many people finish school and then just sit around taking what they can from others. They think that because they can’t find a job with a company or government that they do not have to find another way. You can't just sit around and wait for someone to give it all to you. You have to work for yourself to have success.”

Gift says he’s trying to get a hold of more capital to work on different businesses. He wants to come up with 10,000 MWK so he can buy a fridge and start selling drinks. When I asked him how much start up capital he had when he opened this shop, he told me it was only 2000 MWK. I find it hard to believe that you could start a shop with only 2000 MWK unless he somehow came into the location for free or already had some other inputs, but I doubt that he was rolling in cash.

I guess one factor to consider is that Gift must have had some opportunity to take a risk on starting a business. It’s your standard risk versus reward dilemma here: if you have a job already, you could choose to get away from the industrial/ government/ NGO sector, all of which are pretty shitty IF you are a person who wants to be entrepreneurial. But doing so is a big risk and there are no safety nets, so many choose to stick it out and have their creativity hit a brick wall.

What does this mean for entrepreneurialism in Malawi? Well, there certainly is an opportunity gap. Access to capital is hard: loans are very hard to come by and interest rates are ridiculous, I think 30% or so. But it's not just about capital. Gift thinks, and I agree with him, that many people don't see opportunities to succeed as within their reach or withing thier sphere of responsibility to find. From my first glance assessment, I'd say the biggest thing Gift has going for him is his attitude and his willingness to make things happen for himself.

I only met the guy for 20 minutes, but I was still able to see a spark of creativity and entrepreneurialism of which I strongly feel Malawi needs more. Further, when people have that spark, I strongly feel it goes to immense waste in NGOs and government, partly because there aren’t enough people with it (very few, no critical mass) and partly because those whole sectors lack strong enough leadership and professional development for entrepreneurial people to have positive impact on them. Chicken or the egg: if these sectors had decent leadership, good leaders could help them be better, but they don’t, so good leaders just get swallowed in a sea of ineffectiveness.

Here’s hoping Gift and his family can keep leading the charge.

If this story is interesting to you, check out what of a friend of mine, Ryan Coelho, is up to. He is starting an initiative in Ghana called the Proving Potential Investment Fund. I think it’s a cool idea and I'm interested to see where it goes. He recently send out an email about an aspiring leader he knows named Daniel. You can read Daniel’s story here...

Thanks for reading,

~MK