Proverbs 8:12
I wisdom dwell with prudence,
and find out knowledge of witty inventions.
Chido is one of my Facebook fans, she reads every post, and follows up with my “After thoughts”, taking copious notes, and extracting principles.
One day she decided to visit her grandmother, who lived in a village about 400km from the capital city of her country, She would have to travel there by bus, or “catch a lift”, from someone going to the area. The challenge for her was that the bus could be very intermittent, and never really followed a particular schedule, and as for the “guys with lifts”, she was afraid, she might get someone who could harm her.
Anyway she would have to brave it, because that is the way it had always been. Only this time, as she sat in a rickety rural bus, she was thinking about something I had said in one of my posts:
She was thinking about Uber. In her own research she had discovered that the guy who set up Uber, set it up because he could not get a taxi, when he needed it:
“Why can’t we “Uber-ize” rural transport?” she asked herself?:
“Imagine, if I could get an SMS 30 minutes before the bus was getting close to my village, instead of waiting all day?”
She had also read on the Internet, about the “Uber car pool system”, and she thought to herself, “if the guys who offer others a lift, were on an “Uber-like” system, I would have a better chance of vetting who gives me a lift, and when they are available.”
“Why doesn’t some African entrepreneur come up with a system, similar to Uber to solve our own transport problems? … Surely, it must be possible to adapt the software they use for our challenges, here in Africa?”
Returning from the visiting her grandmother, Chido had to wait almost the whole day, by the side of the road, trying to get a lift back to town. As usual it was a harrowing experience for the young woman. Finally, she managed to squeeze herself into the back of a truck driven by a drunkard, who almost killed them.
The following day she called a young friend, whom she often met at the Internet cafe, and she asked him a question:
“James, you know how to write in code, don’t you?”
“I have Internet friends all over Africa, and even as far as India, who could help us develop something like this. Its actually not that difficult.” James declared, confidently.
The two of them reached out to some Internet friends, using Social Media, and began to develop their idea. Very soon they had a company, with partners in Nigeria, Kenya, India and America.
….when their company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a few years later, they were richer than Aliko Dangote!
Principle:
Chido and James do not have to be imaginary characters. There are young people across the entire world who have skills to solve this kind of problem, and many others like them. They do not need to buy buses to get into business, but they will end up making more money than any bus operator in history. They will be able to get into business with far less capital, than I needed.
Be “business conscious”; “be business minded”….. This is your dispensation!
To be continued…
Source: Strive Masiyiwa
