How Technology Has Revolutionized Money-Making in Africa

There is no topic that hobbies me extra than the topic of making money and narrowing it down even similarly. There is no precise problem within the technique of getting cash that jazzes me extra than the usage of broadly available generation. And I am no longer speaking hi-tech right here. I imply simple eras like the cellular telephone, electronic mail, and stuff like that.

Why does this hobby me so much? Because I believe there are large possibilities to make tons of cash from enterprise for individuals who employ technology to do things that had been previously impossible to do. This article explains all that in quite a simple language, and I truly give you practical reports from my own lifestyle.

I started within the very low-tech fundamental traditional business of printing. I used to make some superb cash printing letterheads, commercial enterprise cards, and so on for various clients, large and small. Then computer systems got here and became the entire industry upside down. The computer made the workplace paperless and accordingly in want of a good deal, much less stationary. Clients who required 5000 letterheads now device 500 for the whole 12 months and communicated the usage of email and even SMS messages. Computer systems and cellular telephones invaded the marketplace at approximately the equal time that easily available loans came to make subjects worse. Hence, nearly everyone who was given a mortgage in Nairobi sold a printing press. The result turned into that we ended up having too many printing machines around at a time while the market for printing jobs turned into shrinking swiftly. To cut a protracted story short, I got into critical financial issues. I became auctioned and misplaced all my fixtures and electronics inside the house and the entirety in the office (including sarcastically a laptop I hadn’t even completed procuring).

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Then one day, a vintage buddy prepared for me to get a pretty profitable printing activity from a purchaser in South Sudan. The customer sent me the artwork from Juba as an attachment to an electronic mail. And then he wired me the coins. When I was accomplished with the process, I took it to Wilson Airport in which it was flown out. I ended up with a few quite appropriate cash that gave me a touch respite from the massive economic strain I changed into going via at the time. I sat down and reviewed the role of technology in enabling me to serve a customer who became up to now away without leaving Nairobi. I requested myself questions like, “Could I get greater customers in South Sudan while I turned into Nairobi? In that manner, I could now not be slowed down through the crowded and but shrinking marketplace for offset printing in Nairobi.

My thoughts quickly zeroed in on the era as a device to help me make money in increasingly more antagonistic enterprise surroundings. I actually have by no means seemed lower back because.

To reduce to the chase, I ended up getting an excellent job in Dar-es-salaam Tanzania, where I am presently based totally. When I went there for the first time, I become naïve, and I notion I might hit that beneath-evolved market with all kinds of services and products and become a millionaire overnight. But alas, it was by no means to be. I turned into speedy brought back to the fact while even my Tanzanian employers ran into serious troubles seeking to get me a work permit to work in that country.

To be sincere, I misplaced quite a piece of money, trusting locals to act as my front as I tried all kinds of businesses that failed one after the other. My wife was given certainly upset about my persisted “investments” into cash draining failures and talked about that the coins I had misplaced would have been sufficient to shop for a huge top plot in Athi River or Kitengela. It sincerely angered me while she stated this, especially as it turned into proper.

Then it dawned on me that I did now not want to war within the Tanzanian marketplace, which I did not recognize thoroughly after I may want to use generation to do commercial enterprise in Kenya even as I became nevertheless hired in Tanzania. It becomes no longer easy sailing to what I have today; however, sooner or later, I got to set up something that works like an attraction.

I have two corporations that do extremely well. I sell cars in Nairobi and Mombasa as an intermediary. I advertise my vehicles using the noticeboards at Sarit Centre in Nairobi and some other ones at Nakumatt in Mombasa. I do my shade poster for the cars on my PC at domestic, and then I print out the posters. Bodily send them via Akamba bus from Dar all the way to Nairobi and Mombasa. They would be picked up and positioned upon the respective observe forums for me to begin receiving inquiries. The entire exercise might cost me approximately 4,000 bobs. But nowadays the generation has made it even less difficult and much cheaper. I use a new blog website wherein I hire someone in Nairobi and every other in Mombasa to obtain my posters as a pdf attachment in their email. They then print them out and put them up at Sarit Centre and Nakumatt Nyali, respectively. I pay them best Kshs 100 shillings every for this simple errand. I do this through the site, which means that they do not receive a commission until they have carried out the venture efficiently. I generally ship them the coins thru Mpesa to the innovatively simple website. I use this guy in Dar who travels with buses every different day to Mombasa and back, and I give him the coins in Tanzania shillings. He deposits Mpesa in Kenya shillings and sends the coins to the recipient when he’s in Kenya. To confirm that the paintings are finished, I virtually call a chum in Westlands and ask him to go for lunch at Sarit Centre and test if they see my poster. I do a similar issue with the Mombasa poster. I ought to without difficulty use the same site to rent any person else at one hundred bobs to head and take a look at and verify that the posters had been out up, but I guess I need to keep 100. The cell telephone advertised is my personal one (which fits in Tanzania). When clients call, I tell them as tons as I can, approximately the auto after, which directs them to view it. I paintings with about three unique main vehicle importers in Mombasa. When they buy the auto, the sellers absolutely deposit the finances in my KCB (Kenya Commercial Bank account), and I can then get admission to the price range via an ATM in Dar-es-salaam. Whenever my contacts get new cars in Mombasa, they publish them on their websites, and I surely download them from there and create my income poster. Simple however it really works.