This article is from WeChat public account:< span class = "text-remarks"> 8 crossroads (ID: crosseight) , author: Han plug, original title: “to participate in the African version of” win In China, what did Ma Yun say? “, title map from: Visual China
November 16, 2019, local time, a television studio in Accra, the capital of Ghana, Africa.
There are ten young people standing on the stage. There are men and women, black and white. Ten smiling and confident faces looked at the camera under the stage.
The big screen behind them shows a row of English:
Africa’s Business Heroes(African Business Heroes)
Under the stage, the four judges are sitting in danger, three men and one woman.
Two Africans, Zimbabwe’s telecommunications tycoon Straf Mahiswa (Strive Masiyiwa) and Nigerian female banker Buquin Akoshika (Ibukun Awosika).
The best among African entrepreneurs in these years.
The other two Asian faces are Cai Chongxin, Executive Vice President of Alibaba’s Board of Directors, and recently resigned as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba:
Ma Yun.
Ten young people are the top ten carefully selected among more than 10,000 entrepreneurs in more than 50 countries in Africa.
They need to say their dreams in front of the camera, introduce their projects, and accept reviews from four judges to compete for a total of $1 million in venture capital.
A few years ago, a similar program in China was also popular. It was called “Win in China.”
Ma Yun is also a judge.
01
The first appearance was from a girl from Rwanda, Kevin Kegrimupu (Kevine Kagirimpundu).
Our entrepreneurial project is to create a shoe worn by Rwandans.
The reason for her to start this business is to walk in the streets of Rwanda, often seeing a variety of shoes repair shops, a large number of people are barefoot.
The reason behind this is that Rwanda’s light industry is very backward, and footwear is basically imported. Local shoe repairers only repair shoes, no one will make shoes.
After a long time, many local people are barefoot all year round.
Founding this market, she decided to be self-taught and hands-on.
The first step is to search on Google:
How to make a pair of shoes?
According to the steps provided on the web, Kevin began to practice using the existing materials on hand, the waste tires that can be seen everywhere on the streets of Rwanda. How to cut the sole, how to polish the leather, how to stick, how to sew…
After several months of trials and repeated consultations with the shoe repair master, she finally created the first pair of shoes, and founded her own footwear brand, employing 70% of female employees.
The raw materials she uses are basically from used tires. This is also an approach to environmental protection.
Do you wear your own shoes now? The judge, Straf, asked coldly.
Kevin standing on the stage took the shoes off directly and sent them barefoot.
Of course! Look, there is my company’s LOGO… I am so embarrassed!
The whole audience burst into laughter, and Ma Yun sitting next to him laughed.
This is far from his first contact with Africa, and the young people here.
Two years ago, in 2017, Ma Yun gave a speech to thousands of young people in the university auditorium of Nairobi, Kenya.
He particularly highlighted his three years of college entrance examinations when he was young and 30 failed attempts to find jobs to encourage young people to stick to their dreams.
In the many cheers of young people in the audience, Ma YundangField statement:
From now on, I will come to Africa every year and visit three African countries. I hope that I can visit all 54 countries in Africa in the next 10 to 15 years.
02
Vaccine promotion, agricultural technology, palm oil…One player after another came to power to tell his dreams.
Their dreams are often linked to the suffering of the continent of Africa.
In 1994, the biggest news that shocked the world came from Africa.
This year, a humanitarian disaster in Rwanda was destined to be written into human history.
A few years ago, the two major ethnic Hutu and Tutsi civil war broke out, killing more than 1 million people in just three months, killing one-seventh of the country’s total population. Many Chinese have seen a movie “Rwanda Hotel”.
Rwandan girl Christier Quizella (Christelle Kwizera) was born this year. Fortunately, her home was far from the front line of the conflict and was not affected.
But for Rwandans, the massacre is only part of the disaster. Even if you are lucky enough to escape, you will have to face many challenges and traps of death in your life.
The biggest threat comes from the water that everyone can’t live without every day.
In sub-Saharan African countries, drought is almost always facing water shortages. thingIn fact, except for a few areas, most countries have rivers flowing through, and water shortage is not serious.
What is really missing is the safe water source that can be used.
In Africa, many deadly diseases, cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever or poliovirus are hidden in surface water. Every year, a large number of people drink unclean surface water and die.
When the Holocaust has ended for many years, people in Rwanda are still dying all the time – just because of the water.
Quezera’s childhood is full of experience of watering again and again.
From the beginning of the note, she walked with her mother every day to go to the water intake point more than ten miles away, with a load of nearly 20 kilograms, a round trip for five or six hours, and a weight of ten hours.
It can be said that most of the workforce in the whole family is only one thing to do: water.
In Rwanda, only a few large cities have a water network that provides safe groundwater, which costs about $500 a year, which is about a quarter of an ordinary person’s income.
Quezeira studied mechanical engineering during his college years. After graduation, she founded the Rwanda Water Company.
Since 2014, Rwanda Water Resources has drilled and installed pipelines in more than 90 residential settlements across the country, and has built hundreds of tap water networks.
The price of their is one-third to one-fifth of the government’s water network.
Ma Yun Comments:
Your biggest competitor should be the Rwandan government, as they are also actively promoting water supply construction over the years.
Only you are faster than them, providing better services than they are, can make your competitors worry about you, and your company will continue to grow and grow in the future.
In March of this year, Ma Yun established the Ma Yun African Youth Venture Fund after visiting Africa, with a total amount of 10 million US dollars.
This fund will provide 1 million a year to support entrepreneurs over the next decade.
The “African Business Hero” to be broadcast on major TV stations is the first.
03
In 2009, Nigerian girl Temi Giva Tobson (Temie Giwa-Tubosun) enrolled in the United States enrolled an internship Project, return to Nigeria to participate in medical volunteer activities.
In his hometown, Temi witnessed an unforgettable sight in her life, and a woman suffered three days of dystocia.
Although doctors and nurses did their best to rescue them, they still could not recover. The mother eventually bleeds, causing the baby to die.
To save a baby’s life, you only need a normal caesarean section, or a timely, adequate blood supply.
It seems to be a common condition, but it is almost impossible in Nigeria.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and sells oil to the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and Japan. But in the World Health Organization’s ranking of public health conditions, it ranks 187th in the world, ranking fourth in the bottom.
In Nigeria, local couples have an average of 5-8 children, and 814 deaths per 100,000 production. The main cause of death is postpartum hemorrhage.
Five years later, Temi had his own family and was pregnant with his son, who also suffered from dystocia and bleeding during production.
After fighting for a day with destiny, she has no strength, thinking about whether the fate of that woman will repeat itself.
Fortunately, she has returned to the United States. The doctor easily gave her a blood transfusion and did a caesarean section to save the mother and child.
After that, return to Temi in Nigeria to discover:
This country is not short of blood, and the lack of information.
Because the information is not interoperable, some hospitals or blood stations store blood that has expired and is thrown away. In some places, no blood is available. The core issue is information and logistics.
In 2015, she created a “life bank” (Lifebank) based on this idea, aiming to createNigeria’s largest virtual blood bank.
On the life banking platform, the real-time reserve information of 60 large hospitals and blood banks nationwide is included. The hospital and patients can check the blood bank nearest to themselves, the blood and blood products of different blood types, the first time. Booking.
The Life Bank, which provides information and distributes blood services, charges a labor fee ranging from $10 to $50.
The blood is transported, initially a motorcycle that can walk freely through the streets and a speedboat that crosses the city’s rivers, followed by drones.
In the four years since its establishment, Life Bank has saved the lives of 5,300 Nigerians with 7×24 hours of service.
Temi said that her dream is not only the $20 million blood supply market in Africa, but also the $30 billion African medical market. In addition to transporting blood, Life Bank can also try to transport oxygen, medical equipment, vaccines, and other medical supplies that are urgently needed in Africa.
For this project, Ibukun, a female banker familiar with the plight of Nigeria, spoke highly of:
You can’t expand too fast. The market in Nigeria is very big, and your products are life-threatening. This sensitivity is destined to require your business to be cautious enough.
Ma Yun spoke up, looking serious, dry words:
First, global vision, local success. Blood supply is enough, don’t think about it.
The second is that ppt takes away and shows that the future numbers are useless. The market is big and you have nothing to do with it. Most entrepreneurs say that the market is mostly large. There are 10,000 pieces in the market, but if you only earn five dollars, what can it do?
I don’t like ppt. Your future expectations are very vague. Only the current specific numbers can reflect your achievements.
This is not the first time Ma Yun talked about blood in Africa.
He said this:
Africa needs blood, not blood transfusions. It is impossible for a country with more money and a child with more money to have a good future.
What we ultimately want to do is to make them become changers by supporting young people in Africa.
I hope that in the next 20 years, Africa will grow at least 100 Alibaba, and there will be 1,000 Ma Yun.
In Ma Yun’s trip to Africa, a Chinese official in the local embassy used a similar metaphor in his speech:
What about Africa? Ma Yun brought the answer.
One is environmental protection, and the other is the activities of Ma Yun Africa Venture Fund to stimulate the endogenous motivation of Africa and cultivate local entrepreneurs.
Giving money can only transfuse blood. Now it is for Africa to make its own blood.
04
In the finals, there are also African entrepreneurial projects created by the Chinese model.
Walid Rahman, a young man from Cairo, the Egyptian capital, told a beautiful story about his plans to be an African version of hungry.
According to his remarks, in Egypt, more than 35% of the country’s population, nearly 19 million Egyptians are obese. Among them, 3.6 million children are seriously overweight, but another 900,000 children have anemia.
So his goal is for EgyptPeople provide affordable and nutritious foods, away from junk food.
In 2015, he developed the online ordering platform “Mom” in Cairo, employing a variety of family women to make food from the family kitchen.
Users only need to pay a $9 monthly membership fee to become a member and enjoy a free shipping service.
However, the reality is very skinny. In four years, Walid only attracted 7,000 users to register, and the number of orders per year was about 40,000.
Before the total population of 22.8 million people in Cairo, this figure appeared to have little influence.
In contrast, China’s hungry first year occupied more than 20,000 Shanghai Jiaotong University, and the second year covered Shanghai, with more than 10,000 cooperative restaurants.
The judge, Slav, gave severe criticism to this project that over-examines ideas:
I thought that your size was not good at first, and now I found that your number is wrong.
You always emphasize nutrition when you introduce your project, but it is often children who need to consider nutrition. Adults don’t have time to take care of so many nutritional problems.
You only do so-called nutritious meals, how competitive is it in front of UberEat (Uber’s takeaway service)?
For this project, Ma Yun pointed out the problem:
Starting a business, wrapping up with too many ideas and stories, and lacking a business model is not a good idea.
Because the company is bigger, let’s talk about nutrition.
One thing an entrepreneur should do is to try to make things simple and don’t paint lipstick for monkeys.
The last project to be staged has two CEOs. One gave a lecture and one sat down.
One of the two is good at operations, and the other is good at financing strategies, so their work is usually mixed and who is on the line. The respective employees also report separately to both sides.
A judge asked why he did not come to power. The CEO who came to the stage replied: His eloquence is not good.
Ma Yun Comments:
I had 18 founders, 20-30 businesses, and could not have 20-30 CEOs. Why are there two CEOs? 4 CTOs can be, two CEOs can’t.
A person has only one heart, can’t report the nose to the brain, and the eyes report to the heart.
Let’s laugh and applaud.
After deliberation, four judges named the top three “African Business Heroes” and the founder of “Life Bank” won the championship.
She will receive a $250,000 bonus. Others shared the remaining 750,000 in varying amounts.
05
This time I went to Africa, Ma Yun was very busy.
In addition to participating in the “African Business Heroes”, he also presented awards to nature care and animal patrolmen, visited several countries, and ran at most three times a day.
In every country, he was warmly received by the head of state of the country and was asked a question:
How can Africa learn China better?
Ma Yun said to young Africans on the scene:
Seeing you is like seeing myself 20 years ago.
I tried to go to Silicon Valley for financing, and I hit the wall again and again. Because no one believes that China’s Internet will develop, no one believes in China because we don’t have credit cards and no logistics.
But because of this, there are opportunities for our entrepreneurs.
If China has everything, what else do we want?
Retirement for the past two months, Ma Yun did not idle, even more busy than before.
His calendar is full of charity, education, environmental protection, entrepreneurship, and women’s leadership…
Africa is also a very important part of it.
He said:
Someone often asks me why Chinese institutions want to protect African animals. I want to say, why is it not China?
China and Africa, we live on the same planet, and we only have this one planet. If the earth is sick, no one will be healthy.
Africa is the place of hope. Seeing entrepreneurs in Africa, I feel that I saw myself 20 years ago.
This article is from WeChat public account: 8-junction (ID: crosseight) , author: Han plug