Investors Visiting Uganda

Last week was fun and eventful.

Part of what we are involved in at BiD Network, besides preparing emerging market entrepreneurs for investors, is connecting those entrepreneurs with investors.

I had the pleasure of spending time with two informal investors that had been travelling in Kenya and Tanzania and that were now in Uganda for a few days to visit entrepreneurs and to get to know a little more acquainted with the Ugandan private sector.

The team in Amsterdam had done an amazing job raising the profile of Uganda as an investment environment with growth potential. We had initially tried the formula of mixing business with pleasure (Meeting Entrepreneurs and Do a Safari) but this proved a little too ambitious for a first attempt.

Instead, I got to spend a few days with two wonderful people from Holland. This husband and wife team, have had successful careers in their respective fields and somewhere along the way fell in love with East Africa. They have decided to take all those skills and ambitions that had brought them professional success and to put them to work in a very different environment.

They had specified a number of criterias; first that they wanted to see businesses that have a positive social or environmental impact in addition to being financial viable aka "social investments/businesses". These social investors as they are called, are becoming more prevalent, and that's a huge leap forward. They embrace the idea of investing in entrepreneurs that are changemakers and who run projects that will provide a double bottom line of financial profit and social change.

In addition to what I could call "social" projects, they also wanted to learn more about microfinance and meet a few microfinance institutions. Now that got me excited !!!

They were only going to be here for 4 days so I had to create a top-notch program for them, which would include meetings with the Ugandan Investment Authority, the Private Sector Foundation of Uganda, 4 entrepreneurs, 4 MFIs and a visit to the Trade Fair.

The entrepreneurs were all of extremely high quality - businesses varied from the production and sale of solar lamps and the resale of refurbished second hand computers to the purification and sale of bottled water. We even visited a start up that is looking to distribute Liquefied Petroleum Gas in all the households in Uganda. Quite an ambitious business model!

Meeting with Entrepreneurs

On the microfinance side - the quality and social appeal of the MFIs we visited was wide ranging. We met a reglious based organisation that is doing a great job targeting the rural poor in the South West region of the county but also a Kampala based organisation that is focusing on the urban - quick loans where I thought the social impact of its activities was hard to determine.

Luckily, the checking and re-checking of the schedule with all the participants meant that the program was executed without any glitches or delays.

It was a priviledge for me to be able to spend time with these two extremely knowledgeable professionals. I learned a lot from interacting with them, bouncing ideas and getting a different view point on businesses, financials, overall appeal and the importance of the entrepreneurs above all others.

If the entrepreneur was engaging, precise, knowledgeable and passionate about his business - this made a huge undeniable difference. There is still a lot of work to be done on teaching entrepreneurs to structure their thoughts, present their idea in a coherent logical manner and most importantly engage the investor. Hopefully BiD's Ready 4 Equity Training sessions will do just that!

Visiting the Uganda Trade Show

Especially with social investors, i found that the social return could easily overshadow the financial component if they could identify with the project and feel that they were needed ("the if not me, then you have no chance to succeed and i want you to succeed!" factor was quite important!) .

So if any entrepreneurs are reading this - know that it is possible to get finance. You need to know your business perfectly, recognise your weaknesses and show that you are working on improving them and most importantly you need to be able to convey your passion to those listening. Learn the rules to play the game ... and from there you will have a better chance of winning!

One final note - to my first informal investors - thank you for sharing your thoughts with me and allowing me to learn from your experience.

Now the real work begins to make it happen!

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Eid Mubarak

I discovered a new religious festival last week - Eid El Fitr. I obviously already knew about Ramadan. When I think of what Ramadan means to me, I have to go back to Cairo when I was a child. We were there once during Ramadan and I have a vague memory of things being very quiet during the day and extremely festive at nigh. I remember seeing big long tables set along the streets and big groups of people having a jolly good time all eating together. At the time, I was told that everyone could join in. As we were not allowed to go out alone, i would go to the window and slowly spy on the street below waiting for all the people to arrive a dusk, eat and be happy.

My second memory takes me back to my University years. I had become good friend with two Egyptian students on my Masters course and we decided to join in the class trip around the Stock Exchanges of Europe (this was basically a bus drive from London to Paris to Frankfurt and Brussels ... with the excuse of seeing stock exchanges - I say excuse because the Euro and the creation of computerised systems for recording financial transactions have meant that the exciting images of "Buy! Sell!" seen in the New York Stock Exchange is long gone memory in Europe. Anyway, during that trip it also happened to be Ramadan.

So here I was with my two egyptian friends looking at them "endure" this tradition in an isolated environment - with no one else doing it - so to speak. And it look painfully difficult!

But this time it was different. I got to witness first hand the joy that emanates from celebrating this event with family and friends (not mine but ok). This felt like Christmas. Although it was without the tree, the presents or the weird uncle, the joy, the spirit of sharing and food were all present.

I was sat in a small crammed house in the Ntinda area of Kampala. Children screaming and playing outside in the baking sun. The succulent smells of the kitchen already making my mouth water. People coming in at regular intervals, embracing, holding their children all dressed to the T - saluting and sharing a few words of congratulations and of their experience of Ramadan this year.

And I was there, watching; cultural outsider. Taking all this in and slowly realising that like Christmas, Eid is shared around the world, uniting the muslims across borders. And for this Rachid my friend from Morocco was extremely grateful.

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Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda

It came as a spur of the moment decision, followed by an opportunity to venture out of the capital city and ended up as an adventure with a friend.

Starting off @ Red Chilli Hostel in Kampala one of the only backpacker's hostels in town - we set off in a small van that would endure many bumpy roads, potholes, torrential rain, scary baboons, flying geese and the odd backpacker or 10.

My compadres for the journey were an eclectic bunch of travellers: Estelle (Partner in Crime in Kampala- Jambo Bwana!), Pauline (frenchie interning in Kampala for an MFI), Steven and Christine (Aussie brother and sister who were originally from Uganda, visiting family), Allison (awesome brit gal who is training to be a nurse and was volunteering in a small surgery 80KM from Kampala), an Austrian dude and another Aussie from Melbourne on a 5 month trip across East Africa.

The gals We set off at 9 am for a rollercoaster ride up to a town called Masindi located 215 KM north of Kampala. Although the scenery was rather unspectacular it was impossible for me not to be mesmerized by the scenes of rural daily life spreading across my eyes - children pumping water from a communal well, women carrying huge packages on their heads, farmers digging the rich red earth, cows walking across the road, small stalls of food along the road ... Uganda the Pearl of Africa was letting itself be discovered step by step.

Walking through Masindi

Stopping for food along the way

Africa Paradize

Having stopped for a quick lunch at the only "traveller's " cooking joint, where i opted for a rather disappointed chicken and rice (the chicken must have been the scrawniest chicken ever!) - we continued our journey to Murchison National Park.

Our accomodation for the night

Murchison Falls National Park is the largest national park in Uganda. It offers ‘big game’ viewing opportunities, chimpanzee tracking and truly breathtaking scenery all combined with the awesome river Nile

Safari in the rain

The National Park is named for the dramatic Murchison Falls, where the world's longest river explodes violently through a narrow cleft in the Rift Valley escarpment to plunge into a frothing pool 43m below.

Murchison Falls

Although battered by Idi Amin's wildlife policies and ferocious poaching in the 1980s, wildlife populations have largely recovered. We were lucky enough to see elephants, buffalos, giraffes and a variety of antelopes. We cruised the Nile to Muchinson Falls and witnessed one of Africa's densest hippo and crocodile populations including a dazzling variety of waterbirds (including the rare shoebill stork).
Despite the ferocious morning rain which meant that the skies were grey and the light pale white (making for poor photo conditions -boohoo) , I still enjoyed myself. I soaked up the images of wild animals going about their daily routine and stopping to "watch us, watch them". The sun made a brief appearance and allowed to take in the truly heavenly beauty of this little spot on earth. If I believed - I would have thought to be in the garden of Eden.

After spending two nights at Red Chilli's we moved on to another camp where we set off tracking chimpanzees. Although we were encouraged by the statistics (70% of sightings) our chimp tracking adventure will be remembered for a 4 hour crawling exercise through deep and thick African forests in search of the elusive chimps.

Chimpanzee tracking exercise

We heard them around us, sighted a few chimp ears and bums ... but unfortunately we were to be in the 30% group to barely see them. The lodge in itself was amazing - a nice blend of clean, eco-friendly facilities that blended nicely in its surroundings. Unfortunately the illusion of safety would soon to be shattered by the discovery of the mother of all spiders in our dorm , minutes before setting to bed.

Our spider

Needless to say we didn't sleep very well.

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