[Column] Glenn Davies: AFRICA - The Richest Poorest place on Earth

If you were asked to think of 3 words that best define Africa, would ‘wealthy’ be one of them?

My Company’s been doing business in Africa now for a while, and can safely say it has not been easy. When you first start out doing business across the dark continent, you initially feel like you have stepped back in time and that you hope to add enormous value, wealth and prosperity to a place traditionally thought to be plagued with poverty and limited opportunity. Each country sends a strange false sense of this perception, almost luring you in like the unsuspected fish looking for its next meal but eventually being hooked.

But then something strange happens that turns this perception on its head. Everybody appears to have money, and an endless list of opportunities to choose from. No matter how good the proposal you have, how amazing the solution is, or more importantly - how much money you claim to be able to bring into the Country - nobody seems to really care; Or at least they don’t show it.

I think it’s safe to say, Africa (business community) has become spoilt by choice.

Now of course I’m not saying for one second that Africa is not stricken in poverty - it absolutely is. It’s a fact that seventy-five percent of the world’s poorest countries are located in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Liberia and Ethiopia. And for the past two years, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s second largest country, has also been ranked the poorest in the world with a Gross Domestic Product (based on purchasing-power-parity) of $394.25 in 2013. In 2015, 475 million people were living in extreme poverty across sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Bank, those living on $1.25-a-day accounted for 48.5 percent of the population in that region.

Approximately one in three people living in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that 239 million people (around 30 percent of the population) in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry. This is the highest percentage of any region in the world.

My issue is, it’s almost impossible to do something about this, and therein lies the complex battle of doing business in Africa.

Here’s an interesting statistic recently published: There are over 4,800 Africans spread across 17 African countries who are individually worth $100 million or more in tangible assets.

It’s a fascinating dynamic. And these ultra-high net worth individuals have an aggregate net worth of over $1.2 trillion. It’s been reported that there are approximately 6,970 individuals in the United States worth over $100M, which doesn’t leave Africa trailing too far behind.

So why then is the overall condition of the continent plagued with such poverty and disparity?

Well, according to Financial Times investigative journalist Tom Burgis, “The combination of staggering wealth, rampant violence, and abject poverty is no coincidence, but part of a pattern causing devastation across Africa”.

We’ve got some great success stories coming out of Africa and we will not give up the fight. Our focus is to bring unique solutions to the continent that support the major key problems facing Africa right now - sustainable food production through Agriculture, mobile medical clinics, vaccines, and other Health solutions, mobile schools to improve Education in the rural areas, high tech Security software and hardware to protect the citizens, & large scale national programs around tourism, insurance & banking to drive Economic growth.

It’s a complex environment and a very tough battle; one that needs a ridiculous amount of patience, persistence, and genuine care. The challenge of course is, in order to help the underprivileged in Africa, you need to first convince the privileged.

I hope those at the top that may not ‘need’ or care enough about the opportunity people present or want to bring into Africa, stop and think about those that genuinely do. This is the only way Africa can start to rebuild - from the ground up.

Glenn Davies is Group CEO of Inigmah