HOST: One thing we know here at Limitless Africa, is that Africa has lots of young entrepreneurs that are keen to go global and are not afraid of doing business in the world’s biggest economies.
GERALD KATABAZI: America has a coffee culture which is strong enough, but it does not do what? It does not farm coffee. Should I happen have a one-on-one business talk with President Donald Trump, definitely would tell him that, look, sir, you have the market, I have the produce. So it’s a win win.
HOST: From coffee farmers in Uganda to award-winning creative entrepreneurs in Cape Verde and PR moguls in Nigeria
SIMONE SPENCER: We are building a platform called Creative Base, This platform won the 2024 Cabo Verde Digital Grant as well as the most promising start-up at the Cabo Verde Digital Awards
TEMI BADRU: I also founded a company called Voices and Faces Communications. We provide communication services and we train individuals and organizations in public speaking.
HOST: But what do all these young Africans have in common? Apart from talent, determination and ambition? They were all on YALI – the Young African Leaders Initiative, a U.S. government program which trains the next generation of African leaders. So how did it go? Did learning the American way help them become better entrepreneurs?
Simone Spencer is a visual artist from CV and founder of Creative Base, a digital network for creatives. She told Lourdes Fortes about joining YALI.
SIMONE: So I saw this opportunity, applied, was preselected, had the interview, and was then selected not only for the six-week YALI program, but also for the complementary four-week PDE, which is the Professional Development Experience program, where I had the unique opportunity to work for a month at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, something I never thought I would do in my life.
Having this opportunity to work for a month in a museum dedicated to contemporary art made by African and Afro descendants was a very valuable experience. In addition to the six weeks with 25 leaders from 23 different countries, people with whom I still talk to every day and who do incredible work in fields ranging from health to cinema to sports. They are leaders in their fields. Being among them was a phenomenal experience.
LOURDES: Simone, what was your first impression when you arrived in the United States?
SIMONE: Our facilitators, our teachers, were committed to ensuring that we had the best possible experience so that we would leave stronger than when we arrived. I think that was the strongest first impression, seeing how they treated us as leaders, as people. It wasn’t an experience where they treated us as students and teachers, but rather as equals.
I learned a lot from leadership, team building, how to engage with the community, and most importantly, seeing the examples of my colleagues, how they were already applying it in their fields, in their countries, in their communities. That was very inspiring.
LOURDES: And what struck you about the American mindset? Was the mentality different?
SIMONE: Thank you for your question. I think that when you talk about mentality, you can talk about various facets. And American society has various types of mentality, various rules and points of view. One point that helped me a lot and which I talked about a lot with my mentor was mutual aid, which has many parallels with the African Ubuntu mindset. We talked a lot about Ubuntu, which is I am because you are.
It’s parallel to the mindset I went to study in the United States, which is leadership and community engagement. Community engagement is only possible with the help of many hands and will only succeed if those hands are organized. The need for organization, for putting everything on paper, for everything, for everything.
for having everything well structured with a long-term plan was one of the things I talked about most with my mentor and which I now take very much to heart
LOURDES: How has YALI helped with your website, CreativeBase?
SIMONE: Cabo Verde is somewhat isolated, far from its umbilical cord. One way to expand CreativeBase is through my network of contacts acquired at YALI, which has thousands of members. I will rely on my support network and colleagues at YALI to spread the word about CreativeBase across the continent.
HOST: But Simone was not the only one to be influenced by the YALI experience.
GERALD: Right now, I’m talking to you from Volcano coffee in the heart of Kampala city. It’s a coffee house that serves Kampala City and communities around.
HOST: That’s Gerald Katabazi from Uganda. He founded Volcano Coffee – they sell beans and coffee in Uganda and beyond.
GERALD: Volcano Coffee was founded in 2014 as a social enterprise. And since then, 10 years back, we started with about to three employees. That was my driver and two assistants. However, currently, its growth impact has been very amazing in that we are now employing 22 other people, especially the women and youth in Uganda.
HOST: What do you think American entrepreneurs can learn from African entrepreneurs and what did you as an African entrepreneur learn from Americans?
GERALD: That’s a very brilliant question. Thank you. Now, while ah during the program, i discovered, because we are exposed to so many institutions, one of them was Georgia Tech in Georgia. So I literally connected with a few entrepreneurs. So I learned that American young entrepreneurs are also so aggressive. They are very brilliant and they like hands-on activities. There’s a lady called Carrie. Carrie is from Kentucky. When we met at Georgia, yeah this young lady was in loved coffee herself, but as a student she didn’t know how really to dive in into or navigate the principles of trade, it is like that. So kept an exchange. So when she left us, she left the Georgia Tech in Atlanta, went back to Kentucky, she opened up a small shop. So because of the coffee culture in the USA, consumption of coffee is high, then her shop grew faster than what I was doing in Kampala. Then immediately she was a kidding and laughing at me me like, yeah, yeah, I’ve opened up a second store, I’ve opened up a third store, how many stores have you opened? I’m like, nothing, I’m still holding one.
HOST: That’s because In Uganda the norm is drinking tea even though they grow coffee.
GERALD: Because literally in my country, it’s a tea drinking coffee nation. So that narrative has been here for decades. That’s what made me or what forced me to dive into the consumption of coffee at the domestic level. Then I can say I can change it. And it’s working. Because of that, I had to lag a little bit, but I was thinking beyond, like, why don’t I again dive into the US market where the culture of coffee consumption is high.
That’s how I entered into it, and that’s how I’m really making impact ah on the trade side, linking the Ugandan coffee products to the super global economies like the American.
HOST: He’s looking to expand in the US. He already has two shops in Ohio and Atlanta where he employs American staff to sell Uganda coffee.
GERALD: Should I happen have a one-on-one business talk with President Donald Trump, definitely would tell him that, look, sir, you have the market, I have the the produce.
So you either win, I also win. So allow or either way scrap the tariffs on this produce, then we are able to serve the people. At the end of the day, you will make money through job creation for the American people, also make money through importing farmer’s coffee from the pool of 14,000 that I work with. And then they also sell premium coffee and then make money. So it’s a win-win.
So we happen to be connected to Walmart and I met General Manager called Queense. So we are in touch and I’m still working on the standardization to to ensure that today the product is fully satisfied by ISO certification, such that after that, and FDA certifications, such that after those experiments, then we are able to have our produce introduced to Walmart stores a across Atlanta. So it’s a deal that is a still in the pipeline, and it has a ah close of about 70% to make its achievement. So I’m sure we shall.
We’re delighted to feature Vanessa Delgado, an amazing musician from Cape Verde – follow her on Instagram and on Facebook.
HOST: Another YALI alumnus is Temi Badru from Nigeria – She’s also the founder of the communication and PR firm Voices and Faces Communications. She spoke to Claude.
CLAUDE: I found out um in the research that you actually did the YALI program, the Young African Leaders Initiative program.
Can you tell us about that and what it actually did for you as you were rising in your career?
TEMI: I did the YALI RLC in 2017, actually. And it was beautiful. So it was an on-site program. We had about five weeks on-site. So many topics from leadership to ethical leadership to sustainable entrepreneurship to so many things that have stayed with me.
“oh, fun fact, let me add this. You recall that I’m a trainer in public speaking and communications, and I also host events.
I had the opportunity to actually do like a major event, to host a talk show on the Yali ground, on the galic in the Yali camp. And that’s something I will never forget.
Because it meant so much to me. The presidential host that you see now who tours countries and hosts events, you know, internationally and locally, had that platform in YALI to speak to people that I may not have been able to reach at that time.
And that’s something I don’t take away from, I will never forget. YALI was absolutely amazing.
And then after the YALI camp, we had the mentoring session. And since then, I’ve been so, so particular about mentorship and I’m so grateful for mentors and also for people that have been privileged to mentor. So YALI was amazing. So YALI left so much with me in terms of ethical leadership and beyond that, the community. One of the beautiful things about Africans is that we believe in community.
And YALI gave me that community, that fellowship of people who have a mind to impact Nigeria, to impact Africa and their different countries because it’s for different countries. So yes, YALI gave me that opportunity to network. You like to put it as build relationships, to build relationships. Yes, YALI was beautiful.
HOST: Here at Limitless Africa, we look at how Africans and Americans can work together for shared prosperity. Our YALI entrepreneurs are an amazing example of that – they’re learning about the US market and combining it with their own home-grown knowledge to build international businesses.
