How technology has revolutionized the generation of money in Africa

There is no subject that interests me more than the subject of making money and reducing it even more. There is no specific topic in the process of making money that excites me more than the use of widely available technology. And I’m not talking high-tech here. I’m just talking about simple technology like cell phones, email and things like that.

Why am I so interested in this? Because I think there are great opportunities to make a lot of money in business for those who use technology to do things that were previously impossible to do. This article explains all of that in very simple language and I actually give you practical experiences from my own life.

I started out in the very low-tech entry-level traditional business of printing. I used to make very good cash printing letterheads, business cards, etc. for various clients, large and small. Then computers came along and revolutionized the entire industry. The computer made the office paperless and therefore needed much less stationery. Customers who required 5,000 letterheads now have 500 for the entire year and only communicate via email and even SMS. To make matters worse, computers and cell phones invaded the market around the same time easy loans arrived, so almost everyone who got a loan in Nairobi bought a printing press. The result was that we ended up having too many printing machines at a time when the market for print jobs was rapidly shrinking. Long story short, I got into serious financial trouble and was auctioned off and lost all my furniture and electronics in the house and everything in the office (including, ironically, a computer that I hadn’t even finished paying for).

Then one day an old friend arranged for me to do a fairly lucrative print job for a client in South Sudan. The client sent me Juba’s artwork as an email attachment. And then he wired me the cash. When I was done with work, I took him to the Wilson airport, where he was flown out. I ended up with quite a bit of money which gave me a little respite from the considerable financial pressure I was going through at the time. I sat down and reviewed the role of technology in allowing me to serve a client who was so far away without leaving Nairobi. I asked myself questions like “Could I get more clients in South Sudan while I was in Nairobi? That way I wouldn’t be bogged down by the crowded and shrinking market for offset printing in Nairobi.

My mind quickly turned to technology as a tool to help me make money in an increasingly hostile business environment. I have never looked back since then.

To cut to the chase, I ended up getting a very good job in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania, where I currently reside. When I first went there, I was naive and thought that I would hit that underdeveloped market with all kinds of products and services and become a millionaire overnight. But unfortunately, it never was. I was quickly brought back to reality when even my employers in Tanzania had serious problems trying to get me a work permit to work in that country.

To be honest, I lost quite a bit of money trusting the locals to act as my front while I tried all kinds of failing businesses one after another. My wife was very upset about my continued “investments” in cash drain failures and she pointed out that the cash she had lost would have been enough to buy a large prime plot in Athi River or Kitengela. She really pissed me off when she said this. Especially since it was true.

Then I realized that I didn’t need to struggle in the Tanzanian market, which I didn’t know very well, when I could use technology to do business in Kenya while still employed in Tanzania. It wasn’t easy to get to what I have today, but I was finally able to set up something that works like a charm.

I have two businesses that are doing very well. I sell cars in Nairobi and Mombasa as a broker. I advertise my cars on the notice boards at the Sarit Center in Nairobi and another at the Nakumatt in Mombasa. I make my color poster for the cars on my PC at home and then I used to print the posters and send them physically via the Akamba bus from Dar to Nairobi and Mombasa where they would be picked up and placed on the respective notice boards for me to start receiving queries. The whole exercise would cost me about 4,000 shillings. But these days technology has made it even easier and much cheaper. I use a new blog site where I hire someone in Nairobi and another in Mombasa to receive my posters as a pdf attachment to their email. They then print and post them at Sarit Center and Nakumatt Nyali respectively. I only pay 100 Kshs shillings each for this simple errand. I do this through the site, which means they don’t get paid until they’ve successfully completed the task. I usually send them the cash through Mpesa to the innovative and simple site. I use this guy in Dar who rides buses every other day to Mombasa and back and I give him the cash in Tanzanian Shillings and he deposits Mpesa in Kenyan Shillings and sends the cash to the recipient when he is in Kenya. To confirm that the work is done, I simply call a friend in the Westlands and ask him to go to the Sarit Center for lunch and see if they see my poster. I do something similar with the Mombasa cartel. I could easily use the same site to hire someone else for 100 shillings to go and check and confirm that the signs have been put up, but I guess I want to save 100. The cell phone advertised is my personal one (working in Tanzania ). ) When customers call, I tell them as much as I can about the car and then direct them where to see it. I work with about 3 different major car importers in Mombasa. When they buy the car, the sellers simply deposit the funds into my KCB (Kenya Commercial Bank account) and then I can access the funds through an ATM in Dar-es-salaam. Whenever my contacts get new cars in Mombasa, they post it on their website and I just download it from there and create my sales banner. Simple but it works.

I still have my job very well paid and at the same time my side business brings in an average of Kshs 500,000 every month.

Do you understand drift? Now you know why I’m so interested in talking about technology and how to use it to make money through a simple small business. Remember that you can do virtually any type of business as an absentee because technology now allows you to “be there” without being physically there.

Sit down today and try to figure out how to use technology to make money.