John-Paul Iwuoha - 101 Ways to Make Money in Africa

This book is the most comprehensive collection of Africa business ideas you will ever come across.anywhere. But it does not stop here. Having an idea is easy making truly informed decisions in an African context and making them confidently is a different pair of shoes. As a result, too many entrepreneurs never get started, hop from one idea to the next, or rush into a hasty startup concept only to find out it didnt work.

Do you recognize yourself in one of those categories? The real tragedy here, however, is not that you struggle to get the train moving, but that you really miss out on what Africa has to offer right now when you dont.

Africa is now being widely promoted as the worlds last market frontier. In simple terms: It is a new, fast-emerging market, a little bit like China was about a decade ago. Well, it is fair to say that it took the world quite some time to wake up to this phenomenon; now that it has, the race has started. And this is precisely why you need a sense of urgency to get your Africa business off the ground, why you need to make smart and informed decisions about what business you will start and we will help you to move you forward in that direction.

This is exactly why we wrote this book. In short, we are two ambitious African professionals and business bloggers (smallstarter.com & africajumpstart.com), one based on the continent, one in the Diaspora, who strangely find great joy in reading and writing about Doing Business in Africa almost seven days a week. All that knowledge we have now put together here. Africas future will be driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs. We truly believe that Africas entrepreneurs have the amazing potential collectively to drive the continent into a better future; that they will pick up, where corporations and politicians have more often failed than succeeded. Its a vision, its a conviction and for that to happen those who want to do business in Africa need to be empowered on a larger scale. Information and inspiration are key drivers to success, and with this book we want to provide both.

It is probably needless to say that this is not some kind of magical get-rich-quick book. But we have studied the amazing stories of hundreds of African entrepreneurs who indeed managed to turn their fortunes around, who built businesses starting with almost nothing just a few years ago, and now belong to the continents most successful and wealthy.

The low level of competition makes such great success stories possible, and even if you find it hard to believe right now, these are ordinary Africans and non-Africans who are no different from most of us. That means you can indeed achieve the same, if you put the vision and hard work into it.

Now, we have not chosen to collect some random business ideas that may or may not succeed. This book is the result of a lot of research and work a combined period of almost four years between us, to be precise. The ideas we present to you in this book are Africas TOP business concepts across a variety of sectors and industries: there is a market demand, they feed into a hugely growing trend, and others who have embarked on them have become extremely successful.

No, selling DVDs in a corner shop or importing television sets are not among the ideas in this book. Well, there may be a market for those, but you probably get the essence of it we have collected business ideas that are Africas real drivers.

Each of our 101 business ideas presents a strong case. And here is how:

Market context

We are starting with an outline of an overall market potential for each idea. Here you will understand why this idea is powerful, what the current market dynamics are, and which trends you can expect. In short, this is the powerful Africa context for the idea.

Business Concept

Here you receive guidance as we introduce several business models, suggesting which one would work best and why. Take tomatoes as an example: You can plant them, you can export them, or process them into ketchup different business concepts for the same product. We will point out why some business concepts will be smarter than others.