How bad politics ruins good business

Recently, I have been fortunate to meet some pretty amazing young people bucking the trend. They are intelligent, ambitious without being greedy and they want to leave a legacy.

They also want to put in the work it takes to achieve their dreams. Sadly, they all express the same sentiments about their often times painstaking growth.

At no point in their journey have they been supported by the public sector. Not in access to resources, networks or markets. And for those who have sought this support, the process has been so excruciating and flawed that it belied any positive outcome they may have envisioned.

Given that one of the recurring themes in the public sector has been about women and the youth participating in the tender quotas and funds that have been set aside for them, something somewhere doesn’t add up.

The existence of cartels and tenderpreneurs effectively ensures that neither of the targeted groups have a fighting chance. As I mentioned in my last article, intention and action are as far-removed from each other as day and night. The aphorism ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ comes to mind.

Could it be that everyone I meet legitimately failed to qualify for the allocations? Or were they all in the wrong place at the wrong time? I posit that there is a possibility (albeit infinitesimal) that I have just been talking to the unlucky half. But undeniably, there is clearly a disconnect between the words spoken and the reality on the ground.

Before someone sends me an irate email faulting my logic and quoting a million or so entrepreneurs who have successfully been enabled by the Government, I acknowledge that there could be success stories that do not make the front pages in the dailies. And that is where the relevant institutions need to make more effort in their communication strategy.

Exposing us to victories allows us not to write off the initiatives as a lost cause, but more importantly, it increases the participation being advocated for. I am eager to reverse my current mindset. After all, who doesn’t gravitate towards a success story.

In light of the main drivers of entrepreneurship - access to funding, education, training and coordinated support – you might as well be on your own. Every time a conversation about the intersection of business and politics comes up among my peers, it is all I can do not to scoff in derision.

Not because I do not believe that the two can be mutually beneficial, but from the sheer lack of effort put into positive correlation. Yes, the role of politics in business is to create an enabling environment for sustainable enterprise, tackle inequality and grow a productive economy.

Well, that does not happen where I come from. We all know the roles our lawmakers play and it is hardly to intercede for our dreams and desires. So this is my gripe. Every so often, I hear lawmakers casting a blight on the West and wishing them away, citing their misplaced sense of relevance in our very ‘progressive’ society. After I take a moment to wrap my head around the sheer ignorance of the argument, I realise that our realities could not be further removed.

While for them, access to quality education and business financing are not matters to be concerned with, it is not the case for the other 60 per cent of the population aged 0 to 24. The inability to create sustainable businesses further propagates the poverty cycle, and in many cases the funding needed is negligible by most standards.

I have interacted with five business incubation hubs in Nairobi. Their mandate is to support, to different extents, startup businesses by providing mentorship, seed capital, business training etc. Yet, of all five hubs, a significant amount of funding comes from organisations like Omidyar, Accenture, Hivos, Google, USaid, the list goes on. Basically, organisations from the same countries we are thumbing our noses at.

So, say we were to adopt the extreme and assert our sovereignty, following in the footsteps of a certain African country that showed foreigners the door, what would happen exactly?

Would the public sector step in, ready and willing to fill the gap left in their wake? Remember the young people I met who are bucking the trend? Eighty per cent of them have gotten to the sustainable stage in business by being supported by foreign organisations.

Regardless of whether their mandate was education, economic empowerment or the environment, local funders and their relatives would not touch them with a ten foot pole. So now you understand why I scoff at conversations that assume a reciprocal relationship between politics/policy and business.

From where I sit, there is simply none. If you are an entrepreneur who has a big dream of changing lives and sadly, like the rest of us, no patronage, I only have this to say to you “You’re on your own”.