4 tips to Creat a business in Africa

Unless you want to risk going through bankruptcy before you could even establish a business in Africa, you need to make sure you take some preliminary elements in consideration. Taking decisions on an impulse or making management mistakes can be extremely detrimental to anybody who is trying to be an entrepreneur in Africa. Those two things are actually the main issues that people who have been trying to establish a long running activity on the black continent have been dealing with. For that reason, we have 4 tips to help you have a successful business in Africa… 

• Find an incubator to help you

Whether you graduated from an Ivy league business school or not, as an entrepreneur, you need to get acquainted with the reality of the market and have someone help you through all the paperwork and necessary steps especially when you are a foreigner who is trying to invest in Africa. Unfortunately, the majority of the project holders in Africa, in French speaking areas specifically, start their business without trying to get some tips from experienced professionals like incubators. That is the reason why we recommend you to get you an incubator if you want to become more efficient, gain legitimacy and credibility, in your line of business. 

• Test your idea on the market

An idea of a project can seem relevant in theory and have a hard time being well received in practice. Thus, many entrepreneurs have ideas that are strictly laid on paper without the concept of it having really seen the light concretely. So in order for you to have a chance to have a successful business in Africa, we recommend you to test your concept on consumers. That would allow you to get your idea approved on the present market and to have the opportunity to gather feedback, criticisms, and suggestions from clients in order to consistently improve the characteristics of the product until it completely meets the needs of the consumers. 

• Think big

In Africa, lots of entrepreneurs tend to have projects that are not quite big. Most of the time, they just stop at selling out all their products and provide their services locally . Yet, investments opportunities are huge in this continent where middle classes are emerging. Project holders in Africa can therefore benefit from  a consistent increase of their business. For that reason, they must think bigger and try to increase their market share in the sub-regions, whether in the CEMAC region -Central African Economic and Monetary Community – or in the -ECOWAS region -Economic Community of West African States.

•  Surround yourself with qualified partners

In many cases, the skills of the project holders are not a match with the core business of the company. Majority of companies choose to have people performing several functions as managers and technicians in an effort to reduce the costs. This represents one of the main reasons for business failures in Africa. This lack of skills towards the design of a product or a serious issue with the way a service has been provided, are in the very heart of the growth of a business. You need to make sure you are only surrounded with people with solid expertise and a good knowledge of your products if you want to maximize your chances of seeing your project succeed.