Thread by @MichaelMburu_

Why The Small Business Model (SME) in Kenya & Africa is flawed and why Asia & the West are winning. THREAD (PART ONE).
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For how long will Africa accept the status quo on being the receiving end of innovation & not the giving end?

What are we doing wrong?

Let’s see..

Let’s begin with two businesses Nyamazone & Farmers Choice.

NyamaZone is a sole proprietor meat butchery started in 1980. His primary business is selling meat to customers but he also once in a while gets peak orders from hotels.

In a good year, he nets around 700,000 Kshs.

The second one is Farmers Choice also an LLC started in 1980 by Lonrho.

He's in the meat business & his primary business is selling to institutions & customers who buy from him in supermarkets.

In a good year, he nets around 20Mn Kshs.

Is this an unfair comparison? Let's see..

Are the two business in the same industry? YES. We’ve proven that meat is big business.

Were they started kindah the same year, YES? Why the discrepancy?

Cases like this are common in Africa. Take another example in SA where stokvels started earlier have been overtaken by ABSA.

What’s the glaring problem here?

It’s the MODEL of doing business.

Whose business model is more RADICAL? It’s Farmers Choice.

In all those years ask yourself why has Nyamazone preferred to be a sole proprietor or stick to the familiar end customer business model?

Why? 🤔

Nyamazone has hard so many years to grow & match Farmers Choice.

Why is Nyamazone content in being a small vendor for all those years.

We've proven that meat is indeed a big business.

There is a deeper problem here & to see it we need to go back to the genesis of these two.

When look at the two companies we see a huge difference in the RADICAL THINKING of their business models.

While Nyamazone is content in owning & running a small farm to supply hotels & end customers, Farmers Choice approached the meat industry with a bigger solution.

That UNRADICAL approach on Nyamazone’s part is the reason why they lost to F.C.

This is why most Africa businesses NEVER impact the world.

As Kenya & Africa we need to ask ourselves a very HARD question.

Why are we contented with creating & running small businesses? WHY?

We need a radical form of thinking on the continent on how we approach ENTREPRENEURSHIP.

Entrepreneurs & gvt need to question the failing SME logic.

You can blame colonialism or apartheid all you want but fact is all companies start the same as startups.

ONE MAN & ONE MISSION.

What is making the Americans & Asians successful is that yes they do have VCs with lots of capital but they’re funding startups with RADICAL GROWTH THINKING that are coming here to do big business because we as Africa are a huge business.

So why are we waiting for them?

How do we fix this problem of UNRADICAL THINKING that plagues majority of entrepreneurs in Africa?

What is the underlying problem here that fuels this?

I’ll answer this on part 2. Meanwhile I’d love to know your thoughts & takes on how we can create world dominating companies.