“The West African Indaba was an awe-inspiring and enjoyable for me
both as a fellow and an individual. I must say, it’s a very thoughtful
idea by Anzisha to bring us for a get together so we could remind
ourselves on the values of what we do and to also keep tab on the
progress of our various ventures. I feel its something that should be
sustained in the future.
Last month’s Indaba was exciting as I met with fellow finalists from
my year (Yaw Duffour) and from 2013. I was pleased to meet with last
year’s finalists from cameroon (David Morfaw) and senegal (Donald
Bambara), and we shared our experiences as entrepreneurs. My fellow
Nigerian finalist (Tayo Olufuwa) from 2013 is a friend and so I was
already familiar with his project.
The indaba was held in my home country (Nigeria), Lagos to be
specific, so I didn’t have much challenge coming down to the hotel.
Although I had to travel 3 hours from a neighboring town to get to
Lagos.
As host fellows, myself and Tayo had to plan a lot of fun trips for
the rest around Lagos. We took them to places like the Mall and Local
restaurants for them to have a taste of the rich Nigerian recipes. We
also had them go to the largest Marketplace in Lagos where they got
varieties of items like clothing, snacks and other souvenirs.
Coincidentally, the social media week, Lagos was organized that same
week and we attended most of the events.
Personally, the social media week events I attended impacted greatly.
I learned so many tips on how to tap into social media platforms like
facebook, twitter and linkedin to help grow engagement in my product
and create awareness for my business as a whole. Prominent
entrepreneurs shared the challenges they had in their business and how
they used social media tools to swiftly solve those problems.
We were also featured in one of the sessions where we were given the
opportunity to showcase our own projects. That feature had a great
impact on my business as afterwards I met with the Sales Director of
Eskimi (makers of Eskimi online dating platform), who now are in talks
with us for partnerships. I also got to talk about my business on a
radio interview with theBeat 99.9 FM. The interview has also
influenced so many opportunities which has come our way over the past
few weeks now. We are now getting twice as many emails for business
opportunities as we normally did get several months ago and we have
gotten nothing less than 6 opportunities which would bring huge pay
in. In short, we’ve made more revenue this first 3 months than the
entirety of last year.
The last activity that I also benefit from and enjoyed was using BUILD
framework to track performance of both my business and that of
Anzisha’s.
At the end of the 3-day get together, I felt it should never have
ended as the whole experience was something I didn’t know when next I
would have again.”
– Mahmood Oyewo
