Becoming a Pan African Champion with Irene Kiwia – Smart Money Africa


Episode 12: Becoming a Pan African Champion with Irene Kiwia

On this episode Arese interviews Irene Kiwia who is our first Pan-African guest.  She is a champion for socio-economic development for Africa, who’s experience spans over 17 years in media, marketing, communication, technology and development programs that are focused on youth and women empowerment.  She is the founder of Frontline Media Africa.

In this interview Arese has a wonderful sit down with Irene Kiwia; discussing life as an entrepreneur living and making an impact across East Africa and sub-Saharan Africa through her various Profit, and not-for profit organisations she is actively involved in. She talks about Life as a young teenager and her love for media and communications and pursuing this desire in her early years right after her high school education, and her various experiences working and schooling throughout university.

Her big break came after starting out at 25 and deciding to runn her own business after “90%” of her schoolmates from the university sought employment in companies”.   In her words, “I was like a child, they don’t really think- ‘If I do this, that will happen’, they just go with Faith”. This sums up her philosophy as she makes her way through the value chain and building the capacity as an industry leader.  

They proceeded to delve into her investment strategy, and her pie-chart model she uses where she divides her investable funds across businesses, real Estate, commodities, Stocks/Bonds, and in products that are a necessity.

She talked about TWAA, which is a brain child of the need to empower young women leaders in rural Tanzania and giving them the leverage to compete and expand their capacity.  She takes us through the 14-year Odyssey, from when the idea first dropped in her mind, to it’s bootstrapping process, then raising capital and making strategic partnerships and her ultimate dream of having it listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

She discussed the structure and the wide spread influence of community saving programs, and how this model has worked for over 20-years in the East African regions and providing a solid investment options and opportunities.  She discussed how she is using Ekoba, to build value for this model, increase capacity and expand the value chain for users of the savings program.  

Irene goes deeper into the kinds of skills and processes that have brought her this far in her journey.   She discussed the need for her to be open-minded and teachable at every turn and a never ending curiosity to know more and a little of everything and in her words learning that she is , “perfectly imperfect”.

 Using equity to build her house against exploring other financing options is her number one money mistake, especially as she has come to realise that a house (real estate) is an asset with very high running costs especially without being commercialised.

The conversation concluded with Irene’s advice to young women to create products that are valued and to have a plan and to know what to do and when to do it.



Source link

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *