Don't Hit Snooze: My Top Five Reasons

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Early risers are good planners and night owls are creative. Which one will you prefer the good planner or creative. I strongly advice you to choose the good planner. About a month ago, i wrote a post about how the Islamic call to prayer makes me time conscious and this time management hack from Islam has been helping me till now. It is gradually becoming a habit, these days as i wake up 3 or 4 minutes ahead  of the first call to prayer which is around 5am. Being an early riser has been having a good impact on me and is really making me relaxed. These are a few of the changes i have seen.

1. I don't feel rushed anymore. As a teacher, my first class is at 7.45am during my non-early rising days i would typically wake up at 7 which leaves me with 45 minutes to cram taking a shower, ironing, having breakfast, trying to catch up on the news and making reviews of lessons i have to teach into those 45 minutes. I was always never on time to class. I was usually 10-15 minutes late for classes. I also realised if i don't take time to savor my breakfast and i just gulp it down in a hurry, i became extremely hungry an hour or two after eating it. These days waking up an hour earlier has made all the difference, i am always on time for classes.
2. Waking up earlier allow me to do a few of my interest before heading for class. Since i have some free minutes, i can indulge in things that i'm interested in. Going on twitter, reading a book, write a blog post, put down more ideas for a blog post, watch a few funny clips on youtube i mean things i do with that extra time are endless. For me catching up on the news whiles eating my breakfast before work is my most precious moment.
3. I am able to plan my day and the probability that i would follow through on my plans are usually high. Why waking up late might derail your plan is that, you don't have any time for yourself. Others have woken up as well they expect you to listen to their conversations, respond to their texts and your business and employer expects you to be productive so you end up trying to shove your interest such as checking your favourite soccer teams position on the league table or watching facebook pictures of the brunch you couldn't attend into your productive hours which makes you slack. Throwback: preaparing lesson notes and listening to hiphop does not work.
4. Waking up early makes you a step ahead of competition. Let's face it this world is a very competitive place to be. From co-workers to fellow economics teachers (in my case). For startups and entrepreneurs, the competition may be more pronounced and cutthroat. Therefore waking up early gives a clear head start to study, make proper research and analysis, add an extra touch to your project, presentation, product or whatever it is you're working on. Clients and employers notice when you put in that extra touch. 
5. Finally there is the healthy eating and livestyle bit. Waking up early allows me to put a thought into what i'm eating because i don't use time as an excuse on why i didn't prepare an oatmeal for breakfast but ate the leftover of last nights khebab. As a recovering excessive meat eater i realised i have to cut back on my meat and protein intake and spare sometime eating fruits, nuts and vegetables if i want to live past age 60. What about exercise you may ask? For that bit it turns out i enjoy writing more than exercising so i swapped my exercise time for writing this blog post.

So there you go. These are my top five reasons for you to wake up early today. If doing it daily is too hard for you, start with two days a week then build up gradually. I bet you will enjoy the free time so much it would be a daily practise. Even if you call your self a "creative night owl" i encourage you to try it because the problem with pushing a task deep into the night is that you don't know what will set you back. 

A Legend and A Border

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There are indeed many thing to see from at Paga, from the crocodile pond to the slave camp. The number of  fuel stations and how close they are to each other is even a tourist attraction. Whiles returning from the slave camp, i was informed by my tour guide Abedi Ayew one Ghanas' all time best footballer and a football legend comes from Nania. It made sense, he owns a football team called Nania FC. The tour guide showed me Abedi Ayew's house and a school the family had help put up for the village of Nania.

Dede Ayew is Abedi Ayew's son, he also plays for the Ghana national team. Football runs in the family.

Paga is the last town in the north eastern part of Ghana, the Ghana-Burkina Faso border is a few kilometres away from the town so i went there just to be sure for the second time, i have reached another end point of Ghana. 

Crossing this border takes you out of Ghana into Burkina Faso

After making sure that all my curiosities have been satisfied, i headed to the taxi park to board a taxi for Bolgatanga. Due to the border and Burkina Faso being a french speaking country, i noticed a lot of the taxi drivers could communicate in english as well as french and the local dialect of the people of paga. As an aspiring polyglot, this made me real jealous.

With Entrepreneurship, Losing is Winning

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Statistics on startups and entrepreneurship does not look very favourable. A lot of startups fail in their first year of operation, many more are forced to close down by their second and third year. By the fifth year 95% or 8 out of 10 businesses have failed. That is the major reason why a lot more people will stick to the traditional corporate sector and have a regular income. But for the few who go into entrepreneurship  it is one heck of a journey. For all the time i have been reading and studying entrepreneurship i have come to realise that failure is some how good for the entrepreneur. It always clear that those who didn't give up on their dreams after they failed but somehow found a way to get back to their business are the extremely successful ones. 

When you start a business,  it's about you, your ideas, your desire to make a change in your society, community or country in the hopes that someone will be willing to pay you for the change or product you have created. In every startup, entrepreneurs represent their own brand and therefore have to play many roles. From marketing, operations to sales and accounting.When an entrepreneur decides to do it all, clearly the skill set that she's strong in comes to bear. The other skills that she does not possess or comes naturally to her, she  fumbles with them (that is why i encourage partnership). Whiles trying to do hold a startup together out of stress, fear or whatever the problem is she crashes and burns. But the good thing is when you fail as as an entrepreneur you learn how not to do things like you did before. This is the entrepreneurs advantage. Being an entrepreneur makes you a strong analyst. You get to bounce ideas off your head as many times as possible always reviewing and making judgement of these ideas, your mind now is a repository of ideas. Every great product or service you see around began as an idea. From a personal experience you know what works and what doesn't. Which on hindsight is not a bad thing because its like paying for school just that this one is more hands on and your failure makes you learn  a lot about yourself. 

 Entrepreneurship is fundamentally about taking risk, and i guess you have read how life is not "fun" for those who do not take risk and what not. But no matter how cliche these quotes are, they are true. Successful entrepreneurs are happy because they now have a leg up on something we are all breaking our backs to have that is time, money and freedom to do whatever they want to do be it travel, charity etc. So if you're considering entrepreneurship, go for it. Take that risk today. Your first startup will fail, the second too might fail, the third one might not really fail but you will sell it before it goes out of control, your final startup will be google.

PS: I leave you with another cliche quote "I have not failed. I've found 10,000 ways that won't work."-Thomas A. Edison

Nania Slave Music

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I made this short video when i visited Nania Pikworo a slave camp in the Upper East region of Ghana. It is a video of tour guide demonstrating the drumming and singing that went on at the slave camp when the slaves were forced to make merry.

If you like this video and you would like to visit Nania click for all tourism information...

A Problem And A Niche

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Three years ago, I heard a motivational speaker talk on radio. He was giving a motivational talk on how to be successful, one thing that he said that struck a chord with me is that. ´the most successful people solve the most difficult societal problems’. This really got me thinking, how does solving societal problems make you rich or successful. With time i came to realize that what this man said is a truism and that people who are solving simple societal problems are the ones who get a large chunk of society’s resources. Therefore the more problems you solve, the more society is willing to devote resources for your work. Entrepreneurs who have built  successful businesses started by solving a problems in a niche market.

Capt (rtd) Prince Kofi Amoabeng is a Ghanaian entrepreneur who owns UT Bank, one of Ghana's premier banking institutions among other financial services related firm. In the 90's where there was high interest rate and getting a loan from a bank was like chasing a unicorn. This entrepreneur set out to give quick loans to those who needed it with no hassle. He even dared to say your loan will be ready in less than 48 hours. This tagline undoubtedly drew the attention of the public especially those who badly needed loans. Now UT financial service is one of Ghana's top banks. After buying and rebranding another bank. 
Sarah Blakely is the youngest self-made women billionaire in the world according to Forbes. She produces undergarment and her flagship product is pantyhose. Producing pantyhose on the surface might not seem like a 'genius' idea as compared to making a pill that cures cancer but it looks like society was willing to reward her for her undergarment brand. The people who are solving problems do not need a cut throat product to excel, they do normal products with an extreme edge.
Social media allows us to connect in an extra ordinary way that is why we rewarded Mark Zuckerberg and his friends so much for facebook. As a social media user and a tech fanboy, i have realised news that spark national conversation and rumor was heavily featured on social media. To take this further, i  observed that, when news sites, magazines and other forms of traditional media share a post on their social media webpage they receive more comments and reactions than their own website. Now take a look at all the popular social media sites twitter, (have a conversation with people in 160 characters or less) and instagram, (put highly filtered pictures online and let people like and comment). The fundamental idea behind these social media networks are clear and very straight forward. So instead of hoping from one site to another to catch up on your favorite content, you can simplify this by following the social media pages of all these sites (problem solved). 
So now as an aspiring entrepreneur i have been looking. I have been looking for little problems that i can solve in my community, my country Ghana and Africa. I must say there are so many problems to solve, maybe you should also start looking for problems people will be willing to pay you to solve, who knows we all might greatly reward you...

Nania: A Tale of Slavery

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I don't know about you but anytime i hear 'Nania' my mind goes back to C.S Lewis classic fantasy (almost magical) book "The chronicles of Narnia" and its hero Aslan. But for the people of Nania-Pikworo which is a small community near Paga (a major town on the north-eastern border of Ghana) their "Nania" was a story of real pain. If you follow my blog post, i announced a one week backpacking trip. Now that i am back, i am doing series of blog post on the places i went. The last post being my visit to a crocodile pond and how i'm battling herptophobia (don't ask).

Nania was a slave camp during the era when the slave trade and slavery was at its height in Ghana. Nania means "a place of cows or cattle" whiles Pikworo means a place surrounded by rocks. The slave camp was started in 1704 by a slave master whom the people called "Baggaw" which literally translates as "bush man" because they did not know his real name since he was not from the community. Baggaw was suspected to have dealt in slaves in his hometown but the slave business there had tanked. Hence his relocation into the community of Nania to continue his 'craft'. In Nania, Baggaw was still having problems setting up his slavery business because a lot of people in Nania suspected him to be a slave master therefore families were unwilling to let their loved ones go with him because he tried to convince the locals he was going to train the people he took to his camp . He therefore invited two of his friends Samori from Burkina Faso and Babatu from Mali. This gang of three now convinced the chiefs (with gifts in hand) of these local communities to take people especially able bodied ones to their camp where they will receive training and after that sent abroad for further studies. This is how slavery started in Nania.

The families got a little money for allowing their ward to go with Baggaw and his friends. To the three slaves masters their business was not growing to their liking which made them employ local people as slave raiders so that they could capture more people. After many years of taking the people to their camp (20 years and over), the local chiefs were alarmed none of the people taken by Baggaw and his friends under the pretense of training had returned. This is where their initial suspicion of slavery was confirmed but it was too late. Baggaw and his friends had already built a slavery empire which included majority of the locals acting as security, raiders, body guards, cooks etc, From that point no one dared go near the camp for the fear of being captured or being killed.
                                 

Slaves were chained to trees at the camp from dusk till dawn

                       

In the evening, slaves climbed these rocks to have supper

The slaves ate from the carved craters in this rocks

The slaves were fed once a day, in the evening they ate from little craters mad in the rocks after super they were made to drum and dance and make merry. To keep their spirits alive and send signal to those outside the camp that the camp was an enjoyable place.

The only source of water at the camp. It runs quite deep as a test i dipped a stick which was more than 10 metres long in it. The stick went all the way down.

An elderly tour guide demonstrating the songs slaves used to sing.

                               

Highest point at the slave camp, camp security could see very far from this point

This part is the where the security guard of the slave stood to watch out for slave who tried to escape as well as intruders. Slaves who tried to escape were brought back to the camp and taken to the punishment rock. Those who were out of reach were shot. As deterrent to other slaves one of every fresh batch of new slave was killed as a warning for what will happen to them when they try to escape.

At the punishment rock slaves who tried to escape had their hands and feet tied and were beaten to pulp while they sat on the rock with their face upwards.

There is a close proximity between the punishment rock and the cemetery for dead slaves. 

When the number of slaves at Nania reaches a satisfactory limit, the three slave masters take them to Salaga a major slave trading spot which is in the northern part of Ghana. At Salaga, the slave masters sold their slaves for  commodities such as sugar, whiskey, bacon etc. Slave masters from neighbouring countries such as Burkina and Mali also came to Salaga to buy slaves. These slave were then moved to Cape Coast and Elmina both coastal towns in Ghana where they were then taken abroad.
Slave trade ended in 1845 and all the three slave masters were killed. Samori from Burkina Faso was killed at Yendi. Baggaw was also killed at Navrongo. Whiles Babatu was captured and killed at Sandema. Slave trade has no doubt had a dent on African history, but we can blame greediness and deceit on the part of European colonial masters. But as an African, it still beats my mind why we traded each other for sugar.

If you enjoyed this blog post and would like to visit Nania, click for information on the location, contacts, accommodation and dinning available at the slave camp.

Mentoring for Success

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From my previous post i expressed a desire to write about entrepreneurship and in my own way contribute to the development of entrepreneurship especially on the African continent. Anytime i talk to my friends and colleagues on entrepreneurship and why they are not starting their own ventures. The general response i get is "i don't know where to start from" or "i don't have the capital to start". The first answer bothers me a lot. Because i don't think it should be an answer that even exist. But sadly it does and access to information or the lack of it seems to be the problem. I bet most tertiary institutions have got a "guidance and counselling" office, is it that these offices are not playing their roles? The business registration process alone is a turn off for the already fragile entrepreneur. I listened with shock on the radio one day when a group of young Ghanaian software entrepreneurs narrated how it took them months to register their business even with that it had to take certain intervention from a third party (politician i bet) to get the business registered. What if there was someone, an institution or a book to guide these young aspiring entrepreneurs. This is where mentorship comes in. The Socrates-Plato example alone is enough evidence of how key mentoring is.

Usually young entrepreneurs have people they aspire to be like, But having access to these people can be extremely difficult. You can still pick on someone's brain without the person necessarily talking to you personally. What if the person has a book, blog or other forms of communicating to young ones who want to be like him/her. Here is where i think a lot of African business leaders have failed. Most of the successful entrepreneurs do not have any material whatsoever on how they succeeded despite the difficult African business terrain. I comb the web a lot to find material written by successful African entrepreneurs to share with friends who are also passionate about entrepreneurship but i usually find nothing. I can read about Sir Richard Branson all i want but i always think "he is European" "business conditions are way better than that of Africa" "at least in Europe it doesn't take forever to get paperwork done' though fundamentally key principles needed to succeed in business cuts across. All i am asking for is someone successful to tell her story from the African perspective. 

Though i have not given up on this search, i have in my own small way started gathering African entrepreneurship success stories, I have stopped chasing the "Rock stars" and now look for the next entrepreneur who has conquered the hurdle available in front of them like getting their business registered or employing their first worker to share what they have learned in that moment. May be this way, we can gradually tell that African success story...