This session of the African Townhall meeting aimed to discuss:
- How can we better collaborate as Africans for business.
- How can we productively promote our businesses.
Observations:
- Collaboration has to be for mutual benefits. When thinking about collaboration, it’s important to understand that it involves two or several entities coming together for a greater good which could be either growing a business or for a cause.
- Collaboration involves people taking themselves out of the centre and considering reciprocity. People sometimes forget that collaboration means reciprocity. Reciprocity amplifies what both parties are doing and causes a greater impact. It’s a collective build that inadvertently means that what you’re doing grows as well.
- There is a lot of value in African founders and interconnection. We need to find a way for that discovery to be fruitful and productive.
- To better collaborate, we have to see each other as equals.
- The issue of patriarchy in the African community hasn’t been tackled. It’ll be difficult to collaborate with this issue. It would be good to hear stories of inter-gender collaborations, where we all see each other as equals and be able to respect what we all bring to the table.
- For collaboration to be 100% effective., there has to be representation and diversity in collaboration.
- Sometimes with collaboration, you may not necessarily see the reward or monetization initially, but it’s important to note that you’re creating something of value that either people or businesses want to engage with. And sometimes as Africans, we struggle with the concept of creating something of value upfront and trusting that maybe the monetization or something will come later.
Suggestions:
- Ensure you do your due diligence before advancing collaborative efforts.
- Do not consider money first before collaboration. Always consider value addition first.
- There should be a possibility of having a presence on Facebook and LinkedIn to show upcoming events for Africans on Clubhouse.
- We should learn to alter our approach to make collaboration easier. Being able to communicate the value proposition to different people in different ways and with different approaches can help.
- People are willing to collaborate from outside of Africa, therefore we must lookout for ways to integrate them.
- There is a need to have a room for people to network and collaborate.
- There should be a possibility of a conference and seminars on the continent
Community announcements/ Key highlights for the next session:
- Gender equality will be discussed in the next meeting and what it means for African women.
- Property investment as a topic for Africans in the diaspora. We are to liaise with Elaine and the property person.
- Elaine has an upcoming pitching event.
- The Cool House is working on an event repository for Africans to put their events so everyone can easily register for the events.
- We need to create a free business directory for African businesses to collaborate and know what each other is doing.