‘Women don’t support each other enough’

Yasmin Kumi is the CEO and founder of the Africa Foresight Group (AFG), a woman-led company that aims to transform African businesses into global champions. Since 2016 AFG has trained African young professionals to work for African companies. Raised in Germany, she tells African Business that her ambitions were forged at the age of twenty, when she finished her bachelor’s degree in South Korea and interned in Ghana, where her family has its roots.

“It was a very important time for me… I found it quite surprising to realise how all the big brands were mostly foreign brands in Ghana… I realised that we do have exciting family businesses in Africa but they don’t really scale. They’re not visible and I wanted to understand why.”

Kumi says the work has given her unique insights into the challenges that female entrepreneurs in Africa continue to face. “Being a woman founder is definitely difficult. I don’t always feel that women support each other enough through the system we’re in, and I think that makes it worse.”

‘Own your identity as a woman’

At the beginning, Kumi didn’t like to be identified as a female entrepreneur. That was only until she started experiencing situations that would only happen because of her gender. Now, she thinks it’s vitally important to “own your identity as a woman entrepreneur from the start.”

Faced with exposure to open markets, international competition, and the global battle for talent, the barriers facing African businesses – let alone those owned by women – are already formidable. Kumi realised that an empowering ecosystem for businesses to thrive is essential if African-led businesses are to carve out a niche and exploit market opportunities.

“For me as a young African female leader, the dream is that Africa starts playing a more confident role in not playing catch-up, but rather helping to define what system you’re moving towards… There are a lot of exciting success stories, you have to keep going even if things are difficult,” she says.

Recently, AFG has been working with Kalagadi Manganese, a South African women-led company, owned by Kgalagadi Alloys (44%) Kalahari Resources (36%) and the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (20%). Located in the Kalahari Basin of the Northern Cape, the company operates a mine which boasts the largest sinter plant in the world.

Unearthing hidden champions

Kumi also runs a business network called African Hidden Champions, supported by the African Development Bank and the German Investment Corporation, to find African businesses – averaging $200m in revenues – that will become the “global champions of tomorrow”. The initiative aims to generate, publish, and distribute case studies about such businesses; and runs an award and investment promotion scheme for the selected businesses.

“We have some ambitious goals. We want to train at least 25,000 people. We want to add another 150 mid-sized businesses into our champions programme. We want to support thousands more companies across the continent, so we are definitely on a scaling pathway that we’re very excited about.”