Business
The Cheetah Generation: Young, rich and African
But George Ayittey warns Africa’s youthful age profile could become a curse unless more job opportunities are created. “Youth unemployment is a ticking time bomb,” he says. “Unless things change, young people will rebel.” The entrepreneurial skills of the Cheetah Generation will be crucial to help meet Africa’s rising aspirations.
Some of the young African entrepreneurs I met want their businesses to change society for the better, not just make them money. Lorna Rutto, 30, is the founder of a business called EcoPost, which collects waste, especially plastic, and turns it into eco-friendly products, including fence posts, tiles and furniture. Her aim is to provide a sustainable substitute for wood and so help reduce pressure on Kenya’s depleted forests.
Rutto makes poles, fence posts and other building materials from waste so “people don’t have any excuse for cutting down trees”. Since 2009, the firm has sold more than 30,000 plastic posts, which – if made of wood – would consume the equivalent of about 140 hectares of forest, Rutto claims. “We need to stop cutting down trees because Kenya has only 2 percent of its forests left,” she says. “That is down from about 10 percent in 1998.”
EcoPost also provides an income for poor families who collect scrap plastic and other waste. Rutto says about 550 people have gained employment through her recycling efforts: “Ours is a social enterprise. We’re looking at eradicating poverty, not just making money. We have given job opportunities to many youths.”
The living conditions of many poor families who collect waste for EcoPost have improved greatly because of the higher income they now receive. It also helps keep the streets a little tidier; there is so much waste plastic strewn across Kenya that Rutto jokes plastic bags have become the “national flower”.
As a child, Rutto watched the destruction of forests around her home town in Kenya’s Nakuru district, and these memories stoke her passion for recycling: “Growing up was a wonderful adventure for me because I would play in the beautiful forest near my home,” she says. “But because of rural-urban migration in the mid-1990s, we lost our forests; they were cut down for settlement. I decided I would do something about it when I grew up.”
Another childhood experience helped shape Rutto’s eventual response: she had a hobby making ornaments out of scraps of plastic. “I discovered early in life that waste is not waste until it is wasted.”
EcoPost’s production has increased 10-fold in the past three years and Rutto expects extra production capacity from newly installed machinery to double the number of jobs created by the business. The investment will also allow the firm to improve its plastic posts and manufacture other, more sophisticated recycled building products. “I thought this would just be a hobby initially, but now it’s a profitable and sustainable business,” she says. “I am very excited to be able to use waste to help save the forests we have left.”
George Ayittey is frustrated that the Cheetah Generation doesn’t get attention. The world hears far more about Africa’s conflicts and crises than about its economic achievements. “The media is always focused on the Hippos,” he says.
Still, if the success of Young Rich is any guide, that is likely to change. Producing the hit show has left Mbugua in no doubt that Africa’s growing private sector is a potent “force for change” across the continent. “I doubt I will ever run out of subjects for my show,” he says. “A lot of people here are getting into entrepreneurship. There are new millionaires being minted every day.”
A version of this post was first published at the Sydney Morning Herald
