Name: Tolu Itegboje
Age: 22 going on 23
City: Lagos, Nigeria
Educational history: Primary school @ Yaba College of Technology Staff School; Secondary @ International School, Lagos; University/College @ Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

When did you start hashing the plan to come back home?
It was never really a plan. It was just something I figured I’d eventually do. I actually kind of dreaded it. The plan was get a job on my OPT after graduation, work for one year, apply to film school in between, get accepted, and go to film school after the one year was up. I had however planned to visit Nigeria in the summer, before film school would start. Unfortunately, like all human plans, mine didn’t quite materialize the way I wanted it to. I didn’t get accepted into film school, the job thing worked out and then didn’t , my OPT was about expire, and what essentially was supposed to be a visit home ended up becoming an extended stay. Read the full story

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Patrick Awuah (photo courtesy of TED.com) founded Ashesi University, the first liberal arts college in Ghana. He recalls what it took to start the university, challenges with re-acclimating to life in Ghana after decades in Seattle, and his experience dealing with corruption – not just something prevalent in the older generation, but a serious problem with young people also.

Please excuse the sounds of planes leaving from the airport in the background.

OSK stands for the Other Side of Kobo.  A kobo is the smallest denominator of Nigeria’s currency, the Naira.  The firm, started by three graduates of Baylor University who returned to Nigeria, is a full service financial information company.

Starting with Nigeria, they aim to make it easier for people to invest in Africa by:

1. Organizing Africa’s financial information
2. Making it that information universally accessible and acceptable; and
3. Setting accountability standards in the financial market.

Their vision is to establish a well-informed and equipped investor lifestyle in Nigeria by making the facts of the market available and easily accessible.

Born and raised in Ghana, Femi Adetola graduated in May 2006 from Wesleyan College in Georgia. Although her family name traces back to the Yoruba sub-nation of Nigeria, Femi’s family has been Ghanaian for generations.

She moved home in November of 2006 and while completing Law School at the University of Ghana, she launched her restaurant, Red Chilli. Just over a year old, the business employs 12 people and makes at least $1200 per week (on a bad week). Hear her thoughts on leaving America for life back home and what it’s like to launch a business at 24.

This is the story of Tadiwos Belete, an Ethiopian entrepreneur that had taken his little and turned it into very much. He was a teenager when he’d fled Ethiopia in 1980, six years after the coup that ushered in the Derg communist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.  In 1983, he was granted refugee asylum to the United States. He tried his hands at a restaurant and at promoting Ethiopian artists until 1989 when he enrolled in a school for hairdressers, working nights as a parking lot attendant. He then worked his way up from assistant stylist to salon manager before pooling resources with seven other entrepreneurs to open the salon on Newbury Street.

Belete has transplanted his success from Newbury Street to Bole Road in Ethiopia. He bought a piece of land along Bole and began construction on what is now the eight-story Boston Partners building in Addis Ababa. Read the full story

Name: Fred Swaniker
Age: 32
City: Johannesburg

At 26, an employee of business consulting giant, McKinsey & Co., Fred dreamt of a school to train young African leaders. In 2007, that dream came true. We met at Life, a restaurant in Sandton City Mall near Mandela Square in Johannesburg.

S.A.: WHEN DID YOU START HASHING THE PLAN FOR THE SCHOOL?

FRED: Almost six years ago. I went to Nigeria to do an internship in Lagos. Read the full story

In Michael Porter’s article, The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City, I found striking parallels between the inner city in the United States and struggling economies in Africa. The article’s assertion that inner cities are located in what should be economically valuable areas rang true for Africa – a land of oil and precious metal deposits and climates ideal for growing almost anything. Also, just as the inner city market itself represents the most immediate opportunity for urban-based entrepreneurs and businesses, other African nations represent the most immediate opportunity for African entrepreneurs and businesses. Read the full story

Wairimu, a female college senior whom I’d interviewed on the morning of my last day in Nairobi, insisted on a visit to the Mathare slums where she lives. Wairimu’s mother is HIV positive. Since learning of her mom’s status almost two years ago, Wairimu started a Mathare Vision Center, a leadership and community development program that educates Mathare’s youths about HIV/AIDS. Her center also seeks out funding to support slum residents who have been accepted to universities but cannot afford it.

“You have to meet Sammy Gitau,” she said. “He also runs his own community program and helps out a lot with the Vision Center. So we went to see Sammy at the Mathare Resource Center.

Mathare is a collection of slums off Thika Road on the way to Kisarani, a blue-collar suburb of Nairobi. Like Wairimu, Sammy was born and raised in the slums. The 32-year old started Mathare Resource Center. The center is an old shipping container fitted with donated old computers, radio, and video equipment. Although litter seemed to be everywhere in Mathare, the outside of the resource center was swept clean and the dusty earth was a clear light brown in front of the container.

Trash changed Sammy’s story definitively. As part of his community development work, Sammy organizes groups of young men to clean the litter around Mathare. One day, he found a discarded prospectus for Manchester University in England. Based on the merit of his work at Mathare and with the recommendations of advocates he’d met at community development conferences, Sammy was accepted into a Master’s program in development without ever having completed any formal education.

When I asked about his dream for Mathare, he answered, “I want this place to become the Hollywood of Kenya.”

Given the feat he’s accomplished, he might very well have his next dream come true.

Solving Africa began as a traveling project by a freshly grad-schooled twenty-something-year-old who decided it was time to travel and get to know the land of his ancestry. On the spur of the moment and with low expectations, he created the site, www.solvingafrica.com, and asked friends and strangers to fund his trip to Tunisia, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria. Within a week, the donations started and the journey began before he could change his mind.
The book recounting his experience on this journey will be completed in fall 2010 and it looks at the role that individuals can and are having in changing the African continent. It aims not just to entertain as a collection of stories, but also to spark a thought revolution in the way people address Africa’s development.