It was tough being a Nigerian in Kenya –Anoke, M-Tech East Africa boss

Posted by admin Headlines Sunday, April 29th, 2012

Sunday, April 29, 2012

•Anoke
Photo: Sun News Publishing

Ikechukwu Arthur Anoke has cut his name in gold. At just 27 years, he is blazing a trail in the information technology world. His company, M-Tech, a mobile content solutions provider, now operates in 14 African countries.
Anoke is the Chief Executive of M-Tech East Africa Limited, based in picturesque Nairobi, Kenya, the favourite African playground of Western tourists.

Ambitious and visionary Anoke is confident that M-Tech will continue to be at the leading edge of innovative applications of mobile communications technology. In this interview, he talks about the challenges of doing business in Nairobi as a Nigerian, and how he surmounted the negative perception of Kenyans about Nigerians. Excerpts…

What is the story behind M-Tech?
It’s a Pan African mobile content solutions company. We provide services for telecommunications firms globally for the MTN Group, Airtel, Globacom, Vodafone, Hego and Orange. Basically, we come up with a season product that enriches their product offerings for music. We do colouring buttons, wallpapers, mobile reality solutions, and we do customer relationship management.

How did you get into this?
I joined M-Tech in 2005. I started from the ground floor as a content administrator. I did that for a year and then moved to Lagos to join M-Tech fully. By 2006, I was transferred to M-Tech East Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, and in 2009, I became the CEO. Sometime last year, I became responsible for group commercialization. In Nigeria, I’m responsible for commercialization, which includes Ghana. So, I effectively manage the operations across the board.

How well is the business performing in East Africa?
East Africa is really tough. When I came here, the first challenge I encountered was the problem of perception. When I joined East African subsidiary, we had a board meeting. The CEO at the time was leaving, and the local directors felt that they needed to hire an indigene as the new chief executive because the people didn’t like Nigerians. If you read Kenyan newspapers, all you see are Nigerian drug dealers and fraudsters; the reports all allege that Nigerians are criminals. In fact, it was difficult being a Nigerian.

We have Nigerian CEO’s here who claim to be Ghanaians. There was a particular case of Nigerian who was the CEO of a bank here. I saw him on a queue in a shop. I approached him and asked if he was a Nigerian. He denied, and said, I’m a West African. A lot of people tell you they are Ghanaian or say that they are from the UK, not Nigerians. For me, it was a challenge I’m young and considering that I read political science, I have this spirit of activism in me. There needs to be a way as an individual to fight the stereotype because it is affecting business. If I wrote a proposal, I’d not put my name on the proposal, I will put somebody else’s name but I did the proposal. When it comes to selling, I would go and they ask, what is your name again? I would say, ‘I’m a Nigerian’ and that would be the end of that sales effort. So I decided to change it.

How did you change it?
I started something called Naija Night. It happened to be the biggest cultural night in East Africa. We did what we call cultural diplomacy, and started introducing Nigerian music here. We brought Bracket, P-Square, D.Banj, Flavor, and before you knew it, the idea exploded. It became big and two years ago, DBanj, during the 50th Independence anniversary of our country, the Prime Minister of Kenya came here uninvited and was dancing on the same stage with DBanj. That is to show you what cultural diplomacy can do. Can you imagine the Prime Minister of Kenya coming on stage with a Nigerian musician, dancing and hugging him? It was very symbolic. It was social integration. If he had hugged the Nigerian president, one would have said he did so for diplomatic reasons. He did not hug the richest man in Nigeria, but rather he hugged a Nigerian music star.

This was a close cultural synergy; when he hugged DBanj it was like the Prime Minister was saying, “Kari bu Kenya, welcome to Kenya.” It was the hallmark of the effort we have made in terms of cultural integration. Three years ago, if a Nigerian applied for visa to visit Kenya, your application would be sent to Nairobi for vetting before you could be issued a visa. Today, Nigerians get visa on entry. Three years ago, it was almost impossible for a Nigerian to get a work permit here. Today it is a different ball game.

This is to show you what cultural diplomacy can do. What politics was unable to do, music, food, clothing, movies did for us. Rita Dominic when she came to this country she was treated like a queen. When Ramsey Nouah came to Kenya there was chaos at the airport. People who love our stars will not hate us now because we are all Nigerians. So, from there the perception started changing. Kenyans are actually cool – it’s just that they are aggressive.

So the question is how can we use the aggressive traits of a Nigerian to make money from the economy. From then they started respecting us. They understood the potentials Nigerians have but there was this fear about who a Nigerian is, so by the time they began to interact with Nigerians, over the past one year, a lot of foreign direct investments have come into the Kenyan economy from Nigeria. We have Ecobank and UBA in Kenya now; overheard that Access Bank is also coming to Kenya. Africa’s biggest fashion designer MUDI has set up shop in Kenya; we have restaurants and software companies coming into Kenya.

M-Tech came to Kenya in 2006 when nobody was seeing the country as an attractive market to develop. Today, Nigerian companies are establishing subsidiaries here. Kenya Airways has quadrupled its turnover on the Nairobi-Lagos route in the past one year because Nigerians are pouring into Kenya. This is the consequence of cultural integration – what people are able to do when they like each other. This is one of the achievements we have been able to pull through being in Kenya and it gladdens the heart to see that Nigerians are coming to spend their honeymoon here; Nollywood producers now come to Kenya to produce.

You have achieved a lot, considering your young age. What was it like growing up?
I grew up in Enugu. I’m the first child of my family. My dad worked with Nigerian Cement Company, Nkalagu. My mother was a lecturer in Federal College of Education. Right from childhood, my father encouraged me to have confidence in myself. He used to tell me that I was the most brilliant child in the world. This gave me the confidence to do whatever I wanted to do. Having self-confidence is very important for success in life. I was nine years old when I left primary school. I went to Federal Government College, Port Harcourt.

I was the social prefect; president of the press club, president of the dramatic club, president of the literary & debating society. I left secondary school in 2000 and got admission into Nnamdi Azikwe University, Awka where I read political science. I finished school late 2004/2005; I didn’t go for national youth service before I started working with M-Tech, which had a partnership with Cosmos FM, Enugu. I joined as content administrator. After one year, the management asked me to go to Lagos.

As Chief Executive of M-Tech East Africa, what other challenges have you encountered?
Sometimes I get home sick and have this strong urge to come home. But you see challenges are things people face everyday. Champions are made from challenges. When you lose sometimes, you must get up and try again, until you get it right. I never get tired, I laugh because I will get it back.

As a 27-year-old CEO, how do you cope with staff, especially those who are far older?
My executive assistant is 42; we work as a team. Of course the way I’m going to talk to somebody of 42 is different from the way I will talk to somebody who is 28 or 30. But we all realize is that we are in the office to work. Nobody imprints his age on the forehead. You have a responsibility and you simply deliver on it.

Where do you wish to see M-Tech in the next five years?
I want to ensure that M-Tech Group becomes the biggest mobile company in East Africa in terms of revenue and connectivity in the next two years.

Have you ever had any embarrassing moments?
Several. But the one that really hurt me very much when I was supposed to go to India. My colleagues and myself sent our applications to the Indian High Commission and my personal assistant came back shaking. Apparently, they gave others visa, but my application was thrown away when they saw my Nigerian passport. I was furious. I went to look for the High Commissioner and gave him a piece of my mind. They promptly gave me the visa. That was really embarrassing. Anytime a Nigerian name is tarnished I feel very bad.

How do you feel about the unemployment situation in the country?
We need to have pan-African companies. No matter how small a company is, if you are running a buka, begin to think how you can set up another one in Kenya and Uganda, instead of making N1 million and being comfortable. Put the money in your bag, take a flight, come to Kenya, get a shop, employ people and set up a buka in Kenya. Let your Kenyan office begin to make you another million naira.

When you make N1 million in Nigeria, another N1 million in Kenya, you go to Uganda to open another buka shop, and before you know it you will earn enough capital to take your buka to New York. Oil is not all we should be focusing on now, we should be focusing on entrepreneurial skills, and the government should focus on changing the curriculum so that the universities produce more entrepreneurs.

In this business when I see someone who is very enterprising and he says he is resigning to set up his own business, I wholeheartedly encourage the person, because by the time you set up your business there will be linkage between the business I run and your business.

You graduate from the university and say you are looking for a job. If you are working for somebody, create value for the person so that as you are creating value there is opportunity to take other people in. I don’t think that the solution to unemployment lies in the hands of government. Rather, the private sector should drive it. Few days ago, I read about the unfortunate death of the guy who set up DMT Mobile Toilets, the late Otunba Gadaffi. He died a millionaire.

Look at Linda Ikeji, and what she doing with her blog. People should begin to ask what they can with blogs – how can we modify these blogs, how can we get people to work on this blog, how can we have contributors globally. Today, MUDI has shops in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Senegal, Mali and Ghana. That is the spirit of enterprise. Tomorrow he is going to start another in London. We need to develop what we are doing.

-Sunwp_posts

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