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Tweet maybe you might be the best person to talk about this because you you're on both sides, on the American side, and so for people that have not been to Guan or not familiar. You know the reason why we personally, you know, invested our time, energy resources into Ghana. We just felt Gona had a few things that was in his favor. A it's safe, right, that's important. So from a security standpoint, you want to go to a
country that you actually feel safe. And this is just anywhere in the world, right, So we've been all over the map and you know, you kind of know when you're in dangerous areas and you kind of know when you're in the area that's you know, you.
Feel comfortable in.
So ghan is a safe country and it has stable government and that's important too. Unfortunately, especially in Africa, you know, government has been a major issue and that's for a variety of different reasons. But be'st neither here nor there. But you know, gan is one of these countries that has you know, transitions of power. Right, they don't have like military coups happening in every three years, so that's important.
Like, you know, you invest.
Somewhere, you want you want to know that there's that at least you know that there's never gonna be a perfect government, but at least there's no you know, simple unrest that happens every other week. Right, that's something that is not sustainable for investment, especially for foreign investment, because you don't know what's going on.
So that works in his favor.
But you like talk about your transition as far as you know, an American going to Ghana even though you're from Ghana originally, but like because you know, the healthcare system all of that kind of just walking through your personal experiences.
Yeah, no, my experience.
It's interesting because I sometimes tell people you get you get the culture shocked twice, right, Because I was born in the US and then I moved to Ghana when I was seven, Right, there was an adjustment. Even though I was Guinean by blood, there was an adjustment and just being American and now trying to plug into the to the Guinean kind of school system. And then I came back to the US for college, there was an adjustment.
And then going back to Ghana. You don't realize like how much you kind of evolved doing your formative years. But it was an adjustment to start out, but tremendous amount of opportunity because you know kameit touched on the business environment. I actually moved back to Ghana in twenty nineteen to join a small holding company and at the time, like you know, we.
Had three restaurants in our portfolio.
Right fast forward to today, you know, five five six years later, we have upwards of one hundred and fifty where one of the largest franchisees for Pinkberry across the world.
Right, and this is just in Ghana.
And so very quickly I was able to kind of adjust to the dynamics of working and living in Ghana because although our institutions are nascent processes work, if you want to set up a company, there's a structure that you can follow to be able to do that, people to support and assist you all across the board.
And then you know, from quality of.
Life life standpoint, like quality of life in Ghana is really high, especially if you're you know, someone of middle income upper upper middle class, Like there's certain things you can have access to. You have, you know, additional support, whether it's you know, nanny's at home to kind of.
Support with upkeep. The healthcare infrastructure is really strong.
We invest the significant amounts of money the government private sector into enhancing our healthcare systems.
When you look at Ghana from kind.
Of a social perspective, like everyone talks about dirty December and like the year we go to party, but the social scene extends beyond that, right there's movie theaters and golf courses and pickleball and all these nice kind of
restaurants that you can partake in. And then on the cultural side, you know, there's a whole bunch of natural kind of whether you want to go on hikes, or you want to go to the the Cacum forests, or you want to go to the Cape Coast castles, or you want to partake in in like a cultural dance trope. There's just so much richness to Ghana from a social standpoint that even goes beyond just you know, the parties
that a lot of people will see on Instagram. And so for me, it was like that range just allowed me to kind of plug back in and really start to assimilate again. And I think you know, when people are thinking about Ghana as a place, can I live here?
Right?
Like everything from our healthcare to education system, Like right now, from a tech standpoint, you got a lot of people working remotely out in Ghana because quality of internet is there, right.
We have five G Internet in Ghana too.
There's Elon Musk Starlink that you can plug in too, just to make sure you have access to your Zoom meetings and Microsoft teams.
And so I think it's one of the things where.
Like people feel like Africa can be distant in daunting, but stay connected to folks who've been there. Come as a tourist first, and you'll see that it's it's a high quality of life that you can easily assimilate well to.
We talk about talk about your your specific journey as far as, like you said, you're one of the biggest franchise, you had one of the biggest you know.
Food change in Ghana and the whole probably continent.
So talk about like just talk about that as far as your entrepreneurial journey going there, Like what was the steps that you took to get up and run in like kind.
Of walking through that. Yeah.
So my thought process was I've always known that I was an entrepreneur at heart, you know.
I was I was a kid in middle school in high school who you know, would sell back in Ghana. I would buy all.
These us for roll ups, rice, Chrispy Trees, all these snacks and sell it to my classmates.
So I've always had that entrepreneurial spirit.
And so when I was started to think about going back to Ghana, you know, my preference was to do it through what's called entrepreneurship through acquisition. So I found a partner who had set up kind of a food business. They only had three locations at the time, and just started working together as partners and we said, hey, we want to stay opportunistic, right, and our thesis was literally gone as a very nascent market with a lot of opportunity.
Sixty percent of our population is under the age of twenty five and the middle class is growing at an unprecedented rate, and so we knew people will always need food. So we started off in food service and really trying to scale kind of what is you know, quick service fast casual restaurants, And our thesis was, hey, we would get some of these Western brands and learn their processes and then implement it to scale up some of our
local brands. And so now we have both, Right, we have the franchise for Burger King and Pinkberry, but we also have local brands and Domain Foods and Chickenman and selectively are are the largest restaurant operator in Ghana. But we've continued to stay opportunistic and now have a presence in actually fourteen different African countries covering food service. We also do financial services where you provide kind of small business financing for people at the bottom of the pyramid.
We have a gaming platform that effectively provides software for media houses to run raffles. So we actually partnered with Alvin and Kwame to run one of our raffles kind of through their media house, and then and then real estate, so both commercial and residential, and so partner with Alvin and Kwame on Sambra to do to do on the
residential side and then on the commercial side. We also have a bunch of properties in Tanzania, and so it's been interesting to kind of first come to Ghana but realize that the opportunity for growth extends beyond just Ghana and taking that risk going.
To some of these other different markets, so across.
West Africa, East Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, we're in Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, we're working on Senego and Guinea. It's been fun, man, and I always extend myself as a resource for people who are looking to navigate, because I think first you need someone who something to chase, or someone who's had the success you're looking for, and then just kind of leverage those partnerships to deeping your presence and figure out where you can also add value.
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