Building a Growth State Generation

Empower is an award-winning Tanzanian human capital consulting firm with a global reach. Women make up 70 per cent of its talented team, all dedicated to providing career lift-off to the country’s brightest young talent. Twiga speaks to its award-winning and adventurous founder, Miranda Naiman

When the grand ceremony for the Tanzania Consumer Choice Awards 2020 was held in Dar es Salaam’s Mtana Hall in December last year, the winner of the Most Preferred Female CEO of the Year, Miranda Naiman, was not there to pick up her award. She was far away from the evening’s glitz and glamour, fighting for each breath on a final push to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The climb was the latest in a long line of challenges the entrepreneur sets herself as part of the growth mindset that has helped her increase the revenue of her human capital consultancy firm Empower by at least 20 per cent each year since it began more than a decade ago. That mindset is also entrenched in the culture of the company and the now more than three million people across Africa that Empower has helped secure rewarding jobs or furthered their personal development through its workshops, academies and other initiatives.

Positive thinking

Naiman was one of only three in her expedition group to battle through the altitude sickness and arrive at the 5,895-metre high Uhuru Peak, a feat she puts down to positive thinking. “It was not about being the fittest, it was being mentally strong. Before I set out, I told myself ‘I will get to the top’. Near the end these young people are given knowledge and opportunities and she sees Empower, “with its understanding of employers and the labour market” as ideally placed to deliver a solution.

my heart was thumping in my chest with every step, but giving up was not an option.”

Naiman and her carefully selected Empower team have helped many others find similar motivation from within to pursue a meaningful career path. The self-described “accidental entrepreneur” began Empower in 2009 as a solo consultancy that gave her the flexibility to work around being a new – and single – mum. She sees her son, Micah, who was born a year earlier, as the inspiration that drove her to make a success of the venture. “Every time I looked at him, I knew I could not fail,” she says.

Now Naiman has a “dream team” of 19 staff that work with a host of blue-chip clients across Tanzania and into East Africa with plans in place to extend operations across the continent. Empower’s portfolio of services encompasses human resource consultancy, recruitment and business insight. The team helps connect the talent pool of Tanzanian graduates with the corporate world, fills vacancies across sectors such as banking, manufacturing and energy and provides data analysis to help drive results for businesses.

There’s no shortage of people in need of the company’s help. According to the World Health Organisation, 800,000 individuals enter the Tanzanian job market every year. For Naiman there is “great potential” for development here if these young people are given knowledge and opportunities and she sees Empower, “with its understanding of employers and the labour market” as ideally placed to deliver a solution.

Founder of Empower Miranda Naiman

Support for students

Figures from the Tanzania Commission for Universities show that in the academic year 2019/20 there were 55,760 new student admissions with numbers having risen by almost 50 per cent since the 2012/13 intake. These institutions should contain some of the country’s best and brightest young people, but there are concerns too many leave unequipped for employment. Naiman applauds students who signal early business initiative by pursuing start-up opportunities while still at university and, as a member of entrepreneurs’ network EO Tanzania she is among the judges selecting the winner of its annual Global Student Entrepreneur Awards.

Empower is also looking to hone the early business focus of some of the most promising students. Last July, the company launched a non-profit programme GenEm (short for Generation Empower) in collaboration with the University of Dar es Salaam, which aims to give undergraduates in their final year of study the relevant skills and industry exposure that will make them more attractive to employers.

The programme is scheduled to run until 2025 with 250 students selected on merit from across the university’s colleges to take part each academic year. Naiman says: “It gives the chance to prime young people before they enter the job market.”

You don’t have to be among the GenEm chosen ones to benefit from the Empower team’s experience and motivational advice. The company offers plenty of free content across its online platforms. Regular features include weekend reading recommendations, blog posts from leading figures in business on trending topics and a weekly video series of inspirational one-to-one interviews called Yellow Couch Chat, which are conducted in the Empower offices on a sofa as sunny as the company’s unfailingly upbeat staff.

Naiman took on Mt Kilimanjaro in 2020

Spirit of learning

It’s a holistic approach – with content ranging from fitness and wellbeing tips to guides on how to impress at a job interview or structure a productive day – and all part of Empower’s mission to instil an inclusive spirit of learning.

A key move for Naiman in spreading this culture of collective growth in Dar es Salaam was the launch of the Inspire Centre. The event space and café, located along with the Empower offices in Dar’s Tanzanite Park Building, hosts free monthly programme Empower Academy – with recent guest speakers including creative entrepreneur Grace Matata and musician Nikki wa Pili – among events ranging from poetry nights to language classes. Its café is also a hub for many of the city’s self-starters.

Naiman says: “The centre is an extension of who we are at Empower. It combines meeting places with open public space for entrepreneurs who can sit and use the free wi-fi to build their business without a need for their own office.”

Unfortunately, the week before we speak, Naiman had to temporarily close the centre with its usual busy timetable of events and gatherings “hit hard” by the social restrictions of the pandemic. Still, Naiman is, as ever, positive. “It will be back,” she says.

Team spirit

When Naiman began Empower, she says she could never have envisioned that it would have grown and diversified to include projects such as the Inspire Centre. She is delighted by the “different beast” it has become and credits these tangents of growth to the creative idea-sharing of the team she has built around her. “Empower is ours, not mine,” she says.

So, while she was otherwise engaged amid the rarefied air of the roof of Africa, Naiman thought it fitting that members of the team accepted the Tanzania Consumer Choice Award instead. She is also very proud that 70 per cent of the team are women, including four out of its six managers – a quality among those recognised by daily newspaper The Citizen in naming Empower as this year’s winner of its Rising Women Award.

True to a company that prides itself on having the ‘talent to recognise talent’, Naiman points out that the predominance of women in the Empower team was not a conscious decision, but just a reflection that they were the right people for those jobs. “Empower is setting the standard,” says Naiman. “We just look for the best candidate.”

It’s clear there is a close, family-like bond throughout the Empower

team, literally in the case of Naiman’s younger brother, Joshua, and sister, Ella, who came on board five and six years ago, respectively, and are now both shareholders within the venture.

Naiman made it to Uhuru Peak

Family influence

Naiman credits her siblings with “transforming the business”. Both were fundamental in setting up the Inspire Centre and Ella, who gave up a high-flying job as a project manager for retail giant Marks & Spencer in UK to join Empower, heads the company’s advisory team while Joshua co-ordinates business insight projects such as data collection and mystery shopper programmes.

Naiman points out that the predominance of women in the Empower team was not a conscious decision, but just a reflection that they were the right people for those jobs

The family influence at Empower can be traced even further back with Naiman claiming the seeds of her belief in the power of education that are deeply ingrained in the company were sown by her British-born mother, who was a teacher at the International School of Tanganyika, in Dar.

Her mother’s position meant Naiman was able to become a student at the prestigious fee-paying school for free and she made the most of an education she “could not afford” and never forgot the opportunities it brought her.

The power of education was at the fore of her higher education as well. She gained a degree in applied theatre in education in the UK at London’s industry-leading performance arts college The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Despite admitting to feeling like a “fish out of water” as a Tanzanian

fascinated by education among the college’s ranks of students who harboured dreams of being the future stars of stage and screen, Naiman learned much here and the University of Leeds, where she went on to take a masters in theatre and development studies, about how drama could be used to foster effective learning.

Naiman says the techniques she learned during this time can still be seen in the role-playing and team-building services Empower offers clients in its workshops and academies and which, she believes, are among the unique features that give the company its “a competitive edge” in the market.

The Empower ‘dream team’ strike a pose

Return to Tanzania

The final familial influence comes from Naiman’s father – a Tanzanian businessman – who encouraged his daughter to return home once she had completed her studies in UK. “He told me there were lots of opportunities here and should come back, give it a year and see what happens,” she says.

He was right. Naiman joined a recruitment agency and got a job almost immediately. When she became a mum, it felt time to venture out on her own with Empower.

Much has changed since then. Micah will be a teenager this year and Empower is looking to go pan-African and keep building its team. The opportunities for work in Tanzania that Naiman’s father praised over a decade ago are even greater now as a result of the efforts of the Empower team to create an employment ecosystem where skills are aligned to available jobs. The new GenEm is motivated, educated and in a state of growth.

Naiman was named Most Preferred CEO of 2020 at the Tanzania Consumer Choice Awards

To see the latest Empower job vacancies, visit its website at empower.co.tz

For news on its upcoming events and the times of its latest Yellow Couch Chat, head to its Instagram and Facebook pages @EmpowerLimited