Making Investment In Africa Simple

ZIDICIRCLE: MAKING INVESTING IN AFRICA

SIMPLE By Ophelie Lawson

Launching a business that aims to support African businesses by enabling entrepreneurs in Africa to raise capital internationally in the form of business loans through an online platform is quite an innovative challenge, but not an impossible one. And it’s a challenge that Fridah Ntarangwi and her company, Zidicircle, are willing to take. Fridah’s business, Zidicircle, echoes well with the hope of all my fellow African sisters and brothers. By allowing investments to be made simple and creating a platform that directly connects investors and businesses in need of growth capital, Zidicircle is giving a chance to African businesses to prosper, supporting the economy into progress along its way. And this is just what Africa needs. Fridah gave me the opportunity to interview her about her inspiring company. From putting down her first business plan to finding her very first investors, she tells us everything about Zidicirle. Zidicircle It all started by putting down a business plan. Then, gather inspiration by talking to other players in the market. After getting herself a business coach, she joined an incubator (TEC Europe), a group/facility established to facilitate young European start-ups during their early months. In Swahili, Zidi is a name meaning to exceed. Zidicirle is a social network/web not only for entrepreneurs but also for investors together with partners. Initially, Zidicircle started off as an advisory/consulting firm supporting both debt and equity transactions flowing into small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets. But after realizing that creating a peer-to-peer online lending platform where international investors could fund African entrepreneurs directly was more sustainable, the business decided that it will rather go in this direction. From small businesses to medium size companies, Zidicircle helps to finance any African company with a need for growth capital, but who can also prove a traceable outcome in terms of social-economic development. To minimise the risk of failure, Zidicircle also offers business coaching and monitoring. “Even an investment of as little as Euro 500 can affect so many on the value chain. Think of a casual labourer in a small manufacturing company who is paid 3 Euros per day, yet has a family of 5 to feed, clothe, educate and shelter. If the company receives a good capital injection and they are able to pay their workers a decent salary, look at how many household benefits, it means happy employees, more productivity, more taxes…isn’t this wholesome social-economic development?”, she lamented.

She went on saying that “we believe that for a business to prosper it needs not only financing but to be driven professionally. We coach them to make them ‘investor worthy/ready and continue to monitor and coach them during the investment period as well”. She said that this is possible through their pool of coaching volunteers and local partners. Fridah Ntarangwi further noted hat to be able to deliver affordable financing, one needs cutting edge technology that reduces middlemen intervention to deliver low-cost financing and that is Zidi’s priority. Read more: https://mojatu.com/community/news/ zidicircle-making-investing-in-africa-simple/