Nairobi is the only city in Africa whose airports are recording higher growth for domestic capacity than that of international capacity, with a 22% boost. This is according to a new report by ForwardKeys, which compares Nairobi’s trend to most of the other top 10 African Airports ranked by total scheduled capacity for August to December 2017, which are seeing more growth in international than in domestic capacity.

The report, whose special focus is on the East African Community (EAC), further indicates that Nairobi’s airports have a total scheduled capacity (August to December 2017) of 18% in domestic seats, 31% in long-haul international seats, and a 51% capacity in intra-Africa international seats. Of these, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport’s scheduled capacity is 13% and 5% long-haul and intra-Africa international seats respectively within the same period under review.

Generally, the wider analysis of the report on travel to Africa shows EAC destinations received a strong growth of 14.3% for 2017 year to date.

Collectively, the entire African continent continues to record positive performance, welcoming an increase in international arrivals of 14% in 2017 year to date. In a parallel report by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global passenger traffic data for June shows that demand (measured in total revenue passenger kilometers) increased by 7.8% compared to 2016, and from May’s record of 7.7% growth. All regions, according to IATA, reported growth.

Patasente, founded by George W Bakka is a supply chain financing platform that enables people guarantee or to businesses in East Africa. Entrepreneurs get working capital loans to grow their revenues, and lenders finance the loans by buying a range of interest bearing promissory notes to earn extra incomes.

Unlike traditional banking institutions that offer credit based on physical immovable collateral, they instead base their decisions on the credit score ratings of their customers. They also provide financing that enables entrepreneurs to move goods and services to customers who need them most.

Let’s say that Jojus Logistics Ltd gets a USD 10,000 contract to supply food-maize flour to St Mary’s College, and needs USD 5,000 loan at 5% interest to deliver. 10 lenders can each buy notes worth USD 50 to collect the entire amount which then advanced to the entrepreneur. Once St Mary’s pays the client, all lenders are paid back with interest.

To date, 33 lenders have lent out $ 68,710 to 66 businesses with contracts worth $ 196,470. An example of their impact as a business is through one of many companies, Jojus Logistics, which is a commodity trading company that sources agricultural produce-maize and beans from rural farmers to sell to local and regional markets. His only limitation was capital to impact his suppliers and meet his clients. To date, Jojus has borrowed and paid back over $ 30,000 through LPO and Discounted Invoice financing, impacted over 300 small holder farmers and created 7 jobs. Through Jojus we are looking to expand our finance service offering to over 10,000 farmers in East and North Uganda.

Their goal is to further grow Patasente into Africa’s #1 Credit Marketplace. Unlike other platforms, Patasente enables entrepreneurs to access loans to finance lorchase orders, discount invoices and acquire assets. Investors finance these loans by buying promissory notes with 30-365 maturity days to earn solid competitive returns. Their next steps are to 1) Complete development of a robust secure web and mobile application 2) Raise internal funding to finance 50% of the loans on the platform 3) Grow our market base to profitability.

For more information click here.

In this day and age you need more than just the income you make from your 9-5 job. It wouldn’t hurt to enjoy some extra money either way. If you have experiences or knowledge that may be of interest to people out there, then you could use this to your advantage. Here are three things you can do to make some extra income;

1. Freelancing

If you’ve built up a set of marketable skills throughout your career and at your day job, you should consider the idea of starting a freelance business on the side.

There’s a rapidly market demand for talented freelance help.

This also applies to those whose skills include writing, designing, developing, marketing, social media management, or any other high-demand digital skill, then you’re in a great position to start bringing on freelance clients.

2. Blogging

This is a rather fun way of starting a side business, with my very own here. Albeit a very long term investment, starting a blog and building up a loyal audience of regular readers can take a while. If you’re comfortable with the potential that it may very well take you years to start earning a decent income.

3. Online Teaching or Online Courses

If you have a particular skill that others want to possess or improve in, then there’s a market for being paid to coach people, one-on-one, into an accelerated learning experience. To make it easier to find an audience, there are various online coaching websites like Savvy and Clarity.fm which come with a built-in community of people looking to work on various different types of skills.

If you’d like to take it a step further and start your own online course, it may take more investment on your time, considering the content you need to provide on a relatively good platform. However, you may be able to monetize it further. Websites such as Teachable are also helpful at launching an online course business.

Malawi is the world’s poorest country by per capita GDP. Most families cannot afford to finance their children’s education which can cost up to $30 or more annually. Only 33% of secondary school aged children are attending school. From this 33%, only 42% are girls. Most girls marry early in exchange for dowry; payment from the husband’s family.

With the infrequency of social mobility in Malawi, daughters and her daughter’s daughter often face the same fate: early marriage and insufficient schooling. Over time this vicious cycle has created a substantial population of women who are under-educated, jobless and facing extreme poverty.

Tiwale which means “let us shine/glow” in Chichewa, was set up as a youth-led community based organization to empower Malawian women by providing economic opportunities through leadership workshops, micro-finance loans, vocational skills training, and education grants.

Ellen, the founder of the organization, has been a budding entrepreneur since her pre-teen years. She is trying to change the difficult circumstances of women in Malawi who deal with low primary school completion rates, low socio-economic status, higher than average rates of HIV and AIDS, and one of the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality through her for-profit social enterprise, Tiwale.

Tiwale started with a team of five young people between 14 and 19 years old in January, 2012. The project commenced with a business education program that was to be followed by micro-loans. The first loan program aided 12 women to start businesses. To date, this venture has trained 150 women as entrepreneurs, guided 40 women to start businesses via micro-loans and has allowed 30 women to undergo a vocational skills training program. While also offering grants, loans and lessons that can lead to empowerment and independence.

Ellen’s enterprise has had its fair share of victories including winning the Ashoka’s Future Forward: Youth Innovations for Employment in Africa challenge. One of the Tiwale organization projects are to train women to do traditional fabric dye-printing. Some of the revenue from the sale of women’s handiwork is used to fund other programs offered by the organization that give women opportunities for self-sufficiency. These programs include a  school grant program that covers fees, transportation costs, school supplies, and offers a small living stipend, plus the flagship microfinance loan program.

Considering that many women in Malawi do wear African-styled fabrics, and yet most fabrics are imported, Tiwali introduced the dye-printing skill to the women of Ntsiriza community. The Design Project involves a group of 30 women undergoing a dye-print training program for a week. The women then work with their teacher to produce various patterns (usually ten). The patterns are dyed onto fabrics which are sold through our organization. 60% of the profit goes to the women who created the fabrics and the other 40 percent supports our organization’s initiatives such as our school grants program.

She received USD $1,500 in unrestricted funding to be used towards the implementation of her work described and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Ashoka Changemakers Day on Youth Employment in Africa, which had kicked-off at the Globalizer Summit in Cape Town, South Africa, in February. There, they received training and support.

Furthermore, to grow their efforts at providing economic opportunities for Malawian women, Tiwale had acquired a plot of land to construct an education center which would provide secondary school education classes and further vocational skills training for the women of Ntsiriza Community, Malawi, set to have been completed by the beginning of this year.

For more information click here.

Many business owners have made their business-related plans for what they want to accomplish this year. However, to achieve these plans, one needs to invest in themselves and sharpen their skills. The following skills in particular are crucial to ensure success:

• Communication

Whether it’s your employees or customers, there should always be fluid communication. It could be through phone, email, WhatsApp group, etc. Ensure there is a constant stream of communication, to ensure you can track whether either your employees are working accordingly or that your customers are happy with your product or service.

Also it’s important to ensure that the message you send through your website and social-media profiles is the one you want.

Any business can go quickly south without proper communication, while effective communication can positively impact and grow a company.  Many experts and psychologists even believe that communication is the most important skill an entrepreneur can learn.

Even if you’re not a skilled communicator, paying attention to how people react to you can clue you in to how well (or not) you’re reaching them. Getting puzzled looks whenever you speak? Ask the person you’re talking to if what you said makes sense, and give them the opportunity to ask for clarification.

• Personal Branding

A sub-topic of communication, the new currency is your personal brand. This is the message about yourself, as gathered from your online presence, professional reputation, circle of influence and the trust you command from peers, followers, customers, employers and general public.

For example, revisit Steve Job’s keynote speeches and marketing tag lines, you’ll immediately understand how he turned Apple into one of the world’s most valuable companies.

You need to learn how to grow a reputable brand and understand how to do that online. Branding starts with being active on social media, and is shaped through content publication, whether on or off your website. Poor content leads to negative branding, while quality content will bring more customers.

• Financial Management

Your parents always told you to save a bit of what you have. This is something we’ve all heard from somewhere one point in our lives as we grew up. While growing your business this is also a necessary skill. Lack of the ability to manage finances exposes you to the risk of becoming unsustainable, consequences include bankruptcy, regret and probably needing to  go back to a full-time job.

Develop a plan, and discipline yourself regarding savings and investments.

· Sales

If you can’t sell your products or services, then you have no business to begin with. The one skill that keeps the lights on in your business is sales. Most occupations require the skills to sell, whether it’s an artist, a writer, etc. If you need funding, you have to sell your idea to investors.

If you run a business, you’re involved in sales. You do this while pitching your business, negotiating with a vendor, or persuading any partnership or anything really. Even if you have hired sales people, you’ll need to learn the skill yourself.

· Relationship Building

Probably the most fun part, possibly. Get out there and make friends and beneficial relationships. In our highly connected world, ‘introverts’ may never get far. You’ll need people to make progress. From offering referrals, to giving endorsements, recommendations, your network of people the your most valuable resource; your network is your net worth.

What if youths across Africa could learn entrepreneurial leadership skills by the time they leave school? Across Africa, students leave school without the basic learning skills that they, and their countries, desperately need to escape the gravitational pull of mass poverty. This explains why even though Africa is the most youthful continent in the world, 70% of the working-age population is unemployed.

JumpStart Academy Africa is an impact social venture which seeks to solve Africa’s human capital problem by providing secondary school students between the ages of 15 and 19 with entrepreneurial leadership training.

Using the principles of ethical leadership and entrepreneurship, Jumpstart Academy Africa is teaching secondary school students 21st century skills so that they can innovate across different sectors. We teach students to be job creators as opposed to the old rhetoric of job seekers.

Jumpstart Academy’s Adopt-A-School Program has 3 main components. First, a 2 year Leadership and Entrepreneurship training enables students to cultivate 21st century skills, with an emphasis on employment opportunities, enterprise creation, community engagement and civic responsibility. Second, Jumpstart Academy offers mentoring in which students are paired with university students and professionals who guide them through the transition from secondary to tertiary education environments and support through the challenges they face in starting enterprises and community initiatives as well as in their personal lives. Finally, tutoring sessions improve learning outcomes of students measured by performance at school and national examinations

Founded by Madelle Kangha, in 2014, JumpStart Academy Africa has trained over 500 students, impacting them in the areas of Academic Excellence, Civic Engagement and Enterprise Creation. The Academy has also reached over 5000 students through community outreach programs and summer camps.

Their goal however is to reach over 17,000 young people in and they have a strategic top down approach with a goal to advocate local government to incorporate components of their model into the national education system by 2020. They believe governments have a key role to play in transforming the education system and they are already building partnerships and networks with the local government. They have already had several meetings with the Commissioner of Education for Oyo State who has endorsed their work officially.

In recognition of her work with JumpStart Academy Africa, Madelle has been featured by Forbes as “Innovative Africans fixing a broken Education System”. She has also received awards and recognition from the Queens Young Leaders, American Express Emerging Innovators, Ashoka Changemakers, One Young World and Vital Voices. She was recently named as one of the 50 Most Influential Young Cameroonians 2016 by Avance Media Africa in the Personal Development & Academia Category.

Madelle’s vision is to be a leading social entrepreneur, a mass recruiter of local change makers; a role model proving that citizens who channel their passion into action can achieve the impossible.