On the fifth floor of PricewaterhouseCoopers Towers, I meet this young lady who is waiting to formally start her attachment. We are at Cellulant’s temporary offices in Westlands. She mentions that she is a computer programming student based in Cape Town, South Africa. But before I get to inquire further about what exactly attracted her to Cellulant, Ken Njoroge comes to fetch me for our interview. He is the co-founder and Co-CEO of Cellulant, a community of entrepreneurs creating cool tech solutions for Africa’s mobile generation. With presence in over twenty-seven countries, Ken is always on a tight schedule. He was however kind enough to spare some time to chop it up with the Inquisitor.

Did you ever anticipate this level of success when you and your co-founder Mr. Bolaji Akinboro mapped out your vision for Cellulant?

Maybe ‘success’ tells a different narrative. Ours has been more of a journey. Looking at the ambitions we had at the time, coupled with the reality we faced, I feel humbled.  Occasionally, we sit back and appreciate the journey and hardships that have gotten us to where we are currently, and we marvel at it all.

You were bound for ‘med’ school before a certain epiphany. What prompted your transition from medicine to computing?

The sudden fascination with computers while I was at Strathmore University.

It was exciting to see the potential that lay in building a business around computer programming. Dr. Julius Kipng’etich, my one-time lecturer brought us magazine articles of personalities like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who were consistently in the headlines for inspiring great innovations through computers. I figured that if they could start a business at their young age, then I could start one as well.  I then set sail, exploring the universe of computing and I slowly found myself drifting further away from the shores of medicine.

How did you and Mr. Bolaji Akinboro meet?

Bolaji is from Nigeria. He had been posted to Kenya and was working for the African Virtual University which was a World Bank funded initiative. We met by accident at a dinner, a conversation ensued. We talked at length about Africa and the myriads of problems we continually face. Here were two strangers who built rapport within minutes. Bolaji had very interesting views on Nigeria and Africa at large.

These conversations went on over coffee in the days following our accidental meeting. We challenged ourselves on developing solutions to help change our fortunes as a continent. We had a hunger for entrepreneurship and a hunger to impact lives. The vision and mission of Cellulant was thus conceived.

Dear reader, while you would use the serviette to wipe your mouth and fingers at a restaurant, it is worth pointing out that Ken and Bolaji wrote down their vision and mission for Cellulant on a serviette. I say this because…who does that? But really, can you imagine how interesting and passionate this conversation was, with ideas coming in thick and fast such that you have your whole blueprint on a serviette?

Talk to us about Cellulant’s focus on Africa as per its mission statement.

We are Africans and no one is going to make a change on this continent except ourselves.

Do you think we understand our potential as Africans in terms of being able to solve our own problems?

All problems of the world are caused and solved by people.

Bolaji and I obsessed about what prevents us from getting a grip of the problems that afflict us in what is largely the wealthiest continent in the world. Is it the politician? Is it corruption? Is it that we have lost track of our culture? Is it neocolonialism?

We would go back and forth on this until we realized that there wasn’t really much we could do just sitting back and complaining. We resolved to building a business that would show that indeed Africans can do something exceptional. This is in fact the drive that has led to the growth of Cellulant.

The fundamental reason for starting Cellulant was the pride of building a world class business as Africans with Africans and for Africans. Thus far, we have built a business that attracts a lot of young African talent. We are still growing the business by continually solving the critical problems that plague our people. Good businesses solve problems and we believe we are an inspiration to many people around the continent.

So how is Cellulant carving out a niche for itself in the digital payments space?

The payment space is a large and diverse segment in the larger fintech ecosystem. Cellulant is innovating and building solutions around the most critical sectors and markets in Africa. For instance, we have used blockchain to build an online agriculture marketplace – Agrikore that is organizing all the key players and enabling small holder farmers access markets and trade in a transparent and trusted environment. Agrikore has an underlying payments platform, Tingg, which we have also built for the retail distribution sector and to power ecommerce by connecting merchants and consumers in eight African markets.

You had a Board of Directors two years after the launch of your business. What prompted you to create one so early on?

Frankly, in 2004, we were young and needed “adult supervision”. We had observed that African owned, small and family businesses failed to reach scale because of governance amongst several other problems. We saw governance as a critical ingredient of success. Seventeen years later, this decision has proved critical to our growth to four hundred plus staff and a presence in eighteen markets.

Were you not afraid of losing your power in decision making in your own business?

Losing control for an entrepreneur has got to be the most terrifying thing. Completely! (Laughs.)

 At first, the business takes root and starts doing very well because you control a large chunk of it. The business thrives because you have got a grip on the important functions. However, as is certain to happen, the business grows, and it eventually needs to become a team very quickly. At a certain point of growth, the business requires five or six very critical skill sets at the top and as a founder, you are only fortunate to have one or two.

To get these skill sets, you must adopt the mindset of a partnership. You view the people you work with not as employees, but as partners. People no longer hire employees. They bring in partners to help them grow the business. You therefore must give power and ownership. You must also trust the people you bring in and most importantly, you must allow ideas to coexist.

It seems you started this from the very top…

Correct. We understood that the Board would hold us accountable. We knew that the Board would challenge us to deliver on our goals and targets. Perspectives would not be limited to Bolaji’s and mine alone. The Board would help us grow and in turn we would grow the company. The Board played an invaluable part in our growth. They always challenged us to see more and to dream bigger at critical times in our business. Entrepreneurship is a team sport.

What challenges did you go through having a Board initially, and what did you learn?

We have had a wonderful experience with our Board. We have been blessed in that sense.

The key lesson is to find board members who share your values and your vision. You need board members who understand that the job of a board is to partner and support the management team to get the job done. Anything else leads to a lot of friction and pain.

Lack of access to capital is widely attributed to the lack of growth of entrepreneurship but little is mentioned about the lack of proper governance structures which is core to the sustainability of a business. While the two are correlated, why is it that one receives far greater attention than the other?

Because lack of capital is an easier problem to “blame”. Governance requires a lot of inspection and commitment. It often includes uncomfortable discussions and scrutiny. Entrepreneurs are simply not prepared for that level of conversation. As a result, most businesses never really get good governance.

You attribute Cellulant’s success to the corporate culture you have created and the trust you have on the team at Cellulant. Talk to us about how, as an entrepreneur, you learn to dissociate yourself from the business, letting it have its own identity and making it less about you, the owner.

Trust in people is all that you have. It is really that simple. No matter how good a technology guy you are, no matter the vision you have, there is only one of you. If you are going to build a business in twenty seven countries, you are going to have to trust the people in whose country you are going to build the business in and who you are going to work with. As an entrepreneur, you must relentlessly build a culture of trust.

In December last year, you were recognized and celebrated as the Entrepreneur of The Year in the region.  Cellulant was also listed among the leading global Fintech innovators. Talk to us about what this meant to you personally.

For like three hours it felt great. Then it felt normal again.

I feel Ken is being too modest. So, I keep silent hoping that he’ll get the hint and expound a lot more. Surely, you’d expect more to a celebration. But he doesn’t. It seems that he indeed felt the high for three hours and was back to the grind.

So there was nothing more to it? Not a party? Nothing?

The rubber meets the road in the things you do every day. I guess my state of mind is fixated on the undone work. I think this is because I always feel there is so much more we can do. It is the quest for a little more progress. It is what we are not doing well that will cause us to stagnate and then fall. I think it’s a state of mind. Some of my colleagues say that I do not celebrate a lot. But I think I have improved lately. (Chuckles.)

 

‘Adult supervision’ is what Ken calls it. It is not uncommon to hear entrepreneurs refer to their business as ‘their baby’. This is because it is something they birth and nurture with the hope that it will adopt its own identity and outlive the entrepreneur’s existence. At infancy, the entrepreneur and the business come as a package. And just like how a baby would require adult supervision, so does a business and its owner require guidance and direction as they grow. A board holds you accountable to the targets you collectively set for the enterprise. The board also gives guidance and direction in the attainment of these targets. Guidance that is informed by years of experience. Ken also speaks to a quality that one needs to learn as an entrepreneur. One needs to learn how to trust. One needs to trust the “adult supervision” being offered. But more importantly, as an entrepreneur, you need to trust the people who work for you because as Ken puts it, entrepreneurship is a team sport.

 

The Inquisitor