High School Dropout From Zimbabwe Builds Botswana’s Biggest Ad Agency
By Ann Brown
Knight Ganje was a high school dropout but you’d never know that today, as he now runs a multi-million dollar business which is Botswana’s biggest ad agency. The 29-year-old Zimbabwe-born Ganje founded the Botswana-based ad agency, H&G Advertising Group, which counts among it clients Unilever, Emirates, Coca-Cola, and Samsung. H&G Advertising operates in Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The firm earns $38 million annually.
Botswana is the most attractive economy for investments flowing into the African continent, according to the latest Africa Investment Index 2016 by Quantum Global’s independent research arm, Quantum Global Research Lab. According to the index, Botswana, scores highly based on a range of factors that include improved credit rating, current account ratio, import cover and ease of doing business.
President Lt Gen. Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama says Botswana's performance at ITB Berlin 2017, the world's largest trade show, made him proud to be a Motswana. Speaking at a luncheon President Khama hosted at the State House on March 19 for the team that traveled to Germany, Berlin, President Khama indicated that Botswana was well put on the world map. "I want to give special recognition to the artistes for an awesome job done and also say that our artistes' performances are forever improving," he said, adding that Botswana's ambassadors in different countries were always raving about the artistes they engaged at their various functions. He said Botswana's artistes were proving to be "up there with the very best and no country in Africa beats Botswana in terms of the standard of quality exhibited by our artistes."
Run a quick Google search on African women making it in business, and you will rarely find a young woman engaged in rural farming. But Mavis Nduchwa has challenged norms by founding and successfully managing a commercial animal feed farm in Botswana. Thirty-three-year-old Nduchwa, who was born on a farm in rural Francistown in eastern Botswana, near the border with Zimbabwe, developed an interest in agriculture at an early age. However, as she grew older, the allure of city life drove her to earn a degree in real estate and hospitality management. She later worked as a journalist. But given the high cost of agricultural inputs strangling her farming community, Nduchwa sensed that affordable, locally produced animal feed as a substitute for the expensive imported kind, could boost the agribusiness sector. She quit her job in the hospitality industry and teamed up with her husband Brighton Chabana to found Chabana Farms in 2011.
