A simple and straightforward affair indeed – my meeting with Mr. Sander Smits van Oyen was not quite that. I went to Shangri La Hotel completely resourced and prepared to carry aloft the TEDxHarambe torch. When I have something important to do I ensure my homework is done, so I read as much information about Sander as Web 2.0 could offer and Derek, being the super-efficient guy he is, even provided precise and comprehensive meeting notes for the appointment. By the way, I had successfully avoided Tro-tros the whole day; I had certainly seen them, many of them, calling and honking out to me, begging to break my silent notes down into jingling coins. But between my father and my friend, I was Corporal First Class of the “Ghana AC Brigade” all the way that day– well at least up to that point.
I definitely needed that little preparation; Mr. Sander is the managing director of a Dutch Venture Capital Firm called SOVEC Fund that is investing in SMEs in Ghana in collaboration with local partners like Fidelity II Fund and Oasis Capital. The main goal of the SOVEC Fund is to “stimulate sustainable economic growth in Africa. [They] strongly believe that this can best be realized by private sector development: i.e. investing in SME’s”. SOVEC’s model is to add value (i.e. create social value) by linking Ghanaian entrepreneurs to a networked group of Dutch investors who not only have capital, but also contacts, experience and expertise they would otherwise not have had access to. Bottom line, Sander and his partners are operating a fund of €6 million of private equity of which they have committed approx. 40% or € 2.5 million in about 10 indigenous investments so far. That is an average of €250,000 or $320,000 per venture, and this is probably just the beginning because this fund and its portfolio are still growing. You can obtain more information on SOVEC Fund and its mother company, SOVEC Foundation from their website, www.sovec.nl. The TEDxHarambe Team contacted Sander hoping he could share his thoughts on social entrepreneurism – SOVEC stands for Social Venture Capital so we felt their business model was exemplary of social value creation and Sander’s experienced perspective would shed more light on the issue.
Some of the points that were covered in the meeting were:
1. A synopsis of BMIC, Harambe and our Joint-Venture (History, Objectives)
2. A briefing about the TED, TEDx brand and their licensing requirements
3. TEDxHarambe and its primary objective, “Social Value Creation”
4. An orientation on the format of his speech at the conference
5. Securing his consent as a speaker for the event
Well the above represents the main points that were to be covered, but the meeting went further and delved deeper. One of the first things I uttered to Mr. Smits van Oyen was that we were “trying to organize an event,” and he immediately cut me short and said, “Don’t try, just do it.” And later on when I went on to say that “In Ghana we face a lot of problems”, he corrected me by saying, “They are not only problems, they are also opportunities.” Therefore throughout the ensuing conversation I was ‘trying’ very hard to avoid this ‘problem’ of perception and rather use the situation as an ‘opportunity’ to show him I could ‘do it’ because I was a quick learner. However of all the things that we discussed that day, these two statements left the biggest impression on me, I will simply DO as I should by adequately utilizing the various OPPORTUNITIES present in Ghana........
The rest of this blog continues Mid-Week......Keep Checking this space for Part 3(b)
Cheers
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