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Farm boy to self-made millionaire
Dumisani Ncube now imparts practical entrepreneurship skills
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Dumisani Ncube |
By VICTOR KALALANDA, Reprinted from the Zambia Daily Mail, July 6, 2019
What's now a success story could have ended nine years ago when some thugs beat him up and left him for dead in the lonely, pitch-dark night of a foreign country.
The enterprising Dumisani Lingamangali Ncube, only 17 years old then, suffered the tragedy while on a business trip in Johannesburg, South Africa. That fateful day, March 12, 2010, seems indelibly engraved in his mind.
“They wanted to kill me," he says. "But luckily I survived and I used the little money I had left on me in an ‘inner’ pocket to get back home.” The inner pocket he speaks of may sound awkward: his pants.
And
as he left a university seminar hall where he had been speaking about
entrepreneurship in June this year, swarms of students vied to obtain contacts
from the young millionaire, a riveting business executive who
demonstrates that any youth can strike the aquifer of wealth and make money gush
out.
Small
in stature and maintaining a sometimes severe aspect, Ncube now spends time attending
to countless clients in his majestic office at the DLN Entrepreneurship
Institute— the first of its kind in Africa—from which an entrepreneurship revolution
that is poised to cause national impact proceeds.
With
the establishment of this Institute at age 30, Ncube no longer works, in the
usual sense of the word: after serving for over four years, he has stepped down as CEO of his company, DLN Technologies, and assumed the distant
role of chairman as he makes the empowerment of other Zambian entrepreneurs his
lifework.
Fondly known as the Radical Entrepreneur in business seminars around the world, the
book enthusiast was born in Lusaka West to Burton and Matildah Ncube, a poor
couple that could only afford a thatched house for its family on a farmland.
“I was born in a village set-up on the outskirts of Lusaka," he says. "My parents were subsistence farmers, growing maize, tomatoes and vegetables.”
His
love for reading paid off at Chikwama Primary School, where school authorities observed
that as a pupil who “would literally 'hammer' everything,” Ncube should skip his
sixth grade and instead sit for the grade seven examinations.
The
recommendation by the school got approved and the small farmer’s child topped his cohort in the exams, whereupon he joined Matero Boys Secondary
School for both his junior and senior secondary school.
It
was at Matero that he heeded the promptings of his then latent entrepreneurship
genius: “I started selling pamphlets [and] since I was faring reasonably well
[academically], I would give a geography pamphlet to my friends and convince
them to buy,” he states.
The
pamphlet had long been purchased for him by his father; since he had no
financial capital, he would persuade his peers to first pay for half the price
of the booklet, which money he would ingeniously spend on photocopies in Lusaka’s
City Market, and then pay the remainder when collecting the copy.
So just from nothing he created savings, and he says, “I never invested any
financial capital. What is important to note from here is that it is not always
that you need money to start a business. So, your greatest capital is your
brain.”
For
easier travel during his Matero days, Ncube had left his parents’ home and was
now staying with relatives and family friends in Marapodi and Chazanga townships.
Whenever
on holiday, he would go back to the farm, and, upon noticing that “the people
had problems accessing oil, salt, sugar and other home necessities,” he used
the money made through the selling of pamphlets to open a kiosk and sell the
commodities.
It
was about K200 worth of investment, and he says: “People should start
identifying challenges in their communities. My message is that anything they
have complained about is a possible business opportunity.”
Meeting
the needs largely of farm workers, the kiosk grew, making Ncube admired and
also ridiculed, in this instance by friends who found it embarrassing that he was
trading in merchandise like the slightly bitter kasempa. Whatever the
reception, however, his grit to succeed got bolstered day by day.
In
2004, upon noticing that his business was making losses whenever he went back
to school, he started dealing in goats: “I’d sell to those people in Chibolya
for meat,” he says. “To lure the farmers, I would engage in barter
system: I would buy a bike and then exchange four to five goats with the
farmers.”
With
the goats tied one to the other, he would emerge from the farms and trudge back
home from 10 am to 01 am.
Upon
completing high school in 2006, he started buying clothes and duvets from Botswana
and later in South Africa, where robbers attacked him.
When
grade twelve results were published in 2007, he scored 13 points but failed to
enter the University of Zambia (UNZA) because studying his dream programme, civil
engineering, entailed self-sponsorship, which he couldn’t afford.
He
thus settled for an accountancy programme, ZICA, which he would pursue to the
last level with ZICAS in Lusaka in 2013.
Moreover,
in 2010, Ncube met Mukelebai Mukelebai, a fourth year computer science student at
UNZA, whose final year saw him working on a software package that would allow Zambian
students and their families check results from the comfort of their homes.
“I
found Mukelebai and another teacher, Eston Habanyati, who was doing his degree
discussing the project [and] I thought we could make money with the idea. That’s
how we formed Glad Tidings Software Limited with Mukelebai and Eston,” he
explains.
In
2011, they commenced marketing of the product, though in 2012, having graduated
with a distinction, Mukelebai was recalled for a Staff Development Fellowship (SDF)
at UNZA, a situation which left Ncube in a crisis as he lacked the software
knowledge to run the company.
“From
the money we made, I went back to the farm to invest in tomato farming. I would
bring 1000 crates into Soweto every two weeks. I was making K150,000 every two
weeks that time,” he discloses.
However,
the swelling costs of the business proved it was unprofitable, a fact which became
more devastating when Ncube’s only girlfriend left him.
In
April 2013, fortunately, Mukelebai returned to the business and the duo
regrouped to become more aggressive, whereupon most of the provinces in the
country adopted their software products.
“Life
changed and I bought my first car. Three months later I remembered my childhood
dream to own trucks. I was 23 and I bought my first truck and another 30 tonnes
trucker and trailer,” states Ncube, who hopes to marry soon.
Sadly,
on August 24, 2019, his trucker got involved in a road accident while
transporting 600 bags of maize for the FRA. The disaster plunged him in a loss
as unscrupulous people stormed the scene of the accident for a looting spree.
In
2014, the one-time stammerer ultimately launched DLN Technologies—a company
named after him—which was declared the largest supplier of PVC cards, and is
also a leading provider of printers, access control and time attendance.
Before
long, he started a construction company which deals in building and civil works
around Zambia.
All
these are major accomplishments that have established Ncube as a business magnate
and investor, who in 2016 became the first Zambian CEO and youngest African CEO
to receive the Evolis Performance Award.
Under
his high-minded leadership, DLN Technologies has received such awards as the
Customer Commitment Award (SME) and the Most Customer Focused Organisation in
ICT services courtesy of the Zambian Chartered Institute of Customer
Management. He is also a recipient of the Customer Service Business Leadership
Individual Award from the same institution.
Having
been recognised as the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year, the Adventist has already
tasted millionaire status, and he is now managing his Entrepreneurship
Institute in Lusaka after resigning as CEO of DLN Technologies, both of which
are part of the group of companies he owns.
The
Institute is born out of the harassment he suffered in 2015 at the hands of
immigration officers in France who thought he was joking when he told them he
was a Zambian CEO visiting that country for business purposes. They deemed him
an impostor and threatened him with deportation amid unjustified scrutiny.
“I
was treated like that because I am black and coming from a poor country. I
realised we need to raise our standards and, from this, I decided to offer
guidance to young entrepreneurs,” he says, adding that “when I am gone, I want
to be remembered as one who fought for economic liberation in my country and
indeed my continent through entrepreneurship.”
Ncube
now boasts of more than 120,000 social media followers and annually speaks to
more than 60,000 people on entrepreneurship around the world.
Most
recently, he toured the country for the Africa Must Think Conference, by which
he inspired hope in the hearts of nascent entrepreneurs like Emmanuel Simfukwe,
who says “it was at that conference where I met people that influenced me to actualise
my untapped potential,” with another attendee, Stephen Kanange Jr., adding that
“you couldn’t go in and come out the same person.”
Through
the Institute, the MBA student hopes to train generations of Zambians in
entrepreneurship and public speaking using practical modules he has helped
develop, and he is looking to injecting money up to the tune of K27 million into
start-ups in the country.
Whatever Ncube has done so far, there is no doubt that he is walking the talk when he says “the future of this country is in our hands as youths. We need to build entrepreneurs.”
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