Introduction

Tanzania’s Believe Begin Become Organizing Committee (OC) serves as an advisory board to the TechnoServe implementation team on all aspects of the design and management of the program.  The committee is made up of outstanding Tanzanian business people who embody the characteristics and accomplishments of a successful entrepreneur.  The TechnoServe Tanzania Deputy-Country Director is also proud to serve as a member of the committee.

The insights and support of the committee are instrumental in the success and sustainability of Believe Begin Become. The OC meets regularly and members attend all major events throughout the program.  The Believe Begin Become is management team is thankful for the astute guidance and unwavering commitment of the OC to developing entrepreneurs and the economy in Tanzania.

Deus Manyenye
Head of Retail Performance, Barclays Bank
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Deus Manyenye is currently employed as Head of Retail Performance with Barclays Bank Tanzania Limited. Barclays established operations in Tanzania in 2000, and caters to both corporate and retail clients, providing financial and business advisory services. Barclays is among a few banks in the country that has specific package for SMEs, which includes quarterly seminars, business events, business trips, as well as access to the bank’s Business Development Managers. Under Mr. Manyenye’s tutelage, the bank has repositioned itself to provide expanded services to SMEs. At present, Barclays has a large number of SME customers and recently won a TCCIA’s recognition for supporting SMEs in the country. Barclays has the ambition to expand its branch network five times of its current foot prints and aimed at tripling the number of its employees in 2007.

Mr. Manyenye has extensive financial sector experience. Prior to his current position, he worked as Barclay’s Business Development Manager, where he had an opportunity to attract over 100 new SME customers monthly. Before joining Barclays Bank in October 2004, he worked for 5 years with Standard Chartered Bank where he held different positions including but not limited to Head of Retail Credit, Business Relationship Manager, and Head of SMEs . Other Banks that he has worked include Akiba Commercial Bank and International Bank of Malaysia; currently know as International Commercial Bank Limited.

Mr. Manyenye holds a degree in Economics and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from Aligarh Muslim University and the Institute of Health Care Management, Madras in India.

Mr. Manyenye’s top insights for participants and future entrepreneurs in Tanzania are as follows:

1. Believe in business ideas.
2. Nurture these ideas, develop and make them reality.
3. Take business challenges positively and regard them as motivators and not barriers.
4. Embed business professionalism in all business dealings and always aim high.
5. Conduct the business with high level of transparency, trust, diligence and be able to spot business opportunities all the time.

Protase Ishengoma
Managing Partner, Immma Advocates
 

Mr. Ishengoma, 47, is a Managing Partner of Immma Advocates, a corporate/commercial law firm extending a wide range of legal services to the business community in Tanzania. Immma Advocates also offers legal advisory services to foreign entities in need of knowledge of the Tanzanian legal regime. The four partners of Immma Advocates started in 1997 by pooling together their meager resources with the aim of offering timely, quality legal services to the investing public. The initial focus was to advise banks and borrowers, to handle privatization transactions, to advise on natural resources law and to offer commercial litigation services. The firm now can proudly say they have achieved their goals, but nevertheless the partners continuously keep refocusing their business strategy to be in line with changing needs of the economy and their clients.

Previously, Mr. Ishengoma worked as Group Legal Council for the National Development Corporation for a period of 8 years and as Chief Counsel and Fund Secretary for the Parastatal Pensions Fund for over 4 years. He decided to move into the private sector and offer legal services because of the then huge gap in the sector and the need for such services in the liberalized Tanzanian economy.

Mr. Ishengoma is a graduate in Law (LLB Hons) from the University of Dar es Salaam and holds an MBA (International Banking and Finance – Distinction) from the University of Birmingham in the UK.

Mr. Ishengoma’s top 5 insights for participants and future entrepreneurs in Tanzania are as follows:

Khalaf Rashid
Founder and Managing Director, Macmillans Publishing
 

Khalaf Rashid is the founder and Managing Director of Macmillan Aidan Limited, a publishing company located in Dar es Salaam. Mr. Rashid originally established his business as a small book distribution company in 1996 and then negotiated an agency agreement with Macmillan UK that eventually led to a full partnership agreement in 1999. Macmillan Aidan Limited specializes in publishing educational books for primary and secondary schools as well as stocking and distributing to local retailers.

Mr. Rashid is a young, successful entrepreneur who loves living and working in Dar es Salaam. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management and has always wanted to be an entrepreneur. He is brimming with business ideas and believes that it is a good time to bring these ideas to reality here in Tanzania. Mr. Rashid draws much of his inspiration from his wife and three children and is very much involved in the local community through active participation in social and sports events. He is particularly interested in youth development areas having spent the last ten years of his working life in providing goods and services in the education sector.

Mr. Rashid’s top 6 insights for participants and future entrepreneurs in Tanzania are as follows:

Saada Mufuruki
Founder and Managing Director, M&M Communications
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Saada Ibrahim Mufuruki, is the founder and Managing Director of M&M communications, a private sector firm offering advertising, experiential and PR solutions for the communication needs of their clients. She defines the firm’s success by the passion and drive that they put into every piece of work that they handle and the thorough understanding of their client’s businesses, the market and environment that they work in.

Mrs. Mufuruki started her advertising career as a finished artist in 1984 at Ogilvy & Mather in Kenya after completing her HND in Graphics and Visual Communication at the Kenya Polytecnic. She moved to ScanAd Kenya in 1987 where she worked in the creative department as a senior finished artist. During this time, she watched her colleagues with envy as they strategized and implemented their communications plans and she knew that this was the kind of job she was made for. With courage and conviction, she persuaded her CEO that she should be transfered the to the client service department where she was promoted from a Traffic Assistant to Chief Executive Officer of the Tanzanian operations in a space of only 5 years.

Mrs. Mufuruki resigned from ScanAd and knew it was time to start something of her own. She was mentored and encouraged by her husband, who knew that she had the passion and the expertise to create and succeed in her own advertising business. M&M was created on January 2^nd, 1994 with three employees – today the firm employees over 20 people and has grown to become one of the most respected and reputable communications agencies in the country. She believes that running a business requires hard work, but does not believe that it requires large amounts of capital, but rather a passion, a vision and the drive to take it in its required direction. The rest, she says, will automatically fall into place.

Mrs. Mufuruki’s top 5 insights for participants and future entrepreneurs in Tanzania are as follows:

David Bulengo
Founder and Managing Director, Upper Zonal Trading Limited
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Mr. Bulengo, 35, is the founder and Managing Director of Upper Zonal Trading Limited, a company that focuses on the importation, distribution and marketing of luxury food and beverage products and consumables; catering primarily to the tourism sector as well as to the retail sector in Tanzania. The Company started in 1995 after conducting a careful business analysis on the supply of food and beverages to the Tourism Industry. The analysis showed a gap in the growing Tourism sector in Tanzania that would increasingly require the provision of luxury goods in order for the industry to blossom. Upper Zonal was established with only US $7,000 in seed capital and supplier credit from importers of wines and spirits, but mostly the company was built from will, determination and a long-term vision.

Prior to starting Upper Zonal Trading (UZT), Mr. Bulengo worked with TanCan Mining as an Administrator and a Group Personnel Manager for Serena Lodges & Hotels. Mr. Bulengo’s heart and dreams, however, were to become an entrepreneur, which he started from an early age by selling sweets or magazines to fellow students. He and his wife, Lilian, started UZT from scratch in June 1995 feeling that Tanzania was ripe with opportunity and knew that he needed to take the risk and jump into the venture while he was young.

Mr. Bulengo holds Bachelor of Arts from York University in Canada specializing in Public Administration & Economics. Outside of work, Mr Bulengo enjoys reading, music and is presently learning how to play the saxophone. Mr Bulengo is an avid squash player as well as swimmer.

Mr. Bulengo’s top insights for participants and future entrepreneurs in Tanzania are as follows:

Olive Luena
General Manager and CEO, Tanzania Gatsby Trust
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Olive Luena is the General Manager and CEO of Tanzania Gatsby Trust, a charitable trust that aims to improve the productive potential of the informal sector and build the capacity of small and medium sized enterprises. Mrs. Luena joined TGT in 1995 as its first CEO and has built the trust from its inception to stimulate and support entrepreneurship, action oriented advocacy and lobbying, the production and use of knowledge and resource mobilization in order to achiee economic and social advancement.

Prior to starting the Tanzania Gatsby Trust, Mrs. Luena spent over 20 years at Tanganyika Plastics Ltd. before pursuing a career in the non-profit sector. She is an active member of society and is the co-chair and board member of the East African Grantmakers Association (EAAG), a trustee of UFADHILI (the East Africa Centre for phillanthropy). She was also the founding Secretary General (1988-1995) of the Tanzanian Association of NGOs (Umbrella organization of NGOs in Tanzania), the international President of the World Conference of Religion and Peace (1994-1998) and 1998/1999 Nominee for the Africa Hunger Prize. Mrs. Luena is an Eisenhower Fellow, a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University and was appointed by His Holiness Pope John Paul 11 as a member of the Vatican Pontifical Council of the Laity for a period of five years in 1990.

Mrs. Luena holds a degree in Industrial Management, a Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Management, a diploma in Personnel Management, and has also been trained at the postgraduate level at Cranfield School of Management in the UK in enterprise development, and the Economic Institute at Boulder Colorado in USA in Microfinance. She is actively engaged in promoting Social justice and philanthropy both at local and International levels. She is a Widow with three children of her own while also bringing up four orphans.

Mrs. Luena’s top 5 insights for participants and future entrepreneurs in Tanzania are as follows:

1. Be Entrepreneurial minded and dare to dream: all businesses in the world were initially someone’s dream.
2. Look for entrepreneurship opportunities and seize them
3. Once you have an opportunity develop a plan to implement it
4. Work hard to achieve your plan
5. In whatever you do, perseverance will ultimately pay off.

Joseph Kusaga
Founder and Managing Director, Clouds Media Group
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Alex Mkindi
Deputy Country Director, TechnoServe Tanzania
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