The fresh faced 33-year-old young man tells of an important and life-changing trip he made to Dubai 10 years back.
“My visit to Dubai made me believe in the impossible when I witnessed firsthand how the Emirates create their own islands,” he states. “This was when they were building Palm Island. It made me realise that my determination is my best resource.”
It’s that determination which led Gadzanani Makopola to acquire 12 mining licences in Zambia for a diverse range of minerals such as copper, emeralds, gold, cobalt and iron.
Astonishingly, when he got the first licence, he had no financial muscle even though he had convinced the tribal chiefs, who hold the mining rights on behalf of their subjects, to grant him 80% of the shares from the mines they had given him and he’d bring in the money.
“I knew that out of the seven billion people in the world somebody had that money. If not, there is somebody whose signature can endorse the release of that kind of money. The only thing I invested in when I came from Zambia was a pen; to make sure that if I meet someone who has that signature and no pen, by mistake, I would offer mine,” he recalls.
His first emeralds mine started operations a year and a half back, while copper is still at the prospecting stage.
“Zambia is Africa’s biggest producer of emeralds in the world by quality and by value, and number two in the world, second only to Colombia. And where we have a pit, we are 10km to 15km from the biggest emerald mine in Africa,” he says.
Makopola explains that what led him to Zambia was his adventurous nature.
“I’m the kind of person who believes there is more to life than just what I see,” he says. “When I started wanting to achieve the best that life has to offer I had to look at all the industries globally and I remember thinking, ‘what is the biggest and most challenging industry in the world?’. Only one answer came to me, mining. Mining is the biggest money-spinner globally. I realized at this stage that mining is at the top, second is transportation; you’ve got your aviation, sea travel, land travel. Number three is ICT. Number four is agriculture, followed by stuff like engineering. I targeted the highest.”
He describes himself as someone who has always been passionate about doing things differently from a young age. That was how in 1997, while still in junior secondary, he decided that he was going to pursue business. When he completed senior secondary, he chose not to follow the route to a tertiary institution. Instead, he started an ICT company, the Francistown-based Gigatech Botswana. He was aged 19. He studied ICT while running his business.
“My drive was to achieve as much as I could and then help others to realize their dreams,” he says. “I have a passion for charity. Once I’ve done what I need to do, and everything is fully operational, I want to concentrate on giving back to the community because it was not easy for me to reach where I am now. Even my parents didn’t have it easy either. They started from nothing, and I’ve seen how they struggled to build themselves up. And that motivated me and helped me appreciate life more; it instilled this thing in me of wanting to give back.”
As most entrepreneurs would tell you, the world of business is the land of sharks and landmines. Makopola confesses to having had his fingers burnt a lot, being back-stabbed many times by people he trusted, and losing money in the process. Then there has been the fair share of being laughed off as a daydreamer.
A native of Francistown, he has never joined the bandwagon out of the city, and has always believed in its business potential. He insists that Francistown is the place to be if you have really big dreams. It is in this light that he embraced the offer to head the sales and marketing of the town’s Vision 2022, an ambitious plan to reposition Francistown as Botswana’s economic hub, and gateway to the markets in the rest of Africa.
“There is a feeling that Francistown is dead, and we are saying ‘no’,” he says. “For those who do not know, Francistown actually sparked the African gold rush. The continent’s first gold mine was in Francistown, and this region of Africa is what it is economically and socially because of Francistown. And we are saying the first city that started it off is continuing to pioneer the next level that the region has to get to.”
He likens Gaborone to a chicken egg. You gobble it all at once, and you’re not satiated.
“But Francistown is an ostrich egg, and it’s ready to be eaten,” he says.
Part of what makes Francistown a strategic place for business, he says, is that a majority of Botswana’s mines are in the north, especially around the city. Then there is the Kazungula Bridge, expected to be open for traffic in 2019, which will facilitate easier movement of goods to Zambia and beyond.
“We thought it does not make sense that the place surrounded by all these mines which are our biggest revenue earner should have nothing to show for it. So we are converting Francistown into a place that is going to be known for mining and logistics,” he explains.
It is a project that is driven by both the city council and the private sector. The city council has registered an investment company that will undertake joint ventures and PPP projects with private investors.
As a step towards exposing the city’s business potential to the outside world, an international business forum will be hosted on August 19. Makopola emphasises that the event is not a trade fair, but an investment forum meant to match people with the right business ideas with potential investors and partners from outside.
“We have profiled what Francistown offers; the business opportunities in agriculture, mining, ICT and all the supporting industries,” he says.
Ever the marketer par excellence, Makopola says what he is selling to potential investors is a packaged product to invest in.
“I am selling you a tangible product to say, ‘buy into this product, invest in this product [because] you are actually buying shares in Francistown and you are owning a part of the city through the investment company’,” he says.
