Nothing about owning a small business in the developing world is easy.
I received some bad news the other day from Anyaa, a woman I advised while I was in grad school. She founded a bamboo furniture company in the conflict-wracked nation of Liberia in West Africa, and for several months I worked with her to increase sales and attract investors.
Unfortunately, her factory recently burned to the ground, turning a fully-equipped workshop and a storeroom full of furniture into ash and mud.
High-quality bamboo is one of the only natural resources that Liberia has. Anyaa, clever enough to take advantage of this, opened the furniture company with her own money. The bedroom, kitchen and dining room sets that she and her 10 semi-skilled employees produced were nice enough to grace any home.
But what the company had in quality, it lacked in sales. Anyaa didn’t have enough working capital to open up a storefront in town or hire a sales team. There were no interested investors yet, and there was no possibility for a loan from a local bank either. Liberia is strictly a cash-only economy.
The dozens of pieces of finished furniture sitting idly in her factory were the life-blood of her company. Now, with all her inventory destroyed her prospects seem bleak.
She has no financial statements, no payroll documents and no tax filings. No records at all. Without the factory, all she has to prove to investors that she owned a legitimate business is her word. In Liberia, that’s worth about as much as the local currency. She also has no insurance because after twenty years of civil war there is no insurance sector.
I told her how sorry I was and e-mailed her all the pictures I had taken of the factory last year when I was there in Monrovia working with her and 3 other entrepreneurs. I thought like a skeptical investor at the time and took the photos to catalogue anything that could be considered an asset. The furniture, the workers, their faces, the building, the tools.
To be honest, I have no idea how Anyaa will start over but I’m also confident she will. Because she didn’t ask for any advice when she told me about the fire, only if I still had those photos.
She wrote that with those she could “rebuild and get the boys back to work.” She seemed very matter-of-fact about it all. Almost optimistic.
Like most small business owners in undeveloped economies, Anyaa’s positivity and good instincts will save her if she’s given an opportunity. With an increasing number of organizations facilitating collaboration between entrepreneurs and investors, I’m sure she will find one.
