Social banking from GT Bank. Anywhere, anytime, any device. Social banking from GT Bank. Anywhere, anytime, any device. My name is Sangudelli. I am Chief Executive Officer of Golden Palm Investments, I'm an entrepreneur and we are in Accraduct. I grew up in a large family. My mother was one of eight and I was one of five. My father was part of a polygamous royal family in Namdaum. She was one of 86, coming from family union. You see how large the family is. I grew up in a bi-religious household. My father's Roman Catholic and my mother's Egyptian. I grew up in a Pan African household. Being a mix of Ghana and Bikina Bian Egyptian. Went to schools in Ghana, went to Christokin, then moved to Ghana International School. I got a scholarship to attend the petty school in New Jersey. From there, I then went on to Harvard University, while studied African studies and economics. And then, beyond there, I went back to Harvard for graduate studies in a jurors' doctorate law in an MBA. I had Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. I've always considered myself an entrepreneur. I can go way back to class five, class six. I used to, there was a good friend of mine called Niamankwa, who used to struggle a bit with homework. So I'd come early in the morning and I'd help him with homework in exchange for these corn beef sandwiches he used to have. So, early on, I learned how to monetize and select. Then, fast forward, I think my first real brush with business though, was when I first came to the US on scholarship to petty. At the time, after I got the Walter Annembeck scholarship, which covered everything, I still needed to get a ticket. So, at the time, I was at Ghana International School, and I had all the study guides I created in my books and notes for the old levels. So, what I ended up doing was I marketed and sold those mostly to the expat community, and I was able to make about $1,600 from that operation. So, I bought my one-way ticket with Alitalia, you know, for a few other things for winter and whatnot. And I had $500 in savings, which I took to the US. So, that summer, right before school started, I found this website called Bidz.com, which was this discount site where you could allegedly order a Rolex worth $5,000 and you can bid on it. So, you might be able to get it for $200, $300. And I was just like, this is amazing, this is great. I kept bidding and I bid and spent the whole $500. And when all the stuff came out fake. So, it was, I was devastated, I was broke, it had a whole bunch of fake jewelry. And that was my, that was my first introduction into diligence and stats and small. I probably should have just ordered one thing, waited to see it come, check it out. And so, that was my first foray into business. I've always had a thesis on Africa for a long time. And that thesis is rooted in my past son I bring in here in Ghana. 50% interest rates back in the day, things are tough. But then you saw this evolution, you saw this period in which, you know, Africans across the board decided, look, we're going to mature our democracies. We largely have political stability and we had an emergence of a consumer and middle class. And the bedrock of stability has led to this emergence of growth and opportunity. So, seeing that, seeing the demographics in which, you know, we're going to have the youngest population globally by 2030. I saw all these different things happening and I realized I know this is the last frontier. And that's why when I originally went to Harvard, I was actually pre-med, like every good African boy I was going to be a doctor. But I quickly decided that there was more merit to study in Africa. So I studied African studies in economies, focused on opportunities and development. So, when I first got to Harvard, I started an nonprofit actually called the African Development Initiative, now Clean Aqua, and started doing sustainable development projects. All, you know, underlying all of this was the still entrepreneurial bug. I'm in a village called Ejamante in Ghana, working with the community trying to get them clean water and sanitation. And we have a community meeting and I ask everyone, if I had a World Bank budget and there was a single thing you could do, you know, that I could do for you, what would it be? And I thought, you know, someone would say, look, share $1,000 to everyone in the village or I probably would have asked for money. It was quite unanimous when they said, look, we want jobs. People want to be economically empowered. And so that's that really set off. This was 2007, I just set off philosophical change in my mind where I realized that maybe we're going about this the wrong way and that the way we need to liberate the continent is not through these handouts and charity. It is do economically empowering people so they are in charge of their own dignity. The first hurdle was just convincing people that you can actually do business in Africa and then was able to raise some capital, a first capital raise of 50,000 dollars. We did corn farming in our farm plants, 1,000 acres, mechanized farming with imported tractors and it was a great success. So Golden Palm is actually involved in a number of different sectors, all of which we identify as being high growth. One is agriculture, as I mentioned. Agriculture was the first thing we did, we're involved in agriculture. Where if you look at, in general when you look at agriculture, you have what I call a pretty tragic situation on the continent, where we have 60% of the world's arable land. Yes, we don't feed ourselves. We're in net import of food, food that we can grow on our own land. And so there's an import substitution piece here that says that we should be able to grow and get involved in our own production, not just the production of food but also the processing, because you want value out. And so, you know, we're involved in agriculture, we're involved in agro processing or the baby food in gluten-free flour through stawi and Kenya. Just a few days ago I was in Lagos, launching stawi in Nigeria, we're going to expand stawi to Nigeria. We're also going to expand stawi to Ghana in the near future. And the idea is promoting this intra-African trade and intra-African investments and creating a pan-African platform. How can we take what we see in Kenya and expand it to Nigeria, take what we learn in Nigeria, expand it to Ghana and vice-president? That's an agriculture. We're looking at, actually, in jobs. I just, one of the deals I'm looking at is potentially going into processing in jobs. Because my thesis on the nonsense going on is we need to address that not just politically, but we need to address that with creating economic empowerment. Because political instability, terrorism and all those things breed where there's poverty. And if we solve poverty, we'll be able to solve a lot of these political issues. So we're looking at a number of opportunities there in Nigeria. I'll never forget when I was a young kid. I was about, I learned how to read early, about two-three. I was about five-six years old, when I got a journal from my father from the Harvard School of Public Health. So I saw Harvard University. And I said, what's university? And my dad said, oh, that's where you go to get smart. And I said, oh, what's Harvard? He said, oh, that's where you go to get really smart. I said, oh, I want to go. So I wrote a letter to the headmaster of Harvard, because I didn't know it was God-president. I was only a child. So I said, dear headmaster of Harvard. My father says, this is where you go to get really smart. I know I'm smart, but I want to get really smart. So when can I start? Six, seven months later, I get mail. Six years don't get mail. So everyone was like, oh, who's sending me mail? And look at me, hold, it was me who wrote this line. Who I got to letter from Harvard saying, you know, you're too young, but stay in touch. They sent me some Harvard prayer familiar. I want to go to Harvard. And I had this dream from since I was a kid. And people kept telling me, it won't happen. Do you know how many people apply? You're not going to get in. In fact, a European ambassador called me into his office and told me and I called. It's this young and foolish, but an African boy like you to think you get to Harvard. Even my own daughter wouldn't dream of getting into Harvard. And told me that instead, he knows I'm a shabby boy. He'll try and use his links to see if he can get to me into some of the good schools in his country. And I remember being devastated and thinking, why can't I? Because I'm sitting here in Africa. That means I too can't go to Harvard. And now look, by God's grace, where I get in three degrees from Harvard. In a continent that's promising, you're challenging. The advice I have for young entrepreneurs, a number one is, I always believe that the only way you can succeed anywhere in the world, and especially here, is passion. You need passion to be able to sustain. We're supposed to have met several hours ago and we're stuck in traffic for two, three hours. You need passion to be able to go through all of this. You need passion to be able to go through things being wrong, their power being out. The government bureaucracy frustrating you. You know, police asking for bribes and all sorts of things that you go through, which is business as usual on the continent. You need to be driven by something bigger than you. Something that takes you beyond all these things. And that's the passion and that's dreams. Having dreams. Dreams is an ex on the map. And hard work is a fuel to get you there. I want an Africa that is owned, built, championed, and driven by Africans. And until then, our freedom is empty.