GUEST ENTRY

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These words were spoken by one of the greatest leaders of our time. I fully agree, if you deep inside feel that something needs to be changed to the better, you must embody that change yourself in order to make a real difference in people’s daily lives.

It all started when I got back home to Sweden from a period living and studying Business and Mandarin in China. I had travelled around the South-East-region of Asia and saw the hardships that poverty created.  After my homecoming I ignited my passion, Africa’s Potential, during the Winter of 2007, when I received a Scholarship from SIDA, where my mission was to identify the characteristical features of potential entrepreneurs in the Ugandan village of Bubulo, and in corporation with Chalmers in Gothenburg install solar-panels in order to electrify the village and create job opportunities together with local entrepreneurs that weren’t just passive bystanders but active entrepreneurs. More than 150 entrepreneurial jobs were created and more than 3 000 people receive today water on a daily basis from a water-station which is driven by these solar-panels.

After my stay in Uganda, a relentless passion for going back to Sub-Sahara to “boost” more African entrepreneurs was initiated, due to the fact that I saw that the aid that reached these areas only killed entrepreneurship and was breeding inactivity in the Sub-Saharan societies.

During the year of 2010 Africa’s Potential will be involved in many “job-creating” projects in Sub-Sahara and especially East-Africa. I’m going to act as an Adviser for Stockholm School of Economics and their Business Labs international expansion to East-Africa. I’ll also be involved in a project regarding organizing the African Diaspora in Sweden when it comes to “brain-gain” to their home countries, as well as “match make” some of the Rwandan entrepreneurs I got to know in November with Swedish equivalents.

I’m also promoting the success stories of the African continent, which the western-oriented media channels very seldom publish or never promotes. There are plenty of success stories, but very few that reach the masses. My mission is also to make the public aware about the current aid-issue – that trade and not aid initiatives will empower and build the Sub-Sahara region.

This is my life-conviction, not a two or three year project, to “boost” local African entrepreneurs in order to increase competence, “brain gain” and trade to the Sub-Sahara, in the fight against poverty and corruption.

Please, don’t forget! The truth is that YOU also have the same ability to create “greater-good” to the societies’ most pressuring problems. All you have to do is to take that first initial step! 

Morakozee chaniii, (Thank you very much in Kinyarwanda)

/Emre Gürler, Africa’s Potential.

P.S. You can follow Africa’s Potential’s mission on Twitter, Facebook as well as Linked-In.