Over the last 12 years, I’ve been fortunate to steward businesses that have transformed into world-class enterprises. That journey has been a long and arduous one. I’ve made enough mistakes to last me a lifetime. I’ve lost money enough to have me locked up for a very long time! And yet the opportunities continue to abound. This journey has only reinforced my belief in the power of business to positively transform society, stem poverty and impact entire nations for good. I have shouted this on rooftops for the longest time so much so that at the end of last year I was challenged to have some skin in the game. As an ardent enthusiast, I’ve always asserted that the private sector, not government, is best placed to tackle the behemoth of poverty. To understand the magnitude of the challenge we face, consider this one cold present reality: nearly 13 million young Africans enter the workforce every year but the continent creates only 3 million formal jobs. Quite the crisis we have! So the bulk of my time this year (and going forward), am joining up with like-minded folks under the Transformational Business Network, a global movement of impact investors and entrepreneurs. For the last 15 years, TBN has leveraged its 2000+ strong member network across 7 countries to scale the capacity of early-stage entrepreneurs and provide access to impact investment capital. Since then, it has grown into an international movement and leveraged its network to create over 1,500 jobs. 67 entrepreneurs have been supported to scale their businesses and more than USD 400M has been unlocked in investment. The network has provided seed and Series A funding to award-winning social enterprises such as Silulo Technologies (South Africa), Agape (Singapore), Sanergy (Kenya) and Bridge International Academies (East Africa). Beyond Kenya, our footprint will extend to Uganda and another African country by the last quarter of 2018. I’ll be pushing for this, and have my sights on raising capital to inject into, to grow and scale at least 7 growth-stage businesses.