There is a skills crisis in Africa. We are not poor by accident. Many factors make us poor and keep us poor. If we fail to gain critical skills in all areas of industry then we will always--by Darwin's law of survival, always be at the bottom. TINA-- There is no alternative to skills.

True story. During a photoshoot of a professional model some years ago one sister made an off-key comment that I am better looking than that model. How come she gets paid so much when I am hotter. Sure, you are hotter but tell me something cc. We made 5 outfits for her because we know after doing so she will show up on time, every time, at the location that we hired and paid a deposit on. Because beyond how hot someone is professionals are reliable. You can hire a yacht and an entire crew of makeup artists, drone pilots, photographers, caters in advance and depend upon them to come as models. They will not ignore your WhatsApp, or forget their change of clothing, or stand in front of the camera like frigging deer caught in oncoming traffic. So this is why they can charge what they charge. Not for how they look only but for their professionalism. It is the same way Ocacia can put a higher price on our products than the next person. Because God forbid, we make a mistake, you have purchased from a company with a reputation to protect. A company with standards and quality control. With professional codes and policies that govern all transactions. You can email us and get a reply.


ENTITLEMENT

You see in Africa people have a high value on skills they do not have. So, they are models who cannot model yet expect Naomi Campbell's money. They are tailors that cannot sew straight yet expect Oswald Ozwald Boateng salaries. When you tell someone, I am looking to hire people to work at Ocacia the first thing they say is “I am interested, but How much are you going to pay me?”: Can you sew? No, Are you a professional designer? No. Can you make Sheriba? Never heard of it. Can you code Magento 2.4.1? What is that? So how did we get to salaries when abilities have not yet been discussed? But these people look at filmmakers in USA and say "WOW, if I was in America I could make that money" but do you have that ability? A lot of these people we see on TV doing what looks like easy jobs are professionals properly trained. But here where we are it seems like you deserve things yet have nothing to offer. It is almost like a failure to understand that to get paid proper money as an IT professional you need to offer proper competitive skills. How can we in say Ethiopia or South Africa beat Bangladesh or China in the sewing industry when our people sew poor quality 5 times as slow?


MINDSET

Someone from the world of academia said "why do not you train them"?" this is another example of how cool theories clash and get eaten up by cold reality. You cannot train people who want everything everyone else has without struggle and sacrifice. We use to offer training for free on Saturdays. Very few were interested. Some even expected to be paid to be trained. The few that did show up easily got bored and found the tasks too challenging. I guess they were hoping that it was a 7-day course where after that they would open their own fashion house like Hugo Boss. Today we drive past them walking in the sun looking for places to drop their skillless C.V. You cannot train people unless you first correct their mindset. And the job of mindset fixing is way beyond our abilities. Maybe God would have to do that because something goes on after birth (beyond our knowledge) that instills these anti-work ethics in people. And nothing between heaven and hell will make them understand the reality of if you have no skills, you have no proper work. But then again we understand why they hold on to this belief because a great majority of the wealthy people in Africa have amassed great sums of money yet have no skillset.  A lot of shortcut deals with Europe and China for Africa's dwindling resources. There is one guy in South Africa who got 1 million dollars for an IT gig yet he himself could not find the backspace button on a keyboard. So when leadership and success are like this you can start to comprehend the problem in its entirety. 


EGO VS ABILITY

What we see a lot of in Africa is ego dominating ability. Someone is quick to apply grand titles to their name like Dr, scholar, filmmaker, web developer, director of photography yet not have those skills at a professional capacity. It is amazing because after dazzling you with their title it is an instant crash when you as them to deliver. So you are a director of photography after watching a couple of videos online? Where is your work? Fashion designers have never made any clothes that anyone has ever worn. How did you get that title?


NO INTEREST

Maybe it is just me. But I am hanging out with a media professional from our parent company Halaqah, multi-award winning company, and we bump into a girl that said she is studying media and at NO JUNCTION does she even raise the issue of media while in the company of the media professional who she is sitting there watching doing camera and photography work. Not a peep. On another occasion I a young brother is around a group of us dealing with IT and other computer issues. Not a peep out of him. Then we said so what are you studying? He said IT! So You are studying IT then what it is you think we are doing in front of you? But you showed no interest. As stated maybe it is me. But I remember as a youth being interested in guitar and one of my uncles had an old guitar, I was all over him to learn about guitars. It is confusing to me to hear people tell you they are poets, yet you are sitting there with acclaimed poets and they do not even show one ounce of interest. Like MK Asante is coming over to my house later on today why don't you pop around as I know you want to be a poet? "I am busy" They watch an acclaimed photographer working and do not even ask " what camera is that"? Imagine accidentally being a music producer and stumbling into a recording studio you not going to foam at the mouth. Not this generation! All day they were on social media talking about Pan-African history to impress their friends yet Dr. So and So from Temple was at my house for lunch and I invited them and they were not interested. Maybe I should have said Keri Hilson was dropping by.


CYCLE OF POVERTY

Escaping the cycle of poverty begins with understanding what feeds the cycle. And this is not one of those discussions about how to make $1000 a day. It is about abject poverty. And it is always cyclic. We called a tailor for work over the weekend as he is a specialist in a certain style of dress. Cannot get him. Why? He lost his phone. How many times has he lost his phone? Well easy to lose your phone when you always getting drunk. So today he just sent a voicemail--too late mate. The same thing with an embroidery artist from Ghana, he had no data so did not get the message. He has so many numbers yet none of them work. Another person was supposed to come and sew 20 shirts ad hoc style. But we were waiting for fabric to arrive. They took the last money they had and went to their farm and spent the change on data to play with their phone all day long. The fabric arrived the day after and the job went to someone else.
 

You will always find these types of stories at the heart of the cycle of poverty. There is something the world does to us to create the cycle (being born poor and not getting an education) but then there is something we do to ourselves. Breaking the cycle means changing as many of the components that feed that cycle as possible. Because what you find is even when say money changes, all they do is use it to buy things (like fast food and hair) then ensure tomorrow they will be back in that cycle. They would not take that money and go learn how to drive. 


POOR PRIORITIES

The youth, I just do not know what to say. Yesterday our lighting guy messed up bad. These are guys desperate for work. He has a phone, he was told to learn how to use the phone 2 weeks ago after not knowing how to use the navigator. He sits at home all this time and plays with music and WhatsApp— nothing else. Comes time for the job (which is paying him) he does not know how to use the navigator and he has finished all of his internet DATA talking to friends saving none for the job. As a result, he gets lost getting to the shoot location. Everyone is there but him. He shows up 30 minutes late. 30 min into the shoot the weather closes in and we call it a day. Now had he not messed up we would never have lost out. The total cost of the shoot is the same, but two new designs were omitted and we got no video footage. Sometimes you do not know what to do. 1/2 of us were saying get rid of this guy. The other 1/2 saying the next one will be worst! So what is the point? On the way back he bought data and was talking to chicks on Whatsapp. A priority crisis.