My one lesson from two audacious women on success
Women and girls grow personally and professionally by learning leadership skills, coaching, and mentorship through regular workshops and conferences.
What you need to know:
- Sara Bayoh, the founder of Bafing Projects, is a serial entrepreneur who moved to Switzerland 23 years ago to get married.
- Liza Sekaggya, the co-founder of Phenomenal Women Global (PWG) and a human rights lawyer with the UN, has a similar fighting spirit.
I recently met an African woman who will soon be the owner of an island worth $2,000,000 in Cote d'Ivoire, even though she doesn’t have this money. Audacious? Yes, but there’s more to her story.
Sara Bayoh, the founder of Bafing Projects, is a serial entrepreneur who moved to Switzerland 23 years ago to get married. While the marriage disintegrated a decade later, her entrepreneurship spirit remained intact.
“I was still creating businesses even during the marriage, you know. I just had to fight the opposition and the sabotage of my ex.”
At Bafing Projects, they are on a mission to make money flow to Africa through more investments here. They design, build and improve development projects the world over.
Sara was born into entrepreneurship. Her grandmother from whom she inherited the “entrepreneurial gene and passion”, made her start a business when she was only eight. She would buy small pieces of jewellery and sell them to her mother’s friends.
So how will she become an island owner without money?
“I've always wanted to own an island back home in Cote d'Ivoire, so during one of my visits, I fell in love with an island. I asked the islanders about the price and they told me it would cost $2 million. I didn't have that kind of money but still wanted the island. So, I asked the right questions until I got the answer that I wanted," she explained, leaving me even more intrigued.
She asked the islanders why they wanted to leave, and they explained why living there was untenable, because of lack of amenities and jobs. She made them an offer: Would they accept to stay if she provided these things they needed and made living there inevitable? She would do this by designing a modern city on the island that would improve the infrastructure and amenities and offer job opportunities to them, by getting investors on board. She got a yes.
Next, she contacted a London-based architect friend and convinced him to design the city as a way of giving back and fulfilling a deep desire he’d long held to do a project of the same scale. And voila! “The island is not yet mine, I need to deliver the service first and then, I will have it,” she explained.
Liza Sekaggya, the co-founder of Phenomenal Women Global (PWG) and a human rights lawyer with the UN, has a similar fighting spirit. PWG – based in Switzerland, Uganda and USA – helps women and girls grow personally and professionally by teaching them leadership skills, coaching them, and mentoring them through regular workshops and conferences.
Liza gracefully powered through the financial and logistical hurdles of setting up an NGO and six years later, it’s still standing, and still growing.
I once read somewhere about how we should always “proceed as if success is inevitable”. Just like Liza and Sara.
The writer comments on social and gender topics (@FaithOneya; [email protected]).
