forbes.com

Kenyan internet entrepreneur Njeri Rionge has an eye for business ventures. She’s been conducting business for years and now she’s reaching out to help other African entrepreneurs as Africa becomes the next economic frontier.

“Every single entrepreneur must have a backbone, if you don’t have the backbone and capacity to sustain and to be agile enough to organise your ideas and your business growth, then you’re probably not made up for business or entrepreneurship,” she said to BBC.

Although Rionge has been managing businesses for years, she didn’t always experience success.

“I touched many things before I touched the thing that I turned to gold,” she said to BBC.  ”I did hairdressing, I did buying and selling of clothes in London and then the thing that actually created the opportunity for success.”

Rionge found business gold with Wananchi.com, a business venture she launched in 2000 that brought easy internet access to East Africa’s masses. Success wasn’t easy, she first had to fight the government leaders who weren’t entirely sold on the idea of accessible internet. Now she says, the biggest challenge in Kenya is the shortage of trained IT staff.

“The biggest challenge is human resources – how you actually maintain that success story on the human resource side of any business and also the funding and making sure that you always have enough capital to grow the business,” she told BBC Africa’s Ruth Nesoba.

Since then Rionge’s accolades also include Ignite, a management consultancy and her new-technology firm Insight. But Rionge is not afraid to offer her talents to help assist other entrepreneurs. For aspiring idea she created the Business Lounge, which is a space for entrepreneurs to brainstorm and network.

To Africa’s entrepreneurs, she says, “we encourage you to bring your ideas to the Business Lounge and [to] incubate them here for a period of time and within that incubation period we can actually support you.”

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Business in Africa has been booming and the movement is being led by a new league of African businessmen. These men are building pan-African companies with regional and global presences. They are considered some of Africa’s most esteemed voices in the business and political spheres. Ultimately, they are helping to shape the economic future of the continent. Here are 10 of those bold and fearless leaders according to a recent list compiled by Forbes:

Cyril Ramaphosa

Chairman, Shanduka Group, MTN

Ramaphosa is considered one of South Africa’s most respected business and political figures. He is the founder and executive chairman of the Shanduka Group, a black owned and managed investment group with investments in resources, financial services, property, energy and beverages. Recently, his company acquired the South African operations of McDonalds.

Ramaphosa is committed to South Africa’s development in the areas of education and enterprise development. The Shanduka Foundation focuses on these areas through the initiatives of the Adopt a School program and the Shanduka Black Umbrellas.

(Wall Street Journal) — Mobile-phone companies across Africa are drawing battle lines to capture the rising middle-class consumer. But in Kenya, the war already is well under way, stocked with ammunition from abroad.  In the past year, units of India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. and the U.K.’s Vodafone Group PLC have been locked in competition. Vodafone’s Safaricom Ltd. dominates the Kenyan telecommunications sector, with 77% of the market. But in the third quarter, Bharti’s Airtel Kenya boosted its market share to 15% from 11% in the second and captured 60% of new mobile customers each month, according to Rene Meza, Airtel’s managing director in Nairobi. Airtel Kenya is on a path to “market leadership,” the 33-year-old Paraguayan says.

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