"It's time to stop patronizing Africans and seeing us as victims in need of alms," Ashish Thakkar writes. "Instead of giving us gifts, trade with us, buy from us and invest in us. You will benefit from this as much as we will." Thakkar is the founder of Mara Group, an African business conglomerate with 11,000 employees, and of the Mara Foundation for emerging young African entrepreneurs. In 2014, Forbes named him one of the 10 most powerful men in Africa.
In The Lion Awakes, Thakkar tells the dramatic story of his family, Indian-Ugandans for three generations before Idi Amin exiled them to the U.K. They moved to Rwanda just before the genocide, then fled back to Uganda. There, Thakkar dropped out of school at age 15 to start an IT business. His personal story is impressive enough, but The Lion Awakes is also an investor's tour of the exploding African business scene over the past decade, full of case studies, statistics, information resources and tips for success.
Thakkar has an insider's view of small businesses, as well as luxury hotels and tech hubs. In enthusiastic, inspirational terms, he describes the political, economic and educational changes that have made this entrepreneurial surge possible. His main focus is the tech industries, but he also looks at entertainment, agriculture, fashion and architecture. And he shows how the general global recession is inspiring a wave of immigration to Africa by educated Africans, Europeans and Asians "taking a shot at the African Dream." --Sara Catterall