Episode 1 - The Apprentice Africa

The premiere of The Apprentice Africa was interesting for so many reasons. For the first time ever, a show of world class standards was being done in Africa with everything African. African setting, African producers, African contestants, African CEO.
The CEO, a true African billionaire Biodun Shobanjo did his job to perfection in the premiere. He was no nonsense and if i was Nancy, i would watch out. He does not take kindly to "primadonnas" like Blessing and ineffective leaders like Nancy.

Anyway, let me bring you up to speed, i don't want to lose you. There are 18 contestants from across Africa, 7 Nigerians, 3 Ugandans, 3 Ghanaians, 3 Kenyans, 1 Guinean, and 1 Cameroonian.
The contestants are as follows;

1. Omar - Guinea
2. Regina - Ghana
3. Akatu - Nigeria
4. Anthony - Kenya
5. Nancy - Uganda
6. Michelle - Nigeria
7. Eddie - Kenya
8. Hannah - Ghana
9. Oscar -Uganda
10. Kathleen - Cameroon
11. Isaac - Ghana
12. Bekeme - Nigeria
13. Tunde - Nigeria
14. Blessing - Nigeria
15. Deox - Uganda
16. Joyce - Kenya
17. Eunice - Nigeria
18. Nnamdi - Nigeria
    

The contestants arrived and met the CEO, Mr Shobanjo and his advisers Mimi Fatodu and Paul Olaleye. They were then given their first group task under the watchful eyes of Paul and Mimi, putting together a small party area in the garden. It was interesting watching them trying to work together yet they had just met for the first time, the power struggles and egos made them take longer at the task than necessary but it was easy to see who had leadership qualities and those who had great organisational skills.

When the task was finally over and they were in the boardroom, the CEO asked how the contestants thought they did and who they thought was outstanding during the task, Nnamdi noted Nancy's ability to get things in order whereas Eddie noted Deox's ability to hold the team together and so two Ugandans were voted outstanding male and female. In turn, the contestants were divided by gender and Nancy was appointed project manager for the ladies and Deox for the guys. Kudos to Uganda!!!!! The first leaders in the house are both Ugandan!

The contestants were asked to choose names for their teams and the ladies chose Matrix corp with the rationale that a matrix is used to solve problems whereas the guys chose Zulu corp because of the strong African heritage of the name. Shobanjo noted that these were good choices and commended them for this. It's important to note that "matrix" was Bekeme's idea, i personally think she's one of those to watch.

Task 1: According to the CEO, life in Lagos is all about "hustle" and so the first task would involve the contestants "hustling" on the streets of Lagos. The guys were asked to sell skipping ropes whereas the ladies were asked to sell footballs, interesting, huh? The sole objective of the task was maximum sales and whichever team managed to achieve this would win the task and would be rewarded accordingly whereas the losers would end up in the boardroom where someone would be fired.

Zulu's strategy was to use health, fitness and patriotism whereas the ladies decided to use women supporting football in Africa. On paper, all of this sounded good but how well would it play out on the ground?

The ladies decided to stand at a high traffic point but i personally think this wasn't a good decision, the lights changed too fast and the traffic moved too fast for them to be able to convince the customers to buy. Oh and at the beginning they were in a group holding balls and singing "winner oh oh oh, winner....naija you'll win forever, pata pata you'll win forever winner....."
They managed to draw attention with this but did they sell balls? nope!

The guys on the other hand spread out and went out interacting with individual customers pushing the importance of fitness and supporting your country. However, at some point, the ropes seemed overpriced or are Nigerians just bargain junkies??? I don't know, i only think in terms of shillings not naira so i can't really tell. Anyway, the guys seemed to be doing well and Oscar even got a tip from a customer, Kudos Oscar (did i mention, he's Ugandan! Ha!!!)

Back to the Boardroom, when asked who he thought did best at the task, Deox was very confident saying that he believed his team had won the challenge by a margin of 64% and thank God the figures backed him up otherwise, that confident look would have been wiped clean off his face. So the guys won the challenge, they had more profits from the sales than the ladies.

Then the arguments began within Matrix corp about what or who was responsible for their failure, everyone somehow blamed Nancy's leadership, she on the other hand reiterated that she was not dealing with babies but grown women!
Kathleen's reasoning was so thoroughly trashed by Mr. Shobanjo that i wouldn't want to be in her shoes. Anyway, at the end of the back and forth, Nancy chose to bring back Hannah and Blessing into the boardroom. She cited Blessing's unwillingness to work as a group and her individualistic tendencies " I this, I that..."

Anyway, there was a lot of apportioning blame and when it was all over, Shobanjo said he could not understand how Hannah managed to sell nothing, not a single ball! Of course she tried to defend herself saying she could have sold the balls at a lower price than the agreed baseline which is mind boggling as the objective of any business is to make a profit, you cannot sell at a loss! On this basis, she heard the words "you're fired!"

Really, do you blame the CEO? I see his point, do you?