Africa-Press – Namibia. A DARING 23-year-old Walvis Bay entrepreneur has ventured into uncharted waters, establishing a company which provides instructional content for American software companies.
Bryan Nakambonde, whose philosophy is that even a small business is a good starting point and learning curve, founded the company called NSD Media Consultants in 2018.
“We started on an ad hoc basis with a media project, but realised there was a big demand out there for software instructional content, and we incorporated in 2021. We are now in our second year providing this service,” he says
“We have been working with Microsoft to produce video tutorials for their premiere customer support hub, which receives millions of visitors every month,” Nakambonde says, adding their work involves scriptwriting and video editing.
He says the involved American companies have developed the software and have outsourced small and medium enterprises (SMEs), like NSD Media, to design and write instructional content on that software.
“They own the software, which other people use and pay for,” Nakambonde says.
He says the United States (US) companies are probably too busy developing software to be concerned about instructional content.
Nakambonde, who employs four permanent staff members out of the seven youths he has trained, describes software products as “more valuable than gold”.
He says after establishing NSD, he quickly learnt the software industry needs people to explain the use of software.
“I started with a social media platform in 2018, but I realised many young people in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Africa could replicate what I was doing if given an opportunity to do so.
“Some US$30 billion is being spent on hiring people globally to produce instructional content,” he says, noting this is a massive labour market for the continent.
Nakambonde, who holds a degree in social entrepreneurship, says he wants to capitalise on the US$30 billion opportunity by equipping hundreds of African young people with relevant writing skills.
He says Namibian youths would also benefit from their plans to have trained about 500 young people by 2027.
He also wants to raise the capital to expand.
Nakambonde says the Covid-19 lockdown did not affect his work much because they worked from home.
He says the biggest challenge his company is faced with is that the investors they engage with are either from Namibia or the US, and lack knowledge on the “geographical other side of the business”.
“US companies see that US$30 billion is good business, but do not understand why it is not being done by American companies. Namibians see it as brilliant, but it is hard to get people to fund such a company in the US software industry,” he says.
“The challenge is to get investors from the two locations of our business to understand and provide us with capital that would enable us to create hundreds of job opportunities in Namibia and Africa,” he says.
Nakambonde says he attended the Namibia-US trade summit hosted by the Ministry of Indutrialisation and Trade in Windhoek in June.
It was good for meeting and networking with relevant people in international trade, he says.
“Now we have an idea of who to approach,” Nakambonde says, adding he envisages to have grown the company to earn over N$500 million a year through 500 trained youths working for US clients in the next five years.
He says Namibian financial institutions should do more to finance SMEs.
Institutions like FNB have introduced standard financing packages for SMEs, and financing for more complex buy-in and buy-out transactions in the form of loans, asset-based financing, and overdraft facilities.
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