When Luke Callcott-Stevens, Gavin James and Doug Jenman first talked to FORBES AFRICA in 2012, they struggled to imagine what their $274-million 100MW Dorper Wind Farm, in South Africa, would look like. “The first project people assumed big risks. We built a wind farm, we installed it. All those are effectively at the cost of capital. Now it’s done… Every three days a wind turbine is being installed in South Africa,” says Jenman. Forty wind turbines and two and a half years later, this trio from Rainmaker Energy can not only take pictures of Dorper, a tiny town in the Eastern Cape province, they are now imagining that they can cover the rooftops of London with solar panels. “The cities of tomorrow will produce their own electricity. We won’t need power stations,” says James.
South Africa, 23-year old start-up entrepreneur Sibusiso Ngwenya struggled all his life to find trousers that would fit down to his shoes. So, he came up with socks to close the gap and made them in bright colors to make the point. “I was teased growing up and given di¬fferent names. I deliberately named the brand Skinny Sbu Socks because I thought I had been teased enough and it was high time we celebrate being tall and skinny,” says Ngwenya. A sock collector at a tender age, his defi ning moment was reading of two Americans building sock brands. A few weeks later, his mother suggested he sell them. “I had bought 14 pairs of socks for R5 ($0.40) each and I repackaged them and sold them for R25 ($2) a pair.” “I do such designs simply because I am African. At the heart of what I’m doing, I’m trying to express myself as an artist inspired by their surroundings. Our heritage is what we have to our advantage as Africans. I use that to gain the competitive edge among my international competitors,” he says. The company also sells to Standard Bank and Cadbury. He makes R100,000 (around $8,000) a month by advertising and selling on the internet. His company employs three people and outsources bookkeepers, Growing up in a three-bedroom shack in Tsakane, a township to the east of Johannesburg, he was taught love and forgiveness. “I didn’t know we were living in a shack, I thought we were living in a mansion until someone from school came to visit and made fun of me. When I grew up, I learned that I am enough. I am not better or less than anybody. I am enough.” His grandmother, Salamina Molokeng, is the force behind his success.
