Interview with Mahmud Johnson Part II‍

You find the first part of this interview here.

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Coming from a country that doesn’t have so many big entrepreneurs, what are some of the lessons that you have learned over the years that we could share with other aspiring entrepreneurs?

Well Liberia has had some big enterprises like for example, the Messurado Group of Companies. But I agree that relative to other African countries we have not had that sort of entrepreneurial culture for the last few decades. In Nigeria, or Ghana, or Kenya, you would see a lot of young people starting businesses, but that is not the case here in Liberia and I think that it’s a function of the environment. It’s extremely difficult to do business here for several reasons. 

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One of those reasons is electricity – the Liberian Electrical Corporation (LEC) is not stable, and it’s very expensive for small businesses to run on private generators. Another reason is the road infrastructure – this greatly affects people in agriculture. During the rainy season some people can’t even bring goods to town because of the road conditions. Another serious issue is means of financing – people may have great business ideas, but can’t get anyone to invest. Another serious reason is the lack of human resources. The war destroyed so much of the educational system to the extent that you have kids coming out of college without good training and cannot offer much to your business, and that slows you down. Additionally, governmental policies, tax structures and regulations that just aren’t favorable to small businesses.

Our economic model was set up to support the large multinational firms… the concession companies. So it works spectacularly well for them, but just doesn’t work for small businesses. 

Therefore, in order to get your business to survive you have to be very intentional as to how you set it up. You have to focus on the environment… on how people make purchasing decisions, and then setting up a sales structure that feeds into that. You also have to figure out who the customer is, how they are currently buying, and how to get your products into that supply chain. One of the biggest lessons that we have learned at J-Palm is to listen more than we speak.

We have to listen to the people, understand what they need, and then figure out how to get it to them.

Now that you have mentioned electricity, let’s talk about that a bit. How much do you know about Mount Coffee (Liberia’s hydropower plant) and why Liberia doesn’t have stable electricity yet?

Personally, I have two major issues with the LEC; one of them is the cost – it’s about 35 cents for a Kilowatt per hour which is higher than the regional average, and number two is the reliability. For us who do manufacturing, we have large machines and these machines going off abruptly is a serious problem. It’s a serious problem for the machines’ health and also the workflow. 

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If we had stable electricity, it would significantly cut down on capital cost, production cost and increase profitability for a lot of businesses. We had to spend about $30,000 US to buy a generator, run wires and do other installations. Plus we have to buy fuel every day and do maintenance every now and then. All of these things are challenges for cash flow, and taking those out of the equation is going to remove a huge burden off the backs of businesses in Liberia. It really would make a huge impact.

Great. So how much do you know about Renewable Energy?

Well, I know that it’s renewable…

Hahaha. Okay, what if you could get rid of all of the challenges you mentioned earlier by using a more natural form of energy? Do you think that would be great?

Absolutely! Like solar energy. Here in Liberia we have so much sunshine even during the raining season. So yeah, I think that if we had a robust renewable energy network, it would make a lot of difference in so many ways. One of the major challenges for businesses is the initial startup cost. So if we could figure out a way to make renewable energy at an industrial scale affordable and effective, it would really make a difference.

Lastly, do you think Liberia should make the transition to Renewable Energy?

I think it’s something that is absolutely worth exploring. We are all talking about moving to a renewable future… in fact, that is where the entire world is going. So whether or not to make that transition is just a matter of time. Because as people make the transition to renewable energy we will start to see investments within the current technology and any nation that hasn’t yet made the transition would be backward. And, of course, that is somewhere in the future, but as a leader, if you see that this is the right direction to go in, then the question will be “how to accelerate the pace?” 

Because as people make the transition to renewable energy we will start to see investments within the current technology and any nation that hasn’t yet made the transition would be backward.

Mr. Mahmud Johnson believes that a transition to renewable energy would positively affect the Liberian Economy in a great way, and so do we at Emergi. Join us today and let’s make the transition.