Ahabwe Collins

  Most money today is known as 'fiat money'-Fiat is a dictatorial order or decree given bu a person or group of people having complete authority. Money today is debt. Our currency today is an instrument of debt. Every is backed by an IOU(I Owe You) guaranteed to be payed by the taxpayers of our country. We are indebted into our country in form of taxes. There are different forms of taxes, start a company and your liable to corporate tax, your are a shareholder in a company, your taxed on your dividends. your an employee you owe the government PAYE(pay as you earn). you start a small business, you need to pay licene for operating. Buy a piece of real estate and you the government property tax. It is through all these taxes and licence paymens that the masses become indebted into the government. We have to pay taxes to backup our country's debt(currency). The bigger the country's tax base, the stronger and wealthier the nation becomes. Am not a tax activist but taxes...

Some people say the 'love of money is the root of all evil', if that's true then money is a necessary evil, but in my view point the 'lack of money is the root of all evil.' Money is just a medium of exchange, long ago there was barter trade, it was replaced by cowrie shells, then precious metal coins-people learnt chipping precious metal coins and the governments then decided to make coins from less precious metal until today when money is just paper!!??. The more civilized we become, the more money becomes a basic necessity. Nothing is free now. All the basic needs need money, we buy food, we buy shelter(rent if you own there is property tax), we buy water even when 75% of the earth's crust water. Someone will tell you i don't care about money instead i care about my career, can you work on a career that doesn't have a good pay. That's why secondary students  these days are opting for science based subjects, because they hope in the future th...

The name of the game of money is 'who is indebted into whom'. the more people you are indebted to the, the poorer you are, and the more people you have indebted to you, the wealthier you are. that is the game. W e are all indebted to someone else, the problem occur when the debt gets out of balance. Unfortunately the poor people of this world have been run over so hard by the game, they often can't get deeper into debt. If you have too much debt, the world takes everything you have.........your time, your work, your home, your life, your confidence, and then they take your dignity if you let them. The biggest reason why everyone is in debt is because money itself is debt, our currency is not an instrument of equity, but an instrument debt. Every shilling is backed by an IOU guaranteed to be paid by the taxpayers of the issuing country. As long as the world has confidence in in the Ugandan taxpayer to work and pay for the IOU called money, the world will have confidenc...

Daniel Ally Contributor Self-Made Millionaire & Business Expert March 17, 2016 A girl from high school inquired about my recent success. "Daniel, I just read your article on  Business Insider!  I also see that you're writing for  Entrepreneur  and SUCCESS Magazine. I can't believe you're writing for all these big publications. I remember when you had to go to summer school when you failed our 10th grade English class. Mrs. Johnson said you'd never be a good writer!" Yes, it's true that Mrs. Johnson did give me an "F" in English class, but that doesn't stop me from reaching  tens of millions  of people. Actually, I’ve heard from some highly credible sources that I might be the most-read person in the world. Keep reading and you’ll see why. Maturity can only come through adversity. People ask me all the time, "Daniel, don't you just want to go back to Mrs. Joh...

__ You need to develop relationships with people based on trust. By Dr Strive Masiyiwa The other day I was in New York and decided to attend a church service with a dear friend of more than 20 years, Dr AR Bernard of Christian Cultural Centre. During the service they showed a video called the "Marshmallow Test." Young children were put in a room with a marshmallow (a type of sweet) and told that if they didn’t eat it, they’d get an extra one when the adult returned. Left alone, the children then had to manage their impulse to simply grab the sweet and eat it. Many of them managed to control themselves and so earned the extra sweet. However, experts found that those children who’d previously been let down by an adult ate the sweet immediately. __Some of the children in the Marshmallow Test just didn’t value the promise made by the adult because they’d been betrayed by adults before! So what has this got to do with our theme about surviving tough times… the...

__"If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."   By Dr Strive Masiyiwa There’s a story told about a businessman who went to see a close and trusted friend. "Things are so tough," he began to say, "I feel I'm in a deep hole and every day it just seems to get deeper." "Tell me the problem," the other man asked sympathetically. "Everyone is against me," his friend said emphatically, then began to list all the people who had undermined him and wanted to take over his company. It was a pretty impressive list. After a while, his friend chipped in: "It appears almost everyone is trying to destroy you?" "Absolutely!" And he continued to give more detail of people and things that had conspired to undermine his business. "So what are you going to do?" his friend finally asked. "I shall fight and fight." The friend listened and then gave this advice: "I noticed as you were speaki...

__Protect the root of your business. By Dr Strive Masiyiwa A young man and his father were watching a huge fire coming down from the hills towards their family vineyard. At first, the young man tried to organize buckets of water but it was clear that the fire would engulf everything and consume the vineyard. Then to his surprise he saw the old man pick up an axe and run towards the vines. Systematically he began to cut the vines, leaving only the roots. "We must protect the root, my son. Do as I show you." And with this they saved a business that was several generations old. Every business has a root, and you must know that root. You must be able to protect that root, when things are tough. Sometimes protecting that root looks cruel, but you must protect it at all costs. Sometimes it can come down to reducing activity to the bare minimum, with just a handful of staff. Your most valuable resource will always be good people. There's no successful ent...

__Imagining new wealth creation models. By Dr Strive Masiyiwa The talk with my Japanese friend had left me thinking deeply about how we in Africa think about wealth. Maybe, just maybe, there was another way to think about it? Imagine if my teachers had taught me that we are "very rich" because we produce some of the smartest entrepreneurs in Africa… people with the know-how and vision to transform our minerals into such great innovations and products that we no longer export our raw materials all over the world! From then on, every time I visited a country (or even a major city), and watched its economic activity, particularly places doing well, I would reflect on its "wealth creation model." __Imagine a wealth creation model that doesn’t require any raw material endowment, like Silicon Valley, or Singapore! I was fascinated by countries that rise without necessarily being underpinned by minerals and the exploitation of raw materials: Dubai, Mau...

__Changing our "wealth creation model." Ever since I started school, my teachers taught me that our country was "rich" because we had many minerals, and we'd recite the list of minerals. By the time I finished secondary school, I not only knew my country was "rich," but that Africa itself was "rich" because we had so many natural resources. Even though I didn't study geology, I could almost tell you where all these precious minerals and other resources were found: oil, diamonds, platinum, gold, copper… in places like Congo, there were names of some things I couldn’t even pronounce. __Yes, Africa is so rich!!! As a young student, if I thought about what the global buyers of Africa’s natural resources then did with them, it was only ever a superficial thought. But I soon realized something didn't add up… __Sometimes it almost seemed that the "richer" a country, the poorer the people! But how could this ...

Series: The eagle in a storm (Part 1 - Intro). By Dr Strive Masiyiwa The new year opened with turmoil in the Chinese stock markets as prices fell dramatically, leading to a global selloff. In just one week, global stock markets lost over $2 trillion US dollars! Other news in the global markets saw the price of a barrel of crude oil fall below $35 per barrel, down from a high of $62 per barrel less than 12 months ago. That’s down 50% in 12 months and 71% in 24 months! Since the beginning of last year, 2015, the price of copper has fallen by 30%; iron ore is down by 42%; platinum has also been a disaster, losing more than half its value from less than three years ago. Agricultural commodities have not fared much better on global markets. Last week the South African rand hit an all-time low of 16:1 against the United States dollar and it’s still falling! Your small business in Harare, Lagos or Nairobi may not have anything to do with China, or with any commodity lik...