Doing Business in Crisis
2 years ago, I connected with the term “Doing Business In Crisis” a workshop series I coordinated with UNDP and 249Startups to train and connect Sudanese Organisations who work in crisis management. Today I am working in crisis management. Or don’t I?
If I meet today people in Germany who know that I was working in Sudan and who know that I had to flee Sudan because a war broke out 1 year ago, I often get the question:
And what are you doing now?
“The same.” I answer. “I still work with the same 2 Sudanese Businesses than before.” Saying that out loud makes me realise how weird that might sound. We even work on the same projects, using the same emails, discussing daily with the same colleagues, still operating in Sudan, to strengthen the local private sector.
Oh, Wow. How do you do that?
“That is also what I ask myself sometimes.” 🙂 But of course, I do not wanna stumple. I wanna keep people believe that Sudanese startups are those that even a war can not break. Which is true for 249Startups and Solar Foods. But of course, it is not easy at all. But I will answers: “Well, I am working mainly with 2 Sudanese Businesses. One is a startup that is working on food processing. We dry vegetables with solar energy. We reestablish the business right now in Sudan in one of the safe cities and try to set a foot in the Egyptian market as well. The other business is 249Startups, we are an incubator and accelerator and we support Sudanese Businesses. We provide training, coaching, access to funds, we connect and promote entrepreneurship in Sudan.
It sounds like a fairytale.
It is not. We do business in crisis. We may not look like this every day. Me, sitting with my laptop in a nice co-working space in Cairo or Berlin, having a coffee and water next to me, my skin kissed by the sun. I could easily be a student, typing on my latest article on flowers and bees. Even in my head people who work in crisis settings look like this: “a honorable palestinian doctor, covered in blood, with sweat running down his forhead, concentrated, red-coloured from not enough sleep eyes, frustrated from not having enough equipment to save the daily incoming patients.” So, the question is: How to you do business in a crisis setting, from behind your laptop Theresia?
With 249Startups, there was no eye blink between doing business and doing business in crisis. The war hit and I started immediatly a Whatsapp Group and coordinated coping session to the entrepreneurs and colleagues. A week later, we transferred donations to top-up some credit on the phones within our community. 1 months later, we visited some co-working spaces in Addis Abeda to look for cooperation opportunities as our offices were looted by the militia. 2 months later, I witnesses my colleagues inviting a new group of entrepreneurs to join a telegram channel and conduct digital training. 5 months later I onboarded a colleague to coordinate a new project to upskill and empower female entrepreneurs in Kassala, Gedaref, Port Sudan and Merowe. 8 Months later I proudly finished my modeation for a digital graduation event for 80 entrepreneurs. 11 Months later, I break the fast with my Sudanese colleagues who fled to Cairo aside the Nile. 13 months later, today, I join a meeting with 7 individuals who sitting in 5 different countries and discussing digital solutions and services for business owners in Sudan. Doing Business in Crisis can look from outside like any other freelancer. But it requires a very long breath and resilience.
The long breath and resilience was also necessary with my work with Solar Foods. If you are a company that processes foods and selling it in supermarkets in the captital city, your business is pretty much destroyed once a war hits this exact same capital city. This is what happened to Solar Foods. And that is why it took us a bit longer to recover. Today, in this very minute, we are restablishing a solar-drying production line in Kassala (Sudan). To not make the mistake twice, we are working on having multiple locations and income streams, with capacity development components and a product launch in Egypt. But at the end, the visual will stay the same. Me, sitting in front of my laptop, right now, at my kitchen table and writing an email to the people who provided financial support to us.
The fairytales you are reading here would not be fairytales if they would not have many many twists in between arent they? Moments where you think that the evil is winning, set backs, stories of betrayal and cheating, magical moments and tears in your eyes, tears of joy and sometimes sadness.
Yesterday I described it to a friend like this: “With every one step we take ahead, we already expect one new challenge to arise.” At the beginning there is the shock. It is very clear that your business stops for a while, you are worried about your colleagues and employees, maybe you will check on your assets, is your factory still standing or your office already occupied by one of the military groups. The first weeks and month were intuition only. Taking care of people, their wellbeing, your own and their safety. If your mind was in a lucky moment, you reminded yourself to pack important documents for your business. Because the next time you see yourself in Ethiopia, Port Sudan, Cairo or Dubai and this one tiny, papermade document is missing and it is costing you a lot to replace it. Even if you have it, every war brings more corruption. Corruption leads additional costs on any administrative process that was never existing in this world before. Why is all the admin staff something to think about or to discuss here at this point? Within Sudan, it might not be a big issue, but as a foreign business owner in a new country, every entrepreneur needs to understand and follow the new rules. And if, and this was the case for my work, you want to cooperate and seek financial support by other institutions as a Sudanese Business, your papers need to by crystal clear and audited. The businesses I worked with, they manage. The papers are ready, what a relief. Milestone 1, check! Let us climb immediatly the next mountain after reaching the first peak. Money is not growing at the tree but we know that there are grants, angel investors, fund, loans. It is all there, but you need to find it, compete against many other great projects, match with their requirements. I remember the evenings or evenings, filled with creativity, frustration, questions and answers. The innovation, thinking outside of the box, considering all possible crisis scenarios was actually very inspiring and strong, but exhausting at the same time. Every submitted proposal or concept, exhale. The next day, look for new opportunities. The first confirmation of a fund was like winning in the lottery. As if I know how winning in the lottery would feel like 🙂 While climbing the mountain, you almost forgot that there is actually another peak. That there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That there is someone waiting with a cold water and a fresh cut watermelon to tell you: “Congratulation, you were selected for the fund.” Oh my God, what a relief. Milestone 2. Relief. Relief. Relief. And then the patience or better Impatience hits fast. While you are ready, steady, go and you already started jumping happily your way done the mountain, feeling lighter and planning the implementations of all your ideas, the international fund system is. working. a. bit. differently. The money that can be used for so called development projects is not free and it is not fast. It requires a marathon of bureaucrazy and patience. We filled the time. No entrepreneur would just sit back and wait. And it was impressive to see other entrepreneurs and support them on their way from total destruction to restarting their businesses. After the time being filled, the old-known challenge of money transfer haunted us. I mean, it would be naive to think that a challenge that has not been solve in 3 years of transitional government and peace would solve itself in war times. Even when I collected donations, my friends were not allowed to transfer money when the name “Sudan” was in the subject line. Being listed somehow was leading to the consequence of rejection of transfers, for the lucky among us who got support. The new year brough new wind and 2024 brought many Sudanese business I know solutions for that problem. Milestone 3. Now we can rebuild with confidence, backed with assets, hire one or two additional staff members. I felt so proud in between. Providing even one job for one month is so precious in times of war. Many big corpoerates closed down, thousands of people lost their jobs in a minute and we were able to call for applications for a positon to fill. Milestone 4. Wow! I can stretch my back and exhale again. But not too long because the execution of services, products and project in Sudan is waiting for you, not with mountains, but with many, tiny, little holes in the ground, that you can barely see. The holes can be the network blackouts that come and go and cancel connection. The holes can be the lack of material that was so easy and cheap to buy before and now has the price of buying a new car. The holes can be colleagues, cooperation partners, contacts and experts who flee and move and are not available in a specific location from one week to the other. There are smaller holes like corruption that you can jump over. Or there are bigger holes like the one in first week of December. When the active war conflict war reached a new dimension by hitting the second biggest city in Sudan, Medani, we all were in shock again. But we keep walking. And it is worth it. We launch services, we employ, we buy tools, we find partners, we campaign for a peaceful Sudan, we wake up every day, open our laptop, take a sip of the coffee and write documents. Documents that can safe lives, create income, provide a job, enable a product or service that is available. For a mother, a father, a grandpa, a child, an uncle or an aunt. I believe, the palestian docter and me, we might have the same motivation in our very very different environments – one person at the time.
One very important learning I took from the past 13 months. Taking days off, doing activities outside, bringing my mind to completely different topics then Sudan, taking vacation, going out, laughing, dancing – is essential! Yes, the war is nothing to be happy about. But the war is also nothing we can change. There are wars, every day, since I live. So I am always telling myself that if I wanna work in this area for the next 10 years, I need to also live in between during those 10 years. A burned out Theresia is not helping anyone. I also tell myself in moments of “being angry at the world” to shift my focus activism. Getting active and doing my part for the solution is very powerful. My last break was in April, spending 2 weeks in Ghana – without internet, coffee, alcohol and off-work. It was like a magic-healing retreat that gave me new energy to concure more mountains and jump over new holes.
This said, let me jump into bed now and let you enjoy the thoughts after reading my text.
Good Night.
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