Sidonie Latere Niati is the founder of Kobo Hub, a startup accelerator based in Kinshasa. She has training in marketing and advertising in Belgium. In 2013, she returned to settle in Kinshasa where she held the position of creative director in a local advertising agency and a year later she created her own communications company called Welike which has been operating for six years. Very quickly, she realized that there are several business opportunities in DR Congo. She will launch a few projects which failed but which allowed her to have local experience in entrepreneurship and understand local issues. Her failures and her few successes led her to create her accelerator in order to save entrepreneurs from the mistakes she experienced.

Several opportunities exist in the DRC, notes Sidonie before launching a few projects which fail, but which help her gain experience in entrepreneurship and understand local issues. She records failures, but also successes which push her to create Kobo Hub, an accelerator which saves entrepreneurs from the mistakes she has experienced.

Every human being exists for a purpose. This idea motivates her and she realizes that there is a destiny for everyone. His destiny comes down to giving his generation a legacy. She then positions herself as an entrepreneur and a coach who motivates others to surpass themselves in order to grant future generations the privilege of living in a better Congo. It is with this concern for sharing that she is launching Kobo hub, an accelerator for startups and young businesses in the DR Congo.

The mission assigned to this structure is to accelerate the emergence and success of local entrepreneurs by developing projects that meet real needs by promoting local skills. This accelerator, whose name is taken from Arabic, means “African”. Its backdrop is the idea of creating an environment that allows Africans in general and Congolese in particular to have the capacity to be able to undertake, to seek skills, resources and competencies in a physical location to succeed in the ‘entrepreneurship.

Operation
Kobo hub is not an incubator but an accelerator. If the first is a structure which allows project leaders to develop their ideas, to learn the primers of entrepreneurship; the second, in turn, is a structure that supports entrepreneurs, people who already have a company, a product and a service that works to improve their returns.

The accelerator works on society, on what already exists, while the incubator works on the emergence of the business idea. “We use the term accelerator because the company needs a boost or acceleration to go to another dimension”, says Sidonie, who says that Kobo hub takes shares in each company it supports. It also specifies that the structure remains in the minority in order to allow the entrepreneur to remain in control of his business.

The Kobo hub team enters into the operation of a company in a period of more or less a year. Once the acceleration objectives have been achieved, Sidonie continues, the accelerator is looking for investors who will buy its shares and inject money into the company which has just been accelerated. From that moment on, Kobo hub withdrew from the company.

“Per year, we can support up to ten companies. Candidate companies go through an interview and the accelerator chooses those that solve a real social problem. In short, companies do not choose kobo hub, but it is Kobo hub which chooses the company to support”, informs Sidonie.

Keys to success
The factors for success in entrepreneurship as in other fields are numerous. The founder of Kobo hub believes that self-knowledge allows you to succeed in life. Each person will have to explore their abilities to better unseal their strengths and possible weaknesses.

In this exploration, Sidonie explains, the future conqueror must continually set life goals. Which constitute the second factor of success, which can be professional, family, sentimental or social. The environment also plays a very important role for success. “It is therefore important to surround yourself well because you cannot move forward alone”, she says. Finally, the young 36-year-old entrepreneur believes that training has a special place in the career of those who want to succeed in entrepreneurship or any other field.

She thinks that the Congolese entrepreneurial ecosystem is very embryonic. There has been a dynamic over the previous three years that is motivating. According to Sidonie, the DRC does not have an ecosystem but a biased entrepreneurial ego-system where actors only see their interests and sometimes take actions to destroy another actor in the ecosystem. This constitutes a major obstacle to the development of the entrepreneurial environment in this country.

Furthermore, Sidonie Latere recalls that her accelerator has operated since its creation with its own funds. At the beginning of 2021, its structure received support from the Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands (Dutch) which appreciates the excellent work accomplished by the Congolese accelerator.

Female entrepreneurship
The Congolese government has very little developed support, training and support systems for women entrepreneurs which nevertheless have a strong impact on society. A fact that she deplores, emphasizing that female entrepreneurship is not really highlighted. She points out that many people studied thanks to the small businesses their mothers did. Entrepreneurship, according to her, also concerns all these women who are in small businesses and sell in the streets. “They are in the informal sector but it is entrepreneurship”, she insisted. Sidonie would like the government to take initiatives to supervise these women and believes that there will be an impact if structures also commit to training, guiding and financing them.