Kananza Business

08/11/2023

Malawi Kwacha devalued by 44%

28/04/2023

At its sittings on 26th and 27th April 2023, the Monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of Malawi passed the following resolutions:

1) Increased the policy rate by 4 percentage points from 18% to 22%.

2) Increased Liquidity reserved requirement (LRR) by 2 percentage points from 3.75% to 5.75%.

What next?

1) Expect banks to raise their respective reference rate by at least 4 percentage from an average 18.5% to over 23%. Effective lending rates for most retail clients could escalate beyond 30%.

2) Deposit rates will be increased, albeit marginally.

3) Businesses and borrowers at large will experience increased cost of financing by way of increase interest burden.

4) Inflation to remain stubborn in the short to medium term exacerbated by Forex shortages, food shortages and imported inflation amidst heightened inflationary pressures.

5) At 22%, the policy rate is still below the prevailing inflation rate of 26.5%. This suggests that interest pressure will continue in the short to medium term.

19/12/2022

02/08/2022

HAPPY NEW MONTH!!

The gift of time needs prudent planing and utilisation. As you start the new month, engage the habit of holding PERSONAL PLANNING SESSIONS.

PERSONAL PLANNING SESSION

Here is how you can effectively spend one hour and plan for the entire month.


Please ensure that you have a journal or note book. I recommend that you spend time to buy a nice looking journal. This is a very precious exercise, you can't be writing on loose paper.

hour personal planning session.*

1. Pray for guidance, insights and presence of the Holy Ghost.

2. Review the past month.

What went well?
What didn't go well?
What can you improve?
Any outstanding actions? Carry them over.

Tip: don't spend too much time over analysing why things didn't go well. Move on.

3. Goals for the month

What do you want to accomplish in this month ?

Who is responsible for driving the action ?

What action is required to realise the goal?

Who are the people of whom you require their support for your plans to materialise?

4. Pick priorities
Out of the hundred actions that you have, pick top five priorities. These are five meaningful goals with the highest impact.

For the rest, what can you delegate or ask others to help.

Ensure that the goals are written with:
Specific target
Measure of success
Realistic accuracy of attainment within the month
Allocation of time to each action

5. Thank God for the privilege and blessings of work.
Ask God to order your steps
Ask him to connect you to destiny helpers.

You are blessed

24/03/2022

A delegation of people from 🇲🇿is visiting 🇲🇼 from the 28th to 30th March to hold a business forum aimed at exploring business between Malawi and Mozambique. Be part of the conversation at Peacok in !

17/03/2022

What problem does your business solve?
🔨⛏🔧🪛🩺🛒

16/03/2022

Saudi Arabia may sell oil to China and be paid in yuan, potentially ending nearly 50 years of trading crude exclusively in US dollars, WSJ reported.

20/11/2020

1. How can I market my products to maximise sales?

Every entrepreneur must engage in marketing and selling of their products and services. Taking lessons from the street vendors, those guys are persuasive, engaging and scarcely get get deflated with rejections. The biggest strength of a great salesperson is the ability to gather courage to sell to the next customer soon after being rejected by one or more customers.

Some tips!
▪︎Leverage on social media to advertise your products at a very low cost. Be aggressive and showcase your products and services on social media platforms.

▪︎Engage some brilliant graphic artists to design attractive adverts for your products and servicee at a fair cost.

▪︎When you win a client, serve them well and ask them for referrals. Insurance sales agents do this very well.
Ask them "Who else do you think can like our products or services?"

▪︎Please deliver on commitments in terms of quality and timeliness. Build a reputation for speed of delivery.

▪︎Be brave to make connections with "strangers". Your circle of friends is not enough a base to be your customers. Over 90% of your potential customers may well be people you have never met before.

▪︎Should any of your customers be unhappy or get upset, avoid getting into a fight with them. They may go and tarnish your reputation. As much as possible apologise and pacify to avoid negative publicity.

Watch these entrepreneurs.
Pamela Masoka Rose Chisowa Ngabaghila Chatata Robin Nyang'wa Esther Mwawi Nkhoma Em Jaden Vanda Solange Cabral Agnes Mwangwela Chisomo Mwamadi Ladyy Mwamadi Fishani Msowoya Mwanyongo

Yours Trully
Benedicto Kananza

20/11/2020

Recently I had a fascinating Question and Answer session with a group of women entrepreneurs each at different level of the business spectrum. Out of the many questions asked, the broad themes were around; sales and marketing, customer retention, financial management, funding and business planning.

There was no laying of hands but pure impartation of knowledge and agreeing actions.

A lot of you are keen to find out what transpired during the mentoring session. Here is what are going to to do; I am going to list down the questions below and then post responses to each question as a separate post just so we can manage the length of the post.

The questions were:

1. How can I market my products to maximise sales?

2. How can I retain customers?

3. How can I manage finances for my business?

4. How can I raise finding for my business?

5. How can I write a compelling business plan?

14/09/2020

PRESENTING TO WIN
Have you ever sat in a conference packed with a highly expectant audience but the speaker underwhelmed?

The convenor takes the floor and introduces the speaker giving a compelling bio about the speaker. Then the speaker stands on the lectern and begins to deliver. First, they fumble through their laptop and the PC acts up. It takes another 3 minutes before the glitches are sorted. The presentation pops on the screen!
Firstly the audience cannot see it clearly because of light contrast. Secondly the layout is poor and crammed with so much contend due to small print.
Thirdly the delivery lacks energy leaving the audience wondering whether the bio is really that of the one speaking.

If the tables turned and you were asked to present, don't let this happen to you.
Presenting is a skill that can be learnt if you are to avoid pitfalls highlighted above.

Reach out to me for coaching on how you can make compelling presentations whether as a sales pitch, management presentation or presenting at a seminar.

+265999950243

17/08/2020

https://www.news24.com/fin24/companies/industrial/sasol-ends-torrid-financial-year-with-a-r91-billion-loss-20200817

The petrochemical group's financial results paint a devastating picture of the impact of oil price fluctuations and Covid-19 on its operations.

25/07/2020

20 REASONS WHY STRATEGY EX*****ON FAILS

As part of the research done for Part 2 of The Strategy Handbook (which is about strategy ex*****on), I have made an inventory of the most important problems that organizations experience when executing their strategy. As it turns out, this list of problems is surprisingly stable over time. Over the past thirty years or so, they boil down to the following list of 20 key problems in strategy ex*****on:

1. Unclear communication

2. No or insufficient communication

3. Lack of commitment

4. Insufficient or inadequate resources

5. Isolated and fragmented actions

6. Ambiguous or conflicting goals

7. No or unclear strategy

8. No clear priorities

9. Ambiguous responsibilities

10. Lack of performance information

11. Silo behavior and sub-optimization

12. Wrong or ineffective culture

13. Resistance to change

14. Over-complexity

15. Insufficient management capabilities

16. Delay, plans are not met

17. Budget is exceeded

18. Lack of middle management support

19. Strategy is not adapted to changes

29. Poor leadership