Before I begin, let me precede with some advice: don’t eat a big bowl of fufu late at night!  My meal today was fufu and light soup or pepper soup as some people would call it.  I just happened to have some chicken in my freezer from a long time ago and decided to use it.  All I had to get was tomatoes, onions, and ginger. I already had pepper, garlic, maggi and fufu at home.  As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I normally cook without recipes so I can’t prescribe my method.  For those interested though, what I did was to first season the chicken with onions, ginger, garlic and maggi.  I also had some prekese syrup around so I decided to put a drop in.  And then I threw in part of the koobi I had from my yam meal.  Next, I blended tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and onions and then added the mixture to the meat. It didn’t turn out too bad but it definitely would have been better if I had fresh goat meat or oxtail or some other meat with a stronger flavor.  Oh well, we live to learn another day.

P.S.  I’m currently having problems uploading images but you’ll get to see the meals as soon as I sort out this problem.

New York, NY (February , 2012) — Makola.com, the number one supplier of African groceries online, has opened its virtual doors and redesigned its interface to offer the largest retail sales of African groceries online. The New York-based start-up company offers thousands of different products, twice more than any other online African market in the United States. These products can be found at http://www.makola.com.

At a time when most Africans in the diaspora have to travel quite long distances to get basic products that they are familiar with, Makola.com comes in handy to provide the convenience of having an African market just a click away.  In addition to the products that Makola.com retails, the company partners with several local African markets to be able to provide a broad range of groceries from different parts of Africa.  In less than a year, the company has expanded throughout the United States and currently ships to customers in all 50 states.

Makola.com was co-founded by Kwadwo Juantuah, an African student from Ghana. While in school, Kwadwo was frustrated that he could not find a wide variety of African foodstuff online and had to resort to driving long distances to get the most basic items that he was used to.  Makola.com was therefore created to be a one-stop shopping destination  where people irrespective of where they are, can still have access to African products, especially groceries.  The emphasis is on building a robust technological platform to support local African markets and entrepreneurs in the diaspora.  Mr. Juantuah strongly believes that, “if you’re interested in  African groceries, then Makola.com has what you need – it doesn’t matter whether you’re in New York or Alaska.”

The African immigrant population counts millions among its ranks and has been noted as one of the highest educated foreign born population in the United States. And yet, there is still no modern service to cater to their needs when they crave a taste of Africa or just want to buy items from home online. And now with Makola.com, anyone within any state can access African products very easily.

*The team at Makola.com can be reached for comments via e-mail, pr@makola.com or by phone at 646-470-9725.  For more information, check out the website, www.makola.com

Almost two years after giving a presentation on Africa, Theresa Clarke, resigned her position as Managing Director at Goldman Sachs to join the risky world of startups – specifically to start Africa.com.  I had the chance to meet Theresa in person at the launch of Africa.com’s Deals project and could not help but be impressed with how far she’s brought Africa.com.  For me, the biggest lesson, however, is the question that Theresa says she was posed when she announced her resignation:  ”Why am I leaving a lucrative career as a managing director at a prestigious firm and one of the few senior African-American investment bankers on Wall Street to devote my full energies to the high risk dot.com world?”  Her answer was short, sweet and powerful, “The answers are love, love of Africa, and an unquenchable desire to change the way the world views Africa.”  It is with the same sort of love and the absurd but unshakable faith that a few people can actually change the fortunes of Africa that we also work at Makola.com.  You can read Theresa’s full article here.

Here’s to wish everyone a Happy New Year from all of us at Makola.com. 2011 has been an exciting year. It’s when I got an opportunity to start Makola.com on a full time basis. It’s been an exciting year and I’ve learned a lot in the process. But that’s all in the past. Now, I look forward to 2012 with a lot of enthusiasm.

For 2012, my biggest goal is to make sure that I’m not afraid to fail! It’s true that I’ve took significant risks in 2011 but then again there were countless times that I’ve held back because of my fear for not being perfect. I’ve been slow with code changes because of fear that I’ll break something and take forever to fix. I’ve been slow to start the blog because of the fear that we may not have all the posts perfect or that we may not have our messages be very relevant. I’ve been slow in scaling up the business because of concerns that we may not be ready…

These concerns are all valid and I still hold on to them. But for 2012, it’s going to be more about being productive and moving fast without fear of failure. It’s about remembering our ultimate goal of making an impact on Africa and letting that mission keep us motivated. And it’s about having a fun time, learning as much as possible and constantly striving to be the best.

To all our customers and fans, I’ll like to say a very big thank you for your support. There’s no way we could have come this far without you and we appreciate each one of you. You can expect a lot from us in 2012 and we’ll work very hard to make sure that we bring you nothing but the best. Please feel free to reach out to us at anytime with questions or comments or any concerns that you have and I’ll be more than happy to listen to them and address them.

Happy New Year!!!

I was recently looking for a good African book to read and I came across an inspiring short video about the power of  sharing knowledge. The video tells the story of a farmer in Kenya who was searching for a cure to a disease that was killing his potatoes. His story reflects on the importance of acquiring information and how we can use it to define us and help our communities.

Be Inspired to learn and share knowledge!

It’s been forever since I wrote a blog post so you’ll have to pardon me for any sluggishness.  It’s because I’m nervous.  Writing a first blog entry, no matter how many times you’ve written before is always a nervous journey.  Should I write like the personal blog I had back in the day when blogging had just started or should I stick to business?  Should I write about the experience of an African startup based in New York City or talk about running the business?  Should my blogs be about the technical aspects of the company and the code that I mess with every now and then or should I focus on the amazing variety of products that we have for sale?  I guess that’s the beauty of a blog.  I get to write about all these things and get the opportunity to share our life as a company with you.

Perhaps, the first story should be about why we started Makola.com.  It’s really simple.  I couldn’t easily find shito to buy online when I came to the United States.  For those of you who are not familiar with shito, it’s a pepper sauce that’s almost ubiquitous in Ghana, especially for students in Secondary School.  We lived on shito, gari and canned fish (at least those of us who could not afford cornflakes and the like).  I used to think the world of those who could have delicacies like pizza, lunch buffets and desserts as part of their everyday menu while in school.  Little did I know that I was going to miss the shito and gari that I had taken for granted.

I soon realized that I wasn’t the only one who wanted African products.  Many of my friends also had to ask friends in the cities or even back in Africa to send them basic stuff.  And we’re not only talking groceries here.  Some of our best African designers don’t have their clothes online so when one is invited to an African event at the last minute, it’s hard to just go online and order something.  There are a multitude of other things that I could talk about.

It’s this problem that we want to solve.  We want to make it convenient for Africans everywhere to be able to access products that we’re used to.  We want to introduce the rest of the world to the beauty of African products.  We want to help our local African markets to sell their products online. We want to come together with our collective talents to build a new marketplace for African products.  Ultimately, our goal is to contribute to the economic development of Africa in a way where we are not asking for aid but by constantly innovating, competing and thriving.

We hope you’ll join us on this exciting journey we’re embarking and shop with us!

This is just a test…

Makola.com is an African startup company with the goal of being a one-stop shopping destination for African products. As students in school, we found it very difficult to find basic African products online. We later discovered that this was most likely because most of the local African markets are run by our mothers and aunts and other first generation immigrants who may not be as tech savvy as the current generation. Makola.com seeks to bridge that divide.

We seek to combine our collective talents and harness the power of technology to produce a viable African business that ultimately makes an impact on the continent as a whole. As such, we work with many partners, both local African markets and producers in Africa, to create an online market for Africa. We believe this will help grow businesses, create jobs and enhance economic conditions.

While we set up this blog, please check out our website at www.makola.com and send us feedback.  We’ll love to hear from you.