Tireless entrepreneur who sees Africa as it really is: full of hope and opportunity FIRST PERSON Sharon Bamford has founded five successful businesses. Now she wants others to learn from her experiences, writes Julia Fields

"What we don't do is look at how Africa is looking after itself. It tends to be a onedimensional view, " she remarks, conscious of the recent headlines about the famine in Niger.

"We're saddened by Niger. As the next crisis in Africa, this will get our attention and quite rightly as we all have a global responsibility. But what doesn't make the news is where there is infrastructure and where there is progress."

Bamford's recent trip to Nairobi was in her capacity as chief executive of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE) - a publicly funded agency that aims to create a culture of entrepreneurialism among the university and college populations in Scotland.

The institute links 20 of the country's degree-awarding colleges and universities with the business community and investors.

Bamford and her team are endeavouring to nurture a nation of Richard Bransons and Tom Hunters by offering students entrepreneurship masterclasses and summer school programmes, international internships in corporations, grants for business start-ups or patent application costs, among other projects.

Kenyan officials are now keen to adopt the model for their own universities and invited Bamford to speak to educators and politicians in Nairobi last month, at a youth conference sponsored by the non-profit international economic development agency, TechnoServe.

Kenya, where 78per cent of the unemployed is aged between 15 and 29, is determined to create its own generation of risk-takers who will help lift the economic performance of the country.

University and secondary school courses in entrepreneurship have been on offer since 1986, but the challenge of convincing students to make the leap from studying the principles to starting a company remains.

"Culturally, it's not seen as a credible career option, " Bamford explains. "For them, it is a sign of failure. Traditionally, those who went to university would strive to get a job in the civil service or a major corporation. You would only start a business, if you couldn't find a job elsewhere." For many, the concept of selling is intrinsically linked with a meagre rural existence spent hawking fruit and vegetables.

Bamford, who has founded five companies and lectured in entrepreneurship at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, sees many parallels with the negative perceptions that once prevailed in Scotland.

The rate of business startups has trailed the UK average for many years, and until recently being an entrepreneur carried as much prestige as a used-car salesman. The Scottish Executive is striving to change that mindset from the bottom-up, with classes in entrepreneurship now on offer from primary school through to university.

Bamford believes progress is also being made through the activities of SIE. Within five years, the number of submissions to the institute's National Business Plan Competition for under-graduate and postgraduate students has rocketed from 18 to 1500. TechnoServe Kenya and the Kenya Institute of Management will launch their own national business plan competition this autumn, helped along with advice from Bamford.

The opportunity to contribute in this small way was particularly poignant for the petite blonde, who has had a long relationship with Africa.

Born in Tanzania, she spent the early years of her life living in the small town of Tanga, where her Scottish father worked for Unilever. She later moved to Kenya, before settling in Corby in Northamptonshire during the 1960s.

Bamford, however, would not stay put long. After graduating from a Welsh university, she headed for Nigeria to teach English at a training college as part of a stint with the Voluntary Service Overseas.

"I was teaching Shakespeare in Nigeria, " she says. "One of their standard texts was Macbeth. We put on this amazing production where, instead of the tartan clans, we had all of the local tribes. Of course, they totally got the concept of clan warfare."

Over the next few years, Bamford indulged a passion for social causes. She helped Vietmanese boat people refugees settle in Britain in the early 1980s, and then travelled to Australia to do the same for an influx of Polish immigrants.

These youthful travels and adventures set her up well for a future as a serial entrepreneur.

"You can sit in Africa without any electricity or running water and you could whinge or you can go and solve the problem, " she explains. "This was a form of entrepreneurship."

Her first private sector job was for a language training company in Jakarta, Indonesia, where, within just two months and at the age of 23, she took over as marketing director. It was her first taste for business and when Bamford later followed her husband Tony back to Aberdeen, where he had been posted to work in the oil industry, she couldn't resist starting a company of her own.

"I was used to managing an organisation with 20 staff. I realised that nobody was going to give me that kind of chance here, " she says. She set up a consultancy that brought students over to Scotland for language and oil and gas training in the North Sea and won contracts with the likes of Esso.

Over the years, Bamford would establish four more companies including Montessori schools, a project management consultancy, and an oil-drilling simulation business called Drilling Systems, which would take her to Russia, Libya and Vietnam.

In 1995, she led the Grampian Technology Development Unit at Aberdeen Science and Technology Park. In 2001, she took charge of the development of Edinburgh Technopole, a GBP100 million science and technology park run in partnership with Grosvenor Development.

Bamford's energy reserves seem inexhaustible. She flits between her chief executive post at SIE, outside mentoring projects, board of directors responsibilities at Technology Ventures Scotland and the UK's National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship.

She keeps track of her three sons and husband with an apparent ease that would put the most ardent superwoman to shame. Bamford says she has always been driven by a desire to live every day to the fullest. "I've enjoyed absolutely every minute of it, " she says.

But her vast experience, particularly on the international stage, has taught her that no individual can afford to stand still in an increasingly competitive world. She notes that many of the applications for SIE's National Business Plan Competition come from international students taking every opportunity open to them in Scotland.

"We engage with 10-15per cent of students in higher education [through SIE programmes].

There's still a large number working on the assumption that a degree is enough. That might be OK in the short term, but in the longer term they must differentiate themselves, " she says.

"In a global competitive market, our students are going to have to understand there are people in other nations who are driven and that the opportunities for Scots may not always be there."

In Africa, Bamford has met many people "who are hugely galvanised and looking for opportunities", despite the negative images that dominate media coverage.

"We only see the poor and the starving in the media. We only read about the corruption. We don't see the group of people who are educated and working hard towards a better Africa, " she says. "It's a small group but hugely committed to enabling Africa. That's the part that I was privileged to work with."

MINI PROFILE

SHARON Bamford has been chief executive of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise for two and half years. She says the institute post is the perfect reflection of her experience, which has involved founding five businesses, raising finance for start-ups, lecturing in entrepreneurship, and travelling and working all over the world. She also holds an MBA from Robert Gordon University.

Bamford, 46, is married with three sons and lives near Montrose in Angus.