Birama Konaré, Founder and Managing Director, Binthily Communication

The agency is a profitable business, so I place everything I earn into projects I am passionate about: At the moment my money goes to La Gare, the cultural space I opened last summer. Plus 30 to 40% of my agency’s profits go to paying scholarships for young people.

I love to create and to see the impact it has for example when you manage to motivate others or when you create one or two jobs, little by little. It’s important, that’s how we can contribute to the development of the continent. When several people take small initiatives, that’s how things change.

I am working for my country: I am autonomous and I create too. Businesses create, they participate in the development of the country, they participate in innovation. This is how Africa is going to lift Africa up.

It is so easy to transform people’s lives. And it is not necessarily money that solves everything. Sometimes people just need to be motivated. You have to believe in yourself, in you capacities! Each time someone sends me a cv, I take time to meet them, even if I don’t have a job available. Some don’t understand, but I have them come to my office to show them how to write a good cv, a good letter, how to do a good interview, and to tell them they have to send their cv to a 1000 places for it to work! It only takes a few minutes, but sometimes it is enough. My door is always open, even when I am snowed under.

Birama Konaré is the Founder and Managing Director of Binthily Communication, a communications agency based in Bamako, Mali. A restless entrepreneur, he also recently founded ‘la Gare’, a restaurant, bar and cultural space in Bamako, writes regular columns on various newspapers and is known for his commitment to charities. Son of former Mali president Alpha Oumar Konaré and of writer Adame Ba Konaré he is also the author of several novels.