No bank would fund this African mobile start-up — and then its founder became a billionaire

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Mo Ibrahim is the billionaire founder of African telecommunications operator Celtel, which he sold in 2004 for $3.4 billion. But when Ibrahim started the company in 1998, he couldn't get funding.

Mo Ibrahim is the billionaire founder of African telecommunications operator Celtel, a business that helped to bring mobile telephony to the continent, and one which he sold in 2005 for $3.4 billion.

Part of the problem was a perception that African countries were corrupt. Ibrahim recalled a time when an American contact said it was unlikely his company's board would invest in Uganda because Idi Amin was running the country. But Amin had left Uganda 15 years previously."If that was the perception of Africa, nobody's going to invest in Africa," Ibrahim told CNBC's"The Brave Ones.

It's also costly."Typically, you get at least 50% funding from the banks … we could not get any … We in Africa had to build the company with equity, with our money, because the banks not touch us. That was the picture at that time," he added.

 

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