ALEX NJOVU
NICK Tembo has risen from selling chibuku (opaque beer) at the age of 16 to a prominent businessman on the Copperbelt and is now Freedom Park Shopping Mall managing director in Kitwe.
It is little wonder that Mr Tembo has become a household name in the corporate world because of his family entrepreneurship background.
“I thank God very much for what He has done in my life. I am one person who strongly believes in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because they have the potential to change the country. They create employment, they also empower people in different ways.”
Apart from selling chibuku at Kabala Market in Kitwe with his friend, Clarence Nkosha, the brother of renowned Zambian comedian Bob, he was also actively involved in selling G&G Bakery products at school before abandoning the business in Grade 12 at Mpelembe Secondary School in order to concentrate on education.
“Our chibuku business collapsed because we were cheated by some people who did not pay us and we ended up selling the containers in an effort to recoup our capital,” he recalled.
Mr Tembo’s interest in business came from his family background in Mufulira where his grandfather was a successful businessman in Kamuchanga Township while his father was also a prominent trader in Kitwe.
At 15, Mr Tembo spent three months at a leadership training summer camp in the Catskills Mountain in upstate New York, called Camp Rising Sun, sponsored by the Jonas Foundation, which owned the camp.
Upon his return from America, he decided to venture into the chibuku trade in order to put into practice what he had learnt at a tender age.
Born in 1972 in Mufulira to Mr Enock Tembo and Ms Mary Mbewe, the young man was sponsored by Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) to do A- Levels at Tresham College in England.
Mr Tembo, who is the second-born child in a family of four, has a strong belief in hard work and self-discipline to achieve his desired goals.
While he was in his last term at school in England, Mr Tembo’s mother was retrenched by ZCCM and his father’s business collapsed. In order to complete school and survive, he started working as a waiter in two different restaurants.
“While in England, I also worked on a building site, as part of a team re-building a police station in London, and I made a lot of money using electric equipment which the local people refused to use because they claimed that it was unsafe.
When I came back after spending six years in the United Kingdom, I worked for PriceWaterHouse in Lusaka,” he said.
Mr Tembo has a Bachelors Degree in mechanical engineering from Swansea University in Wales. Currently, he owns a company called Trispar Limited, incorporated in 2006 with the sole purpose of creating and investing in fast moving goods (FMG) retail outlets. He worked for PriceWaterHouse as a consultant prior to joining Maamba Collieries Limited as an assistant financial manager. He originally went to Maamba as part of the PriceWaterhouse interim management team that assisted the Zambia Privatisation Agency (ZPA) in ensuring that the mine continued to operate viably during the privatisation process.
“This is where I gained experience in senior management. I remember supervising over 1, 500 workers. Some of them were as old as my father.
“Sometimes I would run the mine on my own for over two weeks and by the grace of God, nothing ever went severely wrong on my watch,” he said.
“With colleagues from the ZPA, I was one of the founding members of the Zambian arm of a Mauritius-based audit and consulting firm called De Chazal Du Mee,” he said.
Mr Tembo formed part of the team responsible for the business turnaround and gained experience on a number of diverse companies and organisations such as Chilanga Cement, Nitrogen Chemicals, Maamba Collieries, Malawi Development Corporation, Zambia Export Growers Association (ZEGA) and various international donor agencies and local commercial farmers.
He then went on to help set up and lead a department called Barclays Business Support (BBS) at Barclays Bank Zambia as a senior manager responsible for identifying solutions for businesses classified as impaired with intentions of turning them around and sending them back to the live corporate book. This position included responsibilities for direct customer relationship, sales and credit risk responsibilities with a lending discretion limit of millions of Kwacha.
This role included authority for taking provisions for bad debts and quarterly reporting to members of the Barclays Bank board who sat on the two sub-committees of loans review and credit committee. This position offered Mr Tembo exposure and experience on a diverse number of businesses and organisations, which included clients like Agriflora (at the time the largest horticultural exporter), Mubuyu Farms (currently the second largest coffee farm in Zambia), Sable Transport (a company rating as the second largest sugar exporter).
Mr Tembo’s network extends into Government and he was until September 2008 a member of the board of directors of the Energy Regulation Board. From 2006 to 2008, he owned and operated a Spar supermarket franchise.
“I thank God very much for what He has done in my life. I am one person who strongly believes in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because they have the potential to change the country. They create employment, they also empower people in different ways. I am a student of the Zambian economy. I thank God for people like Captain Austin Chewe, who is one of my mentors in life. I draw inspiration from people like Alexander Chikwanda and Costain Chilala, among others,” he said.
Mr Tembo is currently the managing director of the 24,000 square metre Freedom Park Shopping Mall project in Kitwe. He sits on the board of Platinum Gold Equity (PGE), who are the developers of the shopping mall.
The mall will be of world class standards with entertainment facilities that will serve the citizens of the Copperbelt. The complex, which, along with the shopping mall, includes a four-star hotel and a filling station, will result in increased property values, employment and capacity building throughout the region.
Mr Tembo also owns and operates an Engen Filling Station, a Wimpy restaurant franchise and is proprietor of his own brand of Tembo’s Mini Market where he employs over 65 people.
Mr Tembo is married to a journalist, Mary Phiri, who owns the famous Media 365 limited (Club Risky Business) which is one of the prominent programmes on Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and owned and published the Trendsetters magazine, which she founded at 18.The couple has been blessed with three children – Aliseni, Tristan and Nicola-Maria. ...
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