Prepare your children for life’s eventualities

 

 Form Four students from St Teresa’s Girls Secondary School in Nairobi leave for home on September 28, 2015 as teachers countrywide defied a court order to return to the classroom. PHOTO | GERALD ANDERSON

 

By PETER MUTUA

In Summary

• Children in family businesses should be prepared for life and all its twists and turns.
• Leaders of Family Business should not imagine that wealth and power will endure through all circumstances.
• Leaders should focus on moulding character, setting attitudes and establishing good behaviour in their children.

The sight of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a Turkish beach stunned the world into acknowledging that there was a refugee crisis of mammoth proportions in the Middle East.

It was not that migrants had not died before; more than 2,600 are known to have died crossing the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe and other destinations.

The shock was that Alan – unlike the other “anonymous” individuals referred to collectively as migrants (or refugees when recipient countries were being generous) – was a real person, not a statistic. He could have been a child in any European household.

His limp body brought the enormity of the crisis home to Europe and triggered a number of reactions that will greatly benefit other refugees.

What may be lost as the world deals with this catastrophe is that even though the refugees are desperate in their attempts to get to Europe, a large number of them are from previously successful professional and business backgrounds. They are now in destitution because of the collapse of their home countries’ social, political and economic structures.

In 2010, Libya had an income per capita of more than $14,100 and in one momentous year, experienced an unprecedented 104 per cent growth in GDP. The country’s population was well fed, decently housed and enjoyed some of Africa’s best infrastructure.

Without a doubt, numerous family businesses flourished financially in this environment even though there may have been discontent with Muammar Gadaffi’s extended rule. There were few, if any, people crossing the borders in search of opportunities abroad during Libya’s period of prosperity.

All this changed in August 2011 during the Arab Spring when Gadaffi was overthrown and later killed in an uprising. These events led to Libya’s economic freefall and the tragic consequences on countries near and far.