At 18, with little but a dream of a media empire, he turned to odd jobs like painting house windows, to survive. The goal was clear, but the going hard. For a start, he was lucky to get help from a mentor in entrepreneurship.

“This was important. Without this I was just an ambitious 19-year-old with an idea and passion. In the business world it does not mean much and I think that’s why people with good ideas fail,” he says.

“I didn’t get any money to start this business. The idea for this business came when I living in a tuck shop in Botswana. I went to Shoprite and I told them I run this company H&G Advertising and we could do amazing work and save them money and they gave me the work.”

Shoprite paid Ganje with a cash cheque because H&G Advertising was not a registered company yet and didn’t even have a bank account.

Today, H&G Advertising, the Botswana-based ad agency, counts Unilever, Emirates, Coca-Cola and Samsung among its clients. It operates in Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe; has 80 permanent employees and 600 temporary staff and turns over $38 million a year.

“I learned that you don’t need money to start a company. You don’t need a registered company to approach people and sell your ideas. If you can register a company, do it and start selling yourself,” advises Ganje.

He didn’t stop there.

Ganje is now a serial entrepreneur that counts H&G OutDoor, H&G Activations, Zonke Ignition and H&G Express among his businesses.

• Soure: Forbes Africa

In 2017 Africa Youth Awards named him among the 100 Most Influential Young Africans, an initiative instituted to promote African youth movements and achieving and also restoring excellence in the works of young people across Africa