Capacity-building: Empowering To Create Wealth, Financial Autonomy

Faced with the situation whereby most people leave school thinking only of being employed by government or some company, the need to build capacity to create personal wealth becomes more urgent. It was in this light that Strategies To Elevate People, STEP Africa, on January 22, 2022 in Yaounde organised its pioneer wealth creation conference in Cameroon entitled, “Creation of Wealth Through Innovation and Change.”

Mentality Problem
“Building up self comes through seminars, education, reading….. The problem with young people is that they do not like reading,” said Fiola Manmo, one of the speakers and President of STEP Africa. “Success is about mentality – not the socio-economic environment where you find yourself. People expect everything to come from others. If we focus on what we can do to change our situation, the whole country will change completely,” Fiola noted. Warning that “Our country will not change on its own, but through the efforts of everyone.”

Do Something Different!
Another speaker at the conference, Alain Monthe, a Cameroonian entrepreneur based in the US, described real wealth as “the creation of opportunities and jobs for the good of others,” adding that wealth is a state of mind. “You need to find out what people are suffering from and propose solutions as your business plan,” Monthe said.
“In order to be rich, you must try to do something different. Some of the world’s greatest firms like Facebook, Amazon, Apple…were founded by those who had nothing,” he noted. Advising, “You need a compass or an objective for what you want to do.  To create wealth, you need to be a good time manager. If you lose assets, you can recover them in future; but you can never recover time,” Monthe warned.
“There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going. The steps to financial autonomy include ensuring that money remains your servant, not your boss. You cannot create wealth if you keep working for others,” said Dr St Clair Mitchell, the keynote speaker and Executive Director of STEP worldwide.

Christians Are Not Empowered!
“I am also a pastor of two congregations in the US, but I have a problem with the church. They expect people to give offering each Sunday, pay tithes, etc, without teaching these same people how to create wealth. How do you expect them to continue to give to the church? This is why the church is weak in its influence in communities around the world because it has little wealth.
"In the Old Testament, God gave the people the opportunity to make wealth. God is not against wealth. The church speaks so little about wealth, yet expects people to give offering every Sunday. The church has to adopt a new programme of education. If Christians are equipped to acquire wealth, the church’s influence on society will grow,” Dr Mitchell noted.
“Life is about principles. It doesn’t matter if you are a believer or not. You just need to obey them! Do you know that if someone who is not a believer in Jesus Christ gives, they will receive like the Bible says? Rain falls on the crops of the just and the unjust. Some of the greatest givers in the world today are not necessarily Christians. The principles of prosperity are there for everyone,” Mitc...