Being useful to one's community, I think that is one of the most relevant meanings of life.

And one of the ways to achieve this is through entrepreneurship. This path could be summarized as follows: (1) Identify a gap in the community. (2) Propose a solution that fills that gap. (3) Make a living doing it.

However, it must be acknowledged that when you embark on an entrepreneurial career, it's easy to get lost in the throes of the race for financial wealth for yourself. Service to the community can easily become a secondary concern, giving way to quick and easy profit, by any means necessary, legal or not.

Because we live in a world that is ruled by two determining principles: money and domination.

The “Money” principle

Things are set up in such a way that in our daily lives, everything (or almost everything) comes down to the availability or not of "cash" money: our food, our housing, our clothing, our health, our travel, and even our relationships with third parties.

In the business world, money is the basis of all interactions between entrepreneurs, regardless of what anyone says. From the design of a solution to its commercialization, access to financial resources will determine the quality, positioning, and sustainability of the offering.

The money principle is so deeply intertwined with the quality of our modern daily lives and activities that we are conditioned to hoard money and spend it in ways that let the world know we have plenty of money.

We are considered reliable, respectable, feared, coveted, if we can prove or give the illusion that you have accumulated a lot of (outward signs of) wealth.

So how does this "Money" principle contribute to the fulfillment of the members of our community? What are the indicators of happiness in this group? Does the presence or absence of money have an impact on harmony within this community? The answers necessarily depend on the other structuring values that govern this society.

What about the principle of “domination”?

Domination is more subtle to identify as it takes various forms, more or less obvious to recognize.

Take, for example, this new trend toward "gendering" entrepreneurs. One of the visible effects is that it pits "male" and "female" entrepreneurs head-on. The premise is that the world of entrepreneurship is "monopolized" by men, who unduly control the discipline and its tools, to the detriment of women. From my perspective, however, I have a different perception. First, I note that there are probably more women who create and run their own businesses. In Benin in particular, there have been many women traders for generations. There are women in absolutely every discipline, with experiences and backgrounds as varied as there are people.

So I ask myself the question: who benefits from this gender opposition in entrepreneurship? What is the interest of "men" in taking control of an ancestral activity that solves real and concrete problems in communities, only to frustrate a significant part of the actors, "women"? How is the domination of one group over another economically relevant when the performance of said dominant group is not significantly superior?

Domination can be found, for example, in the injunctions of minority groups to consume a particular product, or to adopt a particular behavior by the rest of the community. I use the term "injunction" in the sense that the communication that accompanies the offers is binary. You are either trendy or you are old-fashioned. You are modern or you are backward. The negative connotation associated with the group that chooses not to consume is more or less subtle, but it systematically tends to ostracize individuals, communities, activities, etc.

Domination here is expressed by blaming those who do not want to follow the movement that is "proposed" to them, by the noisy minority. In the business world, we will talk about new trends, new standards, new technologies, etc. In everyday life, there will be new fashions, new social dogmas...

Being useful to one's community without impoverishing or enslaving it in one way or another seems exceptional.

And I emphasize the word "exceptional" because it carries within it a powerful message of hope that I must share to protect it. Because exceptional means that it exists. There is no inevitability, and everything always ends up passing. This time and these values of money/domination will also pass. I see this personally every day.

There are many of us on this earth who are sustainable capitalists who believe that the salvation of our communities lies in collaborative work, respect for life and nature, and the equitable sharing of the fruits of our labor.

First publication of the article in the digital magazine K-World N°6 April - May 2023