We are not a charity nor do we want to be.

It gets a bit tough to be honest – people are always saying to me so what is your charitable angle – do you give to schools, do you give shoes away – but my answer is NO!

For 5 years, I ran a charity and worked in the charitable space – I know what works and what doesn’t – in an emergency or disaster you need traditional aid – but not with building up a country or people.

What works (for me at least) is playing with Africa on an equal playing field, treating all like equals – so the more shoes people buy and talk about, the more people we can have our factories hire and ensure they are being paid fairly and treated with respect.

You won’t see us (I hope) having to be forced into giving into traditional charity – we will be charitable but to the people and the communities that help build Oliberté.

With Oliberté, there will be profit, but a good chunk of that profit will go back into showing the pride of Africa while at the same time supporting the very people who help build Oliberté.

I would rather have a direct and long-term influence on the potentially 1,000 people that will work for Oliberté (in the coming years) from our farmers, to factory workers to operating managers instead of indirectly and loosely helping 1,000,000.