By Andrew Weber
My name is Andrew Weber and I recently served as a Zidisha Client Relationship Manger in Kenya. There I paid a visit to Mohamed at his busienss in a village outside the city of Kilifi on the coast. Mohamad runs a video room where he shows 6 movies per day at 10am, noon, 2pm, 5pm, 7pm 9pm. I peaked in during a showing of a mid-day movie on a weekday and there was still a sizable crowd of about 20 people in attendance. The room has a capacity of about 150 people. He has been in this business for about 6 years, and says he got the idea after working in a video store as a teenager. He has no secondary education and movies are his passion, so he decided to open his own video room. He charges about $.20 per head, and says the room really fills up on weekends. So far the income has been enough for him to support his infant son.
He used his Zidisha loan to increase his already impressive stock of DVDs. He estimates he has about 1,000 DVDs in stock now. He shows movies from all over the world spanning all types of genres, but the crowd-pleasers are typically action or war movies. He tries to show one American movie and one “Tollywood” (or Tanzanian) movie per day. In the future he hopes to buy a big flat screen TV and add a satellite dish to show soccer. He sends his thanks to the lenders for their support.
Mohamed Mangale raised $500 to grow his movie theater business. To view more photos and comments, check out his Zidisha Microfinance profile page.
