By Burnett Munthali
The story of Jamal Tahlil and Edgar Chibaka offers more than a successful corporate case study. It provides an insight into how immigrant entrepreneurship can generate employment, build commercially viable companies and create new channels for international business cooperation.
When the two African entrepreneurs established First Response Group (FRG) in the United Kingdom in 2007, they were entering a highly competitive security and facilities-management market. More than a decade later, the company had grown to employ over 500 people and reported annual sales exceeding £25 million, according to the company’s 2021 account.
The scale of that transformation is important because it demonstrates that business growth is not necessarily determined by the size of an entrepreneur’s starting capital. Strategy, customer confidence, operational discipline and the ability to build a capable workforce can be equally important drivers of expansion.
Recognition as a business signal
Their selection as Black British Businesspeople of the Year in 2021 should therefore be viewed not simply as an award but as a recognition of entrepreneurial performance.
Awards do not automatically demonstrate financial strength or long-term sustainability. However, recognition from an established business awards platform can strengthen a company’s reputation, particularly in sectors where trust, reliability and professional standards influence purchasing decisions.
For FRG, the recognition also provided visibility beyond its immediate commercial activities. It positioned the company’s founders as examples of Black leadership within Britain’s corporate environment.
The economics of immigrant entrepreneurship
The broader significance lies in the role immigrant entrepreneurs can play in host economies.
Tahlil and Chibaka were African immigrants who established a UK-based company that subsequently became an employer of hundreds of people. This illustrates an important economic pathway: migration can involve not only the movement of labour but also the movement of entrepreneurial skills, networks, ideas and capital.
Successful immigrant-owned businesses can contribute to the economy through employment, taxation, procurement and the development of supply chains.
The FRG experience also challenges the perception that international business success requires entrepreneurs to abandon their connections with their countries of origin.
A potential UK-Malawi commercial link
Chibaka’s role as executive board chairman of the UK Malawi Business Group adds another dimension to the story.
His corporate experience in Britain places him in a potentially useful position to help strengthen commercial relationships between the two markets. For Malawi, such networks could be valuable in attracting investment, developing partnerships and connecting Malawian enterprises with international expertise.
The opportunity, however, depends on more than individual personalities. Strong bilateral business relations require predictable policies, reliable institutions, access to finance, market information and mechanisms that allow companies to identify credible partners.
This is where the story becomes relevant to policymakers as well as entrepreneurs.
What Malawi can learn
Malawi’s private sector needs businesses capable of growing beyond small-scale operations. The FRG example highlights several principles that are relevant to emerging-market entrepreneurs: identify a sustainable market, build customer trust, invest in people and develop systems capable of supporting expansion.
There is also a lesson for institutions supporting entrepreneurship.
Government programmes often focus heavily on providing loans or grants. Financing is important, but capital alone does not create competitive companies. Entrepreneurs also need managerial skills, market access, technology, professional networks and opportunities to compete for larger contracts.
The bigger picture
The most significant lesson from the FRG story is therefore not the award itself. It is the progression from a small entrepreneurial venture to a substantial employer operating in a sophisticated market.
For Africa, the experience offers a reminder that the diaspora can be more than a source of remittances. African professionals and entrepreneurs living abroad can become investors, mentors, commercial intermediaries and bridges between African markets and the global economy.
The challenge for governments and business organisations is to turn those individual success stories into wider economic networks.
Tahlil and Chibaka’s journey demonstrates what can happen when entrepreneurial ambition is combined with market opportunity and organisational growth. The next question is whether similar business connections can be built at scale between African entrepreneurs and the markets in which they operate.
That is where the real economic value of the diaspora may lie.
