The Salary Scramble With Lee Kasumba

"I don't pay you much, but I want the world from you."

Building a business in Africa often means navigating a brutal contradiction. You need to attract top talent and demand excellence, but the numbers on your balance sheet simply won't allow you to pay what they’re worth. In this raw episode of The Salary Scramble, Musa Jesse, founder of Pilgrims Specialty Coffee in Zambia, gets brutally honest about that tension. He dissects the guilt of expecting the world from a team you know you’re underpaying, the gut-wrenching anxiety of calling out underperformance when you know you can't afford to replace them, and the "duty feeling" that comes with knowing someone’s livelihood depends on you. Musa explains the harsh reality of hiring: the moments when you feel you’ve done a disservice to an employee because you didn't make it clear at the start that this is where the business is, scrambling, growing, and unable to provide the luxuries of a corporate job. If you've ever felt that heavy weight of responsibility, or wrestled with the morality of asking for more while paying less, this conversation is for you. Musa doesn't sugarcoat the reality of leadership under financial strain. New Episode Out Tomorrow!

The Strength in Our DNA with Papy Kaluw

"We can work ten times more than the Chinese. Our DNA is strength. But are we building to capacity? To quality?" Papy Kaluw on why Africa has the power but still ships everything in from somewhere else.

Is There Actually Money In Fashion? Papy Kaluw On Where Fashion Stands.

The global fashion industry is worth $2.5 trillion. Africa's share? $31 billion, barely 1%. Papy Kaluw knows what that gap feels like. He left Congo as a child, dropped out of university, taught himself fashion, and built Urban Zulu from nothing. Today, he's dressed celebrities and opened pop-ups in Manhattan. But the journey from selling T-shirts outside Market Theatre to running a global brand has been anything but glamorous. In this conversation with Leslie Kasumba, Papy gets honest about why he left South Africa, whether his brand will outlive him, and the question no one asks: is there actually money in this business? This is not a victory lap. It's a founder sitting inside the tension between scramble and stable.

"If I Knew Better I Would Have Left" - Papy Kaluw

Join us on The Salary Scramble With Lee Kasumba as Papy Kaluw breaks down the one thing every entrepreneur fears: your own paycheck taking a chunk out of your business.New episode out tomorrow!

Who Sent You To Start A Company?! 'Oma Areh On Business, Burnout And Survival..

Oma Areh has worked with everyone from Coca-Cola to Davido to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She's a PR powerhouse, film producer, and now a pioneer in the $26 billion micro-drama industry. But her journey started with a column called "How to Get the Man of Your Dreams" at age twenty and a father who announced the end of the Biafran war at sixteen. In this episode of The Salary Scramble, Oma sits down with Lee Kasumba to talk about why African storytelling has been undervalued, what it takes to build a multi-arm creative ecosystem, and why she's betting big on vertical storytelling. She also gets real about the month she couldn't make payroll, the client she fired, and why Nigerian women don't need anyone's permission to be excellent. If you've ever wondered how the creative economy actually works and how to survive the scramble, this one's for you.