Entrepreneur, investor and author of Making Futures: Young Entrepreneurs in a Dynamic Africa, Sangu Delle, thinks success is ‘overhyped’ and has been studying how people fail: ‘I want to look at examples of failures, and how people found redemption after epic, public failures.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I learned how to read when I was two years old, and I became an avid and voracious reader. I read everything—from my sister’s Sweet Valley High novels to my father’s atlas on dermatology. I was particularly fascinated by history books and biographies or memoirs. I was also a very fast reader. I remember we would go to EPP Bookshop in Accra, and my mother would buy me about five or six books. These books were expensive, about five to ten dollars per book. I’d read all of them in about two days and my mother would be yelling ‘stop reading so much, I can’t afford to be buying books at this rate.’ So, one of her friends introduced us to Books For Less, a store where you could buy second-hand books for less than one dollar, and it was a gamechanger!
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