History
Greyson Kiondo, the founder and president of Kilimanjaro International, arrived in the United States from his home village of Uchira in rural Kilimanjaro with fifty U.S. dollars in his pocket and a dream. He was on his way to attend a three-month English study program at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho--a great, great distance from his home in miles, culture, and physical environment.From Idaho, Kiondo began his bachelor's degree at Strayer University in Washington, D.C. and was soon admitted to Cornell University, but he failed to obtain the required financial support. Before long, he found himself enrolled at the nearby State University of New York Binghamton (now Binghamton University) in the school of management.
A classically self-made businessman, Kiondo founded Kilimanjaro International in 1997 (one year before earning his finance and management degree) and has presided over its growth into an international consulting firm with a portfolio of projects worth several million U.S. dollars. He named our firm for his birth region in Tanzania, designing it to combine access to international practitioners with a healthy dose of local management and staff. It has expanded all through Sub-Saharan Africa and is reaching out to emerging nations around the world.
Kiondo saw that a partnership between countries with developed economies and client-organizations in emerging nations offered the best chance for economic stability, good governance, and ultimately better lives for local citizens. He concluded that there was an urgent need to establish a company to provide emerging nations with access to international, broad-based professional assistance while also developing local human resources and management.
And he wanted to help bring those ideas to fruition.
Realizing that the greatest need in Sub-Saharan Africa was for both organizational and individual development, Kiondo focused our company first on presenting training courses — demand-driven, skill-building, experience-sharing programs rooted in a sustainable value-based philosophy. Local self-reliance was impossible without management, professional, and technical skills among the region's citizens and government officials. And we helped teach those skills.
From the beginning we led clients to examine (and refine) their missions; concentrate resources on key success drivers; align employee development systems with business objectives; and focus on performance improvement rather than on broad-based, ad hoc training. We show clients how to invest in themselves and how to cultivate those investments. And the results have been impressive.
In fact, because of our results-driven approach, we have enjoyed steady growth--first in the training arena, followed by small consulting projects, then expanding to complex multi-year engagements.
Today KI has a reputation with host country governments, bilateral and multilateral development partners, and private firms for high quality, thoughtful, value-added consulting and training. And we'd like to add you to our family of satisfied clients. To learn more, simply contact us.
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Off to America, with good luck
and . . . $50
The Guardian, July 17, 2009
A Quick Look
Kiondo believed Kilimanjaro International could be organized to contribute to the pool of indigenous professionals and help keep talented people in Africa. At the same time, keeping operations local would mean that salaries, purchases, and earnings would flow directly into the local economy--thus, everyone wins. Kilimanjaro International member firms, which are all organized on this model of local management combined with appropriate international expertise, now operate in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, and Ethiopia.
Throughout our history we have remained sensitive to client needs: What do our clients need right now to prepare for the future? How can we best meet their goals? And how can we help them sustain for tomorrow the gains we make today?
