There are existing threads on this. Would not advise anyone to go into it

There are some rules for good MLMs:

1. Market must be HUGE and growing: Africa provides this naturally. There is no room for niche MLMs. They have to cover a broad spectrum of products.

2. The product must be highly repeat-consumable: whichever customers you get, they have to keep coming back for more to sustain the business.

3. Product must be priced competitively, with adequate room for good commissions: very hard to achieve this balance.

Taking all this into consideration, the only proper MLMs I've encountered in Kenya so far are Forever Living and GNLD.

PS: An easy way to tell the scammers from the genuine guys is that most MLM scammers preach about an 'easy opportunity to make money while you sleep.' This is simply not true, as this biz is just as hard as any other sales biz.

PPS: I am not in MLM personally, but my uncle is.

@jasonhill isn't MLM just retail via organic marketing?

I think they fail probably because of having too many variable costs, and naive assumptions that demand for their products is unlimited. I don't think that they outrightly set out to scam people. Besides, all companies have that 'multi-level' pyramid structure in their organisation, and the guys at the top earn the most, so I don't think that can be used as evidence of a scam.

Lives in Runda, drives a Land Rover 2010, kids went to Hillcrest... But he's pretty high up the chain, so I guess he's not the average example