At the beginning of August, Africa’s richest man according to FORBES, Aliko Dangote, signed an energy infrastructure partnership with the world’s two largest private equity firms, American-based Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group.
Dangote made a commitment to invest a combined $5 billion by 2019 with New York-based Blackstone in power projects in sub-Saharan Africa and formed a joint venture with Carlyle to invest an unspecified amount in Nigerian oil and gas ventures and other African projects.
This is one of many examples from the continent, showing a step in the right direction in the private equity space for companies hoping to implement projects that require copious amounts of capital.
Private equity refers to shareholder capital invested in private companies. Firms seeking private equity funding often want to finance business expansions, develop new technologies, and complete acquisitions of other businesses among other reasons. The size of the private equity market has grown steadily since the 1970s. Africa accounts for around 1% of private equity investment worldwide, says the Chief Executive of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein.
Patrycja Kula, a Business Development Manager at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, says private equity is also good for the stock exchange. She gives Alexander Forbes, the pension fund giant that delisted in an R8.2 billion buyout in 2007, as an example. It was a R9.7 billion-company when it relisted, showing that private equity helps a lot.
Although the South African private equity industry is small in comparison to those of the United States and Britain, it is well established and locally significant. It may be argued, according to the Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SAVCA) Industry Performance Survey in 2013, that the country has one of the most sophisticated private equity industries among emerging and developed markets, with different funds at all stages of business development, from start-up venture capital funds through to late-stage and buy-out funds.
According to the World Bank, African nations need an extra $50 billion a year to ease energy shortages and transportation bottlenecks. Since the mid-1990s, financing for African power projects has averaged around $1.2 billion a year. This is split between public and private money.
In South Africa, the report on the Economic Impact of Venture Capital and Private Equity in South Africa in 2013 emphasized the benefits of private equity and venture capital transactions to the development of the country’s economy. It stressed that they are not confined to investee companies. Besides providing access to capital, Aubrey Shabane, the Manager of the Development Bank of South Africa’s Private Equity &amp; Direct Equities unit, says these investors bring dynamism, a depth of operational experience, huge financial acumen, strategic partners and foresight.
“As we face several economic challenges, including exceptionally high and persistent unemployment, it is rewarding to note the effect of this type of investment on job creation,” says Shabane.
“Companies with private equity and venture capital investors clearly do create employment and those in our survey indicated they have grown their staff by around 40 percent in the two-year period covered by this research.”
According to the KPMG and the SAVCA survey on the industry’s performance in the country over 2013, the private equity industry has R162.2 billion in funds under management, an increase of 16.9% from 2012. It adds that R58.6 billion of the funds under management are in undrawn commitments at the end of 2013, meaning that R46.1 billion is available for future investments in South Africa and R12.5 billion for the entire African continent.
This report also notes that private equity is an important source of Foreign Direct Investment, both indirectly via the raising of offshore money by local fund managers and by direct co-investment by foreign investors.
Speaking at the SAVCA Gordon Institute of Business Science for Private Equity in Illovo, Johannesburg, Stuart Bradley, a Senior Partner at Phatisa, a private equity fund manager investing in Africa, says that private equity is the most expensive way of getting funding or capital and should be a last resort for any business. Bradley adds that it is advisable for businesses to try other avenues first, like internal cash generation, family and friends, banks, mezzanine finance or even defer projects.

An Expensive Necessity  For Africa

It took the prestigious, New York City-based Columbia University two years to snag Wale Tinubu as keynote speaker at their annual Africa Economic Forum. Not surprising, Tinubu maintains an extremely busy schedule running Oando Plc, the first Nigerian company to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as well as the Nigerian Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion and more than a thousand staff.
The forum, in its eleventh year, was held at the Ivy League school’s sprawling campus on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It highlighted the rise of Africa and provided perspective from various industry titans from the continent. Tinubu, the group chief executive officer of Oando, the sub-Saharan African indigenous integrated energy group, joined Raila Odinga, the renowned politician and former prime minister of Kenya, Rosalind Kainyah, the managing director of Kina Advisory Limited and Emmanuel Nnadozie, the executive secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) to discuss the continent’s economic rise.
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It has been more than two years since the African oil magnate featured on the cover of FORBES AFRICA. Back in November 2011, Tinubu ended his first interview with the magazine, saying &#8220;Africa is a challenging continent; you fight for water, you fight for food, you fight for shelter. We compete by nature, so it&#8217;s always difficult but we don&#8217;t always know it is difficult because we have a spirit of survival. Here at Oando, we deliver on the tough things.&#8221;
Fast-forward to 2014, it seems that Tinubu still has that philosophy.
Standing in the lofty hallways of the university, dressed in denim jeans, crisp white shirt, dark-colored suede blazer and his signature horn-rimmed glasses, one could have easily mistaken Tinubu for a professor; fashionably modern but unassuming even though he sits at the helm of a $1.7-billion energy conglomerate.
During the chat with FORBES AFRICA, Tinubu discusses his company’s acquisition of the Nigerian upstream oil and gas business of ConocoPhillips, an American multinational energy corporation, in a $1.7 billion transaction.
“We were looking to acquire a company that was three times our size. We had to do several rounds of fundraising, which we successfully did. We did a rights of issue first, then we did a private placement, and then we organized a corporate facility. We had about five or six work series running simultaneously in an environment where we were deemed not to be able to do the transaction because anybody wanting to do a $1.5 billion or $1.7 billion transaction in such a short space of time is unheard of. Finance is still a challenge; it’s always been a challenge in Africa.”
The London-trained attorney-turned oil baron is known for being innovative in identifying funding opportunities from across the globe as well as from different classes of institutions. In 2012, Oando’s upstream business, Oando Energy Resources, became the first Nigerian indigenous company to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of $184 million.
His company started off as a trading company in oil and gas. It then went into downstream marketing, where they filed registration and diversified into gas, built three different gas fire systems, 130 kilometers of pipelines went into the services industry and now they are finally in the upstream sector.
“Our ultimate goal was to diversify our business to the upstream — exploration and production of oil and gas — because there is a substantial amount of profitability that exists and there’s an incredible value that we can add towards our indigenous participation in our oil industry.”
Tinubu explains that Nigeria is producing around 2.3 million barrels of oil a month but should be producing 4 million barrels. He also says that 65% of the reserves are on land but most of the focus is offshore because of the better return it offers.
“It is not unrealistic for us to build a $10 billion exploration and production indigenous company. When we started 20 years ago, we had no money. Today, we are probably an enterprise of $3.5 to 4 billion and by the time we complete this acquisition we will be around $6 billion and that is with zero equity.”
This is the result of delivering on the tough things.

The Nigerian  Oil Baron  Buying Up America

Hester Maria Mende has just arrived in Scotland after a marathon three-month holiday crossing continents, cultures and time zones. She is yet to discard the boarding passes she has collected – from Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Auckland – on this recent trip. Yet, call this retired 67-year-old former South African IT developer and opera singer a globetrotter, and she is not satisfied.
For Mende, the world is just not enough.
Late December, Mende was basking on a sunny beach in Thailand when she received news of her clearing the first round of interviews for a one-way trip to Mars in 2025. Now one of 1,058 chosen candidates (from a total of 200,000 applicants from around the world), she will be in the final two rounds that will determine man’s foray on Mars soil.
She harbors no doubts she will make it.
“I believe myself to be the perfect candidate because the people in my age group and my circumstances are the ideal cannon fodder,” says Mende.
“I absolutely want to go. To be a part of that first step will be the ideal way of ending my life. We die anyway, so dying in the midst of this exhilarating endeavor will be fantastic for me.”
Early last year, Mende had spent R300 ($27) in all to apply for the mission after succumbing to an online recruitment notice. She had read that Mars One, a not-for-profit foundation, was seeking to establish human life on the red planet. Probe her further and the real reason emerges. Retirement. And the death of a loved one.
“I lost my husband [in an armed robbery attack in Johannesburg] seven years ago, I have no children and although I have five siblings, I realized that post-retirement, you really need to find a support system of your own. I have led a full life. Nobody depends on me, nobody’s life will stop when I am gone.”
Mende confesses she withdrew from the world for several years after her husband’s demise. Signing up to be a part of the Mars mission added a new purpose to her life – and death.
Mende brushes off any negative speculation about the possibility of humans on Mars with the conviction in her voice. “There is a lot not known. Things can also wrong along the way, but I am sure there will at least be one settlement there for scientific purposes,” she says.
At the moment, Mende is preparing for the next round of interviews. While the first tested her mental strength, the next two will determine her physical agility to withstand the rigorous eight-year training that will ensue. If selected, she will be one of only 24 to 40 candidates training in teams of four. The team with the greatest chance of survival will be the first to undertake the seven-month journey – without a return ticket – to Mars.
If Mende is one of them, she will be 78 at the time.
Mende, who ended her career implementing IT projects for Eskom in Johannesburg, says she has always tread off the beaten track. A classical singer, she has also sung on national radio, TV, and performed at operas across South Africa.
Singing is something she will miss on the red planet, as the atmosphere is not conducive for sound. And what if she does not qualify?
“I hope with every fiber in my body that I will. I am trying not to be fixated, but I believe my sense of humor will get me up there.”
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A total of 1,058 global candidates have cleared the first round of Mars One’s mission to the red planet of which 586 are male and 472 are female. In this group, 54 are from Africa, with more men (42) from the continent than women. On the Mars One website, the project’s co-founder Bas Lansdorp describes the 1,058 candidates as the first tangible glimpse into what the new human settlement will look like. “We anticipate our candidates to become celebrities in their towns, cities, and in many cases, countries. It’s about to get very interesting,” he says. FORBES WOMAN AFRICA connected with some of the future female astronauts who are from or have origins in Africa.
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Alexandra Doyle, 28
Law student, South Africa
Specializing in international law and criminology, Doyle worked full-time as a dental nurse in order to support herself through college, also at times dabbling in acting and modeling. “I know in my heart I am right for the Mars mission and have this funny feeling that everything I have done in life until now has been in preparation for it,” she says. Least expecting to be chosen, Doyle says she was overcome with shock when she first heard of her selection. “I am looking forward to proving myself in the next rounds. The ultimate dream of sustaining human life on another planet is my dream too. And I think that a life spent in the pursuit of a dream is better than any other, whatever the outcome.” And what would she take with her if she were chosen? “My sense of adventure, and a hot water bottle!”
Adriana Marais, 30
Research student, South Africa
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Completing her PhD in the University of KwaZulu-Natal, her abiding interest is astrophysics. “Research in the field of quantum biology contributes to the development of renewable energy technologies essential for our continued existence on this planet, and perhaps others,” she says. Having decided as a child that she wanted to be an astronaut, she became fascinated with quantum mechanics, and the eternal question about life. “In my opinion, if life can exist on earth, it must also exist or have existed elsewhere. I will be prepared to sacrifice my joys, sorrows and day-to-day life for this idea, this adventure, this achievement, that would not be my own, but of all humanity.” She is keen to know more about her fellow Martians, and thinks they will be some of the most interesting people on earth. “The first Martians will need to be multi-talented and quick-learning. What sets me apart is my dream of being part of the discovery of evidence of extra-terrestrial life: a goal which becomes a more realistic when Mars is my backyard,” she says.
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Kristy Flower, 20
Nursing student, Zimbabwe
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A first year nursing degree student, Flower has adventure in her genes. Her family has moved to New Zealand, and the rest have ventured from Zimbabwe to Australia and England. “My parents and grandparents are incredibly strong-willed. Both my grandparents served in the Rhodesian war and in World War II when my grandmother worked as a registered nurse.” Flower’s keenness on the Mars mission is to be at the forefront of knowledge and exploration. “I want to be able to contribute not only to my community but also to mankind and leave a mark on future discoveries that will benefit us all. This is an amazing opportunity to make a difference and I will do anything to ensure I am the best candidate and most capable person for the job,” she says.
Maggie Wernich, 51
Personal assistant, South Africa
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A divorcee with two children, ages 20 and 25, Wernich says her family structure is one of support and respect for another’s dreams, and that she has always harbored the wish to travel to space. When she first saw the Mars One website 10 months ago it was a dream come true. “We need to realize orthodox structures and outdated belief systems have no place in the future of our children and the continuation of a healthy environment on earth,” she says. “It is every individual’s right to decide how and where they choose to live their lives.” The reason she chose to be a part of the Mars experiment was to explore different ways to live. “This opportunity will be a breakthrough for women, especially in Africa. It is my belief that older people needn’t retire to await death in a facility or system that is socially acceptable. It will be an honor to spend the remainder of my life as a colonist on Mars, to plant the seeds of life for my children’s children.”
Esther Kabuchi Kanyiri, 42 Dentist/pharmacist, Kenya
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Kanyiri is a mother to two teenaged children, and yet, has chosen to go to Mars. Her reason? “To explore the outside world and better the human race. I like being a pioneer and believe I have skills and the knowledge necessary for this process. The selection process requires individuals with different talents who are able to live away from family and in seclusion and maintain sanity. The individual will also need to be able to make decisions individually and trust the decisions made by others for them. I believe I have demonstrated this in my life as I have lived away from family and friends and still focused on my goals. I like spontaneity and embarking on missions most people think are impossible. I have an open mind and am ready to learn, even for survival,” she says.

‘Mars Will Be  The Ideal Way Of  Ending My Life’

It’s February 2014. The New Year is already distant. The overcrowded yoga studio is thinning out as the New Year’s resolutions fade. I like more space but I don’t like what it means in terms of women letting go of their resolve to take better care of themselves this year.
Sometimes I draw a Wheel of Life with clients and ask them to place descriptors on the spokes for the different roles in their lives. They generally easily combine their professional and personal selves: executive, mother, spouse, member of professional body, MBA student, extended family member, board director, church committee and so on. I ask them to rate, from one to 10, how important each role is – marking the spoke with a colored pen. Using a second color, they rate the effort they dedicate to each role. With the third colored pen they rate their level of satisfaction. Together we consider the alignment and discord, and the changes that are needed.
There’s often one role missing. My clients stare at their wheel, puzzled. “What about the role of self-care?”  I ask rhetorically. Without self-care every other role may be jeopardized. It is extraordinary how many people relegate and neglect self-care. Steven Covey’s concept of being “properly selfish” needs more advocacy. I admire the women I’ve had the privilege to work with for over a decade but I often fear for them. They are outstanding achievers but at what cost to their long-term selves?
Whilst this column was named Headspace, I aspire to work with clients on the connectivity between our headspace, emotions, body fitness and energy. I’m increasingly respectful of the power of breath. It seems like the simplest thing – breathing. We’ve done it since the day we were born. Yet breathing consciously can contribute to our ability to create different choices and outcomes for ourselves.
As CEO of the Land Bank my medical check-up revealed high blood pressure and the blood analysis indicated high levels of cortisol – another indicator of stress. I spent 10 years on chronic medication. Then I read that one of the beneficial effects of meditation is improved blood pressure. My meditation breathing has been one of my best investments and I’ve had four drug-free years.
“So how have things gone since our last session?” The client gives me an update and the very recall of the events spark a panic attack. I’m able to draw on my training on breathing for relaxation to assist my client to recalibrate and regain their equilibrium. Another client is battling with insomnia – again certain breathing exercises can induce sleep and act as an effective alternative to slipping pills and their possible side effects.
My favorite easy breathing tool is one that I often teach clients, both individuals and teams, to use when they need to interrupt a burst of anger that might otherwise lead to behavior they will later regret. It’s aptly named S.T.O.P.
Imagine the traffic light. STOP. On red, take a breath – breathe in for the count of four. On amber, observe and hold your breath for the count of four. Then proceed to green, breathe out for the count of four and repeat. Focusing on the breathing breaks the anger burst in the way that a fuse breaks the electrical circuit when there’s danger of overload.
Another conscious breathing practice includes movement. Perhaps you’ve seen people doing Tai Chi, which resembles slow-motion ballet. Chi or Qi (Mandarin for breath) embodies the concept of vitality and life-force. While western medicine works with two body networks:  blood veins and the nervous system, the Chinese work with a third network, that of meridians. When meridian flows are blocked people experience fatigue in spite of clocking up hours of sleep or cardio training. It’s worth considering learning the body-breathing exercises that stimulate Qi.
I hope I’ve made you curious on two counts. Firstly, to consider what your wheel of life look likes. And secondly, the role that breathing plays in an expanded concept of fitness. Remember that leadership roles are stressful and self-care is paramount.

S.T.O.P.

How do you make millions from the sun in Africa? You can replace kerosene lamps in Tanzania or build a solar farm, the size of a small island, in Ghana. Everyone is talking about it and many want to invest. It involves importing millions of solar panels, installing them in barren deserts, then cashing in. Sounds easy, but it isn’t. Watch out for sand dunes, fast-growing vegetation and hungry animals.
You would think that a company that can build a solar panel designed to withstand hail stones shot from a cannon would be able to weather anything nature can throw at it. Think again.
Problems come in thick, fast and furry, according to Matthew Merfet, Africa and the Middle East’s project director at First Solar, a company that operates more than 20 utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) plants producing 1.7 gigawatts of energy worldwide.
“On one farm, we noticed a number of panels kept shutting off. We thought it was a cable problem, and we didn’t know why. It took us months to figure out that racoons had moved in and were chewing the cables,” says Merfet.
Fending off rodents on a 4,000 hectare plot is just one of the many unexpected headaches for solar energy farmers. Merfet says First Solar discovered dandelions and trees that grew so high they blocked the sunlight. In deserts, sand dunes piled up.
Finding these problems is harder than you think. Merfet’s company has to fly a toy plane with an infrared camera across fields of panels to check for dark spots.
“It’s easy to get lost out there, finding your way in acres of land is impossible, so we have GPSs,” he says.
Even when everything is working, solar energy can present problems. Merfet says solar energy is unique in that it has a predictable timeframe; you have roughly 10 hours to maximize a sunny day. The key is to heat your panels quickly, and keep them in the sunlight for as long as possible.
As the sunlight is converted to money, companies like First Solar have come up with black panelled solar units designed to follow the sun like a field of sunflowers.
It also means that if one panel breaks, only that panel will miss out on the light. Compare this to a conventional solar farm that moves panels in rows; if a motor malfunctions, the entire row will fail to soak up the rays. Even with hungry creatures and growing trees, First Solar believes this sunflower system can increase output by 25% a day.
In September, South Africa bedded down its first private PV plant in Kimberly, three months ahead of schedule. The 75-megawatt (MW) solar farm houses 312,000-panels. The country’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme has allocated $2.8 billion for renewable energy, of which 8,400MW are for solar PV. Currently, South Africa needs 41,346MW of new power over the next 17 years. The country also needs to upgrade its grid infrastructure, which is so out of date it might not be able to support all the required renewable energy.
Ghana has also stepped forward. Once their giant 450 acre, 155MW solar plant near Aiwaiso is completed in 2015, it will be the biggest solar plant in Africa, boosting electricity capacity by 6%. Costing $400 million, the project will have the capability to generate sufficient energy for 100,000 homes.
This dwarfs Africa’s former largest grid-linked solar plant, Kigali Solaire, in Rwanda. The small 250-kilowatt plant helped the county during a two-year drought, which strained its hydroelectricity plant.
Investing in Africa has only been possible after prices of PV modules dropped by 80% since 2008, according to CleanTechnica. As prices reduce, more technology arrives in Africa.
Then there are days when the sun doesn’t shine, according to South African analyst Chris Yelland of EE Publishers.
“Solar energy can produce more power than wind during the day &#8230; we generally have a sunny climate in South Africa. One of the biggest disadvantages of solar power is that the price is not coming down. There is also no storage in solar PV, which restricts power during the night. So you need batteries to store energy and they are expensive, which makes it uninteresting for investors,” says Yelland.
But, soon night won’t be a problem. Abengoa Solar, responsible for building the world’s largest solar plant, is now planning to build the largest parabolic trough solar plant in the world, in Arizona, in the United States. Solana will be the first solar plant in the United States with thermal energy storage. This plant, which will cost $2 billion, will be capable of producing energy night and day.
One of the investors taking the plunge is Adam Camenzuli. For Camenzuli solar energy is a common topic around the dinner table, but his best idea came in the stalls of a McDonald’s in Toronto, Canada.
“We were just hanging out and talking. We saw that the North American and European economies were not going to be the drivers of tomorrow’s growth. With our ties to Africa, we always talked about the next thing for the continent’s growth,” he says.
“We realized that bringing in solar lamps was not a viable business in the long-term—we had to do something different. We had to be innovative and combine the effectiveness of pay-as-you-go, which revolutionized mobile telecommunications, with the benefits of solar technology.
The current market penetration for solar energy is around 15 million people, but there are 600 million people who use kerosene. A family in Tanzania can spend 10 to 25% of their income on kerosene alone. There is a large quantity of low quality solar lanterns coming into the market [Tanzania] … But the upfront cost of a solar lantern is $20 dollars. The average person can’t afford that. Kerosene lanterns are the best alternative,” says Camenzuli.
Clad in a neat black suit and blue shirt, the Canadian-born Camenzuli is in the heart of Sandton, South Africa,.He has traveled from China to Brazil, on the hunt for investors that will back his idea.
In 2011, shortly after moving to Tanzania, his idea shone like a bulb in the dark.
“The ‘aha’ moment was when we realized we had to separate the components of the lamp and introduce a pay-as-you-go model through swapping the battery/light portion of the lamp,” he says.
Camenzuli was even able to throw in a cell phone charger, which has made the lantern even more popular. He sold it to small shops that sell cigarettes, soap and daily doses of kerosene in Tanzania. They call these shops Dukas, and for Camenzuli they are his first step to solar millions.
“By selling through Dukas, you can rent the battery, and swop out a used battery. The Dukas then charge the batteries on their roofs. People pay $20 over the course of a month to rent it, around 66 cents a day. Its money they spend on kerosene, so there is no additional cost to the user. At the end of the 30 days they have paid for the lamp and get to keep the solar panel. In effect, it’s a fully working lantern at 66 cents a day. The individual Duka keeps all the spare batteries. They pay a small charge for the battery and solar panel batteries can last for two years. The beauty is that you can replace individual pieces if it breaks,” says Camenzuli.
It took only six months to turn his dream into reality. Big or small, Africa is the ideal landscape for solar energy. Early bird entrepreneurs are snapping up the worms, but they must watch out for hungry animals.  <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2290" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_6883-300x277.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="277" />

Don’t Let The Dandelions Or Nibblers Dim The Sun

It’s no secret that the Empire State’s inimitable energy, relentless pace and pulsating drive have led to the creation of some of America’s (and indeed the world’s) most famous and enduring commercial and cultural institutions.
This dynamism coupled with an effervescent melting pot of people of diverse nationalities and ethnicities has also given rise to a newer trend—an African one. In the past few years, the New York eye on Africa has gone from strength to strength, resulting in what we have today: a veritable community of business leaders—some African, some not—who are using New York as a base for building, showcasing and investing in African ventures and opportunities.
Not long ago, doing business in Africa was the preserve of die-hard Afrophiles in New York. Most New Yorkers had little interest in or connection to Africa; on the contrary they stayed away, discouraged by media depictions of Africa’s various crises. In 2013, this has changed dramatically as the metropolis has become the de-facto hub for much Africa-related activity on this side of the United States (US).
A slew of successful investment firms, PR agencies, fashion companies, media houses and various other businesses now operate out of the city, having laid firm foundations in recent years, all culminating in what appears to be a New York-based Africa boom.
A growing number of people, both African and non-African, are opening and investing in businesses and business-related activities focused on the continent. These people wish to deepen and strengthen the relationship between Africa and the US from their New York City bases. They are positive that they can take
Africa by storm. And, they are doing it. In fact, a New York location allows them to take advantage of the constant comings and goings of international colleagues and clients, who may be easier to access in the US than when further afield, while technology allows them to stay in constant communication with Africa.
You can see the shift by looking at the media’s portrayal of Africa. Major news outlets such as The New York Times and The Daily Beast are now willing to extol Africa’s virtues, while towards the end of last year, The Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, hosted an invitation-only breakfast panel to discuss ‘Africa’s burgeoning media sector’.
You also know that change is underway when Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt returns from a trip to Africa and pens a thoughtful blog post, in which he describes Rwanda as a ‘jewel’ and admits his surprise that Nigerians are entrepreneurial, stylish and educated in addition to laying out some of the major opportunities that he has seen for Google’s growth on the continent.
International PR agent Claudine Moore, a British expat who is based in New York and spends a good proportion of her time working on African projects, counts the Nigerian airline Arik Air as one of her clients. She uses her British, American and African connections to advance business on both sides of the world. She is currently gearing up to present the first Social Media Week in Lagos (the first to be held on the continent) in February.
They say that art imitates life, and the city’s art world has not been shy in its current embrace of Africa. Currently showing at the Walther Collection is ‘Distance and Desire’ an exhibition of contemporary African art and photography. The Walther Collection is extraordinary in that it is owned by Artur Walther, a German man who has one of the largest collections of contemporary African art in the world.
Africa Fashion Week, which has become a regular feature of the global fashion week circuit, will return to New York once again this summer.
ARISE media group has also just announced the launch of a new Africa-focused 24-hour global news channel. Guess where its first US-based hub is? New York City of course.
New York finance firms have also been encouraged by President Barack Obama’s open desire to encourage US businesses to invest more heavily in Africa and are looking forward to attending the Africa investor summit later in the year which will once again bring together over 250 investors from around the world at the New York Stock Exchange.   FL
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<h2>The city of dreams</h2>
<h5>By Farai Gundan</h5>
From Wall Street, Tribeca, SoHo, Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and the rest of the boroughs that make up the 8.2 million-resident metropolitan city, Africans are quietly but steadfastly building their empires and pursuing their diasporan dreams.
Charles Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and indeed it is the best of times for Africans in the United States. Particularly in New York, a global city, where the residents are constantly in an empire state of mind. This is not surprising given that New York yields tremendous influence in fashion, finance, technology, art, film and media, and music and entertainment. International organization, the United Nations, is headquartered in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan overlooking the East River making the mega-city an epicenter for international diplomacy.
Navigating around New York City on the subways, buses or yellow cabs; Africans in New York typically use HopStop, an app that provides optimal directions and was founded and developed by Nigerian-born tech entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo.
Africans can also experience home cooking right in New York. From the renowned Africa Kine, a restaurant that serves West African cuisine in Le Petit Senegal, a neighborhood of Harlem, to the popular Madiba, a South African eatery in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, or Buka’s, an authentic Nigerian restaurant and bar in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
From the electrifying musical performances of D’Banj, Lira and Oliver Mtukudzi during the summer months and the fireside readings of authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and NoViolet Bulawayo to Nollywood movie premieres, colorful traditional weddings, baby showers, graduations and family celebrations, Africans always find a reason to gather in New York. We celebrate our entertainers at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards, our African models walk the runways and fashion designers show off their talent during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. You find Africans working diligently in corporate America on Wall Street, choreographing hit musicals on Broadway or being cast in the popular play, Lion King.
Like the rest of my fellow Africans who left their beloved countries for greener pastures, I came to the United States fresh out of high school to pursue my tertiary education. I had two options: the United States of America or Japan. The United States offered a generous scholarship to a private liberal arts college in the mid-western state of Wisconsin. I was so determined and focused that I graduated in three years instead of the usual four. I also worked full time to financially support my mother and younger sister who were still in Zimbabwe at the time. Never easy but an “African girl’s gotta do what an African girl’s gotta do”. Fast forward to my graduation, my family stood proudly on the well-manicured lawn at college congratulating me on obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree: a first in my family.
Of course, I had my eyes on even higher goals—a joint law degree and M.B.A. But law school is expensive, so I opted for the M.B.A with the goal of one day returning to get my law degree. That day is still to come. I attended Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black university, where I learnt about the works of W.E.B DuBois, Langston Hughes, and other great black men and women. Graduate school was a turning point for me. I embraced my culture and realized who I am as an African woman. I even went natural with my hair, sporting a short Afro. It was the beginnings of a coming of age of an African girl.
I received great training in corporate America, however, after a defining moment with Oprah Winfrey, I left to pursue a career in media. From covering red carpets to the fashion runways and everything in between, I have been able to travel across the United States. Yet New York remains the place that can turn an African girl with dreams of being a media mogul into reality.   FL
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newyork-city-with-flags_Audrey-Anderson

I’m an african in new york

Another answer to Africa’s energy shortage could be sitting thousands of meters off the south coast of the continent. Its extraction could cause a row between interested parties.
British company, OK Energy Limited, is on the hunt for potential oil and gas energy (hydrocarbon) reserves in the East Algoa Exploration Area, under the Indian Ocean. The area is off the eastern coast of Port Elizabeth and is 9,314km² and reaches a depth of approximately 4,000m.
OK Energy appointed a South African company, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), to prepare the environmental management program for Petroleum Agency South Africa (PASA) ahead of consideration and approval by the government.
OK Energy submitted two applications to PASA between March and August as per government’s licensing requirements. A decision is expected before the end of the year. If the bid is successful, it will add to the existing exploration of ExxonMobil reserves in South Africa and the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.
The applications included a consultation process. According to ERM reports, community meetings and an environmental program were required. These activities involved the evaluation of the environmental and social setting, identifying potential impacts and developing a plan to reduce them. The company received approval to go ahead with seismic processes in 2014.
“For the East Algoa Area, currently there are no outstanding stakeholder issues and the process is likely to lead to PASA granting the exploration right later this year. We would then look at acquiring seismic data, either in conjunction with another operation in 2013, or our own in 2014,” says Paul Barrett, OK Energy’s director and geologist.
“South Africa will benefit from significant tax and royalty revenues—the local area, especially Port Elizabeth’s port, will benefit from a large amount of fabrication and support activity to build and operate any oil field development.”
“The geology of the coastal region suggests that deepwater oil reservoirs may have been deposited. This is totally unproven and ourselves and Impact/ExxonMobil, our neighboring licence holders, are using worldwide analogues to drive our exploration focus. It is a high-risk area in terms of finding hydrocarbons, but if it works it will be significant,” says Barrett.
“The rights to all of South Africa’s oil resources should be given to PetroSA because it’s state-owned. There’s no guarantee that oil will be cheaper because it’s being sourced from our oceans,” says Bobby Peek, director of a non-governmental organization Groundwork.
Peek, an environmentalist, also warns that the seismic activities in the oceans could drive dolphins and whales away.
PetroSA has proposed an amendment bill to Parliament, which significantly widens the scope of state involvement in mineral production, making it the custodian of the state’s allocation for all petroleum rights.
This has led to a backlash from the industry’s interested parties, like ExxonMobil and Anardako, with warnings that the proposed amendments could deter investment in South Africa at a time when prospects for gas and oil discoveries are good.

Energy Under The Waves

In just 18 months, a few modest farms on the plains of the Eastern Cape, South Africa will transform into the third largest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa. The Dorper Wind Farm will produce 100 megawatts (MW) of energy a year.
For the owners of Rainmaker Energy Projects, it’s hard to imagine what 40 towering wind turbines will look like, but Luke Callcott-Stevens and Gavin James are spending R2.5 billion ($274 million) to find out.
“You build a wind farm in 18 months… after four or five years of hard work,” says Callcott-Stevens.
It was New Year in 2009 when James and Callcott-Stevens—friends since university—decided that they were tired of their jobs and wanted to make it on their own.
At the time Callcott-Stevens was looking for wind farm sites for Australian outfit Macquarie Capital, and James was a lawyer. Shortly after—with a third partner in tow, former Macquarie engineer, Doug Jenman—Rainmaker breezed into the market with government tenders in mind.
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That year, the South African government declared its intentions to buy renewable energy at favorable tariffs through its Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff (REFIT) program. The program gazetted wind energy, promising R1.24 ($0.14) per kilowatt-hour (kWh).
“When we started this out, we couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing and who we were. We were all competing for sites, if you want to go into wind farms now you would have to go and buy it from someone else. But at that point in time we were in frontier country,” says Callcott-Stevens.
The rush to the wild wind of the west had begun with the force of a Californian gold rush. Many companies were looking for coastal sites near Cape Town in the Western Cape and Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, where wind is strong. Rainmaker went its own way inland into the Eastern Cape.
“I racked up 100,000kms driving in a year, just looking for different sites but we couldn’t find another that was as ideal as Dorper,” Callcott-Stevens says.
The site has 10,000 hectares of flat grassland on top of an escarpment flanked by a mountain range, which channels wind to Dorper.
“The whole escarpment is windy, but this is a particularly windy part of that windy escarpment because of this funnel,” he says.
Along with strong wind—which, coincidentally, is at its strongest in winter, when South Africa demands most of its electricity—a wind farm needs to be close to a distribution line to connect to the national grid, South Africa’s national power generator Eskom.
Unlike other companies, Rainmaker is in the unique position that if it wins more phase bids it does not have to look for new sites. With its space, Dorper Wind Farm simply has to construct more 125-meter-high turbines. It has the planning permission to put enough turbines to generate 560MW
Rainmaker has permission to use a 400kV transmission line, which could revive the Canadian Alcan smelter, in Port Elizabeth, which was abandoned because of the country’s power crisis in 2008.
This means that they have the capacity to feed over 1,000MW of energy into the grid.
All seemed lovely in the wind farm industry. In two years, the company struck a deal with an equity partner, Sumitomo Corporation and secured huge bank loans. The Japanese company, says Callcott-Stevens, is a good partner since it helped build one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world: Shepherd’s Flat Wind Farm in Oregon, in the States.
Then in February 2011, disaster struck when the government scrapped REFIT. It was declared an unfair and uncompetitive tender process. This meant a lot of people who had procured loans and deals with renewable energy companies were left high and dry. Government officials mooted a new tariff of 99c/kWh ($0.11/kWh), which meant for many the cost of building farms was just not feasible.
There was a lull for nine months. Rainmaker carried on acquiring loans and negotiating deals with wind turbine companies. Other companies were throwing in their towel at this point.
“We were committed, we were in, we had put our lives on the line,” says Callcott-Stevens.
In June 2011, the wind picked up. The South African Department of Energy (DoE) announced that R47 billion ($5,17 billion) would be thrown into the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Programme (REIPPP). The six-phase program picked up where REFIT left off. The government announced it was starting a new bidding process for private business investors to apply for tenders. Investors could procure spots to sell electricity back to the government, not at one set rate, but at a bid price of lower than 115c/kWh ($0.13/kWh).
Eight wind energy projects were chosen, Dorper Wind Farm was one of them. After 2015, REIPPP aims to provide 3,625MW of renewable, clean energy for the country. The largest coal plants in South Africa, like the under construction Medupi coal plant in Limpopo, will generate 4,800MW.
“The next round, we could see a further R7 billion ($700 million) in development and going forward you could theoretically have R30 billion ($3,3 billion) going into infrastructure development in this area in the coming future,” says Callcott-Stevens.
Renewable energy could be a game changer. Ninety seven percent of South Africa’s electricity grid, which has capacity to provide 43,000MW, relies on coal. Even then, it is struggling. Eskom has warned that with overdue maintenance this will be at 33,000MW. This winter could see rolling blackouts; during peak demand periods South Africans can use up to 38,000MW.
A coal plant is able to produce 40 times the amount of energy a wind farm can but new coal power plants will produce power at a higher cost than wind, particularly in South Africa.
According to Ayanda Nakedi, Eskom’s general manager in Renewable Energy, the cost of the rollling blackouts of 2008 was R75/kWh ($8/kWh). This is 84 times the cost of wind power today.
But people should be cautious with wind energy, especially when it comes to solving blackouts, according to Chris Yelland, director of EE Publishers.
“Let us just say that you build a 100MW wind farm. So when the wind is blowing flat out, the wind is going to generate its peak of 100MW&#8230;. The reality is it very often generates at an average of 20 to 25 percent. Although it may generate on average 25MW, for a considerable amount of time it’s producing below 25MW. And this makes wind a big problem, so when you may want the power, you may not get it, and when you don’t want the power, you might get it,” Yelland says.
Currently, South Africa lies near the bottom of the global wind power league. In three years according to Nakedi, it will have climbed to fifteenth. A large slice of this could come from the windswept optimists of Dorper Farm.
It may look easy but risk stalks a wind farm. Bids are not guaranteed.
“For every guy constructing a wind farm there are 20 guys who spent a lot of money, who are nowhere, who don’t have a project,” says Callcott-Stevens.
“We could be hit by a strike onsite, or maybe our turbines could sink in the sea, or we miss our dates when we have to be connected to the grid by, and we stand to lose a lot of money. That could significantly affect our returns over the long-term. There have been projects, in America, where blades have cracked on a wind farm. But these risks get less and less once you have been awarded status under the REIPPP up until the point when you have finished construction,” says Callcott-Stevens.
Further costly delays stem from the administration of REIPPP.  According to Yelland, the DoE needs to be cautious when signing 20-year long contracts under the REIPPP.
“Look at long-term supply contracts, like Eskom with BHP Billiton. It now turns out 10 years down the line that Eskom is locked into selling energy that they now regret. If we buy into these energies on a long-term basis the same could happen,” he says.
So far all phase bids have been delayed at sometime or other. But Callcott-Stevens says that the system has been merely ironing out its wrinkles.
“There have been problems and there are still problems but if you look at where we are coming from, South Africa was a totally regulated power market. It takes a long time to deregulate a market. They did this, relatively quickly; we signed our PPAs [Power Purchase Agreements] last November. Effectively power was deregulated in South Africa,” says Callcott-Stevens.
So, if you want to be a wind farmer, all you need is R2.5 billion ($278 million), an open desolate plain to put your mills on, a few years of patience to win over your investors and a bit of luck, from then on, it’s a breeze.

Reaping The Wild WInd of The West

Tony Elumelu is in his office on the corner of a serene Ikoyi street, not far from the bustling Obalende taxi and bus park, in the heart of Lagos. Documents are strewn across a large desk and he looks busy.
“I was in a meeting in this office when I got the call. The first thing I did was to call one of my brothers, to mandate him to take charge. In crisis management, the first thing you do is get somebody to take charge,” he says.
It was a call that everyone dreads. Kidnappers had snatched his 84-year-old mother, Suzanne, from her farm in the Delta State. Elumelu, realizing the futility of panic, strove to deal with the situation calmly. By all accounts, there was nothing frenzied about his actions in the days following the kidnapping.
I ask if he expected something like that to happen. His answer is instant and forceful: “Not at all!”
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Elumelu sums up the incident as “a symptom” of the prevailing despair in the country. Nigeria’s security agencies “were very supportive,” he says.
It all ended well, she was rescued four days later, and arrests were made. The message from the Elumelu family on Facebook says it all.
“The family wishes to thank Nigerians and friends from around the world for the unprecedented outpouring of concern, solidarity, love and prayers during the harrowing ordeal. We are most grateful to the Federal Government, the Delta State Government and the respective law enforcement agencies for their professionalism, diligence and bravery which led to her rescue. At this time the family requests for privacy to spend time with Mama, and recover from the emotional wounds and anguish of the last few days.”
Persuading Suzanne Elumelu to move to the relative safety of Lagos doesn’t appear likely. Elumelu says his mother insists on staying in her village. At that age, he adds, it is essential for her to be where she feels at home.
As Elumelu and his family recover from this trauma, the coming months promise to be hectic for him. There are three new hotels to be built: two in Lagos, and one in Port Harcourt. This will increase the number of hotels owned by his Transcorp Group to five, in which he acquired a controlling stake in 2011 through Heirs Holdings, his investment firm.
Then, there is the goal of taking over the entire import market for fruit juice concentrate by 2013. Elumelu says that until the opening of Transcorp’s manufacturing plant—the agri-business subsidiary run as Teragro Limited—in Benue last March, Nigeria imported all of its concentrate, costing the economy close to $1 billion every year. Teragro also plans to build fertilizer plants in Delta State.
There are also the two oil blocks, one owned by Transcorp, the other by Heirs Holdings. He expects that by 2013 both oil blocks would have gone into production. And then there is the power plant Transcorp is bidding for, under the Nigerian government’s privatization program. For this, the company has gone into partnership with US energy firm, Symbion Power. When the deal is done, Elumelu says the goal will be to increase the plant’s capacity from the current 300MW to 1,200MW.
Elumelu is a champion of the private sector and its role in redeeming Nigeria and Africa. Regarding the insecurity in Nigeria, he chooses to focus on how the private sector, by providing employment, can help create a less combustible environment.
“Where there’s hope people do not take to violence. Where there’s no hope people become vulnerable,” he says.
His story is by now a well-known one. In 1997, a group of investors acquired the distressed Crystal Bank Limited, and rebranded it Standard Trust Bank (STB). Thirty-three-year-old Tony Elumelu, who until then was executive director at Continental Trust Bank Limited, was appointed CEO of the new institution. Over the next few years he grew it into Nigeria’s fifth largest bank. In July 2004, the Nigerian Central Bank governor, Charles Soludo, announced a series of banking reforms, with the goal of creating larger, more robust banking institutions in Nigeria.
Elumelu led Standard Trust Bank into a merger (in Soludo’s words, “the first successful merger during the banking consolidation”) with the older and larger United Bank of Africa (UBA), and took over as CEO of the new entity, which adopted the UBA name.
Nuhu Ribadu, former chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, recalls it as being the “gutsiest news of the year”. The merger was completed in 2005, and a year later the Elumelu-led UBA became the first Nigerian bank to hit a N1 trillion ($6.3 billion) balance sheet mark. The ‘whizkid’ had come a long way from the modest beginnings at STB—which had a N5 billion ($31.7 million) balance sheet in 1998.
The UBA phase was destined to wind up as it had started—on the strength of a policy pronouncement by the Central Bank (CBN). In January 2010 the new Central Bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, introduced a new rule stipulating that bank CEOs would have to retire once they had clocked ten years in office. Elumelu was in his 13th year as CEO—eight years at STB, five at UBA—so, at the relatively young age of 47, Elumelu was going to have to step away from the business in which he had made his name and fortune; from a bank he’d grown into a pan-African brand, with more than 800 branches in 18 African countries, and $19 billion in assets.
Two days after the CBN policy announcement, UBA named Tony Elumelu’s successor, becoming the first of the banks to realign. He recalls people telling him he was too young to quit, wondering what he would do with his life. He was the youngest of that set of CEOs to retire.
“But looking back,” he tells me, “there couldn’t have been a better time to start a second journey.” And thus began the second life of Tony Elumelu.
It has been almost two years since Elumelu left banking. I ask him to assess the bank he left behind. I’m especially interested in what he thinks about its 2011 results—the bank posted dismal results: a pre-tax loss of N28.5 billion ($180.8 million); the result of debt write-offs.
“Last year UBA decided to clean up its balance sheet … This has been demonstrated on the first quarter results,” he says
UBA posted, for the first quarter of 2012, N16 billion ($101.5 million) pre-tax profits, a 233% increase from the corresponding period last year. And its share price has more than doubled over the last month.
“Africa is beginning to contribute to the [UBA] bottom line. Africa contributed over 20% of the [first quarter 2012] profit. The harvest period is here.” UBA Ghana, he adds, currently generates profits of “close to $3 million monthly”.
He sees a bright future; referring to a new Standard &amp; Poor’s’ report that predicts a rise in GDP across several African countries.
“UBA operates in almost all the countries they mentioned,” he says.
There is an air of ruthless efficiency around Tony Elumelu—deducible, not merely from his rise in less than a decade from relative obscurity to a prominent place in the engine room of the Nigerian banking industry; but the sculpted jawline, and the flawless, understated cut of his suit. The credit for his fitness should go to the gym, not the golf course. He’s that rare type of CEO—the non-golfing one. And no doubt this is a man obsessed with getting things done—no fuss, no excuses. Just like Michael Jackson.
“If you saw Jackson’s last movie, This Is It, you saw a man who was so detailed and meticulous,” he says.
“He believed in hard work”—at this point his voice takes on greater forcefulness—“Look at the amount of practice, energy; everything he put into that show!”
In a country where all sorts of stories circulate about the personalities of corporate CEOs, the no-excuses-acceptable Elumelu would be lucky to escape unscathed. A hint of this may be gleaned from a tribute to him written when he was leaving UBA, and published in a hefty coffee-table book, The Power of Vision. “Sadly, he is misrepresented publicly as being an arrogant and hard person,” writes Owen Omogiafo, who worked as his executive assistant at UBA, and now works as director of resources at Elumelu’s Heirs Holdings.
One underlying theme in the tributes in The Power of Vision is the idea of Elumelu as a people-person.
“Talents I don’t have, I don’t regret; I surround myself with people who have them,” he says.
During the interviews he comes across as sober and soft-spoken, with tendencies  for much chuckling and laughter. A member of staff tells me one of the things she’s realized about him is how close he is to his family—his wife, Awele, and their five daughters. In the time I spend with him, sitting in on a meeting of senior management, and then interviewing him (twice), his mischievous, self-deprecating sense of humor shines through. When I ask him what talent he wishes he had, he says: “I think I’m very shy, but people don’t think so.”
On July 31, 2010, at the farewell party organized in Lagos to mark his retirement, Elumelu said: “As I retire from UBA following the regulatory pronouncement, a question has come up in the minds of so many of you here; what’s next for Tony Elumelu? I would like to share that with you today. I have two passions—entrepreneurship and philanthropy.”
Thus, were born Heirs Holdings, his investment company, and The Tony Elumelu Foundation, a non-profit organization keen to redefine philanthropy in Nigeria and abroad. In Elumelu’s words they were intended to “develop business excellence and leadership in Africa.” He shares the vision behind the transition.
“Upon my retirement from UBA it was a question of ‘beyond business’. I tell people I was born in Africa, bred in Africa, schooled in Africa, worked in Africa, still work in Africa, and achieved some level of financial and economic comfort in Africa, from Africa to—so you ask yourself, what’s next? What’s next for me is: I’d like to create more Tony Elumelus. If, due to our entrepreneurial drive we’ve been able to create 25,000 jobs, if we had 10 or 100 people like me, multiply 25,000 jobs by 100, it’s more impact. To me those are more sustainable and impactful ways of helping society than just donating money.”
Embarking on such a journey, he looked to the example of Warren Buffett.
“I decided, okay, it’s time to build a holding company that will monitor our investments in companies we’ve invested in. What we do here at Heirs is slightly patterned after Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett is a very astute and serial investor. I like his business sense. When it’s time to give back to society he’ll give, but time for business is business; they are two different things.”
From the “lean” nature of Heirs Holdings to its “highly strategic” approach to investing, imprints of the Buffett DNA are evident.
Joining Michael Jackson and Buffett, in Elumelu’s personal pantheon, is the man who’s arguably the most famous contemporary second actor—stepping down from running one of the world’s most successful companies to devote his life to philanthropy: Bill Gates.
“He changed the world to a large extent, and upon retirement—he also knew when to leave—he decided to give back to society. The learning point, for me, from Bill Gates is that this is a world of infinite possibilities.”
Leaving UBA freed him up to expand his perspective.
“UBA’s life was extremely busy but industry-focused: just on UBA and banking. And I was at UBA, more like, at operational level.”  But now, it’s a different type of life—more of a strategic life, looking at bigger pictures and interests,” he says.
Now he has a lot more speaking engagements within and outside Nigeria. Most recently, in April, there were appearances and speeches in Washington, D.C.: at the International Finance Corporation headquarters; the Global Philanthropy Forum Annual Conference and a meeting of the World Bank Group Advisory Council of Global Foundation Leaders.
I’m curious to know how things would have worked out had he not left UBA when he did. From the readiness of his answer, it’s clear that it’s something he has thought about.
“If I didn’t leave UBA when I did, two things would have happened: one; I’d still have continued to see life from that micro-perspective, and think this is just everything about life—competition&#8230; But today one has transcended to a different level where you look at your business interests, you look at mankind, you look at society, you look at the interplay of societal forces that shape the system, the economy of the country, the continent. You’re looking at advocacy, trying to make sure there’s good governance because good governance brings economic prosperity and social wealth. You’re also trying to do good; to give back to society in a more impactful way, to mentor others&#8230;”
Again and again Elumelu sounds like a business professor addressing a class. Words and phrases like “sustainable”, “impacting”, “good/better society”, “good governance”, “full potential” crop up regularly.
When I ask him what he would title his autobiography, the motivational speaker within him takes over.
“I like to make people understand that there is no glass ceiling, that you are who you want to be; that if I can, you too can&#8230; I was not the most brilliant in school, and I also did not have all the resources growing up, to have everything I wanted. But I had a determination, I had a purpose, nothing in my life happened by chance&#8230; and I think people can become what they aspire to be.”
In the end we conclude that the phrase “glass ceiling” is likely to feature in the title of the book.
At our second meeting he deflects my attempts to get him to declare his net worth. “It’s not how much we’re worth but the amount of impact we make. Why boast that one is worth a certain amount when there’s so much poverty around. I will assess my wealth based on the [number of jobs] I create through my economic investments,” he says.
As the curtains rise onstage for act two, Elumelu joins a set of Nigerian CEOs and billionaires who are redefining the rules of the retirement game. Gone, it seems, are those days when, after quitting the roles that brought them to national prominence, CEOs settled for a life of sitting passively on company boards; playing golf; attending social functions; chairing book launches—and handing out scholarships to indigent students. More retiring Nigerian CEOs, it seems, are carrying C-suite thinking along with them into the retirement zone.
“We’ve had a trend in the past where it was more of donating monies to society, but I personally believe that this is not the age and time for that. Donations are good, but to a large extent we should do it in a way and manner that is sustainable, we should make it have more meaning and impact,” he says.
Given a choice between giving out a million dollars in scholarships, and using the money to fund advocacy that could positively influence the government’s education policy and help expand citizens’ access to education, he insists he’d settle for the former.
“It might not sound too populist, and people might not even appreciate what you’re doing, but indeed it has the most significant impact for society,” he says.
After laughing at my questions about the possibilities of a third phase, Elumelu is ready with an answer. I realize that he’s assumed, rightly, that I’m hinting at full-time politics.
“I believe that everyone cannot be a king, and at times, you know, kingmakers are more powerful. I think that I’m very content with this second phase, more so that I’m able to combine business with advocacy, in a manner that is sustainable,” he says.
He proceeds to lecture me on “natural human progression”.
“There’s the age of acquisition, after that [there’s the] age of social order, social wealth, happiness for all—you need to think of how you want to be remembered and [helped] change the system. There could also be a third phase of, ‘you know what, let’s go and do it, let’s get things done’, but I think one has to know one’s limitations, strengths and capabilities. So instead of all of us being involved in government, we can be outside and support the government to achieve growth and prosperity.”
Around the world bankers are prime candidates for the backlash against the excesses of capitalism. I ask about what it means to be a member of the “1%” (and I’m interpreting this loosely; hinting at the fact that he belongs to the moneyed class). He laughs, and then sets out his thoughts on the state of the world. He draws from foundational economics philosophy—the work of Lenin and Marx—to make his point.
Elumelu thinks governments should take the bulk of the blame for the global economic crisis.
“To a large extent we are failing to hold those we should hold accountable for what’s happening—the governments that have failed to either create the right environment, or to block the loopholes&#8230; I do not think that the world should be negative towards successful businesspeople. What is important is the kind of governance framework we put in place to make sure that successful people do not exploit those who are not so privileged.”
He is standing up for his capitalist constituency, but in this new phase of his life, the larger society counts just as much.
“Why is it important to companies that a country has a huge population and huge purchasing power, that income per capita is high?” he asks. “Because those are predisposing factors to good business—it means it is in our collective interest that people who are at the bottom of the pyramid are also able to afford certain things.”
That task—of reconciling the hard-nosed demands of the bottom-line with the interests and well-being of the pyramid-bottom—it seems to me, is what the second act of Tony Elumelu is all about. And he is going about it with the same passion, and intelligence, with which he built one of the largest banking institutions in Africa.

Tag: Energy

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