Silas Zimu, one of the key players in South Africa’s fast-expanding renewable energy sector, says the seminal climate change documentary by Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, was the trigger for his new focus, the development of green energy in Africa.
Zimu, 46, took up the position of chief executive officer of the South African unit of Indian wind power company, Suzlon Energy in 2010, after years working for power utilities that relied almost entirely on coal.
“It changed my outlook so much I started searching for green solutions,” he says.
After running City Power Johannesburg, a parastatal electricity distribution company, for three years, Zimu came to Suzlon with 19 years’ of experience in South Africa’s power industry, including senior roles at the country’s power monopoly, Eskom.
He has now played a part in securing two of the government’s wind power contracts, which will involve billions of rands of investments.
Under his stewardship, the group, one of the world’s leading wind turbine makers, has already started building 66 wind turbines near Cookhouse in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. When the units are completed by 2016 it intends to sell power through Eskom’s national grid by 2016. It is the biggest renewable tender awarded in the first round of government tenders.
Suzlon will operate and maintain the turbines energy project selected during round one of the government’s Department of Energy’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPPP). The awarding of tenders through the program has been a long time coming, with the policy amended at least once, leaving potential investors somewhat confused for a time.
The Cookhouse Wind Farm is being developed in partnership with African Clean Energy Developments (ACED), described as a South African-based renewable energy project developer, owned jointly by Old Mutual-owned African Infrastructure Investment Managers AFPOC Limited.
Fulfilling government’s desire that South Africa, in terms of job creation and the local communities, benefits from the renewable tenders, the Cookhouse Wind Farm Community Trust holds 25% equity in the project. It is anticipated that the local communities of Cookhouse, Bedford and Somerset East will be beneficiaries of the trust.
“The strategy is to make Suzlon a company that embraces empowerment in South Africa, to manufacture in the country and have offices here. We have a locally-appointed team. We know the playing field and know what we should be aiming for, while understanding government’s renewable framework. The last few years have been tough, but this is the risk one had to take,” says Zimu.
This partnership was part of the awarding of the first government tender. Under the REIPPP, government has said it wants 1,850 megwatts (MW) to be provided by a variety of renewable power sources annualy; this includes wind, solar and power generated from biomass. It hopes to have this much on line by 2021, adding to the country’s current installed capacity of about 40,000 MW.
When Suzlon SA won its first tender, Zimu says friends and family threw a surprise party for him, but he says,
“I would like to celebrate when the first megawatt is generated”.
Zimu, who has a Master’s in engineering, has a 20% stake in Suzlon’s South African unit. It is part of Suzlon Energy, which is the world’s fifth biggest vertically integrated wind turbine maker. He sits on the executive committee of the global group, which is based in Pune, India.
The first project will import the turbines and steel towers to assemble the windmills but Suzlon energy SA is planning to form an operations and maintenance company that will be South African-based.
The intention is to build the steel towers in South Africa for a second project. Zimu says the group has already been awarded a second contract. It will be announced in the next few months.
“We are working towards financial close on that.”
South Africa plans three rounds of bidding for renewable energy projects in the second round Suzlon again secured the biggest allocation in terms of power it will produce. The two projects combined, when up and running, will make Suzlon the second biggest wind turbine company in the country.
South Africa’s desire to build up its green energy sector to reduce its reliance on coal, head off potential power shortages, and meet ambitious targets for slashing greenhouse gas emissions is attracting assistance from other countries. Zimu expects companies like Suzlon to benefit.
In March, Denmark said it would work with the South African government towards its meeting of its renewable goals. The Danish government said in a statement that before the transition from coal to wind energy can take place, wind resources must be mapped and the power grid regulated to allow wind energy to be exploited to the fullest possible extent.
“If we can assist a country like South Africa to convert to more renewable, energy efficient power sources, the climate as a whole will benefit. In 2009, South Africa’s carbon dioxide emissions constituted half of Africa’s total emissions,” says Martin Lidegaard, the Danish minister for climate, energy and building.
Currently South Africa boasts some of the world’s biggest coal-fired power plants and generates some energy from nuclear, natural gas and hydropower sources. While crippling power outages in 2008 forced Eskom to press ahead with two major coal projects, the country’s aim is to spread its power generation across a number of technologies to take advantage of the nation’s abundant wind and solar power potential. Ambitious solar, wave power, hydro and biomass initiatives are also being considered.
Zimu says that Eskom has the capacity to make all the grid connections and the Danish government may help government develop a policy on grid codes.
Zimu is leading Suzlon’s charge into other African countries.
“We have been awarded work in Mauritius and are interested in tenders in Kenya and Namibia,” he says.
It also presented submissions for work in Madagascar and has been invited to visit interested parties in Nigeria, Angola and Ghana.
“I think South Africa is showing other African states the way,” says Zimu.
Even so, other African countries such as Morocco and Kenya are developing ambitious projects of their own. In Kenya the $800 million Lake Turkana Wind Power project is billed as the continent’s biggest and is expected to generate 300MW of electricity.
However, GDF Suez of French and Moroccan company Nareva Holding plan to build a plant of the same size in the desert region of the North African country. Morocco is planning to have 2,000MW of installed wind power by 2020. Lesotho, the mountainous country landlocked by in South Africa, has its own ambitious.
On whether the costs of wind power compare favorably to those of other renewables, Zimu pointed out that solar is more expensive and says wind energy can compete with projects powered by biofuels.
“My vision is to go green, generate green energy [and] create green jobs”.

Money  In The Wind

Less than nine months after the shooting that shocked the world, conflict and tension are back at the richest mines in Africa. Thirty four miners were shot and killed, on August 16, following a week of wildcat strikes in Marikana, South Africa. Now the platinum belt is at war once again.
Miners at Lonmin downed tools for two days following the death of a union leader. The wildcat strike sent share prices tumbling a day after the company had posted positive results. Lonmin shares fell more than 10% over the two days while the rand retreated to a three-week low against the dollar, on fears that the unrest might spread across a sector that accounts for nearly half of South Africa’s foreign exchange earnings.
As an inquiry into the deaths of the 34 miners continued around 40kms away, in Rustenburg, hundreds of miners belonging to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) marched to the infamous koppie, where the massacre occurred.
In 2012, the strike was over wages; this time around it was union rivalry. Amcu accused the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of killing one of their office bearers. NUM denies it. Amcu, which has 70% of the membership at Lonmin, is demanding NUM leave their offices at the mine.
In the scorching heat of Marikana, it was a menacing site as miners chanted and danced their way to Wonderkop Stadium. More than 6,000 Amcu members chanted anti-NUM slogans and sang: “Who killed Steve, the man we loved so much”. This referred to the killing of 46-year-old Mawethu Steven, a shop steward who was shot dead while watching football at a tavern on May 11.
“If they have proof of us committing the killings then they must take it to the police,” says Lesiba Seshoka, spokesperson of NUM.
Following a marathon of meetings with Lonmin management, Amcu regional leaders addressed members at the packed stadium just after 4PM on a day where they vowed not to return to work until Lonmin management had kicked out NUM.
Addressing members, who were sitting on the grass using a loudspeaker system, an Amcu leader said the meeting they had attended yielded no results, as Lonmin management had declined to shut down NUM offices.
“The main issue at the meeting was our demand for the closure of NUM offices. After a meeting that started at 5AM, there’s nothing we’re bringing to you. What they [Lonmin] are saying is that they want you to go back to work,” says the leader.
Members reacted angrily and refused to go back to work at the 13 shafts that lay idle at Lonmin. Following deliberations, the leaders invited six workers from the 13 shafts, which have been affected by the strike to respond to the outcome of the meeting.
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All six workers said their co-workers would not return to work because management and government are colluding with NUM. They added that they [Lonmin and government] are allowing their members to carry dangerous weapons to the shafts.
“The employer is clearly showing that he is sleeping with NUM and government. We are not going back to work until NUM vacates the mine,” he says.
Another miner refusing to go back to work said: “What management is saying is the same as farting under water—you can’t hear it”.
Three days later, miners made a U-turn and returned underground.
Meanwhile at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) Rustenburg, the planned retrenchment of 6,000 miners is set to get ugly. Miners are prepared to fight back and embark on a massive strike that will halt production and send shockwaves around platinum shares.
Workers committee member Evans Ramokga says the company is not backing down on retrenchments, and workers had taken it upon themselves to fight. He says after mass meetings at different shafts, workers have decided to go on strike.
“Unions have done their part and negotiated on our behalves. Now the workers have decided to lead their cause. No one is happy about the retrenchments. Workers are saying if Amplats cannot run the mines they must leave and surrender the mines to another company that will save jobs,” says Ramokga.
Meanwhile on May 21, security guards fired rubber bullets at strikers at Lanxess mine, Rustenburg—one of the biggest suppliers of chrome ore. Five people were injured. The illegal strike was over bonuses.
Days of unrest lie ahead.

The Ghosts Of Marikana

A new generation of African entrepreneurs and businesses is emerging. They are challenging the old way of doing business and driving cross-border growth.
Kenya’s ICT companies are investing in Rwanda and are now looking to enter Nigeria, while United Bank for Africa and other Nigerian banks are rapidly expanding into Africa. In 2009, South Africa invested $1.6 billion (FDI outflows) into other African countries. MTN, a South African mobile giant, operates in 21 African countries; and Glo, a Nigerian mobile operator, operates in the Republic of Benin, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Africa’s statistics speak of tremendous potential: the continent is the size of China, Mexico, Europe, India, the States and Japan combined. The population will soon surpass China, with a middle class as big as India’s. Africa has enjoyed more than a decade of sustained GDP growth, which has often outstripped many other parts of the world.
There is frustration in that Africans are not reaping the rewards of the current global investor confidence. The mass export of commodities doesn’t see wealth trickle down.
Home-grown investments, focused on value-adding industries, are the key to changing this dynamic.
Africans still seem to choose products and investments from outside the continent. They prefer to export outside Africa rather than to trade, manufacture and add value within. Many African countries continue to trade raw materials but they don’t have the capability to refine or process, so they import the finished products from outside of Africa.
We need to understand what is preventing Africa from being home to value-adding and value-creating businesses. Why, for example, is Africa’s agricultural richness not generating an integrated growing and processing industry as it has done in Brazil?
Africa requires an environment that facilitates investment and greater market integration. The current weaknesses—corruption, high start-up costs, poor infrastructure—are well-known. But our study will also shed light on the legal, social and cultural differences within Africa that restrict cross-border investments.
There need to be integrated regional production chains within Africa, where Africa’s raw materials are processed into finished goods to be traded. Regional trading blocs— including the Tripartite Free Trade Area, which encompasses the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community—would thus thrive, paving the way for a Continental Free Trade Area, that would produce and trade high value-added goods internally.
Greater market integration in Africa will lead to a significant reduction in the cost of doing business and alleviate some of the problems associated with securing work permits and labor mobility.
Over the long-term, Africa’s competitiveness will hinge to a great degree on how well we educate our young people. Often, the most talented Africans have sought educational advancement and careers overseas, but a combination of transformational educational technology, growing opportunities at home and the poor global economic climate could see this brain drain becoming a brain gain. Retaining talent, home-grown or otherwise, is critical. Policy that enables skilled Africans to work across our borders more easily will help achieve this goal.
Never have circumstances been more propitious for African business. A rise in disposable incomes, high rates of urbanization and a fast-growing working-age population speak of an emerging class of purchasers of consumer goods, financial services and infrastructure, as well as a potential source of manpower for industrialization and agricultural development.
Africans must explore ways to move beyond regional differences and competition to build Africa together from within, so that Africans at all levels become the primary beneficiaries of the continent’s growth.

Unite And Prosper

The lines were drawn across a giant map of Africa at this gathering of the great and the good in business, in Cape Town. The expensive business of pouring billions of dollars into making these lines on a map into trade routes plied by high-speed planes, trains and trucks, will make-or-break of the African dream.
More than 1,000 delegates arrived at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cape Town, on May 9, to discuss the practicalities of building infrastructure to nurture the emerging economies of Africa. It is a herculean task, to say the least, with the World Bank estimating the continent needs $93 billion to complete the job. Experts say the cost may be much more.
Plans have been drawn up for trade corridors traversing the continent. They include: a swifter trade route between oil-rich Angola and South Africa; plus, an ambitious plan to improve the rails, roads, ports and airports between Cape Town and Cairo—a dream that is likely to have the old colonialist, Cecil John Rhodes, chuckling in his grave in the Matopos Hills, near Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.
“It is ironic that democratic African nations, that have turned their back on colonialism, are trying to revive a plan hatched by the colonialist Cecil Rhodes more than a century ago,” says Ebrahim Patel, South Africa’s economic development minister.
To execute these plans, experts have drawn up a list of 50 priority projects that will be whittled down to 15 in the next six months. They include the expansion of the Grand Inga Dam hydroelectric plan in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the boosting of infrastructure to help extract gas from the waters off the coast of Mozambique.
“It is a wonderful vision but getting it done is something else,” says Nick Chism, the global head for Infrastructure at KPMG, who has been studying infrastructure worldwide for 20 years.
Chism believes a shortage of skills and finance are likely to be among the biggest hurdles. He also warns there could be tension between nations, before the list of 15 projects is decided, over what is built where.
“The idea is to build infrastructure in hubs, that is, a good airport in one country, a good port in the neighboring country and so on. As you can imagine, each country wants the best of everything built in their own backyard,” says Chism.
Despite these warnings and the dismissal by critics of WEF as a mere talk shop, there was optimism among the millionaires, entrepreneurs, technocrats and government officials, who gathered in Cape Town.
“I think things are starting to gel. We are in a lot better space than we were a decade ago,” says Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s minister of national planning.
Money, in a shallow world capital market, is likely to be the most insurmountable object. But Nigerian entrepreneur, Tony Elumelu, who invested recently in a $300 million power plant at home and put money into the launch of Rwanda’s new commodity exchange, sees hope.
“The best of Africa’s entrepreneurs are seeking investment opportunities in the continent… If we invest in Africa, we will get others to follow,” says Elumelu.
Folorunsho Alakija, reputed to be the richest woman in Africa, with a personal fortune, estimated by FORBES, of $600 million, has made her money through the license to the rich Agbami oil block off the coast of Nigeria. The block has 1.2 billion barrels of oil.
“We shouldn’t be waiting for handouts from other countries; we should get together to make our way forward, by ourselves, to give our people pride… There are plenty of opportunities in agriculture. Nigeria is importing so much rice. I do not think we should be importing anything from anyone,” says Alakija.
If optimism were cash, Africa’s infrastructure problems could be sorted before WEF reconvenes in Nigeria in May.
As it stands, there is a lot of fund raising and tough talking to be done. Cautious investors from New York to Beijing have to be won over. Despite the promise of returns of more than 20%, this is likely to be a hard sell. Africa is rising with an average growth rate of 5% at a time when the rest of the world is at a standstill. Few at this annual talk fest could disagree that the economies are moving, but finance needs to keep pace.

The Near  And Dear Dream

It all started with a coffee addiction. Carl Pretorius drank five to six shots of espresso a day until the caffeine started affecting his health. He looked for an alternative, but he didn’t want decaf, nor tea.
“One late morning, I was about to have another espresso, but was feeling jittery. I literally tore open two Rooibos tea bags and popped the leaves into the espresso machine. That wasn’t really good, but the idea started there,” says Pretorius.
It took him several weeks of refining his attempts to get from the strong tea that came out of the espresso machine that day, in 2005, to the world’s first ‘red espresso’, which today sells all over the world.
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“I experimented with different grinds. Every time I tried a variation it got better, until one day, the consistency was perfect,” says Pretorius.
The flavor was intense, smooth and nutty. And the ritual of drinking a shot of something hot and sweet was similar to that of having an espresso. Then Pretorius added milk to turn the Rooibos espresso into a cappuccino.
“After I tasted it, I knew this really had potential. I got goose bumps,” he says.
Pretorius’ entrepreneurial instinct kicked in. Only six months after putting the first batch of Rooibos into his espresso machine, he filed an application to patent the cut of the tea leaves and preparation method. He then hired an attorney to verify that he was indeed the first person to come up with the idea.
“They did a very thorough global search but there was nothing like it,” he says.
Next, Pretorius checked if there was a market for a tea-based espresso. He visited a friend’s coffee shop in Paarl, in South Africa’s Western Cape province, wrote ‘Rooibos Cappuccino’ on a small chalkboard, sat and waited.
Within a couple of hours, a range of customers had ordered the new beverage. Everyone loved it, giving Pretorius the boost he needed.
He got his friend Pete Ethelston onboard, who invested several million rands, and the two founded Red Espresso. Just a few weeks later, the naturally caffeine-free beverage was sold in the cafés of South African upmarket food and retail chains Woolworths, Mugg &amp; Bean and @Home throughout the country. Suddenly, old-fashioned Rooibos tea was new and sexy.
Pretorius believes it is the product’s authenticity that led to its fast commercial success. Red Espresso is made from 100% export-grade, wild, hand-harvested Rooibos tea. Because it is grown organically, it has a small environmental footprint and is extremely healthy, with 10 times more antioxidants than regular Rooibos tea and five times more than Green tea.
Within six months of serving the first Rooibos cappuccinos in cafés, the demand for a retail product came. Customers liked the coffee alternative so much they wanted to brew their own red espressos at home. Today, the multi-award-winning “tea that plays by coffee’s rules” is available in more than 600 South African stores and 16 countries around the world, with Canada, Portugal and South Korea being the biggest export markets. A move into Germany is planned for the second half of this year.
Expansion plans weren’t always straightforward, though. While Rooibos can be found in almost every South African kitchen, people in most other countries had never heard of this particular herbal tea, grown only in a small region of the Western Cape. As a result, red cappuccinos were a much harder sale overseas.
“We basically have to educate the customer base first,” Pretorius explains.
The company gives Rooibos virgins a taste experience by first introducing red cappuccinos to the food service and only later move into retail.
Early expansion into the United States taught Pretorius and his team a tough but invaluable lesson. Whole Foods Market, a major American chain of natural foods supermarkets, listed Red Espresso as one of their products that would be sold in thousands of stores throughout the country.
“That was a real achievement, but the product didn’t go off the shelves, because nobody knew what it was. We realized that you need to go in slowly, go through food service to create the demand and then go into retail. We had put the cart before the horse and eventually had to pull the product. Now it’s a matter of going back into the US market, but more slowly and probably state by state,” Pretorius says.
The Americans’ increasing affinity for healthy drinks could give Pretorius an extra advantage. According to Beverage Digest magazine, coffee consumption in the United States fell for the first time in decades by 2.3% between 2006 and 2009, while tea drinking increased over the same period by 4.5%.
Pretorius, who still indulges in the odd espresso, says: “We are very excited about that trend. While we don’t try to compete with coffee, we offer coffee drinkers an alternative. And that’s happening.”
He is also eyeing a range of other markets like China and the Far East, where tea drinking has a long tradition and people don’t need to be seduced into trying coffee alternatives.
“Those are exciting markets for us because people there are herbal tea drinkers and keen to try new options,” says Pretorius.
He’s painting the world red, one cup at a time.

Something Red Is Brewing

It’s 10AM on a Thursday on Victoria Island, Lagos; the pulse of the Nigerian financial world is racing. Blue-chip boardrooms buzz; so does the traffic. I’ve eased my way to the serene offices of a man who surveys it all from the 12th floor.
The view is framed by the Atlantic Ocean to the south and some of Nigeria’s richest buildings to the north. From his vantage point, Jim Ovia can pick out the twin pillars of his success. Across the city is the unmistakable red of Zenith Bank, where he made most of his $825-million fortune. Company insiders say that his wealth is nearer $1 billion after a string of lucrative deals this year. Also on the Lagos horizon are Visafone billboards, his telecommunications business and moneymaker, with a current subscriber base of  around 2.3 million.
Inside the huge office are shelves of plaques, awards and photographs of Ovia with Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Goodluck Jonathan, alongside pieces of literature and art.
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Dressed in a well-cut suit, he greets me like an old friend. They call him ‘the godfather of Nigerian banking’ and in many ways, he is. Banking is where he began life as a clerk; it was also the vehicle that carried him to his fortune. He created West Africa’s largest financial services provider, according to market capitalization and assets.
Ovia transformed Zenith from a small commercial bank into a financial services conglomerate, with operations in private and retail banking and investments around the world. After nearly two decades at the helm he stepped down, but he remains its largest individual shareholder with a 15% stake in the company.
“When we started Zenith in 1990, it was extremely difficult as the necessary resources and infrastructure to do business, particularly banking, were not in place. There were no ATMs, no mobile phones and ICT was a rarely known concept in the business space,” he says.
“When, in 1990, banking licenses were being issued, indigenous private individuals were being offered the opportunity to set up financial institutions. Prior to that, you either needed to be a foreign global financial institution, or a federal or state government institution, to own or set up a bank in Nigeria. Businesses and entrepreneurs could not possibly get these licenses because of the prerequisites attached. It was perceived then, that Nigeria did not have the technical expertise to run or manage banks.”
A surge of liberalization soon changed this. On May 30, 1990, doors were opened for Ovia and 119 other hopefuls, who received their bank licenses. It was a long-awaited breakthrough. Ovia and his team got down to work quickly. They commenced operations on July 16 for what proved to be a rocky beginning, with technology very thin on the ground.
Improvisation was the way forward. Ovia had to be creative with the sparse telecommunications and financial services on offer. In time, with the help of improved infrastructure, the bank found its feet.
Ovia saw a silver lining, then noticed the cloud. The introduction of ATMs to Nigeria was not an easy one. It proved difficult to win over people who had grown up with counters and rubber stamps. People worried about fraud and it also took time and feasibility studies to decide where to place the ATMs. Ovia and his team persevered and Zenith blossomed.
Banking isn’t Ovia’s only game. He also owns an expansive real estate portfolio with landmark commercial and residential properties. These include the Civic Centre  and an exclusive boat club, Aquamarine in Lagos, where Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is a member. Ovia is known to have a weakness for expensive boats.
It is his infectious entrepreneurial passion that paid for this lifestyle.
“Your passions are always in sync with opportunities. You’re naturally able to identify them and respond to them as they materialize because of the passion you have for them,” he says.
It is an intuition that has driven Ovia through life as an entrepreneur. Choices came early for the young Ovia, who grew up one of many children in a large family in Akbor in Nigeria’s Delta State. As a young man, Ovia pondered what to study. He was encouraged by his uncles, who had run successful businesses, to pursue a qualification in business administration. To this day, for most Nigerian families, business administration, alongside medicine, law, accounting and engineering are the keys to success. Ovia went for it and enrolled for a degree in business administration at Southern University, Louisiana, in the States.
“It so happened that halfway through my studies, my keen interest in computer science and information technology was heightened… I couldn’t help it and decided to incorporate computer science into my program. One of my uncles advised me against this, as he reckoned that it was an immature industry at that point. Business administration was the way forward,” he says.
Ovia carried on regardless of avuncular warnings.
“Like any young man, I was full of hopes… [there were] tremendous opportunities in the future. It wasn’t so much what you studied but what you did with the knowledge that mattered.”
Ovia earned an MBA from the University of Louisiana, after which he returned to Nigeria to do his National Youth Service Corps, where he worked with one of the government-owned banks. He secured a job with First National Bank of Chicago—then International Merchant Bank—in Lagos, where he was trained as a financial analyst. This was just one of many strings to Ovia’s bow.
“I’ve worked as everything, from a junior clerical officer in a bank to a middle management trainee. I really did work my way up the ladder. I had enjoyed banking as a profession right from the onset and because of the passion I had for it, it became a place that I went to be happy. I worked 16 hours a day and I enjoyed every minute of it,” he says.
Many years later, Ovia knew the business inside-out and nurtured his brainchild, Zenith Bank, to rude health. ICT was the next fertile field.
“The way I see it, all are seamlessly interwoven. You can’t do telecommunications without combining information and vice versa. As part of my interwoven passions, it became my immediate desire, and the next level of evolution for me was the establishment of a mobile phone company,” he says.
Ovia was one of the early players in the internet space and established a company called Cyberspace in 1995, when the internet was almost unheard of in Nigeria.
“We were the pioneering set of internet service providers in the country and it was very challenging back then because there were no submarine fiber optic cables to give us the bandwidth and speed we needed to download data. We then had to rely on satellite dishes that would provide this speed to log into any portal out of the country,” he says.
As the private sector fought steadily for its place, the government kept a firm grasp on major sectors, especially telecommunications. Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) enjoyed a monopoly.
“It had the density of only about 0.04 percent, which equated to about 250 entities and homes sharing a telephone line. There were hardly 450,000 existing lines for an entire population of about 120 million Nigerians then. Today, we have about three other submarine cables that enable high-speed broadband technology internet services in the country.”
Ovia’s telecommunications company, Visafone, was another testament to his faith in timing and instinct. The Nigerian government, after an apparent communications epiphany, decided to license the Global System for Communications (GSM) services to a few bidders. Ovia didn’t participate in this auction—an opportunity every bidder couldn’t afford to miss back then.
“All my attention was focused on building a strong financial institution at that point, I couldn’t afford to be distracted and the timing was unfortunately not good for me. Failure is an opportunity to learn&#8230; You can only succeed when you fail, get up and then run again. I was determined to keep running.”
Ovia’s philosophy on setbacks was useful when a new directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria, on the tenure of bank CEOs, forced him to step down from an organization he had built from scratch.
“I immediately took it in my stride and couldn’t find any reason for resistance… I’m in fact glad that decision was made, because it also opened up tremendous opportunities for me and this allowed me to move on to accomplish new things I wouldn’t have had the time for.”
With this philosophy in mind, Ovia started anew. Along one of the major roads in Victoria Island, Ozumba Mbadiwe, is the waterfront, which used to be refuse dump. A drive along this road saw the genesis of Ovia’s real estate empire.
“I saw an opportunity on this refuse dump and decided to transform it into something else. The result of this foresight is the famous Lagos Civic Centre—a masterpiece event venue on the waterfront. This development immediately opened up other opportunities,” says Ovia.
Lagos, a metropolitan mega-city with a population of around 21 million, scores poorly when it comes to hotel rooms per head. Ovia saw the gap. As the result of a multi million dollar deal, the Lagos Marriott Hotel is set to open in December next year.
“This is one of the ways to create an enabling environment for the future of tourism in Nigeria,” says Ovia.
Philanthropy is equally important to him. He has embarked on the establishment of a free, co-educational high school, James Hope College, in Delta State, the place where he pondered his future as a young man. The school, an 18-month project, launches in September with an initial capacity for 420 students. He is also the founder of Mankind United To Support Total Education (MUSTE), an organization providing scholarships for the underprivileged.
“This will provide an opportunity for our future leaders. It is a mission I’m thrilled to drive, as it is a great investment in the future of my country. The first thing you learn in business is to make profit. However, how you choose to spend the profits is just as important. Philanthropy is important to me as I derive more joy from spending mine this way. You need to give back, reach out to the larger society and less privileged,” he says.
In the past year, Ovia gave $6.3 million to help the rehabilitation of flood victims across Nigeria. He also runs a non-governmental organization for young Nigerians that drives social change through information and communications technologies. Ovia is a father of five and a family man.
“Family is very important and I derive tremendous joy from being with [them]. I’ve always been family-focused. My father had three wives and I have almost a dozen siblings but we’ve always been very close-knit,” he says.
While he is revered by many, Ovia has also been influenced by a few. One of his inspirations is Akintola Williams, the first African to qualify as a chartered accountant, whose firm, Akintola Williams &amp; Co., was founded in 1952. The company merged with two other accounting firms to create Akintola Williams Deloitte, the largest professional services firm in Nigeria today—a position it has held since 2004.
“This 94-year-old man is someone that I have so much respect and gratitude for. He inspired me very greatly, because he’s a man of honor, integrity and an unbelievable level of discipline,” says Ovia.
Ovia learned from many to become the fourth richest man in Nigeria and the 19th richest in Africa. I ask him about his fortune but he becomes reticent.
“Wealth means nothing to me—it’s what you do with it that is truly important. Yes, I am blessed but there is really nothing special about me. I’m just a regular guy who has a hunch for identifying opportunities and taking advantage of them.”
He says that he achieved his success by remaining truthful to every partner and stakeholder.
“Honesty and integrity are key. Always honor contracts. That speaks volumes. It’s very important to be of tremendous integrity. There are really no shortcuts. Those who try to take shortcuts will always fail,” he says.
When it comes to Nigeria and its entrepreneurs, Ovia is fulsome, believing that with improving infrastructure and the privatization of the power sector, the country is a breeding ground for entrepreneurial spirit.
“Nigeria will be a gold mine in the next few years… Every day, international airlines are fully-booked to come to Nigeria and the only reason they do this is because the return on investment here is one of the highest in the world. I’m very proud to be a Nigerian because this country gives… tremendous opportunity to blossom,” he says.
Nigeria is a country that rewards hard work and Ovia says that some foreign investors misunderstand the terrain. The solution, he says, is understanding that while the work is tough, it is very rewarding.
Zenith has seen the fruits of this kind of hard work. This was reflected in the 2012 financial year, as it achieved $634 million profit after tax, according to reports released by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) a grand feat that not only saw it become the first bank to cross the 100 billion naira mark within a financial year, but also reflected an impressive 106.7% growth on the $303.2 million profit after tax recorded for the 2011 financial year.
Zenith is now Nigeria’s largest bank. It recently listed $850-million worth of shares on the London Stock Exchange at $6.80 a share, to improve its liquidity through Global Depository Receipts (GDR). It has a current market capitalization of around $4 billion, according to the NSE.
In recognition of his accomplishments in the banking sector, Ovia was conferred with the national award of the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON) in November 2011.
From these achievements, it may seem to many that Ovia has reached his zenith with a sharp mind that once saw value in a refuse dump.

Tag: June 2013

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