Where are Nigeria’s executives?
How do we create more Mr Akin’s?
I have argued in many of my articles that Nigeria needs to entrepreneurialise and that founders/entrepreneurs are essential for growth in Nigeria and across Africa. However, I haven’t highlighted the dearth of talented senior executives in Nigeria and the essential role their expertise plays in corporate and economic growth. This article will focus on this group of people, that Nigeria needs just as desperately as their more-talked-about entrepreneur counterparts.
Why executives matter
A study by consulting firm Russell Reynold’s points out that businesses operating in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa face a growing executive talent gap especially with regard to traditional management skills such as team building and change management.
All growing companies find that they have an increasing need for executives and since executive decisions can make or break the business, every company wants the best.
Entrepreneurship is about going for the things that are much bigger than one person could do alone
The job of an entrepreneur isn’t to reach the goal; it’s to build a dream team that will reach the goal. The success of any business depends heavily on the effectiveness of its executives. Good executives need to make the right decisions and ensure the business is able to exploit any opportunities open to it. At the same time, good executives protect the business by anticipating and acting against any threats to its welfare.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is seen as the most challenging market in which to recruit high-level talent. Lets look into some of the reasons why that maybe the case.
Immature capitalism
One of the most obvious reasons may be that Nigeria and many African countries are new to organized capitalism. While trade existed early in African history, it was not capitalism. Modern capitalism had fully emerged by the early modern period between the 16th and 18th centuries in Europe, with the establishment of mercantilism or merchant capitalism.
However, trade was still predominant in Africa. Most of the first bankable Nigerian companies are less than a generation old.
Economist Joyce Appleby explains in this video why she believes that capitalism isn’t an economic system, but a culture. Have the type of critical thinking skills, innovation, efficiency & financial savvy historically been part of our culture? Or is it something we are developing?
This relative immaturity may be the reason why Nigeria and most other African countries have not developed an executive culture. Our education systems still don’t fit the needs of the market and our political governance is often disengaged from market realities.
Poor education system
8 of the 10 countries with the lowest pre-primary net enrollment rates are in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, Africa’s working age population (15–64 years) continues to grow at a rapid pace. By 2040, the world’s largest labor force will be in Africa with an estimated working age population of 1 billion
With the birth & commercialization of AI, the internet of things and 3-D printing; what could such a large number of African young people contribute to the world, unless they are educated?
When it comes to executive education, business schools perform just as poorly. The University of Cape Town is the only African higher education institution that made it into the Financial Times top 100 MBA programs in the world.
This is likely to be another reason why we don’t produce enough talented executives.
Brain drain
The African diaspora is an important source of talent ,but historically has been hard to tap into; according to the Russell and Reynolds study. There is a reason why these people left Africa in the first place. The conditions in Africa haven’t improved since they left. So understandably, many African’s based in the diaspora are reluctant to return.
Similarly, many executives/professionals that have the opportunity to work abroad, leave for ‘greener pastures’ further depleting the continent’s stock of executive talent.
Economic terrorists/Political rent seekers
South Africa features prominently on the Economists ‘crony capitalism’ index. Other crony’s across Africa are still too poor to make it onto the Economists list.
But evidence from the chart below reveals a stark difference in the numbers of crony capitalists in developing countries vs developed countries. One of the consequences of living in a developing country like Nigeria where crony capitalism is rife, is lack of good executives.
When the revenue of every big company relies on the founder’s friendship with a government official, not innovation, strategy and grit, executive skills are not developed. This creates entire companies filled with ‘senior managers’ who are unable to think, reason, develop themselves or compete with their counterparts in the developed world.
Solutions
The great paradox is that whilst companies are struggling to find talented, smart, youthful executives, young people in Africa make up nearly 40 percent of the working-age population!
Yet 60 percent are unemployed. On average, it will take a university graduate five years to obtain a job in Africa.
To address these challenges early on, companies should invest in building their own talent pipeline, develop leaders in-house and encourage greater mobility among staff. To pool talent and achieve scale, companies should consider forming partnerships for leadership development.
Young people should also engage in greater levels of self-development using online platforms such as youtube, udemy and other educational platforms to develop their skills . These are some of the ways that we can ensure that African companies have the expert executive leaders that are essential for us to build globally competitive companies. Hopefully Africa will produce more “Mr Akin’s” in the years to come ;-)
