One of the biggest challenges businesses in Africa face is short lifespan tied to the life of the founder. This has led to a bigger problem whereby the death of a founder or business leader leads not only to the death of the business, but also the ideas that conceived, birthed, nurtured and grow the business to whatever heights they get to.
This near absence of documentation, engagements, or shared experiences has become the bane of knowledge deficit in the Nigerian entrepreneurial circle such that younger generation of business leaders have little or nothing they can learn, imitate, or replicate from the successes of the older generations. This became even more troubling because most Nigerian business leaders especially of the baby boom generations, and generation X hardly write, talk or share their experiences.
To mitigate this huge loss of knowledge, and ideas, the GlobalMentorBridge, a global mentorship platform dedicated to tackling cross generational knowledge deficit within the business community through the facilitation mentoring, reverse-mentoring, and purpose-driven networking, to bridge generational, sectoral, and geographical gaps will hosts a special summit this Saturday 3rd August, 2024 in Lagos.
Themed Beyond Ideas, this special business summit aims at bringing business leaders, across all sectors of the Nigerian economy but most especially entrepreneurs and startups for a time of cross pollination of ideas, sharing knowledge, networking and mentoring.
The event will be bringing together some of these business and organisational leaders together to share how they moved from ideas to building the successful businesses in Nigeria today. They will share experiences on how they continue to build and scale their businesses beyond ideas in spite of the socio-economic challenges which continue to plague our society.
According to Jane Oma, the convener, “Our goal is to build a global platform that will help experienced business leaders and startup founders – no matter the age – foster meaningful connections, network, knowledge and skill exchange, as well as to encourage the use of mentoring as an effective tool to build bridges.”
“This year’s Gala seeks to inspire more business leaders to move beyond ideas and limitations to actively promoting sustainability and knowledge transfer across generations, sectors, and geographies through mentoring, reverse-mentoring, and purpose-driven networking, she added.
A minimum of 200 business leaders, management executives and startup founders to register for and attend the event and then connect, share with and learn from each other and subsequently build mentoring and reverse mentoring relationships amongst themselves, and this is expected to help both the older business elites and the younger startup founders to tap into one another’s strengths, collaborate better, learn from and share knowledge, network as well as other resources.
Some of the speakers include Ms. Ifeoma Malo, the CEO and co-founder of Clean Technology Hub, Abuja who will be sharing on the topic – “Building Clean Technology Hub – Attracting and Nurturing top Talents into Global Leaders.” Mr. Don Ebubeogu, the CEO/MD of Tiger Foods will speak about “The case of Tiger Foods – The Power of Mentorship to drive Collaboration, Innovation and Strong Business Leadership, while Abimbola Adebakin, founder and CEO of Advantage Health Africa will speak on “Leading Advantage Health Africa”
Others are Babatunde Akin-Moses, co-founder and CEO of Sycamore NG who will highlight on the place of mentoring across different areas and sectors, Dr Clement Obadimu, CEO and Principal Partner, Mentor Tower will speak on “The place of mentoring and reverse mentoring in organisational, professional and Personal Growth,” while Mrs. Modupe Ehirim – CEO and Principal Partner, MOE Advisory Ltd will be sharing about “The Importance of Mentoring for a healthy Family Life and its impact of our overall lives.”
Shehu Zubairu, Senior Partner at Human Capital Partners will guide the conversation about “Being a Pace Setter – Organisational and Personal Growth.” Mayowa Adeosun, Co-founder and COO, Sycamore NG will speak on “Decision making, Managing Change – moving from England to Nigeria and to co-founding Sycamore,” Dr Tochukwu MacFoy, Founder Energize Africa will share on “Staying ahead of industry specific knowledge, emerging technologies and global best practices.” It will be followed by Mr. Regis Ohia, CEO Varosi Real Estate Group who will enlighten the participants on “Gaining Competitive advantage in the Real Estate Industry.”
This year’s summit attracted collaborations with some Nigerian businesses, startups and international groups such as the Al-Hussein Technical University, Amman Jordan. It could be recalled that in June, GlobalMentoreBridge held its summit in Jordan in partnership with the University where the President of the University Dr. Ismail Hinti was a keynote speaker among other notable business leaders from around the Middle East and the United States. That event had a combined reach of about 1.1 million people covering both in person and online views.