UBA Africa Conversations: Baci, Omogiafo, Others Urge Youths To Explore Untapped Opportunities For Innovation

Young Africans have been advised to imbibe entrepreneurial spirit and explore untapped opportunities for business innovation and growth.

The quest for advancing the development of the African continent has continued to dominate discourse for decades.

At the Africa Day event organised by the United Bank for Africa (UBA) in commemoration of African unity, entrepreneurs and corporate executives highlighted the important roles citizens of the continents can play for growth through exploring innovative trends.

The 5^th edition of the annual UBA Conversations held at the Tony Elumelu Amphitheater, UBA House on Wednesday, May 24th, 2023, focused on the theme “Innovating the Continent for Growth.” The conversation provided opportunity for the African and global audience to gain insights from diverse panelists on tips to overcome challenges and grab opportunities to attain success in respective endeavours.

 

Speaking during a panel session, Owen Omogiafo, President/Group CEO, Transcorp Plc, said there is a beehive of untapped opportunities in Africa. She advised young people to be diligent, focused and always dispose themselves to learning new vital skills that would help them in any area of business they want to engage in rather than sitting idle and feeling that nothing can be done to be economically empowered.

Omogiafo, who joined the Transcorp as Executive Director, Corporate Services in July 2018, and later appointed as the MD and CEO of Transcorp Hotels Plc, said opportunities for economic success abound but the young people should be ready to work hard and achieve their dreams.

“In the continent, we indeed still have a lot of untapped opportunities. When you come to banking, they tell you about the unbanked. We’ve seen fintech companies springing up today. Why are they springing up? It is because there is an opportunity. I want to tell the young Africans listening that Africa is a place to be but you should understand something that nobody is going to give it to you on a platter of gold. You must have a vision, work hard, discipline yourself, and learn,” Omogiafo advised.

Dwelling on innovation, she spoke about various innovative projects of Transcorp group in hospitality, energy and power, and the disruptive tendencies of those investments.

She said that the concept of improvement in business is that one identifies gaps in the market keeps on innovating and reinventing in line with the needs of the people. For the power sector, specifically, she said the company understood that power has become the lifeblood and is going to be a game changer for Africa development, hence the decision to invest in it.

Executive Director/CEO, UBA Africa, Abiola Bawuah, said innovation means adding value to what one is doing in a business. She noted that UBA by its management strategy is leading in innovation.

Bawuah, who is the first female CEO of UBA Africa, said the gesture of giving women opportunity to take management positions and even becoming CEO in the bank is disruptive in itself and has brought significant results. She said that her appointment as CEO in the Bank has made other financial institutions across Africa to follow suit as they came to realize the benefit of doing so. She hailed the Group Chairman of UBA, Tony Elumelu, for his visionary leadership, saying he is the “Chief innovator”.

Speaking further on the innovative strategies of the Bank, she also observed that the leadership outlook shows the bank top executives are spread across Africa, reflecting the pan-African philosophy of the company.

She said UBA is leading the charge for positive change, raising awareness about women empowerment.

She added that the opportunity of serving as CEO has made her put in more effort to achieve success.

“To be given an opportunity as a female to serve as a CEO, I told myself that this is an opportunity to prove that what they think women can’t do can be done. So, I think that what has happened in UBA, for me, is a complete innovation of ideas, changing the status quo; telling the girl child, ‘you can make it.”

Bawuah said the glass ceiling has been broken and charged women, especially the girl child to explore opportunities to attain higher goals and no longer hide under the excuse that it is the men’s world.

Other members of the panel that made robust contributions in the discussion, include award-winning Foodpreneur/Chef, Hilda Baci; renowned Fashion Designer, Banke Lawson-Kuku and Business & Technology Executive; Folusho Gbadamosi.

Baci, a chef, actress, and TV producer, who recently won the Guinness World Record for marathon cooking, said people’s needs are constantly changing, demanding that the entrepreneur should always evolve strategies to meet those needs.

“If you want to survive in the business world, it’s important that you’re constantly thinking of ways to make life easier for the people that you’re providing a service to, or you’re selling a product to,” Baci admonished.

She also stressed the need for collaboration in the education industry for people to acquire the right skills. She advised young people to imbibe the culture of reading, especially business related ones to gain deeper insights on how to manage one successfully even without going to business school.

Folusho Gbadamosi said the youth should leverage technology to advance their knowledge on vital skills to be empowered.

Gbadamosi, a business leader at Junior Achievement Nigeria, who is  an advocate of using technology to drive literacy and business sustainability across Africa, said youths need to imbibe the idea of innovation because they constitute majority of the population for instance in Nigeria.

“We have 70 per cent of Youth population in Nigeria. There is no innovation without 70 per cent. I mean, they are the whole population.  For me, innovation is being very, very intentional about bringing positive change to that 70 per cent so that they can then bring forth what the continent needs.”

Gbadamosi predicted that with the advancement of technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is bound to be a lot of disruptive changes in the tech world. She also emphasized the need for governments to be very intentional about education of the people to equip them with the right skills needed in the 21^st century industries.

She also called on authorities to adopt appropriate regulations that help to enhance the tech ecosystem in the African continent.

Fashion Designer, Banke Lawson-Kuku, averred that innovation is a continuous process in all aspect of one’s business.

Noting that evolving new strategies for marketing, helped her succeed in the fashion business that was caught up with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, Lawson-Kuku said that to succeed in a business requires patience, persistence, and discipline.

“In midst of the pandemic, we had to get online, get a website and to started selling online and it just has to keep moving with life. So you have to be innovative with your design. Also, behind the scenes in terms of production you have to be innovative in terms of how you produce, make sure that your production line really matches your environment.”

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Earlier in his opening remarks, the Group Managing Director (GMD), Oliver Alawuba, said there are vast opportunities, talents and resources in Africa that need to be unlocked, stressing that individuals and corporate organisation need to collaborate and innovate to create the change needed to develop the continent.

“In Africa, we have a continent of vast opportunities, talents and resources that we need to unlock. So we as individuals as corporate, need to collaborate with each other to innovate and create the change needed to develop this continent. The time to develop it is now and the people to develop it are we here. No one but we can develop Africa,” Alawuba stated.

He further noted that UBA is highly committed to Africa becoming a great continent in the future.

He said one of the key things the bank has been doing is developing programmes that address challenges that African women are going through in their business and in their workplaces.

“At UBA, we are the bank with the highest number of female directors on the board. Over 50 of our board members are females and out of those females we have three executive directors that are females,” the UBA GMD added.