ET Now Global Business Summit: ET GBS 2026: It’s time for India to hop aboard Africa’s Entrepreneurship Express
“We tend to excel in absolutely everything we do. I believe that literally every African is actually an entrepreneur within himself. Africa is not devoid of any of these assets. We are rising, we are entrepreneurial and we give absolutely 100% in everything we do,” he said during the session titled ‘Entrepreneurship in an Emerging Africa’.
He said that someone who does not already have an African partner in India should do this.
“Some of these problems and some of the challenges we often face have become our superpowers,” he said. “Some of the superpowers that we have on our continent include being 1.4 million people. We have the youngest workforce in the world. The average age of an African right now is 19. So if you look at your future workforce and your future consumers, they’re going to be in Africa.” “If you are not already trading or doing business in Africa, it is really time to do so,” he emphasized. “We are driven by the gaps we see and that is what drives entrepreneurs on the continent. There are fast-tech hubs in Nairobi, Nigeria and other cities,” Abudu said. he said. “We do not have a shortage of natural resources… 70% of the world’s cobalt comes from Africa. Lithium, copper reserves, of course oil and gas, especially in my country, Nigeria. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, 70% of the world’s cocoa come from Africa. A large part of coffee and tea comes from our continent.”
“But I am happy to export the media we have consumed for the longest time to the rest of the world,” he said. “For the longest time, we’ve consumed Western media. We’ve left it up to them to tell us who we are, and our stories come from their perspective. How about we take some responsibility, take some ownership of our storytelling?”
Nigeria is one of the continent’s biggest film producers, close to Bollywood in terms of the number of films.
