The Chief Operating Officer of Apex Network, Joy Alabi-Hundeyin, has asserted that fewer than 10 companies in Nigeria have managed to remain in operation for over 100 years.
She disclosed this in her remarks at the Apex Tech Summit held recently at the Landmark Event Centre in Lagos.
She said, “While countries like Japan boast of more than 60,000 century-old companies, Germany has over 20,000, and France over 10,000, we have just about seven century-old companies in Nigeria. In Africa, there are a little over 200, despite having 54 countries, meaning only about 200 companies have lived 100 years and are still in operation. Guess what? In the whole of Nigeria, fewer than ten companies have lived for over 100 years.
She added, “Nigeria having less than 10 century-old companies and Africa as a whole having barely 200 is not a reflection of a lack of intelligence or absence of commerce, but rather the result of deep-rooted structural, economic, and socio-cultural challenges. Many African businesses face volatile political environments, weak institutional frameworks, inconsistent policies, poor access to long-term financing, and inadequate infrastructure, factors that make it difficult for companies to survive across generations.
“Coupled with periods of colonisation, post-colonisation hardship, economic instability, currency devaluation, and shifts in ownership structures, businesses often struggle to build the resilience required for longevity. In contrast, countries like Germany and Japan have enjoyed more stable policy environments, deliberate succession planning, and strong support for family-owned enterprises, allowing tens of thousands of companies to thrive for over a century.
“Longevity, therefore, is less about innovation capacity or market size and more about the enabling environment that sustains businesses through multiple economic and political cycles.”
According to Alabi-Hundeyin, it is essential to treat business ownership and business leadership as two different entities, which they are.
She advised, “Owning a business or founding a business need not necessitate one to be the core leader of it; that you own a business does not mean you must lead it, and vice versa. You could be leading a business in another industry while being a 4th-generation owner of another. These are realities we must begin to experience in Africa, which we can achieve when we plan our business leadership right from the get-go. Identifying the best successor in business leadership is just as crucial to making revenue growth; this ought to be a qualitative business analytical metric.”
She further stressed the importance of futuristic delegation and assigning responsibilities that may exceed current capacities to build future competencies in those we lead.
She concluded, “While delegation remains a debated concept in African business circles, power has long been wrongly equated with control, a narrative that must be dismantled if we are to achieve agile, effective, and sustainable business growth. Encouragingly, there is a growing shift toward embracing the ideology of delegation, not merely in words but increasingly in practice, as leaders adopt more agile approaches to leadership.
“When was the last time you went into a banking hall? Because banking halls are quickly becoming like the post offices for our parents, things are changing so quickly; most of us have embraced and accepted the dynamism of technology dynamics, so also its leadership dynamism has become more agile than that of technology.
“Hence, the adopted survival mode that our fathers bought on, due to the commerce irregularity, lack of basic amenities and extreme hardship aftermath of colonialism, made us toss off our natural adventurousness, innovativeness, documentation and value in our discoveries. We must now ditch the survival mode in business building and embrace the legacy mindset in building businesses that can live one, three, four or more generations.”
