The Achievement of Folorunsho Alakija
Compared with that of Oprah Winfrey
Questions of Business Trajectory, Life Skills and National Economy
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nigeria's Mrs Folorunsho Alakija is being described in some fora as the richest Black woman in the world, replacing US talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
Is there a story in how was this level of wealth was achieved that I and people all over the world can apply to ourselves, that can inspire us in our struggles for success?
Are there skills Alakija exemplifies that one can emulate or develop?
Can one realistically try to adapt her story in one's own life to a greater or lesser degree?
Are there points in the story that have universal value as pointers to how to succeed, perhaps in almost any environment?
From my little knowledge of Oprah, I know she knows how to talk.
She is a show-woman, a woman who creates a sense of theatre.
Her show seems to have been made popular by its confessional angle, where people bared their lives.
I also understand that she integrated a self help philosophy into the show along with book readings.
I also know that she describes herself as practicing public speaking with animals when she was young.
I have, therefore, learnt from Oprah Winfrey, key qualities of human relationships,-the value of communication, of getting people to share their emotions and delicate experiences, the value of inspiring ideas, perhaps introduced through books, all these qualities particularly powerful when communicated through a charismatic figure.
I know that these qualities are relevant in various aspects of life.
I would appreciate a summative history of Alakija along similar lines.
I was struck by the description of her channeling of her education in couture into amassing a fortune in that business.
I was struck by the description of the greater body of her wealth coming through owning an oil block.
Does it suggests a replication of the national dependence on oil rather than on a more diversified economy that engages significantly on creation and not only on extraction?
I realise that achieving Oprah's kind of success in her line of work is less likely in Nigeria where the economy might not be that expansive.
I am hungrily looking for Nigerian inventors and investors in mechanical manufacturing, not only in vehicle assembly.
I am hungrily looking for investors in Nigeria taking advantage of the skills of very young people and older people who are fabricators and inventors, even though they might not be formally educated to a high or even to any level.
I am looking for the Nigerian equivalent of the US's Orville and Wilbur Wright, men without a university degree whose starting line of business was bicycle manufacturing, but who built and flew the plane they used for the world's first successful manned flight on that great day in Kitty Hawk.
Inventors in information technology, not only in setting up networks using systems created in the West and Asia.
Inventors of new software, not only utilising existing software from the current centres of the global software industry.
I am looking for visionary entrepreneurs and investors who are ready to commit themselves to the development of a new Nigerian and African economy that is fully active in both the Industrial and Information Age.
In other words, I hungrily seek an expansion in Nigeria and Africa, of the space for achievement in business, in wealth creation, beyond existing prominent products and services represented by consumables and even service industries, within which, in my layperson's mind, I include banking, valuable as all these are, but in terms of industries centred in the creation of new understandings and shapings of nature and the creation of new products.
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment