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[MUSIC] Well hi Tony, it's so great to have you here, thank you for being with us today.
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You are one of the most celebrated and most decorated business leaders in Africa and I would posit the world.
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So it's truly an honor to be able to host you, at Stanford this afternoon.
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>> Thank you very much >> We watched a video earlier, where we learned a little bit about the foundation which we'll speak about towards, the later half of the interview.
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But we saw there that you're such a supporter and such an advocate of entrepreneurship.
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Which isn't really a surprise, because your parents were entrepreneurs.
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I'm curious to know, how seeing them build businesses at a young age influenced you and impacted your journey.
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>> I'm pleased and honored to be with you all today.
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Stanford, great university, and a team from this pay University visa dittany Foundation lot before the pandemic I think.
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And I was quite impressed there on time.
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[LAUGH] As part of the chaotic traffic situation in Lagos.
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And the research work also very impressive.
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So for me coming back here, such as how they get in pressure of your school.
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Entrepreneurship is in my DNA, I preach entrepreneurship, I encourage entrepreneurship.
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I also try to catalyze more intrapreneurs in Africa, because in my own life journey.
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I've come to appreciate the significance, the importance of entrepreneurship.
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In transforming families in transforming self, in transforming communities,, in transforming country's societies for humanity.
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When we find out the Tony Elumelu foundation.
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It was driven by the need and urgency, to help catalyze development in Africa, the scale, sustainable realizing for that entrepreneurship is a way to that.
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I was privilege, lucky, blessed to be mentored in this journey of entrepreneurship first by my parents, especially my mom, who was an entrepreneur, small scale.
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But the lessons I imbibed, watching her, supporting her, continue to help me to date.
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And it's also critical, in the message and advice I give to young entrepreneurs.
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I learned from her about hard work.
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She was extremely hardworking at the time.
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Today she's not on 94 and she's she will cook for me. >> [LAUGH].
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>> As it sent her to come on pick food And I'm like, I have so many people to cook for me.
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But that spirit in her remains so strong.
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She was disciplined, and I've come to realize that this journey of entrepreneurship, this advantage, entrepreneurship everything in life discipline is critical for success.
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He was extremely tenacious.
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And I've come to see, and I put it to, that the journey entrepreneurship is not a linear journey, is up and down.
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But if you're tenacious and resilient, you cross the finish line?
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So those are part of the early learners from my parents.
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My mom, my dad, long ago told us and and the, see my brain to date.
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That if you earn $1, if you're unable to save, you any billion dollars you will not save anything.
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So that for me the first lesson and capital formation, capital formation starts from savings.
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If you do not save, you don't have money to invest.
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If you don't invest, you remain where you are.
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And so these lessons have helped me in this journey of entrepreneurship.
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>> So lets fast forward a few years ,you graduate from university with a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Economics.
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You then proceed to become one of the youngest bank branch managers in Nigeria, typically a job reserved for people who are in their 50s or 60s.
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You become the managing director one of the biggest banks in Nigeria.
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And then 2005 comes around, and you're being asked to help lead what becomes like the biggest merger in Nigeria's corporate history.
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What were some of the challenges that you faced during that time?
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And which leadership principles did you stay rooted in as you were guiding this process?
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>> At the time quite a lot of challenges, but just to contextualize the won't stand it.
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We took over a distressed bank, cause a natural bank In 1987, and in 2005, we met Standard Troz Bank I United Bank of Africa.
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But before the merger there was an acquisition, standard was acquired and significant interest in native of Africa that were met.
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And I emerged CEO, so first I saw United above Africa as almost 70 years old as an institution.
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And kicked a set ways of doing things.
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Then digital adoption was not so strong, so I think it took people months to read males in.
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And, in terms of service delivery, those days, the old generation banks were not so strong on service delivery.
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We were coming from a bank that was so strong in service delivery and technology, young people, etc.
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So bank we size off less than 1800 people, and the United Bank of Africa had over 12,000 staff.
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These 1800 younger, technologically advance, and this other one older and a very big blank.
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That are not easy integrating because as you see cooperate majors, the legal combination is not the issue.
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The difficult part is people integration, the culture integration.
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That is the top part and so as you can see from history, most corporate institutions, it takes so many years to integrate people and culture.
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And if you do not integrate people and culture properly, you lose the major value levers.
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So we were mindful of this I wanted to measure we, we were able to match integrate.
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And it's a financial institution that was like you match the one customers don't care whether, they want to be served same institution they moved up.
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Those are tough, integrating our people, merging our people, merging cultures, old culture state set in their ways and a vibrant younger culture.
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But there in lies the interesting aspect of the combination of the job.
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I say to people, my elder brother who is seven years older than me, he doesn't have gray hair. I have my gray hair.
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My gray hair started from the merger because making it work, serving your customers.
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Making sure that everyone in the universe of the institution, which we had 428 branches at the time, that it was same level of service across board.
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Customers of Standard Trust Bank that were used to a certain level of service delivery, you will not want them to come to the new institution and have a drop.
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So we just have to make sure that we put our customers first.
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That's why today in United Bank for Africa, which interestingly, has grown from a one country bank to a bank that operates in 20 African countries, with presence also in Paris, London, recently Dubai.
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And the only African bank that operate in US as a deposit taking institution.
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It started small, it's growing that big.
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And that experience during the merger continue to guide what we do, especially how we prioritize our customers and how we prioritize our people.
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So I would say the biggest lesson from that combination was with making our people, integrating our people, our culture.
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I was realizing that, especially in the service sector, where you sell intangibles, so to speak.
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It is very important that your core army, your workforce, that they are fully aligned, totally integrated, and positively mobilized, and motivated.
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If you lack this, you can't make progress.
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And those lessons from the early days, resilience, hard work, discipline, staying focused, prioritizing people, have all helped us in creating today's United Bank for Africa.
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>> And as you mentioned, you all were able to do that very successfully.
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You expanded from being a single country bank to one that operates in 20 countries in Africa.
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And then has an impact and influence and reach in other countries as well.
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Many of us are interested in working in emerging markets or are building, developing products or services for emerging markets, or one emerging market, to begin with.
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And I'm curious to know, how do you evaluate which markets to enter when you were expanding United Bank of Africa?
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And how do you determine when is the right time to do so?
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>> So first is most times people see the empty part of a glass.
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At times, people see also the full part of a glass.
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You would always have difficulties and challenges in almost every sector, especially countries you want to go into.
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So when we decided to expand into Africa, the story was first, we thought that we had mastered the act of serving customers, because that's what banking is about.
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Banking is about serving your customers, all of our customers, customers, customers.
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And realizing that to serve your customers, you must have a mobilized workforce that is aligned with those mission and vision that you see for the group.
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So we felt, looking at the African landscape, that we had opportunities.
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Nigeria remains the largest economy in Africa and we thought that the level of banking or service support was very high, and that we should leverage this and spread across the continent.
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And we had to decide which country should we go to?
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How do we decide the country and macroeconomic stability, policies, etc?
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Foreign exchange policies, ease of doing business in countries, taxation policies in countries.
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And the demographic of countries because we were quite upset that we would like to support small and medium scale enterprises.
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That is the bedrock of United Bank for Africa.
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So based on that, we came up with 30 countries that met the internal criteria we set up.
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We developed what we call the UBA Red Book, how wanted to expand in Africa, issue to consider, etc.
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But in all of those issues, the ease of doing business in countries was very critical.
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The population was also important.
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The GDP of countries income per capita was important, ease of finding the right human capital to work with because, again, it's a people business, so that was very important to us.
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And we came up with all of this, we now tiered it.
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Well, we developed what we call the three-tier strategic intent.
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Tier one was we wanted to be strong in Nigeria.
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Tier two, be a leading Pan African bank.
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And tier three, having presence in global financial centers, which is why we start with London, Paris, New York, Dubai.
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It's all part of our three-tier strategic intent.
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The second one, therefore, was orchestrating our expansion in Africa.
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And on that, was what strategy do we do?
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A conduit strategy or not, pass through or have presence in countries.
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And we decided that we needed to have presence in countries.
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And next was, okay, let's tier the countries.
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Again, we use GDP, that's what we use in tiering the countries. I would say it really.
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Greenfield, brownfield, acquisition, mergers, how do you want to grow?
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We decided that we do a combination of both.
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So in the countries we went to, some countries we acquired banks, some we merged, and some we said okay, greenfield.
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And the journey so far so good.
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Today, United bank for Africa serves over 35 million customers in Africa and we're still growing.
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We're helping to simplify payments on the continent.
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We're helping to orchestrate trade transactions, intra-Africa trade transactions.
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Prior to this time, Africa did not trade with and amongst itself.
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We believe the reason Africa didn't do this is because payment issues, because of infrastructure, even transportation infrastructure.
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And also making sure we support and capacitize small or medium scale enterprise to grow.
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So UBA has done quite a bit in this space.
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And most importantly, financial inclusion.
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We're trying to make sure that everyone, a continent with over one billion people, the banking population is not so high.
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So to us, it's not just about offering banking services It's about what we call democratization of access to financial services.
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It's about financial inclusion.
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So I'm making sure that almost everyone in markets where we're put in, have access to banking facilities, banking services.
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And that's why in some countries was spearheaded and pioneered opening of bank account zero balances.
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Because what's important to us is to be able to attract people.
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We believe that Africa will have informal economy that is very large.
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And all of us should be involved in trying to formalize the informal economy.
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And this is one of the ways we're doing so, through our banking services.
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In other areas of operation and as a group we to try to do the same thing.
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What we do at the Tony Elumelu Foundation is all again about helping to develop the continent, financial empowerment, taking opportunities to people, irrespective of your cadre, irrespective of your level in society, irrespective of where you live, whether you're in urban or rural areas.
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So those are things we need to keep doing to create a more inclusive society, especially in Africa.
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>> You alluded to this a little bit earlier.
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There's a lot of innovation happening in the financial services industry, a lot of tech disruptors, and many of which are working towards that goal of democratizing access to financial services.
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From your position as CEO and now chairman of United Bank of Africa, how do you see the company collaborating, or even competing with some of these disruptors?
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Particularly thinking about new technologies like cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer payments, etc.?
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>> First is, I was CEO of UBA, the Chief Executive Officer of United Bank of Africa about 12 years ago.
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[LAUGH] So today, I don't see myself as a banker, per se, I'm an investor that invests in banking, in helping to improve access to electricity on the continent.
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A critical resource deficit on the continent that's important to preach if we must leapfrog and move the continent to where it should be.
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Investors in healthcare sector, we have realized that indeed health is wealth.
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If the pandemic taught us one thing, it is about prioritizing health and realizing that what the world couldn't do, health or lack of it can do.
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Who would have thought that the entire world would go into a lockdown mode?
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I never thought that could happen in my lifetime.
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So we're invested in that sector.
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We're invested in energy, the full energy chain.
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Because again, for a continent like Africa, it's critical for us for growth.
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So for us or for me, at this point in time, not so much of a banker.
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However, as a group, we realize the importance of technology.
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The digital disruption that we see in the world is real.
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And in Africa, in particular, thanks to the population of our continent, we know that we have to catch up.
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If you don't catch up, we're going to lag behind.
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For businesses and businesses we're associated with, the United Bank of Africa and other businesses, digital adoption is critical for our service delivery, for everything that we do.
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In the payment space, we lead in the payment space through digitization, through adoption, partnership with FinTech and all kinds, just to make sure that we're able to serve our customers.
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Today's customers, they don't need a bank.
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They just need a facilitator for payments.
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They need a facilitator that follows their lifestyle. And banking is changing.
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It's changing from the way we used to know banking so many years ago.
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Today you can sit in your house, in fact, I tell you, at United Bank of Africa, I told you earlier that we have 35 million customers.
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A few years ago, 2005 when we did the major case, and that was by United Bank for Africa, all of 2004 UBA celebrated, we were the first bank in Nigeria to have 32 ATMs [LAUGH] 32 ATMs. And I love Nigeria.
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I did a major marketing to have 32 ATMs.
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And then the first bank also to pay out of 1 billion Naira, our local currency, billion Naira in cash.
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Then let's just sat 200 Naira per dollar in cash, today.
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And then, then, 97% of our customer transactions occurred in the banking hall.
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Today, UBA opens about 500,000 accounts every month.
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And these accounts, 95% are opened online, not in the banking hall.
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Number two, transaction count.
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We have over 98% of our customer transaction now occurring online, not in banking hall, again.
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In terms of ATMs, UBA alone, just UBA alone, has close of 4,000 ATMs in Nigeria, all from 32 ATMs.
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>> [CROSSTALK] >> I've got POSs, uncountable, there was no POS before.
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So things have changed and bandwidth will change further.
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The technology is disrupting a lot of things, not just in the US, not in the West, but everywhere, everywhere.
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Even healthcare, in our healthcare sector today healthcare can be delivered digitally online, and everything.
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So we live in a new world and everyone of us is adopting and adapting faster to the new world or we'll be left behind.
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>> You mentioned energy a little earlier, which makes me nervous because it seems as though you're reading my mind, because that's where I want to go next.
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Last year the Africa Energy Chamber recognized you as one of the 25 most influential individuals in shaping Africa's energy sector.
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I'm curious to know, especially knowing that at Stanford, sustainability and renewable energy, and energy more broadly is a really important subject that gets studied here and talked about a lot.
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What are the most pressing issues and solutions being discussed right now as it relates to energy in Africa?
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And also I would love to know a little bit more about the work that you're doing, I believe through Transcorp, to address this.
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>> So access to electricity is extremely poor in Africa.
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Less than 35% of our people have access to reliable electricity on the continent.
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This is a continent of young people.
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Over 700 million people are young on the continent, under the age of 30, and yet access to electricity is almost impossible.
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These young ones are in a very competitive world.
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They're going to compete with children who are used to 24/7 uninterrupted electricity supply.
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So the world we see ahead is actually frightening because the divide we want to breach is not the case happening in the digital space, is not happening because of access, lack of access to reliable source of energy on the continent.
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And from the work we do at the Tony Elumelu Foundation, from our close interaction with young Africans, male, female, we know, we can tell, we see, we hear, listen to them.
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That access to electricity is a major hindrance, constraint on their ability to succeed.
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I'm sure at Stanford, you might have seen this in your business research studies, that most small and medium scale enterprises on the continent die, they don't succeed.
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And single most important factor for this due to poor access to electricity.
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So to us as a group, we believe in the concept and philosophy of africapitalism, which is a call on the private sector to play some role in developing our continent.
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It's a realization that the private sector has a role to play in developing the continent.
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And in practicalizing this, and not just speaking to it, we decided that the power sector was critical for us to invest in as we mobilize resources and invest in this space.
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Today, we have capacity to generate about 2000 megawatts of electricity.
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But we have some other hindrances like gas supply and grid connectivity.
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So we're able to generate about 700 megawatts out of the capacity of 2,000.
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But we're happy that we're playing a key role in this area.
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But my message always has been to investors, we've been on this trip, we started from Washington, we've been to New York.
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We interacted a lot with University of New York.
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We were in LA, we attended the McCain Institute, which had a gathering of global asset managers and former interns.
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My message has been consistent.
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We have opportunities in Africa.
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There's huge opportunities in Africa, a huge population.
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Income per capita is improving, and we lack access to electricity on the continent.
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So as the world mobilizes towards a more inclusive society, right, the world mobilizes to a more prosperous world, I always like to remind people that we cannot have that prosperity across the world if we will not deal with the issue of access to electricity on the African continent.
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The reason we have youth unemployment in Africa is attributable to this.
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The reason we have youth restiveness in Africa is attributable to this.
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The reason some embrace extremism is attributable to this.
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In fact, government's ability to fight extremism is also limited by this.
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So, at times you see communities and large spaces that do not feel any impact of government or society because no access to electricity.
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So it's a major for me, it's not just an investment.
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A commercial investment is what we should be doing in the 21st century to help improve access to electricity.
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And yeah, I can never shout or say it enough.
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And I want to have more people in this crusade that all of us, those who have capital, should look at investing in Africa.
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There are opportunities there.
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And those who have voices, let's keep shouting to attract attention.
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And those who have the focus, so that collectively all of us can make a difference in the Africa.
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>> I want to stay a little bit, I want to spend some time on what you mentioned earlier, Africapitalism.
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Which you are known across Nigeria and other countries as well as being a strong proponent of, you've detailed here.
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I am curious to know why you believe that Africa needs to take a unique approach to capitalism.
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>> Well, it's not a unique approach to capitalism, per se, it's for me realization.
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Okay, so at times, there's this entitlement mentality that people have, okay?
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We should be helped, we should be supported, we should be developed.
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Well, for Christ sake, I mean, it can't be like that forever.
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We need to help ourselves too.
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So it's realization that call.
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The private sector is growing.
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We need government to prioritize it, we need government to create the right environment for private sector to keep doing well.
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But the private sector also must be sensible and reasonable and conscientious in how we do things, okay?
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We should invest in a manner that helps to catalyze prosperity.
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We should invest in a manner that helps to create social equity, social wealth.
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We should invest in a manner that helps to create inclusiveness.
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So, this is not just about a new form of capitalism or the other, it's more about the fact that the private sector should play a role in helping to develop the continent.
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And let's stop blaming others for our woes.
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Let's stop blaming others for everything.
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Let's lead and hopefully they follow. And I've seen it happen.
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In some of the investment we have made, we did not invest all the capital assets, we reached out.
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I will say that the world we live in is becoming highly interdependent, and people are also beginning to listen, especially if we show good example.
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So it's a call on all of us of whether in Africa or outside the world, that we all have a role to play.
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In advanced society again, the meeting I attended earlier, it all had different names today.
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Patient capital, impact investing, shared prosperity, mutual destinies.
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We just need to invest in a manner that's not just about profits for the investors.
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We should invest in a manner that creates mutual benefits for everyone, for the investors, for communities where you do business in, for society at large.
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The fact that we do what we do at the Tony Elumelu Foundation, committing 100 million US dollars to supporting of entrepreneurs is not because we have so much money.
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But we also know that some of the basic needs we want to have are provided.
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So it's not about what we have in the bank account.
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It is about that in the in the big eye.
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Can we take a part of it and share, not for me not to share in the manner that creates a dependency, perpetual dependency, no.
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In a manner that makes you, stand on your own, makes you self reliant.
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And so when we, say we'll give non refundable seed capital of $5,000.
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And when we do so, to date over 16,000 Africans have benefited from that program.
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It is not encouraged laziness, no, more we know when San Francisco were in tech environment.
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We know some started with less than $5,000 but today they've grown big.
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So we just want to give young Africans access, opportunity to prove their concept, and then let others see them as good accommodators in them.
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So we need all the privacy discipline.
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We need everyone in the private sector looking at critical sector today we talked I just spoke about electricity.
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Instead of people giving their monies and backpackers abroad.
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Why did you bring your money to invest in letraset on the continent?
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You make more money by, you also impact society in a more positive way.
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There is yet the essence of is so, we will need more, private sector leaders, showing the way, but we need also our public sector leaders creating the right environment that will enable the private sector to do.
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And we need friends of Africa, development partners also begin to look at how our data when are they engaged I had to give the first century with the aim to create self-reliance and independence rather than perpetuating the syndrome of dependence.
33:52
>> Now, Tony, typically when people retire from very high stress jobs, such as being the CEO, one of the largest banks in Africa, they take a vacation.
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You instead decided to found a company Aeris Holding, and also the foundation that you've alluded to.
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I'm curious, this was back, this was a few years ago.
34:13
I'm curious about what you saw happening, like in Nigeria or beyond that at that time.
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Drug that was the impetus for you to develop this foundation.
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>> We did two things, when I retired in 2010, 12 years ago, we decided to create a family office, which was to some extent Novem in other parts of the world.
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And we'll say the family office will be quite catalytic, in the kind of investment that will make, hence this philosophy of Afro capitalism.
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So as audience is epitone and this home of overall group investment philosophy of Africa policy.
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And decided the sector's consider very important, that we have to move the needle power.
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With Nigeria and Africa is endowed with a lot of sources, yet we do not have the ability to process all of this, and convert them to the state.
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So that they can be calm valuable, to people so said NH from integrator point of view and I call the value chains.
35:31
Looked at healthcare sector, I will say health is It's important that we need to invest in the healthcare sector.
35:37
So these were the key of course, estate important in Africa and hospitality, okay.
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Hospitality, if you want to grow a country and economy, transportation and hospitality critical for this.
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So those are the things we decided to do at the time the motivation was, to help drive our philosophy further.
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By all important to help manage the investments, and we wanted to push our Exodus as the go to investment partners on the continent.
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We wanted help to attract investment, to the continent, and so far, so good on that.
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And the other thing we did the second thing was the foundation.
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I thought that my story has been one of this element of luck, in my story, this element of being at the right place at the right time.
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And I wasn't the most intelligent in my class and also, I wasn't the most hardworking my certain people I knew.
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And therefore there was a lock in it that was and I thought, I had risen very rapidly don't question and I thought it was time to commit this second phase of my life.
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To have into impact humanity, tap into to democratize dialogue that I had growing up to help expand access to opportunities, to help people.
37:28
I mean, I talk about parents, I set still have to remember small scale entrepreneur, not the kind of big entrepreneur that I see.
37:36
So I was not like, a son of any known families so to speak, just regular family person.
37:50
And so I've been inspired by what I see around the world, look at, Steve Jobs, for instance, and his background.
38:02
And I asked myself see Joe were an African if it was an African in Nigeria, would you have been able to succeed?
38:09
At this scale and magnitude I succeeded.
38:12
I mean, long after deat as a company is funded first across 1 trillion in market cap, and all recently so it's all of you that drove me to say no.
38:26
It will be, an unfortunate I don't know what I would say to God, if I do not create or have to create more email list on the continent of our kind first instance.
38:40
And that was what drove, my wife and I at the time to decide that if you commit $100 M.
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To helping, to identify, support, and empower, the generation of African leaders and to do it at the scale and magnitude, that's never been done before.
39:12
Given that we do business in many African countries with distribution or Wi Fi Nigeria, issue about Africa, given that we know that poverty anywhere is a threat, all of us everywhere, would say to make sure that it's broader.
39:27
So that is why We started the Tony Elumelu foundation.
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So the motivation for starting the Tony Elumelu Foundation, is to help democratize, lock, create access to people.
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Whether or not you big match if you have ideas, you are enthusiastic, you are committed, you are ambitious, apply it, and you set diagnostic.
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I will give you an opportunity.
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So when I look back today, I see that as a major, major achievement, what we have done, the happiness I see on the faces of these young Africans, gives me good.
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>> So my final question for you.
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You seem to be a nation in and of yourself through the foundation.
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You've worked with local governments international governing bodies to help move capital where it's most needed.
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And so I'm sure you've heard it asked many times before Nigeria is now it's in its election season. I will join the chorus.
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Why aren't you running for President?
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>> [LAUGH] [LAUGH] I didn't see that coming, I think first is When I look around I know the potential that we'll have as a continent and as a people.
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I see opportunities, I know that life can be a lot better for people often times you feel the urge to, Show interest in how we're governed or how things happen.
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By soon also realize that because I've never been selfish, because I've never been self centered, because never been to me that must be Tony.
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I say to myself, there are other good people capable people who are in the race who are showing interest.
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Why don't you support them and share with them what you think should be the right thing in terms of leadership, in terms of governance, in the 21st century Africa, wherever was suffering according to suffer so much.
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I realize also that all of us cannot be in the political space.
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By no way that evil succeeds or tries in the world when good people keep quiet So I said to myself, just the way am committed to entrepreneurship, the way am committed to helping to empower young Africans.
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We should support emergence, castration or good governance across the continent, because I think that is what I said was Africans.
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So for me, Japan, Nigeria, is many countries, many countries on the continent.
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So, I am interested in good governance.
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And I know that what we preach and advocacy and everything we do try to encourage young people will not succeed in the political space if leadership is not good So mine is for to continue to encourage the evolution of the political process that we want through a good leadership.
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And to ensure that our leaders stay accountable that process is not there yet, but we are working together against one area.
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When I was in Washington, I said to put good leadership here too, that it should be a concerted effort to think encouraged people on the continent to do what is right, even as we also on the continent continue to speak
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out on good governance and accountability >> Thank you so much Tony that was amazing and typically we like to close with a lightning round of questions, so I have four for you and I'm going to say them and you have to answer as quickly as possible, hence, the lightning part. So outside of aside from Palo Alto, California,
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So outside of aside from Palo Alto, California, what's your favorite place to visit? >> I did that.
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Sorry >> What's your favorite place to travel to. >> Assa?
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I just came from LA Los Angeles I love Los Angeles >> More than San Francisco >> No you do some more [LAUGH] >> Now with Nigeria out of the World Cup who are you rooting for.
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>> Wow [LAUGH] even my voice they were like crying when they drop.
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I think Nigeria is, Senegal.
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>> Okay, that's good safe choice. >> Senegal.
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>> What's- >> Who's from it Senegal here?
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[LAUGH] What is your favorite Wizkid song? >> Hit song?
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>> What's your favorite Wizkid? >> Wizkid song?
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[LAUGH] you dont know that. >> I dont know.
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>> Who has a iphone here?
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>> [LAUGH] >> And last question, what are you most grateful for?
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>> I'm grateful to go for my wife and family and children.
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I think, you can't do it live you don't have a home that's at peace.
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I do have a very peaceful area for center, so I'm grateful to go for that.
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>> Thank you so much [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]