Being considered as Africa’s unexplored wealth, family businesses by nature, often build lasting relationships and valuable in any investment climate.
The 2021 PwC global family business survey report disclosed that family-owned businesses are now even more crucial to economic development especially within the context of the economic downturn precipitated by multiple challenges of a global pandemic, oil price downturn as well as the shocks of a national recession.
For instance, a study by the Institute of Family Business in the United Kingdom, said about 30 per cent of family firms make it to the second generation, and only a third survive to the third generation. A report by Africa Investment Forum, which recognises family businesses as important players on the continent, said the past decade had seen African family-owned companies grow quickly.
It is one of the businesses that believe start-ups can help turn around the continent’s economies if they are supported and nurtured. The Group Managing Director of Dangote Industries Limited, Olakunle Alake, while delivering a paper entitled, ‘Corporate Governance and Succession Planning’ at a forum, said proper planning alone by most businesses and companies founded by Nigerians seems incapable of surviving beyond one generation.
Former President, Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria , Samuel Kolawole, decried that the story of indigenous family businesses has been rather pathetic. “Another issue is the culture of fear. The fear that the trade secrets have to be kept within the family, and this cultural fear of trusting other people to participate in the business or fear of betrayal, shuts out good ideas that could ensure longevity.