8 | The Lion King
Theme Story
Africa’s
Corporate
Transformational
Leaders
Meet some of Africa’s top transformational leaders. These individ-
uals have achieved significant transformational impact on their
companies, industry and nations through their leadership styles.
Tony Elumelu
- Nigerian
E
very entrepreneur sets out to
change something or satisfy a
need. Tony Elumelu sought to
change how banking is done in Nigeria
and he did.
Elumelu was a banker that wanted to
be more than a bank employee. He
was not satisfied with the status quo in
the Nigerian banking industry.
An opportunity came when the Central
Bank of Nigeria (CBN) put up for sale,
the license of distressed Crystal Bank.
He led a group of investors to take over
the bank, becoming the youngest bank
managing director in Nigeria at 33. They
changed the name to Standard Trust
Mo Ibrahim
- Sudanese
Bank (STB) and within five years took
the bank that was ranked last among
about 89 banks in the country to a top
five bank.
He grew the bank on a radical redefi-
nition of customer service, challenging
the concept of “arm chair” banking
where bankers sat in their offices
waiting for customers and introduced
“mobile banking” where bankers were
the ones going after their customers.
He also pioneered neighbourhood
banking, setting up branches closer to
where people lived to create acces-
sibility. Working with a young and
dynamic team, Elumelu changed the
face of banking in Nigeria.
Not just satisfied with Nigeria, he had
his eyes on Africa and when the
opportunity came to build a pan-Af-
rican institution, he was prepared.
Elumelu took his team into a merger
with UBA in 2005, then the biggest
merger in Africa, creating one of
Africa’s largest financial institutions.
Today, UBA is present in 19 African
countries and has business offices in
New York, Paris and a subsidiary in
London.
Elumelu, retired as the Group Manag-
ing Director of UBA in 2010 at the
young age of 49 and is currently using
his transformational leadership skills to
mentor new entrepreneurs while build-
ing new businesses in the Nigerian and
African power sector, oil and gas and
consumer goods. He has built around
him a dedicated team of followers
who have believed in his vision and
stuck with him to see his vision of the
future achieved.
M
o Ibrahim is now known for
the Mo-Ibrahim Foundation
which awards the largest
prize money in history. This is the
Mo-Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in
African Leadership which offers $5
million to an African leader consid-
ered to have been exceptional in
office.
Born in Sudan, Mo Ibrahim is a
distinguished academic and serial
entrepreneur in mobile communi-
cations. He schooled in Egypt and
the United Kingdom. He obtained
a first degree from the University of
Alexandria in Electrical Engineering
then returned to Sudan to work for
the national telecom company.
He then moved on to England in
1974 where he obtained a master’s
degree from the University of
Bradford in Electronics and Electri-
cal Engineering and then a Ph.D
from the University of Birmingham in
Mobile Communications where he
also taught mobile communications.
In 1983, he was lured by British
Telecom to work for them as pioneer
technical director of a new subsid-
iary Cellnet where he struggled for
six years to try and impress on BT
that mobile communications had a
future. He left after six years to form
By Anthony Osae-Brown
