Volume 69, Issue 2

Africa has been the location of centuries of business activity. African business displays a complex development path through early indigenous kingdoms, colonial control and post–1950 independence. The historiography on these developments is unbalanced in favour of the role performed by enterprises embedded in capitalist metropolitan economies. Complex and dynamic African entrepreneurial activity persisted but adapted to global market changes. Business historians have not systematically explored African agencies in business, the management systems and the organisational evolution of enterprise in Africa. As market liberalisation provided new business opportunities, African businesses emerged to complement and compete with foreign-owned enterprises. As market liberalisation stimulated globalisation, multi-national companies returned to African markets, fostering competition and collaboration. Changes in the political economy of many African states gave rise to more dynamic regulatory contexts and public-private partnerships in different sectors of developing African economies. These trends appear in the Business History of Africa from the perspective of African business, owned by Africans from diverse ethnic origins as proof of the complex trends and processes in African enterprise development. This contribution seeks to refine the focus on business and entrepreneurs in Africa as agents in the continent’s business landscape. The manuscript acknowledges the diversity among African entrepreneurs and the dynamically changing state-business nexus through history. Can one identify a distinct «African» nature of enterprise? This manuscript addresses aspects of conceptual clarity on what constitutes African business in an attempt to map the agenda for Business History in Africa.

Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) PLC, a wholly Nigerian business enterprise, founded in 1990, blazed the trail in the banking sector of Nigeria in many respects. By 1995, it had become the fourth most profitable bank in Nigeria and the first indigenous bank to attain a profit-before-tax of one bn naira, and by 2002 had expanded into several West African countries. The significance of the bank is attested by several scholarly studies of its founding, growth, performance and impact. This paper examines a neglected aspect of the history of the bank: its successes and failure in complying with standards of corporate governance and business ethics in a notoriously opaque industry. Specifically, it focuses on the GTB’s relations with statutory regulatory bodies – the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) – as well as its shareholders, who kept the bank on its toes on matters of its business operations. Relying on previously unexploited sources, including minutes of the bank’s board of directors, annual reports and oral evidence provided by members of the board, management and staff, and former top employees of the bank, as well as snippets from the reports of the regulatory bodies (which are not to be cited), this paper highlights issues raised by stakeholders about how the bank managed its affairs, and how it dealt with the queries and questions raised by the external regulators and internal stakeholders in the first 15 years of its existence.

Scholarly studies of business enterprises in colonial Lagos have neglected Chief Joseph Adediran Ajao, a foremost investor in the real estate enterprise. Though there are sketchy details about him in social circles and passing but constant references to him typified by «Ajao Estate» and «Papa Ajao» communities, there is yet to be any thorough scholarly study of his enterprise. Using family records, archival documents, court records, newspaper reports, interviews, published works, and site visit, this study examines the entrepreneurship of Chief Joseph Adediran Ajao. It sheds light on Chief Ajao’s entrepreneurial exploit first in the import and export trade from which he earned substantial wealth, and ultimately on his investment in land and real estate, where he left an extant impression as one of the largest land-owning individuals in Lagos. On the premise that African culture had a significant impact on African businesses, this study is situated within the context of Yoruba philosophy of business and enterprise. The study concludes that: one, Chief J. A. Ajao was a forerunner of the emergence of real estate enterprise in Lagos; two, Chief J. A. Ajao’s import-export business, J. A. Ajao and Brothers, though eclipsed by his real estate enterprise, was no less significant; and three, J. A. Ajao’s enterprise ensured that his name achieved an eponym status in Lagos.

The impact of the Shonubi family on the economic and commercial interrelations between the Ikorodu district and Lagos during the colonial period is indelible. Two prominent personalities, a mother and her son, distinguished themselves in trade, commerce, agro-allied and the transportation sub-sectors of the economy by harnessing indigenous entrepreneurial ingenuity. The mother, Patricia Efun, was not only the «king of women» in the traditional political realm, but she was also indeed a leader in other dimensions. The son, Joseph Shonubi (popularly known as Owolowo), took the opportunity of his mercantile background to make a mark in the business world. However, apart from the personal and family benefits, their entrepreneurial exploits contributed to laying the foundation of post-colonial economic developments in Ikorodu and Lagos. This paper highlights the connections between family wealth and entrepreneurial exploits in the colonial Ikorodu district of the Lagos Colony. It is based on archival materials, oral interviews and newspaper reportage among others.

This paper focuses on the subject of the cocoa transfer agreements and the transformation of rural agrarian livelihoods in the cocoa belt of South West Nigeria under the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The paper maps the trajectory and career of three dominant agricultural entrepreneurs in the cocoa produce trade in South West Nigeria during the 20 th century. The paper demonstrates that while the cocoa business in Nigeria has received considerable scholarly attention, the impact of moneylenders, public letter writers (PLWs) and cocoa transfer agreements on cocoa business, rural livelihoods and entrepreneurship in the aftermath of SAP is yet to be fully investigated. Analysing the accumulative strategies and contributions of Emmanuel Akintan, Isaac Adegbuyi Akingboye and Rufus Orosundafosi to rural capital formation, the paper highlights the impacts of liberalisation policies on African rural businesses in the aftermath of SAP. The paper combines primary sources, such as oral interviews, personal observation and ethnography, with information collected from the archives, newspapers, diaries, and extant literature to analyse the dynamics of rural accumulation in the cocoa producing South West Nigeria during the 20 th century. The paper argues that the acquisition of wealth and the thin line between standard procedures and clandestine deals stimulated accusations of dispossession of peasant farmers by the capitalist moneylenders and merchants in the post-SAP era.

The focus of this paper is on business organisations in Benin and their interplay with the state from the era of Oba Ewuare up to the fall of the Kingdom in 1897. The paper analyses economic nationalism in the kingdom and the roles in the protection and development of identified business groups during the period. Knowledge of business organisations in pre-British Benin and their relationship with the state, which aided their development between ca. 1440 and 1897 is a vacuum in the study of African business organisations and will be useful in understanding economic nationalism from an African perspective. The study adopts the historical method and requires a multidisciplinary approach for interpretation and reliability. As such, both primary and secondary sources were utilised, and the findings confirm that several business organisations in manufacturing, trading and in large scale crop farming existed. The work provides insights into the entrepreneurs, composition and operations of these businesses. The findings also reveal how trading and industrial activities were controlled and what implications this had for the development of these businesses and the state. The work shows in addition how these businesses benefited from the security and licences granted by the state as well as how the state used these businesses to mount up economic power and political stability.

This paper examines the importance of Highfield to the African entrepreneurship history of colonial Zimbabwe, then known as Southern Rhodesia. The Southern Rhodesia colonial state established the township of Highfield in its capital city, Salisbury (now Harare), in 1936 as part of its spatial and racial segregation policy. The policy made Africans temporary residents in the urban areas. However, the post-Second World War industrial growth forced the colonial state to revisit its stance on African urbanisation. Seen as critical for the expanding manufacturing sector, African labour now had to be accommodated in the urban areas, which triggered the colonial state to expand the township of Highfield in 1956. That very year, enterprising Africans responded by taking up the expanded township’s entrepreneurial opportunities. This response and the subsequent evolution of African entrepreneurship in Highfield township are the focus of this paper. The paper provides a historical kaleidoscope of Highfield as a place of African entrepreneurship, which thus far has been occluded and separated from the dominant literature on the township’s role in the rise of African nationalism and anti-colonial struggles. Highfield emerged as a cultural milieu hosting an African Renaissance in food, fashion and lifestyle inspired by a mix of modernity and indigenous ethos. Thus, the paper argues that Highfield was the entrepreneurial centre of various businesses and startups. These colourful stories of African entrepreneurship are gleaned from handwritten business stand applications by African traders, archival documents, and newspapers in piecing together an urban history of African entrepreneurship in the township of Highfield in colonial Zimbabwe.