A Nigerian entrepreneur shares her story of innovation and transformative leadership

My guest today is Ada Osakwe. Ada is an entrepreneur and investor. She has founded two companies: Agrolay, an investment firm that makes angel investments in early stage, high-growth companies; and Nuli, an innovative beverage brand and casual dining restaurant chain with eight locations across Nigeria. Ada was the Forbes Africa businesswoman of the year, 2021, a young global leader of the World Economic Forum, and an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow. She was also the Entrepreneur of the Year and Achiever in Agriculture awards in 2015. She serves on numerous boards of corporations and she graciously agreed to join me today to talk about her role as an entrepreneur and investor.

Ada, welcome to our podcast.

OSAKWE: Thank you so much my brother, Aloysius. It’s a pleasure, a delight to be with you today.

ORDU: So, could you tell us a little bit about your personal journey prior to becoming the successful entrepreneur and investor that you are today?

OSAKWE: Oh, you’re taking me back, huh? I grew up in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, same country that you’re from, to a really simple family with parents who had lived and worked really only in Nigeria, but from a very young age I had a yearning to build a life of significance, I would say. And for me, that’s a life that focused on impact.

Maybe it has to do with my name—as Africans there’s a power in the name, and my name Ada means “first daughter.” Actually, the full name Adaobi, means “first daughter of the king.” So, there’s great responsibility around that being the first.

And so, as I think about my personal journey to becoming this successful entrepreneur, you say, or being successful at what I do in order to achieve the impact that I seek, is one that truly represents the saying in one of my favorite books, The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho—you may have read it—and that’s when you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.

And I’m really fortunate to have been able to make impact in a very unique and very diverse way: blended experiences across public and private sector, a career that’s allowed me to live in across three continents—Europe, the United States, and Africa. But specifically, you know, just this blended experience across private sector, development finance, public sector, and now entrepreneurship. Started off in private sector in investment banking, transitioned on to development finance with the African Development Bank. And that’s where I was privileged to meet you, Aloysius, so much great development and impact to Africa.

And then I took this leap to go into public service. I worked as a senior advisor on investments to the minister of agriculture of Nigeria. So, wearing that hat was completely the other side of the playing field and working on policy was just an eye opener for me.

And finally rolling up my sleeves as an entrepreneur to build my own businesses and actually put my money where my mouth was for so long in actualizing impact through entrepreneurship on the continent.

So there’s been varied experiences, the decisions I’ve made to move across all these various areas to land where I am today, I think for me it’s quite telling. I’ve always yearned for these opportunities and in many ways I’ve just had the conviction to keep following my dream. So, ultimately I didn’t really know how it would happen or where my path would take me. But what I do know is that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.

ORDU: That’s quite a journey indeed. As I recall, you were the Forbes Africa Business Woman of the Year in the year 2021. How did that come about?

OSAKWE: Oh, Aloysius, pure luck, just luck. But really, I’m a big believer in that quote from Seneca, that “success is where preparation meets opportunity.” I remember the first time I heard that, and I saw it or I read it somewhere, I was just like, Wow, that’s so true! I’m not successful just by virtue of being lucky or being successful or working so hard or harder than everyone else that you deserve to have what you get. No, you know, you have to be prepared and work for it.

And for me, being prepared also means knowing that people are always watching. Right? People always are watching even when you don’t know it, they are seeing your progress, seeing the things that you’re doing, the impact that’s being made. And I guess that’s the case for that award.

And I still remember, you know, when you think about people watching and that’s the opportunity, but when you merge that with preparedness … I was catching a flight, I was going through terminal five at Heathrow and I saw this email that popped up on my phone—I literally was trying to catch the connecting train to the gate—and it said, Hey, we are considering you for this Forbes Africa Award. Can you please send us anything that just showcases the work you do and the impact you’ve made. I just document and I save things away, any speech I make, or any conversation I have, like today this conversation with you, I don’t let it just filter away and disappear. But I try to be quite focused on keeping it.

So, I had access and I was ready because I had a folder that had all these things. And I said, Yeah, sure, have access to this folder, you see all the stuff I’m working on. And as a result, that was the preparedness that met opportunity. And I feel like that’s really how that came about. You know, it’s full of grace as well—I’m a believer and it’s the grace of God as well.

ORDU: And for the benefit of our youths across the African continent and elsewhere, how does one get to become a World Economic Forum Young Global leader and also an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow?

OSAKWE: These are two honors that I’ve been very privileged to have bestowed on me over time. With both cases, you have to be under 40 years of age because they focus on youth and the younger group.

The first—the Forum for the Young Global Leaders—it’s part of the World Economic Forum’s network. It’s one of their flagship programs, or I would say communities, just about 1,500 members and alumni combined, over 120 nationalities across civic society, entrepreneurship, technology pioneers, education. In fact, your former guest, one of the guests you had on the show, David Sengeh, is a Young Global Leader as well. You have people like President Macron or Jacinda Ardern from government—you know, just a varied group of really high achievers. And I think just as long as you’re a high achiever and people notice your work, you could potentially be part of this amazing, amazing community.

And the final one is the Tutu Fellowship, which is under the African Leadership Institute. It’s one of their flagship programs and communities. And the difference here is that it’s all young African, so it’s not a global program. It’s specific to the continent. And I think it’s just one of the most amazing networks one can be part of as well. Just people doing amazing things to move the narrative, to change things on the continent and make impact.

ORDU: Let’s now pivot to your time at the African Development Bank, when the bank was still in Tunisia. You led, as I recall, a $100 million project—one of several—but this one particularly for the Nairobi toll road in Kenya’s first transport sector public-private partnership. What was the experience in negotiating with such a multiplicity of entities? The government of Kenya, the officials from there, the World Bank was there, there were project developers—because you were in the private sector at the time in the Bank, and of course, private financiers. What was that experience like?

OSAKWE: Oh, wow. It was an eye opener, I would say. In just the complexity of what it takes to drive change in one of the most important areas that Africa needs to develop further, which is infrastructure. This toll road was going to be a transformational project. Many people knew at the time how difficult it was moving from the central business district in Nairobi all the way to the airport. The traffic, you would sit for hours. And this was potentially going to be transformational where you have private players who come in to manage and operate and make it a sustainable road that is maintained frequently and has smooth-flowing traffic.

So, for me it was just groundbreaking. And I feel really honored to have been part of those early negotiations, working with some private banks, investment banks, working on financial models one minute. Another time you’re going to sit down in the World Bank office in Kenya. I don’t know if there’s still there, these fantastic, lovely grounds. And having conversations with the country managers, with the project heads, and really looking at the nuances of what it means to deliver such a transformational project and working with the government and the private sector.

It was at a time when we were really trying to push the notion of public-private partnerships, PPPs, in infrastructure, and the African Development Bank was so well-positioned to be that player that uses its balance sheet in such a way. So, it was it was really, really exciting to work on.

I would say as I reflect back at times like that, and we were working in infrastructure team, Aloysius, you still see with Africa needing $100 billion a year to close the infrastructure gap. I’m like back in 2007, we were saying the same. So, why haven’t things really moved? And these are some of the questions I ask myself. And it’s what actually still fuels me to keep doing all I can to move the needle when it comes to impact in Africa.

ORDU: After your career in international development, at the African Development Bank, you went on to graduate school for a second master’s degree, this time an MBA. You then served as senior advisor to, as you mentioned earlier, Dr. Adesina, who was then Nigeria’s minister of agriculture during 2011 to 2015. As I recall it, there were many, many, many initiatives launched during this period when Adesina was in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture. So, looking back, which initiatives were you most proud of and why?

OSAKWE: As you mentioned, we were working on so many things. It was just one of the most exciting times in my career, working in government. But working with a team, or with leadership that was focused on seeing how we could utilize government and have government as only focusing on policy, paving the way for private sector to do its thing, recognizing that private sector is always there—governments come and go—but you have private sector to work in a sustainable way to guarantee the long-term success of projects and delivering development projects.

And so, we were really focused on this, what we called a government-enabled but private-sector driven type of agricultural transformation. So, in everything we did and everything I had to do as the senior advisor on investment was really with that lens. And it meant that my role was quite important because I interfaced with private sector, made the case for agriculture, made the case for Nigeria, and why they should be investing, and why they should be working with the government.

And so, one of my proudest projects brought all these elements together and it was called the Fund for Agricultural Financing in Nigeria. My background before I joined the government was in private equity. So, after business school at Northwestern Kellogg School of Management in the U.S., I joined a private equity firm in New York who were working on Africa, Africa initiatives and Africa investments.

So, I brought that lens and that mindset to government and I was like, we need to do stuff with investing in funds and supporting these fund managers who would go on to invest in other projects. And that’s how we started developing the Fund for Agricultural Financing in Nigeria.

And this was fantastic because we then got to work with KfW, the Development Finance Bank of Germany, and we we actually utilized funding that had been sitting with the government of Nigeria for years, donor funding from Germany. We repurposed that grant to utilize it in this more transformational, impactful fund. So, it had never been done before.

And so for me, that innovation was critical. It was innovative because the government was the seed investor. So, we catalyzed it and then went on to raise $69.5 million in total to invest in projects such as farmer farming, cassava processing, edible oils processing, and a dairy processing company. Just exactly the things we wanted to see as we were looking at the value chain of agriculture.

So, for me, the top three things of why we really this was that project meant a lot to me and why it still counts as one of the biggest initiatives: The first is that we used donor money in a very efficient way because I still look at the ways sometimes donor money is used, it’s just a waste. But this was used in a very efficient way and made to last and made to truly have impact.

The second thing I would say is that we addressed the key issues of the funding gap in agriculture, really focusing on processing and the SMEs in agriculture. A lot of money had been going into either primary agriculture—the smallholder farmers—or really large companies that had no risk for the banks. But just being able to put the money towards medium sized entities was big.

And then the thing for me is that it’s still there today. It remains, it was sustainable. So, it truly helped us achieve that government-enabled but private-sector led transformation, because private sector is running that fund. Government money was put in place, and no one touched it, even though there was a change in government. W e made sure we put structures in place to make sure that nobody tampered with it. And so, today they are still up and running. And that’s why it remains one of the proudest initiatives that I was fortunate to lead.

ORDU: Let’s turn to some of the companies, Ada, that you founded. The first is the Nuli Juice Company, which in 2019 and 2020 was consecutively on Business Day’s prestigious top 100 fastest growing small- and medium-scale enterprises list. So, what was the motivation and the business case for this company?

OSAKWE: Oh, you know, Nuli is my daily bread and butter. Nuli came about when I was considering what to do after working in government and, you know, had worked and been this proponent for investing in African agriculture for so long. So, it was my way of truly rolling up my sleeves to build an agribusiness.

Our mission really is to energize healthier lifestyles in Africa with better nutrition. And we do this by focusing on buying local produce, fruits and vegetables, and food from farmers in rural areas across Nigeria and adding value of our all-natural fruit and vegetable juices as well as our food products.

So, it was just this vision to do this and I decided to act on that vision. And I’ve been staying that course for the last seven years and it’s been quite a journey and so fulfilling. I can’t even describe how fulfilling it’s been the fact that just under 50 people work with the company. You know, these folks depend every day on the salary that Nuli is paying to take care of themselves, their families, their extended family to give them dignity coming into a company that respects them and that has built its own brand equity. So, they feel proud to say that they work with the company.

And even just thinking about what we’ve done—we have eight restaurants today doing the farm to table meals. We use only indigenous produce. We’re not importing food—we’re not importing our prawns, we’re not importing our chicken, we’re not importing our lettuce, or even our berries—we’re buying from just Plateau State in Nigeria. Some people didn’t even know that we grow those and the region is cold enough to do that. We are using our coffee bean from Nigeria. Yes, Nigeria grows coffee. Our waffles on our menu—we use cassava flour. Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world, over 40 million metric tons annually.

So, we have to use flour, not the wheat flour that is being imported from the U.S. No, let’s support our farmers and use cassava flour. So, our cassawaffles are delicious and I hope you try it when you come to Nigeria, Aloysius.

That for me is what gets me so excited and motivates me today to keep building this company. Ultimately I think about even just the impact we’ve had on society. People saying they didn’t know how eating fresh local food, that obviously is affordable, how we could change their health and their lifestyle and the way they approached food. So, that for me has been one of the biggest motivators.

Ultimately, I truly want to see a Nuli in D.C. one day. So, if you’re walking by, Aloysius, in the next three years we should have lunch in Nuli in the city one of these days. Let’s stop embracing all the brands that come into Africa all the time, be it KFC or McDonald’s and folks who are increasingly coming in. Let’s also see proudly African food brands and restaurants that go global.

ORDU: I couldn’t agree more. You also founded Agrolay Ventures. Could you tell us more about this company? And also as an angel investor, how do you determine what startups to invest in?

OSAKWE: So, when it was time to move on from the government and my former boss was going on to become the president of the African Development Bank, I had worked with the African Development Bank for a number of years before, as I mentioned earlier, with you as well. And I was like, I’m not sure I want to go back. I have this itch now. You know, we worked with young people, we launched our Youth