LBS, Mondelēz urge investment to unlock Africa’s 1.3bn market

The Business Unit President, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mondelēz International, Hisham Ezz El Arab.

The Business Unit President, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mondelēz International, Hisham Ezz El Arab, has urged Nigeria and other African countries to invest in their people and create the right environment for them to tap into the continent’s 1.3 billion-strong consumer market.

Ezz El Arab spoke on Tuesday in Lagos as a guest speaker at the Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, Leadership Dialogue, themed ‘The 5 Ps of Business Transformation.’

Addressing the challenge facing cash-strapped Nigerians and credit-constrained small businesses seeking to grow, the Mondelēz chief said sub-Saharan Africa’s population represented an enormous opportunity for the continent, its governments and its people.

“Investing in our talents, giving them the best possible environment and ecosystem to grow and thrive, nourishing them, giving them opportunities, is, I think, probably the only way we have to tap into this massive opportunity we have in front of us,” Ezz El Arab said.

He added that Africa’s young, energetic and aspirational population made it a unique growth market that no other region could currently match.

Earlier in his presentation, Ezz El Arab unveiled a five-point leadership framework for driving business transformation, built around the themes of people, plan, process, progress and purpose.

He explained that the five elements were not sequential but interconnected, noting that the starting point for any organisation depended on its peculiar circumstances.

“I have discovered that you can start from anywhere and then work on anywhere. Really, it depends on the transformation of man,” he said.

Ezz El Arab illustrated the framework with examples from Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, drawn from his career at the company.

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In Egypt, he recalled leading a purpose-driven transformation of a dairy business that turned a market where yoghurt was consumed mainly during Ramadan into a year-round category leader within 24 months.

“The learning for you is that sometimes you’re going to have to pick between an unconventional approach and an ordinary, safe, conventional approach, and the best way to adjust your compass is to consult your purpose,” Ezz El Arab said.

In Turkey, he said the company faced a different challenge despite strong business performance, as economic hardship pushed skilled staff to consider emigrating, forcing management to rally the workforce around a bigger organisational purpose.

In Saudi Arabia, he said a long-struggling business unit was turned around by focusing first on rebuilding the people and the organisation, a decision he said should guide any leader confronted with a company that is badly off track.

“You start from people. And once you fix that, everything else will fall in place gradually and slowly but surely,” he said.

In her opening remarks, the Dean, Lagos Business School, Prof Olayinka David-West, represented by a member of the school’s Management Board, Prof Uche Atoh, said the theme of the dialogue was timely given the rapid ecological, economic and competitive changes confronting businesses today.

“Transformation, therefore, is no longer something organisations undertake occasionally. It has become a continuing pillar of responsibility,” Atoh said, quoting the Dean’s remarks.

She said the Leadership Dialogue series was designed to let LBS participants, alumni, executives and faculty engage with leaders who had navigated real-world business complexity, in line with the school’s mission of developing responsible leaders to drive Africa’s growth.