What does it really take to succeed in business in the developing world? One man’s remarkable journey from a rural Nigerian village to a top job in a global corporation reveals the challenges, the opportunities and the issues we must all face up to if we’re to create positive organizational and societal impact, equality and equity in global business.
Babs Omotowa has spent his life rejecting the status quo. His own career disproves the unthinking perception that Africans underperform in global businesses, and his insistence that bigger societal issues such as community development, corruption, transparency and pollution belong on the corporate agenda alongside market and production target has revolutionized big business’s approach to the developing world.
From government agency blockades due to his refusal to pay an illegal levy, to the fallout from his resistance to paying $2bn to fund elections, to bringing transparency to oil spills and revenues to government, to creating strategic master-planning for community development and to taking tough stance to address corruption issues, his story exposes the challenges of big businesses in developing countries and reveals a better way for multinational companies to navigate these challenges: with integrity and courage.
