First Week at LEAP
I am finishing up my first week of work in Lagos and am very excited to be here. During my first drive from the airport to Lagos Island, we passed Oshodi, which is an immense market and informal bus terminal. From a certain vantage point, there are throngs of people, tents, buses and motorbikes as far as the eye can see. There is an electricity in the air here and after visiting I truly think Nigeria can be the country on everybody’s lips in the next 5-10 years as not only an African economic powerhouse, but as a global powerhouse.
Within my first two weeks here I will be attending two weddings. The first one was at the Mountain of Fire temple and for the next one I will be getting a Yoruba style Buba Sokoto suit custom made out of a Ghanian fabric called Woodin. The food here is incredible. I tried pounded yam, pepper soup, cow tail, efo riro, ofada rice, moi-moi and jollof rice. Nigerian food is very spicy and usually accompanied by a starchy food like yams, garri, or moi-moi. Moi-moi is similar to a tamale, except it is made out of beans and wrapped in a tropical leaf instead of a corn husk.
Lagos is a huge city with a population of around 15 million and the traffic jams are quite tough to navigate. I have been taking cars around, but recently have been riding Okadas (informal motorbike taxis) to weave through the traffic. When my co-worker heard about this he offered to take me to the Okada ward in the hospital where he will attempt to dissuade me from riding them again.
At LEAP Africa, I am managing a project to write a book which I hope will result in significant knowledge creation about business ethics in Nigeria. The objective of the book is to demonstrate how you can be profitable and ethical in Nigeria, and how employing business ethics in your company leads to long term financial sustainability. A challenge has been how to measure the impact of ethical business and to determine how much of a premium ethical companies can place on their products and services. I have conducted interviews with business and academic leaders and am designing a survey to measure people’s perceptions about a variety of business practices in Nigeria.
It is great to be involved in such a worthy project in one of the world’s most dynamic markets. More to come next week……Stay tuned.