Afro-modern Entrepreneurs and (Pan) African Business Leaders: Tony Elumelu and Reuel Khoza as Exemplars

Abstract

This chapter examines the biographies of the founder of Afri-capitalism (Nigeria’s Tony Elumelu) and a foremost Ubuntu business leader (South Africa’s Reuel Khoza). They are presented as business leaders and African agents of a new Pan African leadership derived from the awakening of a burgeoning transnational capitalist class, a new middle class, and transformative business sectors in Africa that are driving “Pan Africa Rising”. The chapter presents Elumelu and Khoza as purveyors of Afro-modern entrepreneurship, a new genre of African leadership that combats Africa’s marginalization in the international political economy using negotiated dirigisme as a tactic to achieve more fulsome economic benefits for Africans. The chapter presents both leaders as exemplars of a bourgeoning African business class that is strategically cultivating discourses of Afri-consciousness to engage national, regional, and international public–private sector dialogues about African political economies. The chapter demonstrates that Elumelu and Khoza’s leadership reveals a paradox showing how economic practices of both business leaders seem to be at once pro-neoliberal in that they uncritically leverage and thus enable neoliberal Africa Rising narratives. Yet, at the same time, we will see how the business leaderships of Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu business are as well significantly and increasingly Afri-centric, nationalistic, and Pan Africanist. To this end, they present alternative approaches to international political economy that offer distinctive alterity for understanding African economic struggles in a global era.