Family businesses seek global partnerships

Family-owned enterprises across Africa are seeking global partnerships and governance reforms as business leaders warn that high generational failure rates threaten one of the continent’s most important economic engines.

At the centre of the push is the Lagos Business School Family Business Initiative at Pan-Atlantic University, which is intensifying efforts to connect Nigerian and African family enterprises with international networks and research institutions in order to improve succession planning, governance structures, and long-term sustainability.

Speaking ahead of the 2026 International Family Business Conference, the Chairman of the LBS Family Business Advisory Board, Rasheed Sarumi, warned that despite their economic dominance, family businesses remain structurally fragile.

Sarumi said: “I just saw the Forbes list being released. These people are predominantly from family businesses. Whether you look at the fastest growing in Africa or the richest individuals, they both come from this angle.”

According to him, they were small businesses on the businesses that do not make the headlines —the corner shops and mid-sized firms that form the backbone of local economies.

“When those businesses are sustained, the economy grows, we are able to have an impact on poverty, and it brings prosperity. We stand for family business because it assures us prosperity,” he said.

According to him, building companies capable of surviving multiple generations requires deliberate institutional thinking rather than informal family control.

“Our vision and drive is to make sure that maybe in our lifetime, certainly in ten generations, the seed that we are sowing here will lead to all of that happening beyond our times,” he said.

He pointed to examples from Asia and Europe where family enterprises have endured for centuries, noting that longevity depends less on luck than on governance discipline.

“Family business is about the resolve of the owner to put in place a set of practices that will make it enduring and that will make it a winner,” he said.

Nigeria’s challenge, Sarumi noted, is that many entrepreneurs still rely on inherited management styles rather than modern governance frameworks.

As Sarumi put it, the aim is for Nigerian family businesses to eventually sit “at the same table” as those in countries such as Spain and Brazil — not merely as participants, but as equal partners in the global family enterprise ecosystem.

The Director, LBS Family Business Initiative, Dr. Okey Nwuke noted: “Family business contributes about 80 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). He emphasised the central role such enterprises play in national economies across the continent. “Over 70 per cent of GDP of every country is driven from the family business. But this reality is widely misunderstood, particularly in Nigeria where people assume oil and gas dominate everything. If you look at Nigeria, you might think that the largest contributor to our GDP would be oil and gas. It’s actually not the largest contributor,” he added.

Advertisement

Nwuke said roughly 70per cent of family businesses fail during the first generational transition, creating a pattern of instability that disrupts wealth creation and employment.

“The start and stop, start and stop — that is what we want to reduce. We want that failure rate to be reduced,” Nwuke said.

To address the challenge, he said LBS is hosting 2026 International Family Business Conference at the Ecobank Pan African Centre March 26, to boost sustainability of such organisations.

The conference, organised in partnership with Ecobank Nigeria,he noted will bring together business leaders, policymakers, academics, and family enterprise owners from across Africa and beyond to examine how governance and culture shape the long-term survival of family firms.

This year’s theme, “Beyond Survival: Governance & Culture as the Foundation of Lasting Family Legacies,” reflects a progression in the initiative’s focus over recent years. The 2024 edition explored the transition “From Family Enterprise to Family Institution,” while the 2025 conference addressed the challenge of preparing the next generation for stewardship.

The 2026 event will feature a keynote address by John Momoh, founder and chairman of Channels Media Group, whose career in media entrepreneurship has often been cited as an example of institutional leadership in Nigeria.

Other speakers include Kunle Elebute, former chairman of KPMG Africa; Bernadette Eyisi of Sims Group; Toyin Bakare of SAS Textiles; Alfred Okoigun of Arco Petroleum; Kemi Ojenike of Meristem Family Office; Belinda Nwosu of Lagos Business School; Okechukwu Ikoro of Camela Vegetable Oil; Kenechi Chidolue of Chelsea Hotel Group; A. U. Mustapha of A.U. Mustapha & Co.; and Mahmud Tukur of Ashgrove Group.

Nwuke said the event forms part of a broader strategy to professionalise the sector through research, training, and policy dialogue.

Beyond the upcoming conference, he said the long-term vision is to build a generation of African family enterprises capable of competing — and collaborating — with counterparts in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Since family businesses account for more than 80 per cent of private companies across Africa and provide a substantial share of employment, he said improving their survival rates could have a major impact on economic stability.

According to him, LBS advisory board has entered into collaboration with IESE Business School, a leading European institution, as part of a broader international research programme on family enterprises. The initiative, he explained, aims to establish a Nigerian chapter of the Family Business Network, a global association that connects family-owned firms across continents.