From local to global: Experts identify blueprint for building world-class firms

In the 1980s and 1990s, travelling by road from Lagos to the eastern region of Nigeria required some passengers going to Ajegunle or Mile2, suburbs of Lagos to physically book for their tickets with transport giants like Ekele Dili Chukwu or Osondu Motors, transport companies that were dependable for interstate travel.

The companies enjoined the control in the road transport business, especially on the Lagos-Eastern corridor.

In the telecommunications sector, NITEL enjoyed monopoly, making some Nigerians think that telephone ownership was an exclusive privilege reserved for the wealthy and the nation’s elite.

In the retail market, Leventis and UTC were once two of Nigeria’s biggest retail chains. Daily Times also enjoined wider readership and dominated the newspaper industry. But today, some of these firms have either scaled down, are dominated by competition or have fizzled out.

The story of these companies resonates across Nigeria from Port Harcourt to Aba to Sokoto and Maiduguri to Calabar and to Lagos as they failed to innovate, failed to predict the future, felt that market dominance would last forever, engaged in bureaucratic decision-making and never engaged in customer experience.

This is what Victoria Uwadoka, Nestlé Nigeria’s head of corporate communications, public affairs and sustainability, discussed recently at a Brand Handlers summit in Lagos where she spoke to a hall of marketers, journalists and business founders.

Her view was simple: Africa’s problem was never a shortage of ideas or the establishment of firms but what happens after the idea -it is the scaling of the business, and it is where the continent keeps losing brands.

For instance, NITEL may not have anticipated GSM or was slow to innovate; Daily Times did not employ much technology to serve consumers; UTC may have adopted a weak response to new shopping habits, and Osondu Motors must have remained traditional in its approach of serving customers.

With poor customer experience, the businesses lost customers to competition that adopted modern methods to serve their customers better.

Uwadoka put it directly, “Africa is not suffering from a shortage of ideas. Africa is not suffering from a shortage of entrepreneurs. Africa is not suffering from a shortage of creativity. What we often struggle with is transforming great local brands into brands that can travel, compete, and win across borders.”

She made it clear that businesses that are resident in the failure premises had one thing in common: a lack of imagination and a lack of positive stories around their brands.

To Uwadoka, how African brands can scale and move from being locally-loved to continentally relevant and globally respected lies in the intersection of Data, AI and Creativity, three factors Uwadoka described as “powerful forces and a sustainable foundation.”

For decades, scale was determined by capital. Today, Uwadoka said scale is increasingly determined by intelligence. “We are in the knowledge economy. “

The brands winning globally are not necessarily the brands spending the most money. They are the brands learning the fastest. They understand their consumers better. They predict needs earlier. They personalise experiences more effectively, and they make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.

“This is why data has become one of the most valuable assets in modern business. We must operate based on insight.”

Citing African brands that scaled through intentional brand building, Uwadoka cited businesses like Flutterwave and M-Pesa in Kenya.

For Flutterwave, she said it did not position itself merely as a payment processor. It positioned itself as an enabler of African commerce. Its story was bigger than transactions. Its story was about a Nigerian brand helping African businesses participate in the digital economy. That narrative helped Flutterwave gain credibility across markets to attract global investors, partners, and customers, she said.

“What made M-Pesa extraordinary was the clarity of its purpose and the consistency of its positioning. It became synonymous with financial inclusion. It transformed from a service into a movement. Today, it is regarded globally as one of Africa’s most influential innovations.”

She regrets that too many African brands are designed for local success and later adapted for scale… if they survive, but the world’s most successful brands do the reverse: They are designed for scale from inception.

She advised marketers that when they are building their brands, they should ask whether the identity can travel, whether the promise resonates beyond one city or country or language and whether the product competes in different markets and can the story inspire audiences who have never visited our market?

She said global relevance should not be an afterthought. It should be embedded in the blueprint.

To some other experts, it is true that every African business will not become giants, but businesses need to build systems such as insight, technology, sustainability and narrative in addition to a quality product to endure. For Uwadoka, she wants African creativity to travel beyond borders.