ET GBS 2026: It's time for India to hop aboard Africa's Entrepreneurship Express

New Delhi: Africa cannot be ignored anymore, EbonyLife Media founder Mo Abudu said at the ET Now Global Business Summit, emphasising that the continent is no longer emerging but at the forefront of everything.

"We tend to excel at absolutely everything that we do. I literally believe that every African is actually an entrepreneur within themselves. Africa is not short of either of those assets. We are rising, we are entrepreneurial and we give everything that we do, absolutely 100%," she said at the session titled 'Entrepreneurship in a Rising Africa'.

If anyone in India already doesn't have an African partner, they should do so, she said.


"Some of those issues, and some of those challenges that we often were presented with, have become our superpowers," she said. "Some of the superpowers that we have on our continent include the fact that we are 1.4 million people. We have the youngest workforce in the world. The median age of an African right now is 19. So, if you are looking at your future workforce, and if you're looking at your future consumers, they are going to be in Africa." She stressed that "if you aren't already trading or doing business in Africa, it really is time for you to look at doing so". "We are driven by the gaps that we see, and that's what fuels entrepreneurs across the continent. There are rapid tech hubs in Nairobi, Nigeria and other cities," Abudu said. "We are not short of natural resources... 70% of the world's cobalt comes from Africa. Lithium, copper reserves, of course, oil and gas, especially in my country, Nigeria. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, 70% of the world's cocoa comes from Africa. Coffee and tea, a large share of that also comes from our continent."

"But what I am happy about exporting to the rest of the world, which we have consumed for the longest time, is the media," she said. "We have, for the longest time, consumed western media. We have left it to them to tell us who we are, and our stories come from their perspective. What about us taking some responsibility, some ownership for our storytelling?"

Nigeria is one of the largest film producers on the continent, close to Bollywood in terms of the number of films.