Fluidity 2025 is a two-day event designed to encourage regional expansion, business development, joint ventures, investment, and trade flows between the UAE and Africa. Early BIRD tickets are on sale now. [Click Here]
I get energized when I meet younger founders; they possess an enthusiasm, energy, and agency that have dimmed in me after 20 years in the competitive world of venture building in Africa. Capitalism requires industry, and youth has that in abundance. This old man is tired. Looking back, 15 of my 20 years in this field have, for all intents and purposes, been in HARDMODE. Africa’s macro turbulence has made it so.
Africa’s Macro Turbulence
I can make a step change as I have cash-generating assets, and for the last 18 months, I have largely been self-funding and paying down debts for my money-losing startups (pray for me). I can largely choose the pace at which I move, so I decided to slow things down and spend more time with my family rather than the constant pursuit of dollars. The more I stepped back from capitalism, the more I feared for the state of our communities. From 1980 to 2010, I lived in the UK, then Lagos from 2010 to 2018. I witnessed firsthand the collapse of an economy; I found the negative energies surrounding it troubling, so I decided to relocate to Accra, Ghana, from 2018 to 2024, essentially straight into another collapsing economic story. It’s exhausting. At this point, I am older and fairly comfortable. But whatever wealth one thought they had amassed across Ghana or Nigeria has dramatically eroded during that time frame. Take a minute to imagine how much wealthier you would be if the Naira had simply remained or stayed below 500/$? I landed when it was 120/$. It’s 1,500 today. The reasons for these collapses were different, but more importantly, they seemed largely self-inflicted. Why, in Africa, do we set aside centuries-old tested and trusted economic management and trade policies only to end up at the top of the poverty and lack of development indices? That’s 15 years of experiencing firsthand turbulent macro headwinds for Africa. During that same period, the UAE GDP moved from $147B (2004) to $505B (2024), and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has seen astonishing improvements in wealth, with a GDP of $256B (2004) to $1.064T (2024). That’s why you see the 60 million population of The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, had a combined GDP of approximately $2.1 trillion, which is almost equal to the 1.4 billion inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa. This is reflected in the cost of living and salaries for the region. For example, it’s not uncommon for working-class populations at the lowest end to earn the equivalent (net of housing and feeding allowances) of $6,000 per annum. From my experiences, domestic staff like drivers and nannies easily earn $10-15,000 per annum. Outside of South Africa, that would put them in the top 5% of earners on our continent. From my research, there are 1-2 million+ Black Africans living and working across the GCC. That market alone may be larger than most African markets for fintech, entertainment, or internet services. Everyone I have spoken to who has lived in Dubai for the last 10+ years is happy; their property prices have exploded. Things are crowded, yes, but they are definitely better than they were before. The future appears very bright. Dubai, at least, forces you to be productive; if you are not, you simply can’t survive here. Their entire immigration, social, and economic policy is geared towards productivity. That’s an incredibly inspiring place to be. Something that blows my mind is the fact that Dubai and Port Harcourt have very similar populations, but the latter has far more oil than Dubai as she produces more than 60% of Nigeria’s output of crude oil. Nigerians have been slaying and Jayé in Dubai when our fellow emerging market founders have been building wealth.
Where are the $5m+ HNIs?
In finance, “HNI” stands for High-Net-Worth Individual, referring to individuals with significant liquid assets, typically defined as those with a net worth of at least $1 million excluding their primary residence.
As I traveled the globe, it became even more evident how limited Black and African people have been in the global money game. As a community, I feel we over-index on the glorification and celebration of wealth while having frank (usually low IQ) conversations around it. But we are, frankly, at the bottom of any tables when it comes to actually creating true wealth. This only scales at the community, regional, and then state levels. Take Nigeria, for example. The mediocrity is universally scaled across all the tribes and regions. I held some hope in the diaspora that some of the largest growth in global GDP contribution to the world over the last 20 years has been from China, the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and UAE), and Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.). I have been asking folks how many, let’s narrow it down, Nigerians are there who have made money ($5m+) from within those regions? Not made money in Nigeria and parked it there. I have been tracking The Sunday Times Rich List for over 25 years. The latest has only eight Africans. And the most on that list made their money in Africa but just happen to reside in the UK (South African billionaire Nicky Oppenheimer and Strive Masiyiwa were 1 & 2). Global Black Billionaires: As of 2025, Forbes lists 17 Black billionaires worldwide, including Africans like Aliko Dangote (Nigeria) and multiracial individuals such as Rihanna. For Bloomberg Billionaire Index, as of the latest available data, Aliko Dangote is the only African billionaire consistently listed, which tracks the world’s 500 richest people. Bloomberg’s methodology focuses on liquid assets (e.g., publicly traded stocks, bonds), which may exclude some Black African billionaires whose wealth is tied to private companies or less liquid assets.
It was actually quite sobering to not find many Nigerians who had started, invested, or built something of consequence that doesn’t have a direct connection to home. There were tons of very successful professionals (finance, legal, etc.), but after two years of asking, I haven’t found many. Mind you, I am happy to be proved wrong and to learn more. Sustainable, competitive global trade is the only way to grow wealth for your country. But I have seen Lebanese and Indian individuals with their own Forbes top 100 list filled with billionaires from the Middle East. The richest having a $2.5billion fortune. On the other hand, at the community level, it’s about deliberate, intentional long-term planning; bridging knowledge gaps, expanding your network to create opportunities, and avoid pitfalls; having an open mind to learning and being willing to teach others. I relocated to Dubai a year ago; I spend a significant amount of my free time community organizing to contribute where I can to support our communities here in the UAE. I have a strong network in Africa, so when serious people come into Dubai, I host them (lunches, dinners, and discussions). 90% of this is actually private and offline. For the most part, their issues are similar: rebasing their HQs to Africa, expansion, applying for golden visas, looking for technical partners, investors, or licenses from friendly GCC regulators, etc.; exploring school options for their families, etc. Of course, many just want to switch off and relax in Dubai, the center of softness. Over the last year, I have informally advised founders, investors, and large corporations on all of the above. It’s fun but very inefficient and doesn’t necessarily scale. So I created and have been evangelizing Fluidity 2025 on the 7th-8th of April as a two-day event designed to encourage regional expansion, business development, joint ventures, investment, and trade flows between the UAE and across Africa. It’s a small <200 person summit where we gather serious founders, investors, regulators and big corporations from across the regions into a room over a compressed period of time to figure out how we can amplify our wealth creation efforts. Of course alongside supporting the ecosystem and aligning with our Nigerian customs one expects to be priced into any deals that require a little extra handholding. Anyways. if you are an entrepreneur or executive, including those from Fortune 500 companies at the levels of VP, SVP, Director, and Regional CEOs who want to supercharge your network and explore ways to build wealth, join us at FLUIDITY 2025 at Al Habtoor Place, Dubai. There are so many opportunities we as Africans are missing out on by simply not exploring in markets that are more emerging than the developed ones we are used to jappering to.