Breaking Bread in Lagos: The Inaugural Summit Reimagining Africa’s Future

Olayinka Wealth Equity Strategies (OWES) convened 40–50 venture and ecosystem leaders in Lagos, Nigeria, last week for the inaugural Breaking Bread Summit—an intimate, half-day dinner designed to help shape the future of African and diasporan economies.

Hosted by founder Olayinka Osibodu, the gathering brought together influential voices from the U.S., U.K., and across Africa for candid conversation and high-level strategic alignment.

Building and Investing in the Africa We Owe Ourselves

Titled “Breaking Bread Summit: Investing In The Africa We Owe Ourselves,” the event assembled builders, investors, operators, and policymakers to explore what it will take to strengthen the continent’s tech ecosystem—from foundational infrastructure to cross-sector partnerships. Attendees represented sectors including energy, logistics, and supply chains, as well as next-generation financial and health technologies.

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Across the discussions, a clear theme emerged: accelerating Africa’s growth will require deeper cross-industry collaboration—and a sharper focus on the systems that enable independence, resilience, and scalable economic expansion.

Breaking Bread Summit

Sharing on why the event is being organized in an exclusive chat with UrbanGeekz, Osibodu said, “The world is turning its attention to Africa because the data and statistics point to that. In terms of resources, the continent does most of the labour but doesn’t benefit from the wealth and income generated. If we continue like this, Africa will be the same place in the next 30 years. The idea behind this event is to make sure we avoid that as much as possible.” 

The population of Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to rise by 79% over the next 30 years. This surge to 2.2 billion will come at a time when most developed countries are facing shrinking and aging populations, giving the region a demographic dividend with labour-force benefits and substantial economic potential.

This is reflected in optimism about talent availability. Data from the World Economic Forum show that employers in Sub-Saharan Africa are more upbeat than those in other regions: almost half expect talent availability to improve in 2025-30, vs. 29% globally.

Excerpts From The High-level Summit 

Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, the Founding Partner and CEO of Aruwa Capital Management, highlighted that the intersection of impact and wealth creation drew her interest to invest in African markets. “It was after I spent some time in JPMorgan Chase and Investment Banking that I had an opportunity to work with a fund called TLG Capital in London. I was involved in investments across Africa, including one in Uganda that locally manufactured antimalarial drugs. I invested alongside the fund, and we made 4x on that investment.” 

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At the same time, I saw people’s lives improve through access to genuine, locally produced medicines for the first time. And then we were able to export those medicines across East Africa. This was 14 years ago, so it sparked my interest to say, well, I’ve been in investment banking on large transactions, but there was no way to follow through on the impact. For the first time, I was like, “You can make 4x more money and improve people’s lives at the same time, while making an impact.” 

Breaking Bread

I haven’t seen that kind of intersection between doing well and doing good. At the back of my mind, I thought, well, I want to do this back home in Nigeria, but I didn’t quite know how I was going to do that. But the light-bulb moment for me came at that point: through investing, you can generate wealth for yourself and the people you invest in, and you can also positively impact the lives of consumers and value-chain participants. 

This can address many of the fundamental issues in society, including unemployment, poverty, access to basic education, and access to healthcare. There are so many ripple effects through these investments that got me excited. I think Africa is the only place around the world where you can achieve that.”

As conversations shifted to why she’s betting on Africa, Ashim Egunjobi, Managing Partner, Octerra Capital, said, “We have an obligation to ensure that Africa reaches its potential. Although we talk about it a lot, we also complain about everything that’s broken; we have an obligation to fix it. No one is going to fix it for us; truly, we shouldn’t expect anybody to do that. So we’ve all got to pull our weight and figure out how to fix it. We are betting on Africa because we have an obligation.” 

The second part she continued is because Africa is a special place, Nigeria is really special because we have this sense of community. “You don’t find that in many areas. This Breaking Bread is really quite symbolic because we take care of each other. The majority of people are living below this designated poverty line. 

UrbanGeekz reporter Stephen Oluwadara, and Olayinka Osibodu

Still, we don’t see those big conflicts or the protests or all of that, not because the people aren’t suffering, struggling, and hustling, but because we have community. I know that today, if I don’t have food in my house, I can go to Adesuwa, and she’ll take care of me even if she doesn’t have any. Somehow, we do it. That is really, really special. We’ve got to make sure we foster that and do our best to uphold that spirit of community.” 

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Some of the other speakers who graced the OWES’s Breaking the Bread include: David Olusegun, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Creative Control Ventures; Ben Oyajumo, MBA, LLB, Co-founder & Investor, Malaika Residency; Solomon Nnanna, CEO, Reach and Sahara Jets; and Walter Erike, MBA.

Sponsors of the event include: Aruwa Capital Management, REACH Support, JPMorganChase, Two Twenty Labs, Project Wellspring, and Octerra Capital.. Other partners were Goodie Nation, Business Africa Online (BAO), SeedSprout, and UrbanGeekz.

Main Image: Ashim Egunjobi, Olayinka Osibodu, and Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes. Image Credit: OWES