African economies are not just made up of recurring debt crises, costly climate disasters or programs to fight poverty. This continent of 1.2 billion people is not only made up of small entrepreneurs, who, from north to south and from east to west, run still informal economies, earning by day the bread they put on their Table. Despite tech strongholds, the economic landscape is still far from being defined by these innovative start-ups that promise to turn local failures into opportunities.
Africa also has large companies, sometimes empires. Groups that are entirely family-owned or listed on the stock exchange, sometimes associated with global giants. Active in one or more countries and with thousands or even tens of thousands of employees. Behemoths of agriculture, various industries, but also construction, energy or insurance, built with stubbornness by savvy entrepreneurs.
It is some of these African sagas that are told to you here. We did not necessarily choose the biggest companies on a continental scale, but privileged three singular epics: those of Sifca, giant of the food industry born in Ivory Coast; Castel, whose drinks have established themselves on many African tables; and Cevital, which has deployed in sectors as diverse as the press, construction and agri-food.
“Fragility of context”
Significant entrepreneurial adventures which, in a changing Africa, have also been witnesses, and sometimes actors, of a change of era, interweaving their little story with the big one. Stories of men (especially, context requires) who have built fortunes by knowing how to navigate in sometimes chaotic economic and political environments made of overthrowing regimes, with kleptocratic states, changing rules of the game and, sometimes, passages through the jail cell.
We also wanted to show that these entrepreneurs, sometimes a bit megalomaniac, are confronted in Africa as elsewhere with the difficult question of their own succession: choosing heirs, avoiding the tearing of entire siblings, handing over the reins at the right time. “Human life is limited, but not the life of a company, and it is something that an entrepreneur does not always want to see, confided during these investigations a lawyer close to many African businessmen. But the fragility of the context means that here they have the obligation to insure their heritage. »
