I have watched a lot of European and American executives arrive in Africa with the same expression. Confident. Slightly impatient. Certain that what worked in Frankfurt or Dallas would translate. Most of them were gone within two years. A few never recovered their reputations.
At embassy cocktail parties in Accra, Lagos, and Dakar, I used to hear the same line: "I'm going to kill this market. They don't have the smarts." I would listen, nod politely, and think: another one bites the dust. And most of them did.
What they did not understand — what takes years to understand, if you are paying attention — is that Africa does not reward the aggressive close. It rewards the patient relationship. The executive who shows up whether or not there is a specific reason to be there. The one who is still around when the contract is ready to be signed.
These are the four rules I have lived by. I did not learn them at IESE. I learned them in the field, often the hard way.
The Four Golden Rules
Keep the Flame Alive
My father said it to me during our first contract in Ghana — a multimillion-dollar hospital rehabilitation that took over two years to close. "Christian, do not travel to Ghana when there is a specific deliverable needed. Travel monthly. Learn the idiosyncrasy. Meet new people. Expand your network. Cement the relationships." Because the alternative is "out of sight, out of mind." In Africa, presence is itself a signal. Showing up when you have no immediate agenda tells a minister, a procurement director, or a CEO something that no pitch deck can communicate: you are here for the long term, not the commission.
Long-Term Vision Over Short-Term Targets
Today's business culture demands quarterly results, measurable outputs, and rapid ROI. Africa operates on a different clock — and paradoxically, that is precisely where the opportunity lies. Africa currently attracts less than 6% of global foreign direct investment, yet consistently delivers returns of 11–15%, well above the global average of 7–7.5%. The executives and companies that grasp this — and can make the case internally to play the long game — capture positions that no late-mover can replicate. A man of vision is not defined by one project, but by the future he sees.
Patience Is Not Weakness — It Is Strategy
Bureaucracy is real. Regulatory frameworks vary dramatically across 54 countries. Multi-layered approval processes, shifting political priorities, and infrastructure constraints mean that timelines rarely match the plan. The executive who treats these as failures of the system will be perpetually frustrated. The executive who treats them as the system — and builds strategy accordingly — finds that patience compounds. The relationships built during the slow periods are the ones that accelerate everything when the window opens.
Never Underestimate African Operators
This is the most important rule and the one most frequently violated. African operators in both the private and public sectors are exceptionally well educated, strategically sophisticated, and acutely aware of when they are being underestimated. I have worked directly with ministers of finance, central bank governors, and senior procurement directors across Ghana, Senegal, and Morocco. They had seen every approach before mine. The executives who succeeded treated their counterparts as equals — because they were. The ones who didn't rarely got a second meeting.
The Lesson from Makola Market
Street level, Makola Market. The scale only becomes apparent when you are inside it.
On our first day working together in Ghana, my father did not take me to the Ministry. He took me to Makola Market.
I was twenty-four years old, freshly arrived, and frankly scared. The market is overwhelming — one of the largest open-air commercial centres in West Africa, hundreds of thousands of people, noise, colour, heat, and a commercial energy unlike anything in Europe.
We came across a small workshop. Men were fixing motor spare parts, reusing components that would have been scrapped anywhere in Spain. Fixing bicycles with improvised tools. My father stopped and watched for a long time. Then he said something I have never forgotten.
"Christian — in post-Civil War Spain, we were in exactly this position. Isolated from the world. A dictatorship. People had to figure out how to do things with almost nothing."
He paused. "La necesidad agudiza el ingenio." Necessity is the mother of invention. "These people are not behind you. They are solving problems you have never had to face."
That moment reframed everything that followed. I stopped seeing Africa as a market to be conquered and started seeing it as a community of operators to be understood. That shift, more than any commercial skill I have developed, is what made every significant deal I have closed in Africa possible.
The Business Case for Relationships First
None of this is abstract. The relationship-first approach produces measurable commercial outcomes — it just measures them on a different timeline than most companies are comfortable with.
When trust is established before the contract is on the table, the dynamics of every subsequent negotiation change. You are not a vendor to be squeezed. You are a partner to be protected. Your competitors who arrive later, move faster, and skip the relationship-building find that the door is already closed — not because of price, not because of product, but because you were there first and you stayed.
"The fact is that it is easier to become a market leader in Africa than in other deeply competitive markets like China and India. It is the best time for Africa's CEOs to charge ahead and capture markets. I would say: invest now and invest smart."
— Ashish Thakkar, Founder of Mara GroupThe companies winning in Africa in 2026 are not the ones who moved fastest. They are the ones who moved first and stayed longest. They built institutional relationships at ministerial level, embedded themselves in local supply chains, developed local talent rather than importing foreign executives who lacked context, and treated patience not as a concession to cultural difference but as a deliberate commercial strategy.
I did not just carry the flame my father lit. I built my own fire. As Africa Division Director and later Deputy Managing Director International, I went on to generate over $175M in projects across eight African countries — operating commercially or visiting 27 in total. The lessons he taught me at Makola Market in 1995 became the foundation of every deal that followed. Every concession won. Every ministry navigated. Every relationship that took years to build and delivered at exactly the right moment.
The Principle
Do business to make friends. Then you will do business with friends. It sounds simple. It is not easy. Most companies are structurally incapable of prioritising it — because the relationships that matter most in Africa are built in the years before the contract, and most organisations cannot justify that investment to a quarterly earnings call.
The executives who can make that case internally — who can hold the long view against short-term pressure — are the ones who end up with positions in Africa that no competitor can replicate, no matter how much capital they deploy.
That is not sentiment. That is 25 years of verified commercial experience across eight countries, two government concessions, and a $10 million hospital contract that took two years and monthly flights to close.
The pudding, as always, is in the eating.
That is not sentiment. That is 25 years of verified commercial experience across eight countries, two government concessions, and a $10 million hospital contract that took two years and monthly flights to close.