Published: October 25, 2022
Okechukwu (“Okey”) Enelamah is the chairman and founder of African Capital Alliance, a private equity firm founded in 1997. After more than 30 years in the industry, including a term in government, he is looking forward to the next chapter of Africa’s transformation.
Back in 1997, when Okechukwu (“Okey”) Enelamah founded African Capital Alliance (ACA), Africa’s private equity landscape was not what it is today. Although there had been a smattering of private equity funds, focused on South Africa, they were a relatively new idea and large parts of the continent were untouched by them.
“You need to give investors a good macro story in order to raise private equity,” Enelamah tells EMEA Finance. “When we decided to go for Nigeria and West Africa – which was what African Capital Alliance was founded to do originally – Nigeria had a military head of state, and it wasn’t a country that investors were pouring into. The question was, how would you be able to raise capital at this time?”