In order to succeed and fly high in 2025, a business consultant, Dr. Vincent Nwani, says media independent practitioners in Nigeria should focus more attention in sectors of the economy that are smiling like the financial services as against those that are crying. Additionally, they should re-examine their operational procedures and tilt towards innovation, research, addressing consumers’ pain points, following where the money is and listening to staff.
Dr. Nwani, who is the strategy director West Africa, Safrik Investment Group, gave this admonition at the 2025 Business Outlook workshop organized by the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN), in Lagos, recently on the theme “Navigating the Cost of Doing Business in Nigeria: Value Delivery in a Tough Economic Climate.”
According to him, businesses are leaving and some sectors are crying but some are smiling. “One of the sectors smiling is the finance sector. Wherever you are in finance I think you are smiling. The average growth rate as at 2024 is 28% while other sectors are growing at average of 3.49%. So, if I am you, as a MIPAN member servicing business, I would increase my capacity to engage or onboard players in the financial industry as they will be able to pay for my services.”
The consultant explains that the takeaways from periods of economic crises and recessions show that businesses that survive and thrive focus on adaptation and innovation; customers’ needs and pain-points; diversification and strategic partnership; efficient operation and cost management; strong leadership and vision; agility and adaptability.
During economic crisis, he says: “For me the first one is agility and resilience. During economic crisis, you shed your weight as a business. You have to be a bit fast. This is how we have been doing it before is not this time. You have to be agile, making decisions on the spot because the rate at which fundamentals of the economy work also changes very fast.
“Avoid waste, wasteful practices and prioritize ruthlessly. Focus on those activities that will deliver value and don’t be afraid to say no to issues that don’t align with your focus at this time.
“By focusing efforts on delivering the most significant value to customers, businesses can stay afloat and survive even in a tough economic climate.”
He advises that businesses that want to make it in 2025 should be strategic in their cashflow management. “This is not the time to keep cashflow because price could change in the evening. This is the time to buy now and pay later, provided the price is frozen or fixed.”
He also advises MIPAN members to sell from the pain-points of the consumers. “Satisfied customers are loyal even in a tough economic climate. How do we satisfy them? By selling from their pain-points.
“This is the time to give the market what the market need not what you have. So it is now market in, product out, instead of product in, market out.”
He recommends that their operational procedures should include collaboration and partnership. “This is the time to turn down competition and to up collaboration and partnership. Co-location. Is there cost you can share, is there facilities you can share, is there investment you can share without compromising your trade secret, without compromising your lifetime value customers? This is the time.”
Innovation and creativity are key, he says.
He also speaks on research. “This is the time to research. If you don’t have money to hire people to research, there is AI. Research your target customers. Research the market. Research your product. Research the competitor. Because lack of credible, timely research and intelligent information is the reason why 25% of businesses in sub Saharan Africa even die before they are five years old.
“And you have to move from research to intelligence. Research is about knowing what has happened yesterday and what is happening now. But intelligence is the ‘juju’ part of it, the prophecy part of it, knowing what will happen tomorrow. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. But it reduced the rate of probability attached to future events. What is your competitor planning to do? What is government planning to do? What is investor planning to do? What are the likely scenarios? Scenarios A, B, C – best case, worst case and middle case scenario on the things you want to do.
“Be spot on in your decision making, don’t carry heavy duty. And that is why in periods like this, one of the things your clients do is to cut advertising, they cut training, they cut HR costs an all of those things.”
Dr. Nwani further advises participants to listen to their staff, to team members, especially the ones that are excited about an idea. “Whether you like it or not, if you have grown your team very well, one of them will come, maybe casually to give you an idea. Don’t dismiss it. As manager this is the time to release the one that has idea and is very passionate about it because we have also learnt that 25% of companies that survive and grow at periods like this, like Coca Cola, like IBM, had ideas that were borne by staff that were thinking, low level staff who came and had conversations with their managers by 7pm in the evening.”
The expert had earlier on painted a picture of the current situation in Nigeria in contrast to where we were a decade ago.
“Years ago, about 2014, Nigeria was throwing itself around as the largest economy in Africa. If you were anywhere in the world, in Korea, Japan and you want to do business in Africa, the place you talk about was Nigeria. So we were getting a lot of attention by investors and business people.
“Unfortunately, according to IMF, at the end of this year, we would have lost that GDP value in USD by about 60 per cent. In fact, we would be the fifth largest economy in Africa by the end of 2024. And if the trend continues, God forbid, we will go further down by next year. These are the realities.
“The Q3 GDP number is out. We are not in recession but it’s a low growth, very low growth. We have moved from the average growth rate of 7 percent to around 3 per cent now. This year, IMF has also projected 3.2 % and our population is growing at about 3 %, so there is no real growth.
He explained that the country’s debt rose by 120% in 2023 and predicted that Nigeria may find itself in debt crisis in 2025.
“Nigerian businesses that were going out are now struggling to even maintain presence in their country because charity begins at home. This is an inverse of what we were having three years ago, when UBA was rolling out, Access bank was rolling out, Dangote opened a new factory in the middle of Central Africa. Businesses in Nigeria that have been here over the last 100 years are having challenges. Some have gone through five, ten business cycles, why are they not surviving now?”
He mentions some of the reasons that multinationals were leaving Nigeria and other businesses going under to include harsh operating environment that borders on insecurity, inability to manage exchange rate, hyper-inflation, cost of importation, power crisis and others.
He posits that it is not all about lamentation as the economic crisis is not the first and would not be the last in Nigeria and even globally and from experience, companies have been able to survive past crisis, some will also survive this one,
“I can tell you that due to last businesses are always borne during economic crisis, not just the way they were formed but maybe you have been operating in a certain one and changed course completely.
“Before Covid-19 where was Opay? Digital payment platforms? Netflix? Where was Paystack? So businesses due to last are borne during economic crisis, whether they are in Nigeria or elsewhere. The economic crisis or economic reforms of the 90s and 2000s gave birth to the Access Banks, GTB Banks, Zenith Banks of this world. Because the tree you plant during dry season and they germinate, nothing stops them again.
“IBM, Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola, they are responses to economic crisis during world war and global economic crisis. Sales Force, Ebay, LinkedIn, Dell, Google, are all products of economic crisis.”
Dr. Vincent Nwani believes “the hope will be for businesses and business leaders to keep searching and exploring intermittent ways and meeting deliberate business environment constraints.”
The event also had in attendance, the President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) and Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Noah Ark’s Communication Group, Mr. Lanre Adisa, who, in his goodwill message, reiterates the need for partnership and collaboration among the different sectors in the marketing communication ecosystem, especially between AAAN and MIPAN.
