Tycoon Sells 'Fear' Gospel to 600 Women in Dubai

Leo Stan Ekeh, Chairman of Zinox Group, stood before more than 600 women leaders in Dubai and delivered a lesson in courage. The address came at the International Women Leadership Conference (TIWLC), convened by the Ibukun Awosika Leadership Foundation, under the theme 'Losing the Fear.' The man at the podium runs a corporate group. The audience was invited to learn from his example.

Who Has the Power

Ekeh told the room he founded a technology company in Nigeria more than three decades ago, and that it was considered "corporate suicide" at the time. He launched Task Systems Limited over 35 years ago, pioneering desktop publishing and computer graphics. From there he built Zinox Technologies, which became one of Africa's first Microsoft WHQL- and Intel-certified computer manufacturers. Note the gatekeepers in that sentence. Certification from two of the planet's largest tech corporations is the credential he points to as proof Africa "could manufacture to global standards." His words: "We were building a statement." The standard-setters sit in Redmond and Santa Clara, not Lagos.

He also declared at an early event: "No country can claim to be independent without technology independence." A fair line. Worth asking who owns the independence once it's built.

Who Gets Crushed

Ekeh described his own hardship: years of surviving on one meal a day and sleeping in a cramped office. Then he turned to the country around him. Nigeria, he said, had "blessed and bruised" him, and he cited controversial patronage, corporate blackmail, and the challenges of building a visible business in a tough environment. Those realities, by his own account, explain why many African billionaires avoid the difficulty of building enterprises.

Read that again. A chairman of a major group says patronage and blackmail shape who gets to build and who gets squeezed out. He offered no fix for the system. He offered a mindset. "Fear will always have a voice," he said. "But it must not have a vote." The road less travelled, he added, "is harder. It is lonelier. But it is worth it."

For those without a parent's blessing, capital, or a patron, the lonely road has no certification body waiting at the end of it.

What They're Calling 'Opportunity'

Ekeh pointed to TD Africa Distributions Limited's TecHerdemy initiative, which has trained over 1,000 women in cybersecurity, AI, software development and data science. Many of those women now hold leadership roles across the tech ecosystem, he said. He also noted that women occupy strategic positions within the Zinox Group, including several female chief executives.

The training is real, and the women who completed it are real. But the model is a corporation deciding who gets trained, in which skills, and slotted into whose firms. It's a pipeline built and owned from above. Nothing in Ekeh's account describes workers owning the tools, setting the terms, or running the programs themselves.

He closed by urging women to embrace "courage, competence and determination," reminding them they hold the keys to national prosperity in this century. He promised to tell his full story in a forthcoming book before 2027.

The keys, in this telling, are individual virtue. The locks, the patronage networks, the blackmail, the certifiers, go unexamined. The chairman will publish his story. The rest of Nigeria is still sleeping in cramped offices.