Okere Appointed 'Entrepreneur in Residence'

Mr. Okere recently lectured as a guest at Columbia Business School's Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Legatum Centre for Development and Entrepreneurship

As an Entrepreneur in Residence, the institution will tap his domain expertise in entrepreneurship in an emerging economy after turning the Computer Warehouse Group into a pan-African Systems Integration Company with revenues in excess of $120m per annum, and a staff complement of 650 specialists operating in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon.

In 2012, Okere was named ICT Man of the Decade by ICT Watch Africa Digital Network, and CWG was named Conglomerate of the Year.

The organizers cited CWG's immense contributions toward the growth and development of ICT, youth empowerment through ICT education, and nationbuilding.

CWG was also named ICT Company of the Year by Technology Africa Group.

Okere's schedule will require him to visit the United States of America (USA) twice a year for two weeks during spring and fall, and also spend a minimum of eight hours per month in online interactions with faculty and students.

It will be recalled that after CBS undertook a case study on CWG in early 2009, Austin became a regular visitor at the institution guest lecturing in New York and Boston.

On his entrepreneurial passion, Okere explains that there is a systematic relationship between a country's level of economic development and its level of entrepreneurial activity.

According to him, 'It is better to have a thousand millionaires than ten billionaires. It is better still to have a million people with access to a hundred thousand dollars, if they can be taught how to nurture and grow it through entrepreneurial endeavor.

'I like to put the story of the Computer Warehouse Group out there because such success stories contribute immensely to the attraction of capital to the region, which combined with the entrepreneurial acumen and the youthful population unleashes waves of economic boom.'

Okere cited the survey of 3,692 MIT alumni who graduated between 1987 and 2007.

The survey results showed that 40 percent of respondents had started their own companies, with 70 percent doing so within five years of graduation.

Forty-one percent of PhD alumni have a patent for invention.

In his view, this could not have been possible without the strong entrepreneurship drive that characterises America.

Okere has also been appointed as 'Catalyst' by the Legatum Center at MIT.

The case study developed by MIT on CWG is indeed the first and only one from Africa so far.

A business desk report