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Name: Dr. Ibilola Amao
Business: Lonadek Nigeria Limited
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Industry: Professional Services
Reason for starting? The reason for establishing Lonadek is to continually develop capacity of young Africans in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. My passion for developing local content and women participation in business inspired me to establish Lonadek, which was incorporated in 2003. We are a firm of consultants with a passion and desire to implement and develop local content in a manner that adds value to all stakeholders. Our goal is to ensure that locals and indigenous companies develop themselves and utilize tested systems, processes and procedures to deliver quality goods and services in Africa and the rest of the world.
Related: Read about another Professional Services entrepreneur here.
How do you define success? Success for me is how many lives we are able to impact in terms of empowerment, skill development and self-actualization of Africans. In the past 25 years, we have successfully trained over 5,000 certified competent administrators, designers and users in the usage of engineering software and information technology. Lonadek is contributing a great deal to the development of local capacity and competence in Nigeria. We have just launched our Cedar Centre of Excellence: A STEM and Empowerment Hub designed to develop and nurture ideas from young Nigerians in STEM. Through continuous innovation, Lonadek is transforming the fate of the African youth with a series of empowerment programs, like our “Vision 2020: Youth Empowerment and Restoration Initiative,” a youth and national development initiative founded in May 2006. We have empowered 78,952 Nigerian youths. The initiative continues till the year 2020.
Biggest success: My biggest landmark achievement is how many Nigerians have been successfully engaged by multinationals and corporations in Africa and all over the world. I have been involved in training Africans for the past 26 years to take up leading roles and compete effectively with their foreign counterparts. The greatest legacy any man would leave on African soil is to place Africans in the front-line of global development.
What is your top challenge and how you have addressed it? Sales and marketing: Providing our services to a wider reach has been one of our focuses. We are currently working on our goods and services to be franchised to entrepreneurs in other parts of the world. Social media has also been instrumental to solving this challenge. Finance: This is due to the economic recession, and we surmounted this by cutting back on overhead and running costs. Business knowhow: As a professional with an engineering background, I have honed my skills in business and entrepreneurship by attending various training and development programs.
Related: TSE Quick Take: Millennial Female Entrepreneurs Hit Roadblocks
Who is your most important role model? Engr. Dr. Olatokunbo A. Somolu, an astute engineer and entrepreneur.
[box_light]Website www.lonadek.com
Twitter @Lonadek
Facebook www.facebook.com/LonadekLimited[/box_light]
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Edited by The Story Exchange