How a Life in Arts, Film, and Policy Prepared Me to Build at a Continental Scale
I did not set out to become an entrepreneur. I certainly never imagined that I would one day design and lead one of Africa’s largest entrepreneurship programmes. In fact, for most of my early career, “entrepreneurship” wasn’t a word I ever used to describe myself or my work. Looking back now, I can see the patterns clearly — but then, I was simply following my instincts, responding to need, building what was missing, and finding my way through spaces that were never built for people like me.
My story did not begin in a boardroom, a startup accelerator, or the world of finance. It began in the late 1970s, in the cultural margins of Britain, where Black, Asian, African, and Caribbean creativity was vibrant, urgent, political, and almost entirely unrecognised by mainstream institutions. The work I did in those years was not called entrepreneurship. But that is what it was:
creating something from nothing, building networks and systems, mobilising talent, shaping opportunities where none existed.
Only decades later — in Lagos, working with African entrepreneurs — did I fully understand it.
Art as Ecosystem Building (1979)
My first job, in 1979, was with the Minority Arts Advisory Service (MAAS), a young, underfunded organisation born out of The Arts Britain Ignores, of the late Naseem Khan’s groundbreaking report on the neglect of Black and Asian arts in the UK. My assignment was simple in theory, radical in practice: to map the Black and Ethnic Minority artists of the West Midlands — photographers, dancers, musicians, writers, painters — and document their needs.
There was no office in Birmingham, West Midlands, England, no template, no training manual. Just me — a young woman with no formal background in arts administration. I travelled across Birmingham and the surrounding towns, meeting artists in community halls, homes, churches, and makeshift studios. I listened to their stories: the challenges they faced, the absence of funding, the lack of recognition from the so-called “mainstream,” the constant negotiation for space and legitimacy.
What I didn’t realise then was that I was learning how to build an ecosystem from the ground up — turning creativity, policy, and lived experience into opportunity, long before I knew to call it ecosystem building. I learned to translate between communities and institutions, identify patterns, analyse gaps, and advocate. It was my first encounter with entrepreneurship, even if no one called it that.
The Uprisings That Changed a Nation (1981)
In 1981, Britain erupted. Black youth across the UK rose up against racism, unemployment, and police brutality. These were not “riots”; they were uprisings— expressions of a community pushed to the edge. I understood this deeply; it was the political and emotional backdrop of my generation.
In the wake of the unrest, London’s governing body, the Greater London Council (GLC), responded with urgency, committing unprecedented resources to support Black and Asian communities. I was appointed the Ethnic Arts Officer— responsible for a budget, a mandate, and a challenge: to transform the cultural life of a city that had, for generations, excluded us.
I was 26 years old.
At the GLC, I discovered the power of strategic investment. We used grant aid to propel the next generation of Black filmmakers, dancers, theatre-makers, and musicians. We changed hiring and programming practices in major arts institutions, including the South Bank and the Royal Festival Ballet. We commissioned murals, organised festivals, and created platforms for artistic expression that still resonate today.
I learned to work at the intersection of policy, culture, and community mobilisation — the very intersection to which I would return decades later on the African continent.
The GLC years were an exercise in building an ecosystem: funding, training, institutional change, celebration of talent, and public visibility.
This work taught me something essential: entrepreneurship is not only about business — it is about imagination, systems, and power.
Later in Lagos, this lesson would guide everything I built.
From Policy to Production: Entering Film as a Founder
When the GLC was abolished in 1986, by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, I knew it was time to turn the page. I had spent nearly a decade enabling and amplifying the creativity of others. Now I wanted to create myself.
I became a filmmaker.
I did not attend film school. I learned on the job, as I always had. My six-month apprenticeship at the BBC’s Music & Arts department taught me discipline — how to research rigorously, structure narratives, work with editors, directors, and crews, and lead creative teams. I learned to think visually, emotionally, and strategically.
But I soon realised I wanted greater creative and political freedom. I joined Formation Films, the company founded by my husband, Julian Henriques, and began raising money, producing documentaries, and learning the business and craft from the inside. Independent filmmaking is not an industry.
Every film became a startup.
Every script is a business plan.
Every budget is a fundraising campaign.
Every production was a masterclass in leadership, negotiation, risk, and improvisation.
By the time I had produced nearly 50 films — from the UK to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe — I had lived the journey of each film from an idea to the screen, again and again. I understood risk, capital, talent, storytelling, and the emotional labour of leadership. This period shaped me as a creative entrepreneur, long before I ever named it as such.
Without realising it, I was preparing myself for Lagos.
Learning the Investor Mindset
In 2005, I shifted from production to film finance, joining Ingenious Media to build and manage the World Cinema Fund.
This was game-changing.
I learned how investors think, how to structure deals, and how to raise money in global markets.
I also learned how to educate creative people about capital — and how to educate investors about creativity.
For the first time, I understood capital not just as money, but as a narrative force — shaping whose stories get told and whose do not.
This experience taught me the sophisticated language of finance and investment. It would become vital years later, when I designed access to finance for African entrepreneurs.
I began to recognise the patterns across industries, countries, and decades: Every creative act is an entrepreneurial act.
Every entrepreneur is, fundamentally, a storyteller.
The Journey to Africa
I first travelled to Africa as a filmmaker in the early 1990s — Mozambique, Angola, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Algeria. I fell in love with the continent’s energy, talent, contradictions, and limitless possibilities.
But nothing prepared me for 2014.
A feasibility study for a Lagos film studio took me into the orbit of the Tony Elumelu Foundation. A chance meeting, followed by a bold email I nearly didn’t send, led to a job offer I wasn’t seeking: to design a $100 million programme to empower African entrepreneurs.
I was 58 years old.
I was thinking about retirement, rooted in London, with a family and a life I loved.
Yet something in me knew: the moment felt destined— not logical, not planned, but deeply intuitive.
On 24 April 2014, I sat at the desk that marked the start of the most transformative decade of my life.
Only then did I realise that all the fragments of my journey — arts activism, cultural policy, filmmaking, global finance, storytelling, and ecosystem design — had been preparing me for this moment.
The entrepreneur in me had always been there. Lagos simply revealed her.
Realising the Truth
Some people become entrepreneurs by launching a company.
Others by building a product.
I became one by building ecosystems — again and again.
For decades, I did not use the word entrepreneur to describe myself. I moved through the world as an activist, a policymaker, a filmmaker, a producer —designing structures where nothing existed, building bridges across cultures, and telling stories that shape public imagination.
Entrepreneurship is not a job title.
It is a way of being.
A way of seeing the world as a possibility.
Only when I stepped into my role at the Tony Elumelu Foundation did I recognise that the skills I had honed across decades were not accidental; they were preparation.
The path was already being made.
I simply had not named it.
