Selling has been in Nobert Okafor’s blood since he was seven years old. At the time, he would spend Christmas and holidays with his grandmother who grew bananas at her compound in the village of Nimo in Anambra state, Nigeria. She would give the harvest to young Okafor, with the instruction to go make some sales.
“I would start in front of her house and when the demand dwindled, I moved the location to the front of my father’s compound. It was along a busier road,” he remembers. “When that didn’t result in sold-out stock, I went to the village market.” Following the demand worked and Okafor would receive praise from his grandmother when he returned having sold all the bananas.
Jump forward three decades and today Okafor (37) is the CEO of the Noberto Group, with its subsidiaries Nobleman Industries, Joofid Construction Company, Noberto Farms and the latest addition, Noberto Renewable Energy. He is still actively chasing sales but has added plantain and cocoa to the bananas, as well as the products processed from these crops.
Okafor was making preparations to travel for further studies in either the UK or US when his father passed away in 2004. He had to cancel his plans so as to take over the family business. His father had established an equipment business, building Caterpillar heavy machinery from scrap and spare parts for rental to construction contractors. When construction clients were in short supply during the rainy season, the family would work a small patch of land, using a tractor they owned.
“That was my first experience with mechanisation and its impact on farming when I had to help my father as a teenager,” he recalls. From 2004 to 2010, he ran the family business and a few side hustles. Any profit was stowed away for his future entrepreneurial plans, which focused on agriculture.
In 2010, Okafor founded the first company in the group, Nobleman Industries and acquired 500 hectares of land in the Nigerian state of Cross River. He established a cocoa tree nursery and transplanted the trees onto 100 hectares. Plantain trees were interspersed between the cocoa trees to provide additional moisture during the dry season.
The Noberto Group supplied the cocoa harvest to the merchants who then sold it on to the exporters.
Copyright © ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE 2015. All rights reserved.
Powered by: C.B.N