France looks to Nigerian billionaire Mike Adenuga to fund its Abuja cultural institute

France is in discussions with Mike Adenuga over financing the construction of a new Institut Français in Abuja, returning to the Nigerian billionaire who paid for its flagship cultural centre in Lagos, according to Africa Intelligence.

President Emmanuel Macron is due to lay the foundation stone for the building during a forthcoming visit to West Africa. His team has been negotiating the funding with Adenuga, the publication reported.

The approach follows a template France has used once before with considerable success. The Alliance Française in Lagos, one of the most active cultural venues in the country, was built entirely with Adenuga's money and carries his name.

A building that changed France's presence in Nigeria

The Alliance Française de Lagos was founded in 1959 and spent decades in Yaba before Adenuga decided to build it a new home. The centre at 9 Osborne Road in Ikoyi was designed by the Nigerian firm Baron Architecture and completed in under a year. Macron inaugurated the first phase during his July 2018 visit to Lagos, and the building opened fully in May 2019.

It bears his name. The Mike Adenuga Centre houses an art gallery, a cinema, artists' studios, a library and e-library, an outdoor amphitheatre, a 120-seat auditorium, nine French language classrooms, translation and interpretation services and a Campus France desk advising Nigerians on studying in France. An Eric Kayser bakery and restaurant occupies part of the ground floor.

The project was conceived, coordinated and executed by Bella Disu, Adenuga's daughter and executive vice chairman of Globacom, working with the Alliance's then-director Charles Courdent. Macron singled her out at the opening.

The centre now anchors a French cultural network in Nigeria that runs to 15 sites coordinated by the embassy's cooperation and cultural action service in Abuja, including the Institut Français, ten Alliance Française branches from Kano to Port Harcourt, two schools accredited by the French education agency abroad, and a research institute at Ibadan supervised by France's national scientific research centre. The Alliance Française network itself dates to 1883 and operates more than 800 associations across roughly 133 countries.

Alliances Françaises are constituted as independent local non-profits rather than arms of the French state, which is precisely why private financing matters. Paris can send directors and co-finance programming, but the buildings themselves depend on what a host country's patrons are willing to put up.

Promoted in eight months instead of thirteen years

Macron made Adenuga a Commander of the Legion of Honour at a private ceremony during the 2018 inauguration, describing him as a true role model for Africa and citing his contribution to French-Nigerian relations, his appreciation of French culture and the advancement of humanity.

The speed of the elevation was the notable part. Adenuga had been made a Chevalier only eight months earlier. Promotion to Commander ordinarily requires thirteen years. He was the first Nigerian to hold the rank.

The 2018 visit was designed around cultural diplomacy more than commerce. Macron, who had worked at the French embassy in Lagos as a young man some 25 years earlier, went to the New Afrika Shrine and paid tribute to Fela Kuti, gave an interview to the BBC partly in pidgin, addressed 1,500 young entrepreneurs at a Tony Elumelu Foundation event, and oversaw the signing of a partnership between the French development agency and NBA Africa. The Alliance Française opening was the centrepiece.

A relationship built on culture rather than contracts

What makes the arrangement unusual is that Adenuga has no significant business exposure to France. His fortune sits in Nigerian telecoms and oil.

He founded Globacom in 2003, breaking the pricing monopoly in Nigerian mobile telephony by introducing per-second billing, and expanded into Ghana and Benin. The company built Glo-1, a 6,100-mile submarine cable running to Britain via Ghana and Portugal, the first privately owned high-capacity cable in the region. His oil company, Conoil Producing, operates six blocks in the Niger Delta and was the first Nigerian firm to strike oil in commercial quantities, in the shallow waters off Ondo State in 1991, a year after he obtained his prospecting licence.

He owns 74 percent of the listed fuel marketer Conoil Plc, close to 6 percent of Sterling Financial Holding, and ranks among the largest individual shareholders in the construction group Julius Berger Nigeria through his investment vehicle Goldstone Estates. He also runs a property business, Cobble-Stone Properties and Estates, founded in 2011.

Forbes puts his fortune at about $6.5 billion, ranking him 645th globally, sixth in Africa and second in Nigeria behind Aliko Dangote.

The relationship with France appears to rest instead on personal affinity and reputational return. French officials have described the Lagos centre as an exemplary partnership with Nigeria's private sector, and it remains the most visible piece of cultural infrastructure France holds anywhere in anglophone West Africa.

His public gestures have occasionally cut the other way. He donated $250,000 to Nigeria's national football team ahead of a World Cup fixture against France.

A famously private man in a very public role

Adenuga is among the most reticent of Africa's wealthy. He gives almost no interviews and appears rarely in public, which makes the naming of a cultural centre after him an unusual departure.

He was born in Ibadan in April 1953, took an MBA at Pace University in New York while driving a taxi to support himself, and made his first million at 26 selling lace and distributing soft drinks. He holds Nigeria's Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger, awarded in 2012, the Companion of the Star of Ghana, and the chieftaincy title of Otunba Apesin of the Ijebu clan.

Whether he funds the Abuja institute has not been settled. The negotiation is live, and Macron's foundation stone is scheduled regardless.