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From a 15-year-old author finding his way into Nigeria’s media industry to an entrepreneur with ambitions of building Africa’s answer to Berkshire Hathaway, Chude Jideonwo has spent much of his life thinking about the power of media and the institutions behind it.
In this interview with Nairametrics, the founder of RED and HBC Holdings reflects on the experiences that shaped him, the business of storytelling, and his audacious ambition to build one of Africa’s most diversified media conglomerates
At 15, while his contemporaries were figuring life out after West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and National Examinations Council (NECO) examinations, Chude Jideonwo had another preoccupation, getting Nigerians to read his first novel.
He had written the book two years earlier, at 13, and managed to get it published while still in secondary school. But publication presented a new problem. His publisher, he recalls, was not particularly good at publicity, leaving the teenager to figure out how to market the book himself.
Jideonwo began studying Nigeria’s media landscape, identifying television programmes, newspaper columns and the audiences most likely to be interested in his work.
- “I was something of a media expert by the time I was in my teens,” he told Nairametrics.
One name on his publicity list was Dr. Livy Ajuonuma, the late broadcaster and host of a popular Sunday programme on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).
Jideonwo encountered him at church, where his mother was a pastor and Ajuonuma a member. He introduced the broadcaster to his novel, and Ajuonuma agreed to read it.
What followed was an invitation to appear on television. A few minutes into the interview, however, the conversation took an unexpected turn: Ajuonuma offered him a job presenting the youth segment of his programme, live on national television.
That encounter would open the door to a career spanning journalism, television, advertising, public relations and political communications.
Today, more than two decades later, Jideonwo is pursuing an ambition that stretches beyond his early success as a media entrepreneur. Through HBC Holdings, he wants to build a conglomerate capable of owning, investing in and operating multiple independent media businesses across Africa.
- “HBC Holdings is built around the Berkshire Hathaway model, an approach I have followed since at least 2016,” he said.
A childhood spent studying the media
Jideonwo’s fascination with media began long before his first television appearance. An only child raised by parents he describes as enthusiastic readers and teachers, he grew up surrounded by newspapers, books and television.
His father regularly read The Punch and Vanguard. Jideonwo devoured the African Writers Series, including works by Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, much of it before his 12th birthday.
He also watched television obsessively, familiarising himself with broadcasters and programmes across Nigeria’s emerging private television landscape.
But it was not simply entertainment that interested him. He wanted to understand how stories influenced society.
Even as a teenager, he followed the political disagreements between then-Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu and his deputy, Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, paying particular attention to how newspapers framed the dispute.
He was less interested in official statements than in the contest to influence public opinion.That curiosity became useful when he began working with some of the country’s leading broadcasters.
He met Funmi Iyanda while waiting backstage for Ajuonuma’s programme. She subsequently invited him onto New Dawn and later recruited him as a researcher.
He would also work with Agatha Amata, gaining exposure to television production and editorial decision-making.
As a young producer, Jideonwo listened to conversations involving senior editors, columnists and political commentators, absorbing the workings of an industry he had previously observed from his living room.
By 17, he had secured a column at ThisDay. He also wrote for Tempo magazine under journalist and former senator Babafemi Ojudu.
Looking back, he attributes his early opportunities to a combination of preparation and audacity: knowing enough about the industry to impress established professionals and having the confidence to approach them.
- “First, there was the confidence, because I understood the media quite deeply,” he said, before identifying another important quality: “the audacity of being able to reach out to them.”
The partnership that built RED
As Jideonwo’s career developed, so did his ambition to build a media company rather than spend his professional life working within other people’s institutions.
That ambition eventually found expression in RED, the communications business he built with his longtime friend and business partner, Adebola Williams.
Their partnership has endured for nearly three decades, although Jideonwo acknowledges that their personalities and professional strengths were markedly different.
In the early years, he was impatient and intensely focused on execution. Williams, whom he describes as infinitely patient, possessed an extraordinary ability to build relationships, negotiate and sell.
Rather than compete for control, they divided responsibilities. Jideonwo became chief executive and creative director, while Williams took on the roles of deputy managing director and chief marketing officer.
- The arrangement evolved through mutual recognition of their limitations. “I’m going to let him be a genius in his own right,” Jideonwo said, “while I focus on the things that I’m a genius at.”
Their working relationship, he explained, was sustained by a willingness to acknowledge each other’s strengths and trust their intentions.
- “What we built was a relationship of trust, where we fundamentally trusted each other,” he recalled.
He believes that neither could have built the business to the same scale independently.
- “Partnership really is a test of humility,” he said.
That philosophy would eventually shape his approach to running an entire portfolio of businesses.
From RED to a Berkshire Hathaway ambition
For much of his career, Jideonwo envisioned creating a media group comparable in scale and influence to what Aliko Dangote had built in manufacturing.
In 2012, RED articulated a vision of becoming a media group capable of reaching and inspiring the largest number of Africans. By 2015, Jideonwo was publicly discussing the ambition to build a media company that could do everything.
But the organisational structure he originally imagined began to change.
Rather than centralising operations under one management team, different businesses emerged with independent executives, distinct operating models and separate commercial priorities.
Some were established internally; others came through investments.
The evolution led him towards the Berkshire Hathaway model, which he says has influenced his corporate thinking since at least 2016.
He admires Dangote’s disciplined expansion into businesses the industrialist understands, but sees a distinction between the Nigerian billionaire’s more centralised approach and Berkshire Hathaway’s decentralised operations.
- “Berkshire Hathaway is much more decentralized, not just in vision, but in operations,” Jideonwo explained.
Through HBC Holdings, he wants to combine content production, advertising, public relations, consulting, journalism, television and creator-led businesses within one investment structure.
It is an ambitious proposition in a market where media companies frequently depend on their founders’ reputations, relationships and continued involvement.
But Jideonwo acknowledges that decentralisation creates its own difficulties, particularly in what he describes as a low-trust economy.
His business has made mistakes in executive selection, succession planning and operations. He expects further setbacks as the companies expand.
Still, he believes the alternative — keeping every important decision concentrated in the founder’s hands — makes it harder to build enduring institutions.
Betting on people rather than ideas
Jideonwo’s investment philosophy is less concerned with the brilliance of a business idea than with the competence of the person responsible for executing it.
- “I invest more in operators than ideas,” he said.
His reasoning is that an excellent operator can improve a weak business proposition or abandon it for a better opportunity, while poor management can destroy value even in an attractive industry.
- “A bad idea in the hands of a good operator might lead to iterations,” he explained.
He is particularly interested in identifying industries with significant commercial opportunities and pairing them with capable executives.
- “But the magic is a good sector and a good operator,” he said.
He cited an investment in a digital creator identified in the transcript as Kenzie, pointing to the expanding market for films distributed through YouTube, TikTok and other digital platforms.
Another example is StateCraft, the political communications business within the RED ecosystem.
When the company entered the sector, Jideonwo believed political communications remained heavily dependent on personal relationships and informal consulting arrangements.
He saw an opportunity to professionalise the business and establish an institution capable of serving clients beyond the personal networks of its founders.
- “It shouldn’t depend on … just your connections in political office,” he said.
According to him, StateCraft subsequently worked across five presidential elections and with governments, multilateral institutions and public-sector organisations.
He considers its development one of the group’s most consequential commercial decisions, generating corporate and brand value while demonstrating that political communications could operate as an institutional business.
Why African media companies struggle to make money
Despite his expansive ambitions, Jideonwo is unsentimental about the economics of the media industry.
He argues that many African media companies have failed because their cost structures do not reflect the financial realities of the sector.
- “Fundamentally, many parts of the media are low margin, at least compared to many other industries,” he said.
He believes media businesses should operate more like fast-moving consumer goods companies, where profitability depends on volume, operational efficiency and disciplined spending, rather than assuming they can sustain the margins of oil companies.
He points to the struggles of advertising agencies following economic downturns, currency depreciation and the withdrawal of multinational clients from Nigeria.
For him, the question is why media companies have struggled to build institutions capable of surviving economic cycles when businesses in banking and other industries have managed to do so.
Yet he sees a potentially transformative opportunity in the digital creator economy.
A Nigerian content creator, he explains, can incur production and operational expenses in naira while generating revenue from international audiences in dollars, pounds or euros.
- “The cost of sales, the operational costs are localized,” he said. “But the income is at source, dollar-based.”
That opportunity partly explains his interest in the Fourth Mainland Fund and Fourth Mainland Academy, which focus on the expanding digital economy.
He believes the model could enable African media businesses to generate substantial profits without relying on political patronage or unrelated commercial activities.
But he is equally concerned about the fragility of that advantage.
Poor economic policies, restrictions on internet access and the withdrawal of international technology platforms could undermine the sector’s profitability.
For Jideonwo, the opportunity is significant, but it cannot be taken for granted.
Building a business on trust
If there is one principle that repeatedly emerges from Jideonwo’s account of entrepreneurship, it is trust.
He acknowledges the risks of allowing independent executives to manage businesses without constant supervision.
- “Every time you trust somebody with your business,” he said, describing the unavoidable uncertainty of delegation.
Yet he considers that risk essential to building a conglomerate.
His recruitment approach consequently places considerable emphasis on personal track records, judgement, employee retention and how prospective executives have handled difficult decisions.
He is particularly interested in accomplished operators who have spent more time building companies than promoting themselves.
Jideonwo also takes an unconventional approach to employee loyalty.
He says he has never required employees to sign training bonds, even when the company invested significantly in their professional development.
The decision, he believes, has created enduring relationships with former employees who continue to collaborate with his businesses.
He argues that whatever a company might lose by not binding employees contractually, it can recover through relationships that endure beyond employment.
His belief is that loyalty cannot be manufactured entirely through legal obligations.
- “People can be trusted,” he said.
He applies similar thinking to equity compensation, preferring to reward employees with ownership after they have demonstrated commitment rather than routinely using stock to attract new hires.
The result, he argues, is a network of professionals with institutional knowledge who can return to projects years after leaving the company.
Oprah at the front, Buffett at the back
Jideonwo’s influences offer another explanation for his unusual combination of storytelling, corporate ambition and management philosophy.
On a personal level, he identifies Oprah Winfrey as the individual who has most profoundly influenced his worldview.
He says he has studied virtually every interview and profile he could find about the American media entrepreneur, including archival material retrieved through internet repositories.
- He even describes himself as “Oprah’s first son.”
As his business interests matured, however, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger became increasingly important influences.
He began studying Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder letters, annual meetings, corporate governance practices and capital allocation philosophy.
He also cites The Outsiders, a book examining executives who created substantial shareholder value through unconventional management decisions, and the writings of Jeff Bezos.
His admiration extends to Naspers, the South African company that evolved from a media business into a global technology investment group.
The common thread is his fascination with businesses that evolve beyond their original products and personalities.
For Jideonwo, the ultimate ambition is not simply to own more media companies. It is to create an African institution capable of identifying opportunities, allocating capital and allowing capable executives to build independently.
