My Reading in 2024
The end of the year brings another opportunity to review my reading and learning for the year. Compared to the previous year, It felt like I did a lot less reading due to some academic commitments. Nonetheless, I managed to pursue some of my curiosities and plugged gaps in my knowledge and understanding of the world. I started off with my annual tradition of rereading portions of “How Will You Measure Your Life.” For me, it’s a timeless classic that helps me reorient my mind towards what’s truly important every year.
The themes that have interested me this year have been around history and anthropology. I find that looking to the past and understanding human societies and culture provides the tools to better understand oneself and the world around them. First, though, I focused on sales and business as I taught a masterclass on sales in Lagos in the first quarter of the year.
Sales and business
I dipped back again into the classic book on selling innovative products, “Crossing the Chasm,” to remind myself of its timeless principles. The book’s central concepts are built on top of the popular idea of diffusion of innovation by Everett Rogers. In it, Moore introduces the idea of a chasm that exists between early and later segments when technology is being adopted. He shares valuable anecdotes and ideas on how to overcome this chasm.
“Predictable Revenue” by Aaron Ross, who led sales in the early days of Salesforce, writes about how to build a sales machine that scales and can be predictable. Pink in “To Sell is Human" writes that sales is a central skill key to all human interaction. We sell ourselves at interviews, we sell our ideas in the workplace and we even sell ourselves when seeking romantic opportunities. He shares how to master everyday sales.
The most impactful book I read in this category, however, is The Villager. Written by a renowned Nigerian marketer, The Villager provides novel insight into how to sell to Africans.
The African consumer is modernising, not westernising, is one of the concepts Olubdoun pushes in his prose. He highlights how African consumers are communal, aspirational and spiritual.
…the African has three components with which he triangulates his progress in life and his endeavours — his own innate desires, the desires of the community (Umunna or Ebi or whatever the case may be for different tribes) and the strongest opposition in his social context. The third component is often the most critical because it is usually the strongest driver and the one most consistent with the African’s inherent religious orientation. The African therefore strives continually to progress in a way that resolves the tension between these three favourably.
African history and anthropology
Max Siollun is by far Nigeria’s greatest (modern) historian. In “what Britain did to Nigeria”, He writes about pre-colonial Nigeria and its evolution into a colony under Britain. The Brits came to trade and soon switched to conquest. I found this an important read as Nigeria is still feeling the after effects of colonialism. Siollun’s book pointed me to Mungo Park’s 19th century travelogue of his journey to “discover the Niger” which was available on kindle. It was fascinating to read as it helped paint a picture of what living in pre-colonial Africa was like, albeit through the jaded eyes of a European traveller. I liked seeing evidence of African ingenuity at play like the making of gunpowder locally.
I lodged at the house of a negro who practised the art of making gunpowder. He showed me a bag of nitre, very white, but the crystals were much smaller than common. They procure it in considerable quantities from the ponds, which are filled in the rainy season, and to which the cattle resort for coolness during the heat of the day. When the water is evaporated, a white efflorescence is observed on the mud, which the natives collect and purify in such a manner as to answer their purpose.
“An African history of Africa” exposed me to several African accomplishments I’d never come across. Great Zimbabwe and the Manden charter were particularly striking. The former was a great southern African civilisation that Europeans spent a lot of effort discrediting Africans for. The latter, An ancient African bill of rights that possibly pre-dates the magna carta.
These books helped me learn that Africans have a rich history and culture. We are capable of inventing and building great civilisations. Contrary to what some would have us believe, there is nothing inherently wrong with us. We just happened to have been conquered by European tribes well practiced in warfare sometime in the 19th century. This created two publics that has retarded our progress (Ekeh’s paper, colonialism and the two publics in Africa is seminal reading on this). We have not recovered since. Knowing our illustrious origins fills me with hope that progress is possible if we can steer our culture back towards its origin.
The final book in this category I found rather enlightening on Nigerian culture despite coming from an American anthropologist was Daniel jordan’s book on masculinity in Nigeria.
Jordan captured and articulated lots of Nigerian culture with surprising precision. Sometimes outsiders looking in can capture things more than insiders. It helped me better explain much of what ails Nigerian society, a deep obsession with money. As the book explains:
Manhood is a performance intrinsically linked to money in Nigeria
This performance has consequences for the broader political economy of the country. Where money lies at the heart of power, identity and more. It will be fascinating to see if this is a culture Nigerian society can shake as it evolves in a modern world of ubiquitous technology and female empowerment.
Memoirs
Imperfect storm written by the founding head of Nigeria’s public health agency made for a gripping reading. Not finished a book faster in recent memory as I knew many of the characters and could relate to the stories. Dr Chikwe was largely responsible for Nigeria’s covid-19 response and tells a great story of the challenges working in Nigeria’s public sector. I was impressed at how he was able to pull resources in to the agency and inspired people to excellence. Feyi of 1914 reader did a good review of the book. I managed to steal a quick photo at a launch event in Lagos during the year.
The second memoir was from angel investor extraordinaire, Olumide Soyombo. He wrote about his experience growing up in Nigeria, starting a business and investing in other companies. Parts of the story elicited some nostalgia in me as it called up memories of my own childhood in boarding schools in Nigeria where I learned survival and independence. What struck me the most was Olumide’s ambition and fearlessness in pursuing the unknown. Little wonder he’s been successful as an entrepreneur and investor. The book had fascinating tid bits about the reality of business and investing in Nigeria.
Uncategorized
Some other random books I read during the year that don’t fall into neat categories.
Interested in what it takes for revolutions to occur (Nigeria needs one), and fascinated by grumblings from the most elite Nigerian, Alhaji Dangote, I turned to a short book on the subject by Jack Gladstone. My feeling was that a revolution is surely afoot in Nigeria. I’ve since learned that revolutions are complex and unpredictable and need five conditions to knock it into an unstable equilibrium, a precursor for a revolution.
When these five conditions coincide — economic or fiscal strain, alienation and opposition among the elites, widespread popular anger at injustice, a persuasive shared narrative of resistance, and favorable international relations — the normal social mechanisms that restore order in crises are unlikely to work. Instead, societies where these conditions prevail are in an unstable equilibrium,
The next book was recommended on twitter by Victor Asemota. He referenced Caste by Isabel Wilkinson as a way to understand contemporary (race relations in) America. Reading it was indeed eye-opening.
The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power — which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources — which caste is seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them and who does not. It is about respect, authority, and assumptions of competence — who is accorded these and who is not.
The minorities who support right wing rhetoric will do well to understand this race based hierarchy that underpin American society.
Last in this non-category is Rovelli’s bestseller on physics. It’s a short book that does a good job at summarizing key principles from physics. Reading it, I came to see the paradoxical tension that lie at the very foundation of the earth. Like male and female, the underlying principles of physics that govern the world are complementary yet contradictory, ying-yang.
In the morning the world is curved space where everything is continuous; in the afternoon it is a flat space where quanta of energy leap. The paradox is that both theories work remarkably well.
Here’s to more reading in 2025.
