Sunmonu: New Standard for African Leadership Necessary for Robust Socio-economic Transformation
In this interview, the Chairman of the Sage Centre for Leadership Excellence and former Managing Director of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, Dr. Mutiu Sunmonu, reflects on the origin of the centre, its evolving mission, and how its structured programmes are shaping decision-making, strengthening governance, and redefining what effective leadership looks like across Africa’s most critical sectors. Raheem Akingbolu brings the excerpts.
How has the Sage mission evolved as it engages with organisations across Africa and responds to the continent’s evolving leadership landscape?
Our mission has evolved along three clear directions. First, we have moved from a personality-led identity to an institutional one, with a defined community of Icons, Vanguards, and Fellows that carries the work forward. In its earliest form, Sage was understood largely through the lens of my personal journey—very much “Dr. Mutiu’s Centre.” That was a natural starting point, but it was never the destination.
Second, we have sharpened our focus on the systems behind leadership—governance structures, board effectiveness, and continuity—so that individual insight translates into institutional strength.
Third, we have become more intentional about sector relevance, designing engagements that speak directly to the realities of financial services, energy, technology, and other sectors that shape the African economy. The intent is that, over time, Sage becomes recognised not just as a centre, but as a reference point for how leadership ought to be practised in our context.
Could you take us through Sage’s strategic service pillars and how they work together to create tangible outcomes for organisations and their leadership teams?
At Sage, we have been deliberate in building service pillars that reflect the real demands of leadership—how decisions are made, tested, and implemented within organisations.
The first is the Sage Masterclass, which brings senior leaders together in high-trust settings to reflect on the decisions that shape institutions. It is less about teaching and more about shared experience and perspective-building at enterprise and board levels. The second is the Enterprise Turnaround Clinic, which provides confidential, one-on-one advisory support to boards and executive teams, particularly in moments of transition, risk, or growth where decisions are complex and time-sensitive.
The third is the Leadership-in-Action Labs, focused on execution—helping leaders translate decisions into organisational alignment and measurable outcomes within their teams. The fourth is the Board Excellence Academy, which strengthens governance by improving board effectiveness, accountability, and long-term institutional continuity.
Taken together, these pillars move leaders from reflection to decision, and from decision to execution, ensuring that insight is not left at the level of discussion but is translated into tangible organisational impact.
African companies face unique challenges — from regulatory shifts to market volatility. How does the Sage Centre equip leaders and boards to navigate these complexities successfully?
We start from a simple premise: leaders in our markets are not short of intelligence or ambition; they are short of time, trusted counsel, and safe spaces to think clearly under pressure. Much of what we do is designed to restore those three things.
Through our strategic pillars, our goal is to equip leaders with a sturdier internal compass and a dependable external network—so that when the environment moves, as it always does, they are neither surprised nor alone.
Speaking of one of your strategic pillars—the Vanguard Masterclass series—you recently hosted an edition focused on the financial services sector. Could you walk us through the concept behind it and the outcomes participants can expect?
Financial services is a foundational part of the economy, driving capital flows and enabling enterprise growth, but it is also a sector under constant strain from regulation, digital disruption, economic volatility, and rising stakeholder expectations. The Masterclass series is designed as a hybrid experience that combines leadership principles with sector-specific realities, and financial services was a natural place to begin given its central role in both national and regional economic transformation.
The April edition, themed, “Leadership in Uncertain Times,” was the second in the series and was designed to create a high-trust environment where senior leaders could step back from execution and engage more deliberately on judgement, governance, and decision-making processes. It brought together Icons and Vanguards and industry leaders such as Bolaji Balogun, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Chapel Hill Denham, and Dr. Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Chairman of Metis Capital Partners and former Chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA).
A key part of the Masterclass is also its emphasis on shared experience and peer exchange. Through case-based discussions and small group conversations, participants are able to connect the themes of the session directly to the challenges they are facing in their own organisations. In terms of outcomes, what we aim for is both practical and psychological. We want leaders to feel seen—to recognise that the challenges they are navigating are not isolated. We want them to gain clarity and perspective, drawing from the experiences of others. We want them to leave with practical ways of thinking and acting that they can apply in real time. And importantly, we want to begin building a community of leaders who can continue to learn from and support one another beyond the session.
Partnerships and collaborations are key to scaling impact. Are there particular initiatives or alliances the Centre is prioritising to broaden its reach across industries and borders?
We are very clear that Sage cannot, and should not, try to do this alone. Our model is inherently collaborative, and partnerships sit at the heart of how we intend to scale. Internally, our most important alliance is the community we are building across three tiers: Icons—established leaders whose reputations provide institutional gravitas; Vanguards—master practitioners with twenty or more years of senior leadership who are ready to transfer their wisdom; and Fellows—high-potential C-suite leaders and founders who represent the next generation. Each tier reinforces the others, and together they form the backbone of the Sage ecosystem.
Externally, we are prioritising a few categories of partnership. We are deepening relationships with sector leaders and industry bodies to shape sector-specific Masterclasses, beginning with financial services and extending into other sectors critical to the African growth story. We are also building credible media and thought leadership partnerships with academic institutions across the continent and beyond to ensure that the insights emerging from Sage contribute meaningfully to the wider discourse on African governance.
Looking at the next five to ten years, how does the Sage Centre envision influencing the broader narrative of African leadership and governance beyond the organisations it directly engages with?
Over the next five to ten years, we want to contribute to three shifts in particular. The first is a shift in language: moving African leadership discourse away from generic commentary and towards a more rigorous, home-grown vocabulary that takes our context seriously. The second is a shift in expectation: helping to establish ethical, transformational leadership as the baseline standard for serious enterprises, rather than a differentiator reserved for a few. The third is a shift in pipeline: ensuring that a steady stream of well-prepared, values-driven leaders are taking on Board and C-suite positions across industries and borders, carrying those standards with them.
Concretely, we see Sage influencing this narrative through a growing alumni community of Fellows, a deepening body of thought leadership and case material drawn from real African experience, sustained engagement with media and policy platforms, and partnerships that extend our reach into new sectors and markets. If, a decade from now, a young executive somewhere on the continent describes an ethical, long-horizon way of leading and instinctively calls it “the Sage way,” we will know the work has taken root well beyond the organisations we directly engage with. That, ultimately, is the legacy we are building towards.
Finally, the centre was launched in 2025 to advance leadership excellence and strengthen executive capability across Africa’s private sector. Could you take us back to the moment or insight that sparked its creation, and the specific gap in executive leadership that it was designed to address?
The Sage Centre for Leadership Excellence began from something quite personal. After my time at Shell, I continued to receive a steady flow of engagements from young professionals and senior leaders seeking guidance, perspective, or simply a sounding board on leadership decisions. Over time, my wife, Eka, observed that this was not incidental but a consistent pattern, and she made the point that it should not remain informal or limited to one-on-one interactions, but could be structured to reach and benefit more people.
That insight became the foundation for Sage. The intention was to create a platform that institutionalises lived leadership experience—grounded in real-world complexity and practice. The gap we sought to address is the need for deeper leadership development across Africa beyond technical competence, with greater emphasis on judgment, values, and decision-making under pressure. Sage exists to provide a space where leaders can reflect more intentionally on how they lead, the decisions they make, and the impact of those decisions on their organisations and society.
What also became evident was a gap in structured support for leadership reflection and development beyond technical competence. There was a need for a more deliberate space where experienced leaders and emerging executives could engage meaningfully on judgment, ethics, and the realities of leading under pressure.
Besides, across Africa’s corporate landscape, conversations around leadership and governance are becoming increasingly urgent. As businesses navigate economic volatility, regulatory complexity, technological disruption, and growing stakeholder expectations, there is a rising need for leaders who are not only commercially capable, but grounded in ethics, self-awareness, and long-term institutional thinking.
It is within this context that The Sage Centre for Leadership Excellence was established. The Centre is dedicated to developing and advancing leadership excellence across private sector industries in Africa and beyond. Its core purpose is to equip and support business leaders with the skills, knowledge, and character required to drive progress, foster innovation, and deliver sustainable impact across organisations and economies. Through initiatives such as the Vanguard Masterclass Series, Leadership-in-Action Labs, Enterprise Turnaround Clinic, and the Board Excellence Academy, Sage is working to create a leadership ecosystem built on ethical decision-making, reflective leadership, and institutional resilience.
