ARCHIVES 2013 / Lagos Business Angels

According to Goldman-Sachs, Nigeria will be among the 10 most economically powerful nations by 2050. But who are the businessmen today working in this country? Going to Nigeria in search of business angels, Rimini Protokoll transforms the theatre into a huge trade fair where the public is invited to go from booth to booth, meeting men and women presenting their activity. From the shoe designer promoting his creations via Blackberry to the Austrian lace-maker dressing Lagos' wealthy women, by way of the evangelical pastor preaching the entrepreneurial spirit anchored in each of us, and the merchant who sold aquarium fish from the Niger delta converted into an advisor in the oil business, Rimini Protokoll's “experts” work, with a disorienting creativity and dynamism, at counteracting the post-colonial and often bleak glance that Europeans usually cast on Africa. A communication space, the theatre becomes a place to hold sway over reality, because if the protagonists of Lagos Business Angels try to meet the public, it is clearly to do business and to smash generally held ideas on North-South economic relations. MS