Meet Osita James Uche

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Osita James Uche a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Osita James, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I grew up in Nigeria with a family of 10. It was me, my mother, my father and 7 siblings. My mother was an English literature teacher and exposed me to African literature at an early age. I read “Zambia Shall be Free” by Kenneth Kaunda, “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong and God’s Bits of Wood at an early age. I was exposed to the African struggle for independence and the base human desire for freedom through the books I read. At the time Nigeria had gained independence but was doing badly under corrupt leaders. As I read, I resolved to become an agent of positive change.

In 2012 I started writing my thoughts down. I joined a literary club and led the publication of 2 literary journals before I graduated. I also studied law to understand the Nigerian political system to equip myself to help my country.

While undertaking my undergraduate degree I sent my works of fiction to over 100 literary journals and got rejected 96 times. I kept writing and was then published in 2016 and 2017 on the Ynaija platform, the African Writers literary journal, Kalahari Literary Review and Kreative Diadem. I also won the Imbube prize for fiction in 2017 shortly before going to law school. I learnt how to strive for progress while facing the challenges of my current state. I kept writing even when no one thought what I was writing was good enough.

In 2018, my resolve to be a better leader was tested. I had the option to pay a bribe to stay in Lagos for my National Youth Service (NYSC) or go to where I was posted. I accepted to go where I was posted and that has transformed my life. I ended up building 8 libraries to support college students in Jigawa state and won a state award from the NYSC for outstanding community development efforts.

Since 2018 I have not backed down from a fight. I applied for 3 years from 2019 to 2022 until I got a fully-funded Chevening scholarship to undertake my Masters at the Nottingham Business School. I have come to accept that victory in anything demands preparation and the ability to stay fighting even when the going gets tough. I follow the same approach in my business and social enterprise.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a startup lawyer and Entrepreneur. I am the managing partner of Blackcrest (www.blackcrest.africa), a startup-focused law firm that supports startups of all stages in Africa. We recently supported startups to raise $4 million dollars from VCs and angels. In addition to Blackcrest, I am a co-founder at Sureagent (www.mysureagent.com).

Sureagent is a physical verification e-commerce service for social media shoppers in Africa powered by independent agents. These agents work on a gig basis in several locations simultaneously. Social media shoppers on IG and Facebook can now book a Sureagent close to the vendor’s location to physically verify the item for them before payment. This will eliminate the possibility of fraud by 99%. Nigeria currently has one of the highest rates of social media shopping fraud globally.

We have successfully verified items worth over N3 million and are looking to verify 20,000 items by 2024. We have partnered with Just Deal (https://justdeal.ng/) an e-commerce market for used items in Nigeria to provide sureagent verification services to a larger market. The most exciting thing so far was discovering that customers not only wanted the items they shop verified but also wanted the vendors verified. This has given us a new perspective on how social commerce in Africa is evolving. I and my team will roll out a pilot project verifying 1,000 vendors by the first quarter of 2024 to test how effective this will be in increasing customer orders as a result of improved trust.

As a way of staying committed to my mission to improve my home country, I run a social enterprise in my spare time. It is called the Flourish Opportunities Network (FON). It is focused on helping young Africans access scholarships, jobs and internship opportunities. We have hosted 35 scholarship information webinars all online on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPIc3v0j_7Gp__X0sQscxA) and have successfully compiled 10,000 scholarships with the goal of compiling the most comprehensive scholarship database to support Africans with quality education opportunities. We have a community of 7,000 undergraduates, 55 campus ambassadors and over 100 universities across 5 African countries in our network. We recently raised N700,000 from Alumni of public and private universities to support indigent undergraduates to pay their tuition. Our goal is to become the biggest personal development student network in Africa.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The top three skills that have made a difference in my career are grit, communication and people management skills.

I was 16 when I started studying law at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. I did not have any special skills and was figuring out myself as much as I was figuring out law school. What I did have was a strong resolve. I remember studying every day in a structured manner for an entire semester. I had a GPA of 5.0 that semester and also won a prize for being the best student in Contract law. I wasn’t working hard because I wanted to impress my lecturers or anyone. I simply wanted to be the best version of myself.

It was the same grit that enabled me to combine my studies with editing the literary journals for the Nwokike Literary Club. It was the grit that helped me overcome the mental burden of co-founding the School’s “Observer Newspaper” in 2017 while completing my final project and managing the Okike Prize for Literature that I started the same year.

My advice for people starting out is to watch anime. You probably were not expecting that, but yes anime. I watched the entire Naruto series before I started studying law. I saw myself as an untalented young person with lots of potential just like the anime character Naruto in the popular “Naruto Shippuden” anime series. He had a dream to become the ninja king (Hokage) and fought adversaries great and small until he reached his goal. He never gave up. By seeing myself in this untalented character who had more talented peers but still accomplished his goal, I was able to push myself beyond my limits to birth productivity at a level that was considered abnormal. I recommend anime like “Attack on Titan”, “Black Clover” and “One Piece”.  The good news for young people starting out is that it gets easier. Once you start and you have some results, the Matthew’s effect will propel you to more opportunities and the results will compound over time.

I started writing fiction in 2012. This has given me a lot of time to polish my communication style and tone. Communication was what I used in writing proposals to the publishing companies when I was undertaking the Jigawa Library Project in 2018. I was able to access over 7,000 books from donations from Farafina, Booksville World, Ouida Books and others. I would however not recommend writing as a way of learning how to communicate because it is very hard and some people are more driven to written expression than others. I recommend choosing a medium of communication that is easier for you. I think I am a better writer than a speaker. I write a monthly newsletter on LinkedIn called Building Digital Products (https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/building-digital-products-6891690985676435456/). I also write articles, business strategy documents and marketing plans. My advice is to stick to the medium of communication that resonates more with you.

People management is the most important of all the skills combined. We cannot do everything by ourselves. People are every business’s greatest asset. This has been shown in the recent OpenAI case where Sam Altman was reinstated because the top AI talent threatened to quit.

I led a team as president of the Nwokike Literary Club from 2014 – 2016. We successfully published a literary journal in print, organized a send-forth event for our graduating members and founded a national undergraduate literary prize called the Okike Prize for Literature. In 2018 I led a team to build libraries and reading clubs in 8 secondary schools across 3 local governments. I currently lead the teams at Blackcrest, Sureagent and FON.

All the work we do and the impact we make is powered by people. In order to improve your overall performance you have to learn to work with people. The two things you can do as a young person is to have a big vision. If your vision is big enough and fits in with other people’s vision, they will follow you. Secondly, care about others.

The only way you can do this is by actually caring. Don’t make all your conversations and engagements about work. Remember their birthdays, remember their work anniversary and the names of their children where applicable. It makes you more human and relatable.

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
My parents are a dynamic duo. My father was educated at the University of Wyoming and approached raising me and my siblings very differently from my mother. My mother was fire and my father was ice. One thing they both did well was believe in every single one of us. It is a difficult thing dealing with 8 different children for the core reason that each child will have a different personality. My parents ensured that we were all close to each other by taking us to events and creating opportunities to bond.

When I was younger I was playful, energetic and stubborn. I was always last in class and my teachers were worried. When they approached my parents, my parents always told them that I was not dumb but distracted. They had so much confidence in me. When I got older and went to college my grades improved but I still was not one one of the best. My father called me aside one day and he told me that things change when we decide to change them. He told me that the only reason I was not the best was because I had chosen not to be. I have strived to be the best version of myself ever since.

My parents supported me when I graduated, got called to the Nigerian law bar and decided to build a business. They did not mind that it would mean that I would rely on their support while I found my feet. I started building my first business Flourish Consult in 2018 and pivoted in 2020 to Flourish Opportunities Network (FON), the exact same time I won a $40,000 fully funded scholarship to study technology and entrepreneurship at the Nigerian University of Technology and Management. After this program, my parents wanted to fund my post-graduate studies in the UK but I told them that I was confident I could get a scholarship. They again believed even when the odds were so low. I eventually won the Chevening scholarship in 2022 to study for a Masters in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.

My story would not be complete without my supportive parents who dared to believe in the dreams of their son, even when they did not make any practical sense.

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