Elizabeth Jack-Rich leads Elin Group’s philanthropic efforts in Nigeria

Few individuals go from being a bus attendant to operating a multimillion-dollar firm – however then once more, Dr Elizabeth Jack-Rich isn’t like most individuals. As founder and CEO of Elin Group, Jack-Rich has helped her organisation set up a sturdy presence throughout a various vary of sectors whereas by no means forgetting its singular objective: to ascertain worth for its prospects, shoppers and shareholders.

Admirably, Jack-Rich has not forgotten her roots: though her success has made her one of the extremely regarded enterprise leaders in her native Nigeria and past, she stays enthusiastic about giving again to others to allow them to profit from the identical alternatives she has loved.

The Elizabeth Jack-Rich Aid Foundation (EJ-Aid), a non-profit entity that helps quite a few worthwhile causes, manages Elin Group’s charitable undertakings. These philanthropic endeavours have grown because the group has made a number of thrilling strikes in the company world. Whether it’s in actual property, energy era, agriculture or aviation, Elin Group is dedicated to innovation that yields dividends for traders and Nigerian society.

Humble beginnings
As Nigeria continues to ascertain itself on the worldwide stage, a younger entrepreneur with a dream and the tenacity to deliver it to fruition is working to empower the nation’s girls and youth. Jack-Rich, the embodiment of Nigeria’s subsequent era of management, is on a mission to deliver shared prosperity to her fellow residents. Hailing from a humble background and formed deeply by her religion, Jack-Rich has embraced entrepreneurship and charity because the core tenets of her life, creating an award-winning charity that helps quite a few initiatives targeted on decreasing poverty and inequality.

Elin Group is dedicated to innovation that yields dividends for traders and Nigerian society

Born in 1993, Jack-Rich entered the world at a time of nice transformation in Nigeria. At the beginning of the last decade, rising oil costs had offered a much-needed financial increase to the nation and, in 1999, Nigeria lastly transitioned to democratic rule after many years of army dictatorships. Democracy introduced with it additional financial advantages, with the nation’s GDP per capita rising quickly between 1999 and 2008 (see Fig 1). While such vital change can show formidable to some, it additionally creates alternatives for many who take dangers and present a willingness to make a distinction. It was in this local weather that Jack-Rich started to make her mark.

After graduating from the University of Applied Science and Management, Porto-Novo, Jack-Rich launched into an entrepreneurial journey with Elin Group. Under her stewardship, the privately held conglomerate has grown its presence in quite a few sectors, together with vitality, actual property, agriculture and aviation, amongst others. With footprints throughout West Africa and the US, Elin Group’s funding portfolio touches a number of aspects of Nigerian society, drawing on its core working values of integrity, mutual respect, customer support, innovation and security.

According to Princess Dato’Seri Maria Amor, founding father of We Care for Humanity and creator of the Global Order of Dignitaries and Philanthropists awards, these values are embodied by the group’s founder and guiding mild: “Jack-Rich has a ferocious drive in serving to the individuals of Nigeria, uplifting the African continent whereas doing so. The enthusiasm she has for the sake of individuals is contagious and highly effective.”

Safety first
Despite solely being shaped in 2018, Elin Group has already had a major impression on Nigeria. In phrases of well being, security and the surroundings (HSE), the entire group’s tasks are guided by the very best regulatory requirements, creating the most secure attainable office for workers, contractors and guests.

To create an surroundings in which everybody feels secure, Elin Group has adopted a proactive strategy to threat administration. By figuring out potential issues forward of time, the organisation can make sure the long-term wellbeing of all its stakeholders. Effective threat administration doesn’t solely hold workers secure, both: assessing, managing and stopping threat offers Elin Group higher entry to information concerning its work processes, improves communication channels and enhances useful resource allocation. Moreover, threat administration can assist with an organisation’s backside line and forestall any nasty surprises from surfacing.

To obtain its HSE targets, Elin Group has formal procedures in place to determine potential office hazards, resembling conditions and substances which may show dangerous to its employees. Consequently, all related personnel obtain coaching in emergency preparedness, accident prevention, accident response and the usage of protecting tools.

“By advantage of the character of the companies we function in – be it aviation or oil and fuel – the well being and security of our employees, shoppers and all different stakeholders can’t be compromised,” Jack-Rich informed World Finance. “We perceive {that a} lapse in judgment or one careless second can result in a fatality. This is why we be certain that we keep compliant with each well being and security coverage, in addition to all authorities and statutory rules. Safety is a core worth for us – we’ve maintained an accident-free office since inception and recorded zero downtime resulting from accidents.”

Protecting workers is a part of a broader ethos that Jack-Rich has adopted all through her profession. Although she wouldn’t be a profitable entrepreneur and not using a clear understanding of enterprise, finance and onerous information, she is cautious to recollect the significance of sustaining a human contact.

Reaching for the sky
In a monumental step, Elin Group just lately introduced a take care of Canadian plane producer De Havilland Canada, signing a agency buy settlement to accumulate three rebranded Dash 8-400s. The Dash 8-400 guarantees a major productiveness benefit over different plane, as it will probably maintain extra personnel than competing 76-seat turboprop carriers and boasts higher gas economic system than bigger plane. According to the De Havilland web site, the Dash 8-400 provides over $8m in further worth per plane.

Commenting on the deal, De Havilland’s chief working officer, Todd Young, touched upon the significance of the African marketplace for his agency: “We are delighted to welcome Elin Group to our household of consumers and to announce this order – the second booked because the relaunch of De Havilland Canada in June [2019].

“Propelled by the joy generated by the transition of the Dash Eight plane programme to De Havilland Canada, our gross sales and advertising and marketing groups are focusing their consideration on constructing a pipeline of orders to additional improve our backlog and reconfirm the Dash 8-400 plane’s place because the world’s most superior and best turboprop. Africa continues to be a showcase marketplace for the Dash 8-400, the place the plane’s velocity, sizzling and excessive efficiency, and better payload capabilities deliver vital benefits to new markets throughout the continent.”

From Elin Group’s standpoint, the acquisition settlement is a savvy transfer by Jack-Rich that helps the organisation’s work throughout quite a few trade sectors. Put merely, the power to move workers throughout Nigeria in a quick, dependable and cost-effective method will show massively necessary to future enterprise developments.

“As a dynamic entrepreneur and a frontrunner with a imaginative and prescient, I’m profoundly happy that De Havilland Canada and Elin Group Nigeria have come collectively to kind a formidable enterprise relationship that can allow Elin Group to ship [a] cutting-edge service to prospects in the aviation sector,” Jack-Rich stated on the time of the acquisition. “It has all the time been my imaginative and prescient to collaborate with an organization of excessive technical and revolutionary reputation to see the actualisation of my imaginative and prescient to broaden providers in totally different financial aspects. I’m significantly proud right now about this alliance with De Havilland Canada – the acquisition of the Dash 8-400 plane for operations in Nigeria is a step in the best route and it couldn’t have come at a greater time.”

Investing in aviation tools may deliver vital advantages for Elin Group. First, it allows the organisation to enter the non-public constitution area and supply a precious transportation service. Perhaps extra pertinently, although, the acquisition of three Dash 8-400 plane will allow the corporate to enhance the reliability and effectivity of its oil and fuel tasks.

Green credentials
In addition to its aviation capabilities, Elin Group is a standout chief in Nigeria’s thrilling hydrocarbon sector. Elin Oil Services is a cutting-edge oil and fuel exploration, improvement, manufacturing and advertising and marketing firm that serves as a one-stop store for engineering procurement, development, oil prospecting and well-drilling options. Specialising in the exploration of oil and fuel belongings, onshore and offshore providers, advertising and marketing, and the distribution of petroleum merchandise, the subsidiary primarily focuses on the supply of solution-orientated, cost-effective and responsive providers in the areas of oil mining and offshore providers.

Besides the take care of De Havilland Canada, Elin Oil Services is in the method of buying a cell offshore drilling unit and three multipurpose vessels – all of that are scheduled for supply this yr. These will add to a broad portfolio of present belongings that gives help all through your entire oil and fuel worth chain. Jack-Rich is aware of now shouldn’t be the time for complacency, although: over the following few years, her firm will proceed to take a position in the acquisition of strategic belongings and different ancillary providers, such because the storage and distribution of petroleum merchandise. A diversified asset portfolio ensures the corporate’s financial sustainability.

Although some might even see Elin Group’s work in the oil and fuel sector as being antithetical to the environmental values espoused by its CEO, this isn’t essentially the case, as Elin Oil Services employs cutting-edge expertise to scale back environmental disturbance. The international petrochemical sector has additionally been exploring methods in which it will probably proceed to offer common vitality entry whereas slicing its carbon emissions. In Nigeria, Elin Group leads the best way in this regard.

EJ-Aid helps society’s most susceptible and marginalised people attend high-quality academic establishments and create a greater future for themselves

“Detailed assessments of potential environmental, social and well being dangers are carried out through the starting stage of all new tasks,” Jack-Rich defined to World Finance. “The reviews from these analyses enable the corporate to handle and cut back damaging dangers to the group and surroundings. Also, environmental impression is a serious deciding issue in asset acquisitions at Elin Group. This influenced our determination to buy three model new Dash 8-400 plane versus cheaper, older, extra polluting alternate options.”

Nigeria is blessed with a large number of pure wonders, from the Yankari National Park, which has one of many largest elephant populations in West Africa, to the magical Idanre Hill, with its mysterious, yet-to-be-deciphered inscriptions. Jack-Rich understands the worth of this magnificence, making environmental finest apply a high precedence throughout all divisions of Elin Group.

Giving again
As good as being a profitable businessperson, Jack-Rich has acquired widespread popularity of her philanthropy. This drive so as to add worth to humanity led to the creation of EJ-Aid and allowed Jack-Rich to observe in the footsteps of her husband, Tein T S Jack-Rich, who established the Belema Aid Foundation to help much-needed tasks all through Nigeria.

Elizabeth Jack-Rich has regularly demonstrated her ardour for serving to others, supporting households and younger individuals via the issuance of grants, supply of medical help, facilitation of abilities improvement and provision of many different instruments that empower people economically. EJ-Aid scholarships, for instance, enable much less privileged college students to proceed their research – each inside and out of doors of Nigeria – and enhance their monetary prospects. Jack-Rich’s staunch dedication to altering lives for the higher is rooted in an expression each her and her husband stay by: “God has blessed me to impression my era.”

More just lately, Jack-Rich launched a particular curiosity basis to help the ladies residing outdoors of Nigeria’s city centres: the Opportunity for Rural Women Development Initiatives (ORWODI). ORWODI equips rural girls with the essential instruments they require to engender optimistic social and financial change in their communities, additional selling the sustainable improvement of Nigeria in the method. Having been born into tough financial circumstances herself, Jack-Rich understands how very important this work will be.

But her charitable outlook and targets don’t finish there: since being formally established in December 2017, EJ-Aid has devoted its sources to bettering Nigerian lives via empowerment and training. The basis has awarded greater than 50 scholarships to underprivileged kids and focuses on giving hope to younger, aged and ex-service personnel throughout Nigeria, Africa and the broader world. In different phrases, EJ-Aid helps society’s most susceptible and marginalised people attend high-quality academic establishments and create a greater future for themselves. These scholarships have usually lined the price of main, secondary and tertiary training for orphans, kids of widows and disabled people.

With regards to financial empowerment, EJ-Aid locations a selected emphasis on abilities improvement and enterprise administration coaching. Once programs are accomplished, seed capital is obtainable to help and encourage the event of SMEs. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, SMEs at present contribute roughly 48 % of Nigeria’s GDP – a major sum, however one that is still behind different markets. Across the EU, for instance, SMEs contribute 56 % of GDP on common, whereas in South Africa – Africa’s second-largest economic system behind Nigeria – the determine stands at 52 %.

The work being undertaken by EJ-Aid ought to stimulate Nigerian SME efficiency, however that’s not its solely remit: starvation eradication is a key intention of the organisation, one that’s met by bettering the supply of meals for all residents, no matter their financial difficulties. In a rustic that has the most individuals residing in excessive poverty globally (see Fig 2), such a trigger couldn’t be extra necessary.

Honour roll
Jack-Rich has acquired a number of accolades in recognition of her work, together with an honorary doctorate in management and group improvement from ISFOP Benin University and the Global Woman Humanitarian for Poverty Alleviation Award from the Global Order of Dignitaries and Philanthropists. She additionally holds certifications from the University of Cambridge’s Rising Women Leaders Programme and Harvard University’s Entrepreneurship Essentials course.

More just lately, the National Youth Council of Nigeria bestowed Jack-Rich with the newly shaped title Matriarch of Nigeria Youths for her efforts to empower the nation’s girls. The award drew explicit consideration to EJ-Aid’s presentation of NGN 110m ($231,820) in start-up capital to 1,100 girls. To date, the muse has empowered greater than two million girls, contributing over NGN 350m ($737,609) in partnership with the Belema Aid Foundation.

“My deal with girls shouldn’t be for gender bias,” Jack-Rich defined upon receiving the award. “As enablers of development, it’s generally stated: ‘When you empower a lady, you empower a nation.’ No girl ought to be on the road. My best want is to see the day when no single girl is roaming the streets of Nigeria, however are somewhat all gainfully engaged in official enterprises, contributing to the uplifting of their households and society at giant.”

Such awards are becoming given the nice effort Jack-Rich has put into lifting her fellow Nigerians out of poverty. In Abuja and Port Harcourt, for instance, she created a two-week abilities acquisition programme for ladies in affiliation with the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria. Of the 1,100 beneficiaries, 500 had been chosen from the Federal Capital Territory and Northern Nigeria, whereas an additional 600 hailed from the Rivers State area and Niger Delta. The individuals acquired education in a wide range of vocations, together with catering, IT, fish farming, poultry administration, cosmetology, baking, handicrafts and occasion planning. At the tip of the coaching, college students acquired start-up funding to start their journey in direction of financial prosperity.

The empowerment of ladies is vital to making a wholesome nation – in addition to holding girls again, gender inequality prevents complete international locations from realising their full potential. In reality, in keeping with a 2015 report by McKinsey Global Institute, Nigeria’s GDP may increase some 23 % by 2025 if girls participated in the economic system to the identical diploma as males.

Growing collectively
Jack-Rich’s purposeful management is a trademark of her work trip and may encourage any budding entrepreneur. When beforehand requested about what drives her success, Jack-Rich was fast to level to her long-term imaginative and prescient: “I wish to guarantee you that Elin Group is in this for the lengthy haul and appears ahead to increasing different enterprise horizons for our collective organisational wellbeing and the betterment of your entire nation.”

True to the values exemplified by its founder, Elin Group’s management crew believes it has an obligation to behave in the very best pursuits of the surroundings and society as an entire. Since its institution, Elin Group has dedicated to empowering the communities it serves with initiatives focused at decreasing poverty and bettering the standard of life for native residents.

Jack-Rich informed World Finance that this is identical wherever the corporate operates: “We imagine this isn’t solely about sustaining our enterprise, however about sustaining our core values and who we’re. Hence, we guarantee our challenge operations incorporate environmentally pleasant practices and socioeconomic advantages into the area people. We have clear duties, duties and requirements in our administration, boards, stakeholders and working items. These embody our sustainable dealings with stakeholders, efficient threat administration and audit regulation, and clear accountability and reporting.”

It is Jack-Rich’s deal with doing the best factor that drives the corporate’s development and distinctive efficiency. She has famous repeatedly that she believes Elin Group ought to ship providers that not solely meet statutory caliber calls for, but additionally exceed such expectations. To obtain this, the group has created, maintained and developed management tips that guarantee processes of manufacturing and supply are constant throughout the board. Elin Group stays steadfastly dedicated to making sure its procedures and engineering practices shield the individuals and surroundings of Nigeria.

With the Nigerian economic system going from power to power, additional triumphs are certainly simply across the nook for Elin Group

A affluent future
Despite the difficulties inherent to being a younger entrepreneur, Jack-Rich stays hopeful and enthusiastic about her firm’s position in rising the Nigerian economic system. Over the following few years, she believes each Elin Group and EJ-Aid can do a lot to enhance monetary inclusion in Nigeria, offering additional good points to the nation’s girls and younger individuals. Although entry to monetary providers in Nigeria has improved of late, the proportion of adults with a checking account in the nation nonetheless sits at a meagre 29 %, in keeping with Kantar.

“Higher ranges of economic inclusion present an a variety of benefits,” Jack-Rich defined. “First, it promotes a financial savings tradition. It offers a secure place for financial savings to be constructed up, thereby offering a supply of funds for emergencies and different existential wants. Second, monetary inclusion facilitates entry to loans and credit score. It offers a platform for broader transactions, serving to to develop small and medium-scale companies. Finally, by rising the incomes potential of ladies and youth, monetary inclusion can result in poverty alleviation.”

With regards to the enterprise, Jack-Rich is intent on retaining innovation on the coronary heart of Elin Group’s targets, discovering simpler, extra environment friendly and cost-effective methods to create worth. “Innovation is on the core of who we’re,” Jack-Rich informed World Finance. “By staying targeted on our imaginative and prescient, constantly figuring out the gaps, offering the necessary intervention and making certain {that a} tradition of steady studying is promoted, we are going to stay profitable.”

It is that this perspective of by no means being happy, by no means standing nonetheless and all the time looking for enchancment that has stood Jack-Rich and Elin Group in such good stead. In simply two years of operation, Elin Group has achieved nice success; with the Nigerian economic system going from power to power, additional triumphs are certainly simply across the nook. What’s clear is that Jack-Rich will guarantee these successes proceed to profit all Nigerian residents.