Tony Elumelu, owner of UBA, the ‘lion’ of African banking, recently dug out his old business card, and egged on the wannabes following him on X to always go for the kill—like the photocopier salesman he was in his hustling days.

“It brought back memories of being a young, hungry sales rep learning the fundamentals of resilience, negotiation, and grit,” the 63-year-old wrote about the card on X.

A menu item Elumelu the salesman hungered for then was being more. For appetizers, he led a four-man gang of vulture investors to gobble up a dying Crystal Bank in 1997, and renamed it Standard Trust Bank. Second course: he drove a hard bargain for another ailing but bigger UBA in 2005, and the merger of the two banks jelled out very solid. He couldn’t have had more on his plate.

UBA, now under Elumelu’s Heirs Holdings PLC, boasts more than 1,000 branches serving 45 million customers across Africa.

In his crave for more, the salesman in Elumelu has somehow cooked up a recipe for productivity—Africapitalism. The trademarked business ideology now stimulates his taste in pitching and negotiating for the lion shares of investments in the financial, energy, and oil sectors in Africa.

His Tony Elumelu Foundation has been schooling and funding young Africans, 25,000 so far, in the art of the bargain as entrepreneurs