Arravo Technologies Limited and ACR Holdings, organisers of the CEO Drawing Board, have announced the hosting of the first African Caribbean Franchise Exhibition, slated for July 2025 in Lagos. The CEO Drawing Board is a platform that allows African business leaders to grow their businesses globally through strategic collaborations.
The announcement was made on Tuesday at a press conference jointly organised by ACR Holdings and Arravo Technologies in Lagos. The exhibition, according to the organisers, will bring together franchisees and franchisors from across Africa and the Caribbean, creating the opportunity for engagement and potential partnerships.
Explaining the rationale for the exhibition, Funmi Bajulaiye, president of ACR Holdings, said, Franchising has become a popular business model globally, with the African and Caribbean markets showing immense potential. Yet, African businesses have not tapped into it, often due to a knowledge gap or clarity on the processes required. The exhibition is thus conceived as a platform for engagement, knowledge sharing, and business partnerships between African and Caribbean businesses.
According to Bajulaiye, the exhibition, slated for 3-5 July 2025, promises to be a hub for international brands, franchising investors, and policymakers.
Chairman of the exhibition and CEO of Arravo Technologies, Dr Ayo Adegboye, said Africa lags the rest of the world in terms of developing its knowledge-based economy. According to him, to close the gap, Africa needs to adopt incremental decision-making, which will involve the development and deployment of homegrown technology. He said the realisation informed Arravos decision to not only support ACR Holdings but also build a platform with the infusion of AI to drive robust business engagements and enterprise within Africa, and drive the franchising conversations between African and Caribbean businesses.
The chairman said the development of the AI-driven platform is in line with the Africa for African Agenda, a pan-Africa principle that emphasizes African ownership, development, and unity led by Africans themselves.
“We have looked at the gap in the franchising industry in Africa. And at a time like this, we need to take incremental decisions to close the knowledge and economic gap between Africa and the rest of the world. We have seen homegrown applications and AI being developed within Africa. And if you look at the Africa for African Agenda, we are looking at a knowledge-based economy and how to grow our own AI capability, Dr Adegboye said.
“We have built a platform with the infusion of AI to help us achieve this quicker, without going through the lengthy process to get there. The platform can perform a comprehensive background check in terms of due diligence on a business in hours. The same process without AI could take six months to two years.
Adegboye said the platform is all-encompassing, incorporating financial institutions that will provide escrow services, legal partners, and the government to ensure that engagements between the franchisee and the franchisor are not only robust but also give the two parties in the franchising arrangement the assurance that their interests are fully protected.
The platform also has financial institutions that will act as escrow. The government and legal partners will also be incorporated into the platform. When businesses engage, we escrow the money within the platform, managed by our financial partners, so that the parties to the franchising engagement are assured of financial security while the process lasts. This helps for a seamless transaction across Africa and the Caribbean.”
Speaking further on the exhibition, Bajulaiye said the idea for the exhibition started in 2020, when ACR instituted the CEO Drawing Board conversations with business owners across Africa and four other continents, with 100 countries in attendance. The rationale, she said, was to teach businesses how to co-pete rather than compete to scale their businesses and expand across borders.
According to her, unlike businesses in the Global West, especially Fortune 500 businesses, which had mastered the art of inorganic growth through franchising, mergers, and acquisitions, African businesses are still largely unaware and inexperienced in these areas, hence the need for the conversations and the exhibition.
Present virtually at the press conference were Maxi Sam Ohuabunwa, founder/CEO of Neimeth Pharmaceuticals, who was the chairman of the 2024 CEO Drawing 6.0; Wincate Muthini, Senior Programme Manager, pan-Africa Chamber of Commerce; Shawna Rollins, the first franchise owner in the Caribbean; and Chalya Shagaya, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Entrepreneurship Development.
Ohuabunwa said his support for the CEO Drawing Board initiative stems from the fact that he believes in economic development advocacy. He said the idea of having the African Caribbean Exhibition is a laudable one. “It is indicative of the overall philosophy about franchising, which is that you must cooperate, partner, and exploit different competencies to achieve sustainable growth, Ohuabunwa said while commending the organisers. Muthini expresses her organisations support for the initiative, while assuring of efforts to bring on board the chambers of commerce affiliated to her organisation.
