Ziwani’s podcast series RISK tackles the practical realities of taking bold steps in business – reframing the conversation around taking gospel-inspired risks while being grounded in professional responsibility. In this episode, host Chinwe Okpala and entrepreneur Nissi Ekpott argue that people’s attitudes to risk are shaped less by personality and more by culture, ambition, experience, and necessity.
You can listen to the full episode here.
When people talk about risk, they often assume it means the same thing to everyone. Some people are naturally adventurous, others naturally cautious. Some are risk-takers, others are risk averse. But the reality is far more complicated – and far more interesting.
Raised in Nigeria in a family deeply committed to community development, Nissi never imagined living anywhere else. “Growing up, I would never have thought I would live outside of Nigeria, because that’s how my parents raised us – kind of nationalistic.”
Yet in the early 2000s he experienced a profound shift in perspective. “I became aware of a lot of ‘Africa, this is your time’ rhetoric, and suddenly realised that I needed to look at things not just from the Nigerian context, but from the African context.”
This eventually led him to South Africa and into a life of building various businesses across borders. It also exposed him to different ways of thinking about risk. As Chinwe notes, in West Africa the word ‘risk’ often triggers negative thoughts of reputational or compliance concerns, while in East Africa people rather associate risk with entrepreneurship, opportunity, and growth.
Both views reveal some truth about risk – and together they remind us that people evaluate risk through different lenses. For example, “some people are strong in the area of social risk, but will not do adventure stuff,” Nissi says. “West Africans will cross the ocean on their boats to go to Europe, but they wouldn’t try to sail around the world in a kayak.” In contrast, many South Africans happily take part in activities such as abseiling, bungee jumping, or paragliding. “But if I told my African friend to jump from that mountain,” Nissi explains, “he would tell me he doesn’t want to give the witches in his village an opportunity.”
The point is not that one group is braver than another. Rather, that people are willing to accept different kinds of risks depending on what they value, what they fear, and what they believe is worth pursuing.
In other words, risk cannot be separated from context. Our willingness to embrace or avoid it is shaped by the circumstances around us, the opportunities available to us, and the constraints we face. What seems irrational from one perspective may seem entirely reasonable from another.
The same principle applies in business. Listening to Nissi describe the realities of doing business across Africa in the early 2000s is a reminder of just how dramatically the continent has changed. Many of the tools entrepreneurs now rely on every day simply did not exist.
“I remember when we tried to get a telephone line in Nigeria in 2000,” he says. “It took three months.” Even after moving to South Africa, running a cross-border business meant searching for quiet public phone booths to make international calls, paying high rates at cyber cafés, and physically travelling between countries to manage deals and deliver products.
“There were no bank transfers between the countries,” he recalls. “We had to do these transactions in cash because there was simply no other way.” To reduce the risk, his team kept paper trails and carried out informal due diligence checks to avoid becoming entangled with fraud. Still, the risks were enormous.
In one instance, Nissi hosted a delegation of about 60 business leaders visiting South Africa. The group arrived carrying luggage full of cash for accommodation, transport and purchases during the trip. “They just handed it over and said, ‘Take care of us’,” he states. Nissi had to arrange for a Bureau de Change to process the transactions directly from the hotel basement. “And we had to get my brother to stay in the hotel room with the cash at all times!” he exclaims.
At another time, he expected payment via cheque after supplying industrial sewing equipment to a client in Nigeria. Instead, the client handed over “bags of money – a whole boot full!” Nissi and a colleague then had to drive 150 kilometres through uncertain territory, unsure whether checkpoints along the road were official police or criminals posing as authorities. “At one point the driver saw policemen and he was thrown into a panic, knowing they were going to say, ‘Open your boot’,” Nissi says. “And I remember my colleague shouting, ‘Don’t stop, keep going!’”
Looking back, it is easy to see these stories as examples of extreme risk-taking. But those involved were not chasing danger – they were simply pursuing the best options available to them. As Nissi reflects, many things that now happen “on our cell phones” once required far more effort, time, and trust than younger entrepreneurs can imagine.
If culture and context determine how we perceive risk, faith shapes how we respond to it.
For Chinwe, this raises the important point that many of the decisions Christians make in business can appear irrational at first glance. “Taking Spirit-led risks sometimes can make you look crazy, illogical, unreasonable – until things take shape,” she observes, referring to Abraham as an example. “He wakes up one day saying, ‘Pack up, pack up, we’re leaving.’ Sarah is like, ‘Where are we going?’ ‘I honestly don’t know. Let’s just go. God said we should go.’”
Nissi agrees that obedience and risk are inseparable. “I don’t think it’s possible to walk in the fullness of what God has for us without risk. In fact, the moment you say ‘Yes’ to God, you’re going to be exposed to risk – whether you like it or not.” That doesn’t mean Christians should pursue recklessness though. “We have to distinguish between presumption and obedience,” he cautions. “Because presumption leads to foolishness, and obedience leads to divinely-backed risks.” Neither risk nor caution is automatically virtuous.
This distinction also reflects a broader pattern – that many of the tensions we experience are not actually opposites, including how we think about purpose and profit in business.
Both Nissi and Chinwe believe that purpose and profit are not competing objectives. “Being financially profitable is godly,” Nissi states. “The Bible says He gives us the power to make wealth.” Yet he strongly disapproves of “over-profiteering” – when margins escalate from 3% to 3,000% and scarcity is used to justify exploiting need rather than serving it. “It’s still profit, but at some point it becomes a matter between you and God, between you and your values.”
Pursuing both purpose and profit often means that timelines need to be different too. “It’s very difficult to do purpose beyond profit successfully if you have a short-term timeline for money. So at BizConnect Africa we invest in small companies and help them grow. Not venture capital, where we’re going to scale and sell – we’re going to stay with them as long as possible.”
His other business, GrowMyHome, follows the same approach. While real estate naturally unlocks significant profit, they go beyond simply building and selling houses. “We work with the homeowners, we train them, we consult with their families,” he explains. It is a slower approach, but one that builds long-term wealth for families who lack access to formal mortgage systems.
“So what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who want to start a business in Africa?” Chinwe asks. His response is thoughtful.
“When I was younger, I would have said to them, ‘Go start your business!’ Now I realise that for some people, you should tell them to go and work for somebody first,” he says. Entrepreneurship requires discipline, emotional resilience and self-awareness, and “not everybody is meant to be an entrepreneur.”
However, for those who choose this path, Nissi once again emphasises context – the practical conditions that determine how risk plays out in real markets.
Macro-economic instability is one of the biggest challenges. “There is always a major currency devaluation every few years, and it can wipe you out,” he warns. Businesses operating across borders need to understand hedging, currency exposure and long-term financial planning. Delays at ports and unreliable infrastructure can derail business operations. “Don’t run with plans that assume everything is perfect. Assume that there will be hiccups.” But “human resources is one of the biggest risks, actually,” he says candidly. Cultural attitudes can directly shape work ethic, accountability, contractual trust and skills development in certain contexts.
Yet despite these realities, Nissi refuses to become cynical. “All of these risks can be managed,” he insists. “And I believe that purpose beyond profit is actually the solution to managing all of them.”
Many social tensions and business risks across Africa are rooted in broken trust, exploitation and communities that no longer believe businesses genuinely care about their well-being. Which is why, for him, managing risk in uncertain markets ultimately comes back to understanding and engaging the human realities that shape them.
Risk is often treated as something objective – something that can be measured, priced, and controlled. But this conversation reveals that risk is also deeply human. It is shaped by experience, ambition, faith, and perception. The same situation can look reckless to one person and entirely reasonable to another. The same word can carry very different meanings depending on context and history.
Understanding risk, then, begins with understanding people. And in a continent as diverse and complex as Africa, that may be one of the most important forms of risk intelligence available.
