Sam Jonah - Africa’s business legend
Loading ...Sam Esson Jonah is a prominent Ghanaian business man. Samuel Jonah was born on the 19 November, 1949 in Obuasi/Adaugi in then British Gold Coast colony (Ghana).
In 1969 Sam applied for and won a trainee position with Ashanti’s Ayeinm mine that included an Associateship (ACSM) in Mining Engineering at the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall, England and subsequently completed an MSc in Mine Management at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London.
He rejoined Ashanti Goldfields Corporation in 1979, working in various capacities, including underground operations, and he became the Chief Executive Officer in 1986 at the age of 36. Ashanti started as a single mine (Obuasi) located 180km north west of the capital of Ghana in 1895 and first listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) two years later.
The company was acquired by Lonrho in 1968 and delisted. Under his able and dynamic leadership from 1986 until June 2004, when he was the CEO of Ashanti Goldfields Company Limited, he led the transformation of Ashanti from a one-mine operation into a multinational. In 1996, Ashanti, which had listings in London & Ghana, became the first operating African company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
He is the Executive Chairman of Jonah Capital, a private equity fund based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the non-executive president of mining giant Anglogold Ashanti Limited, and is also a director of Anglo American Corporation of South Africa and Anglo American Platinum Corporation.
Sam Jonah is a member of numerous advisory committees, including South African President Thabo Mbeki’s International Investment Advisory Council and President Kufuor’s Ghana Investors’ Advisory Council. He is the Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
He also serves on various boards including Lonmin, the Commonwealth African Investment Fund (Comafin), the Advisory Council of UN Secretary General’s Global Compact. As well as his directorships, Mr Jonah is a member of the Advisory Board of the London Business School.
He has been decorated with several awards and honours, among them an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc) degree awarded jointly by the Camborne School of Mines and the University of Exeter (UK) in 1996.
Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain conferred on Sam Jonah an Honorary Knighthood in recognition of his exceptional achievements as an African businessman, a leading business executive from the Commonwealth and an international public figure. The award KBE stands for Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Since Sam Jonah is not a national of the the United Kingdom he cannot use the title ‘Sir Sam Jonah’.
SAM IN THE NEWS
According to a recent article in The Economist Magazine Sam Jonah seeks to raise $250m to build long-distance roads across Africa—the lack which is one of the most obvious failures in the continent’s infrastructure. His goal is to find 50 successful African business people, each willing to invest $5m in the fund, and then to use multilateral funds to leverage the money into the billions. “People in Africa, if they come together, can make a big difference,” says Mr Jonah. “What I want to do is put my money where my mouth is.”There is increasingly a pro-African mood in the global business community nowadays, says Mr Jonah. “Access to finance is much better; now when I go to New York seeking a lot of money, I get a warm welcome.”
Sam Jonah is reported as being optimistic in his new venture and acknowledges Africa’s post-colonial difficulties. “People fail to appreciate the huge challenges African countries faced at independence,” he says. “When you think where we have come from, there has been tremendous progress.”
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