Sahara, Africa Prudential chiefs, others chart path to growth through change, AI, investment at ICM confab

Business leaders and professionals have been challenged to embrace continuous change, Artificial Intelligence (AI), financial protection and strategic investment to remain competitive and achieve sustainable growth amid increasing technological and economic disruption.

The charge came at the Institute of Change Management (ICM) Annual Conference 2026, where speakers from Sahara Group, Africa Prudential and other organisations outlined strategies to navigate technological disruption, workplace transformation and economic uncertainty.

Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Sahara Group, Kola Adesina, in his keynote address, stressed the need for businesses and professionals to continually build their capacity to adapt, warning against remaining spectators in a rapidly changing world.

Represented by Bethel Obioma, Adesina challenged participants to embrace lifelong learning, avoid shortcuts and become architects rather than spectators of change.

Speaking on the conference theme: “Unleashing Change: Accelerating Impact — Harnessing Transformation to Drive Business Excellence and Personal Growth,” he said organisations and individuals must develop the capacity to turn uncertainty into opportunity, adversity into progress and possibilities into measurable impact.

He said transformation must go beyond attractive plans, strategies and statements to deliver tangible improvements in businesses and people’s lives.

Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Africa Prudential, Dr. Catherine Nwosu, represented by Bukola James-Cole, focused on financial protection and strategic investment as critical components of sustainable growth.

Speaking on “Investing for Impact: Leveraging Financial Protection and Strategic Investments for Sustainable Growth,” she said individuals, families and organisations needed to deliberately build resilience against financial and economic shocks while investing for long-term value.

She stressed that financial protection and investment should complement each other rather than operate in isolation.

The presentation also highlighted the role of insurance and strategic investment in mobilising long-term capital for infrastructure, job creation and broader economic development.

Africa Prudential proposed deeper collaboration with ICM in research, risk management, financial literacy, capacity building and sustained industry dialogue.

AI’s growing influence on productivity, profitability and jobs dominated a panel session themed, “Empowering People, Elevating Performance and Maximising Profit with AI.”

Moderated by Janet Tolowoetan, the session featured Adeyemi Ajayi of Synlab; Nneka Jethro-Iruobe, Executive Director, Happy Employee Company Limited; and Jerry Osagie Okoh, Managing Director, Jeme Technologies.

The panellists maintained that AI should enhance rather than diminish human capacity and urged professionals to acquire the skills required to work effectively alongside emerging technologies.

They identified prompt engineering, digital fluency, critical thinking, communication and decision-making among increasingly important workplace competencies, stressing that while AI could provide information and automate processes, human judgement, creativity and purpose remained indispensable.

The conference also examined Nigeria’s changing tax environment and its implications for businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.

Immediate Past President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Samuel Agbeluyi, in his presentation, “Navigating the Nigeria Tax Act 2025: Unlocking SME Growth, Digital Compliance and Incentivised Investments”, examined digital compliance, investment incentives and opportunities available to SMEs, stressing the need for businesses to understand and adapt to the evolving tax regime.

At a fireside conversation on “Fostering Synergy Across Generations in the Workplace,” Ijeoma Onyenobi, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Nigeria LNG Limited and Temitope Emmanuel Aina, Human Resources Officer at Musaroq Nigeria Limited, posited that generational differences should be harnessed rather than allowed to divide workplaces.

Moderated by Yetunde Olori-Oladipo, the session stressed the need to combine the experience and institutional memory of older employees with the innovation, technological confidence and fresh perspectives of younger workers.

Earlier, Chairman of the Governing Council of ICM, Nat Beifoh-Osewele, warned that the rapid pace of technological, economic and workplace disruption had made adaptability a survival imperative.

“Change is no longer an event that happens to organisations. Change is the environment in which organisations operate,” he said.

He noted that past success offered no guarantee of continued relevance. “Yesterday’s success does not guarantee tomorrow’s relevance. An organisation can be large and still become irrelevant. A professional can be experienced and still become obsolete. A leader can be powerful and still lose relevance.”

On AI, Osewele urged organisations to look beyond fears of job displacement and focus on developing human capacity.

“As we discuss Artificial Intelligence, let us ask more than, ‘What can AI do?’ Let us ask: ‘What can our people become because of AI?’  “Technology provides tools; people provide vision, judgement, creativity and courage. AI can process information, but people provide wisdom and purpose.”

He challenged participants to translate the conference discussions into measurable action.

“The true measure of this conference will not be the quality of the speeches we hear. It will be what we do after we leave this room,” he said.