Great Institutions

There is a business school in Africa that does not have any campus, does not require any tuition fee and offers no certificate at the end. What you need to enter is your willingness and hardwork. In this business school, the graduation ceremony involves a man handing a young person his own money and telling him to go compete with him.

It is called igba boi, the Igbo apprenticeship system. 

For generations, it has quietly built traders and manufacturers from Onitsha to Aba, from Awka to the auto-parts workshops of Nnewi. It is often described as one of the largest informal business incubators in the world, and it does not even have a headquarters.

This business arrangement reveals the power of an institution.

A great institution is not simply a place where people gather. It is a structure that preserves knowledge, creates opportunities, and continues producing results long after the people who started it are gone.

For generations, the Igbo apprenticeship system connected experienced business owners with younger people who learned through observation, discipline, and practice. The goal was not only to teach a trade. It was to prepare the next generation to become independent.

Through this system, knowledge is transferred, relationships are built, businesses are created.

A person who was once an apprentice could eventually become a mentor to someone else.

And that is exactly how institutions survive, by reproducing their purpose.

Across history, the strongest institutions have always understood this principle. They do not only focus on what they can achieve today. They think about what they are preparing others to achieve tomorrow.

This is the difference between a person building something and a person building an institution. The one building something creates an achievement while the one building an institution creates a legacy.

So, one question every generation should ask is this:

Are we building something for people to just remember or are we building institutions that will continue to serve long after we are gone?