A dialogue with Seth Dei: about investment, art and leadership (Part II)
Posted on Jun 4, 2015
Seth Dei has various enviable identities: serial entrepreneur, seasoned investor, biggest private art collector in Ghana…not to mention his study in agricultural economics, finance and journalism. In the first part of this exclusive interview with Leaders League, we discuss his choices of study and the returnee phenomenon in Africa. In the second part, he shares with us his secrets of successful investments, his vision on African art market as well as leadership.
Seth Dei. To be honest with you, I don’t have a specific strategy. It’s only that my background enables me to analyze various investment opportunities. When I finished business school in the US, I started working in the investment department of an American life insurance company. As you know, life insurance companies tend to do long term investments. As part of this job, I had to travel to see various companies who wanted to borrow money from us. I had to analyze each company, make a judgment about the management and so forth, before making the decision as whether to invest or not. That experience developed my skill to detect good businesses and broadened my willingness to take risks, and has largely benefited my future analysis of my own investments.
Leaders League. Let us talk more about your art collection. You have the largest private collection of contemporary Ghanaian painting in the country. What is your future plan?
S. D. I created a foundation and set up a center for the study of contemporary African Art with a gallery, and we do exhibitions of some work from our collection, as well as from other galleries. As of today, we don’t yet have a museum of modern art in Ghana, so currently we are evaluating the possibility of building a Museum of Contemporary Art in this country, and my intention is to donate my collection to this Contemporary Art Museum. Nevertheless, the National Museum of Ghana isn’t doing very well in taking care of artwork, so the Board of the foundation has decided that we won’t donate theses painting before the national museum has the capacity to take better care of their art collection, therefore maybe in 10 or 20 years from now.
Leaders League. Do you do all this out of a pure passion for art? What do you think of the art business in Africa?
S. D. Personally, I started the collection with the view of selling no single painting. I’m thinking of the collection more from the standpoint of legacy, to leave the legacy for my country.
The art business in Ghana is not big, because we don’t really have the full complements of all the necessary competencies in the art market: we have some good painters now, but we have no art critics and few galleries, and we don’t have an active art market.
More generally speaking, in our educational system, art is not considered as an important area of study. Every parent wants their child to become a doctor or lawyer, so if you are going to study art, a general misconception is that you are not intelligent enough to study law or medicine. The society as a whole is not fully aware of the importance of art. For example, important people like politicians don’t go to galleries, and thus do not set a good example for ordinary people to also want to visit galleries. In Africa, the art business market is very difficult to enter, because you’ll have to develop every aspect yourself. In Nigeria, one or two people are making some progress, but this is very difficult.
Leaders League. Do you expect a better future for the art market in Africa?
S. D. I certainly would love to see art become a very important part of our daily life, because painting is a historical document that reminds us of our past and guides us what to do in the future. We don’t pay enough attention to art, and that is our problem. I’d like to see a big change in our educational system to put a greater emphasis on this.
Leaders League. What is your definition of leadership?
S. D. Behind the notion of leadership, there is an idea of “being active”. In politics, for example, if you choose to be a leader, you should actively and visibly lead. You cannot be a leader without taking action. This morning, I was listening to news on the radio. What Boko Haram did in Nigeria has lasted more than 6 months, and nobody is actively looking for solutions! This is not leadership!
As for myself, I am the kind of leader that seeks consensus. I’m neither aggressive nor harsh when doing business, instead, I prefer to assure that people agree to do something and that we do it together. When we need to achieve an objective, my people may not know what to do, so I must get them understand what is to be done, how we will do it, and lead them unto our objective. I like encouragement: “You can do it, and we will do it together. I will be there to help you.” This is my definition of leadership.
Jeanne Yizhen YIN
Photo: Chale Wote Street Arts Festival 2013 (Accra, Ghana), by Kwabena Akuamoah-Boateng
This article is dedicated to our fortnightly newsletter “Leaders Wisdom Journal”. To Subscribe.
Other articles of the same issue:
A dialogue with Seth Dei: about choices of study, work and life (Part I)
Throughout Jobs’ Journey
10 disruptive leaders of civil society (Part I)
Emotional intelligence: key to excellent leadership
Wisdom on inspiration
Video: Charlie Rose with Jack Ma (Source: Charlie Rose)