For years, conversations around African enterprise have centered on growth; rapid expansion, market penetration, and funding velocity. Yet few have paused to ask the harder question: can this growth last? In his new book, Sustainable Scale: Eco-Innovation Strategies for Enduring Entrepreneurial Success, Nigerian entrepreneur Michael Ekhoragbon challenges the continent’s business community to look beyond acceleration and start designing for continuity.
This is not a motivational handbook or a recycled playbook on startup expansion. It is a strategic framework for building businesses that can withstand market volatility, environmental pressure, and structural inefficiencies, the very realities that have limited Africa’s capacity for long-term economic resilience. His thesis is as simple as it is urgent: scaling is not success unless it is sustainable.
Through clear, evidence-based analysis, Sustainable Scale explores how entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers can embed ecological, social, and financial sustainability into the core of their operations. The book argues that the future of African enterprise will not be defined by speed, but by balance by how effectively nations, institutions, and innovators can grow without depleting the systems that support them.
Across its chapters, he demonstrates how the principles of eco-innovation, designing with longevity, efficiency, and environmental responsibility can redefine how we think about profitability. His frameworks link macroeconomic development with micro-enterprise discipline, making the case that sustainability is not an ethical luxury, but a competitive advantage.
From renewable business models to green finance instruments and digital efficiency tools, Sustainable Scale highlights how entrepreneurs can design for endurance without compromising innovation. The book contextualizes these ideas within Nigeria’s evolving economic landscape, addressing the interplay between infrastructure gaps, energy dependency, and the urgent need for circular innovation systems.
Its release arrives at a critical moment. As Nigeria and other African economies strive to diversify beyond extractive industries, the call for sustainable entrepreneurship is becoming louder. Development agencies, policymakers, and accelerators are beginning to see sustainability not as a corporate checkbox, but as the foundation for real national transformation.
“Ekhoragbon’s work is one of the few that connects entrepreneurship to environmental and institutional design,” says Aisha Nnodi, Senior Partner at Frontline Strategy Group. “He’s not talking about sustainability in slogans, he’s redefining it as a structural necessity for nations that want to grow without collapsing under the weight of their own systems.”
Already being referenced in policy discussions and enterprise development programs, Sustainable Scale is emerging as a cornerstone text for those rethinking Africa’s next phase of industrial maturity. Its influence stretches from boardrooms in Lagos to policy sessions in Abuja, resonating with founders and planners who understand that resilience is now the most valuable form of growth.
At its heart, the book is a call to redesign Africa’s entrepreneurship DNA, to move from the frenzy of expansion to the discipline of endurance. Sustainable Scale reminds readers that in a world facing resource scarcity and climate instability, the greatest entrepreneurs won’t just build fast; they will build systems that last.
