Soji Comes to Bridgewater

Late yesterday afternoon, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, Dr. Soji Adelaja came to Bridgewater at the invitation of the Ecumenical Council of the North Branch Reformed Church and of St. Bernard’s Roman Catholic Church. The event was held at the Route 22 location of St. Bernard’s in Bridgewater.

Dr. Adelaja is currently a distinguished professor at Michigan State University where he is director of its Land Policy Program. He previously held prestigious positions at Rutgers for 18 years. One of those was as Dean of Cook College.

Although Adelaja’s talk was under the auspices of the Ecumenical Council’s Christian Unity program, the discussion revolved largely around a very engaging presentation of the economic and social structures of the African continent and of its relationship not only with the West, but with China. Dr. Adelaja is a soft-spoken, informal and compelling speaker.

I came away from that 90-minute exposition with a very different view of Africa and of its people than I had when I entered the door of conference room B at St. Bernard’s. This man covered a wide range of topics – too extensive to cover adequately in a blog post.

But I’d like to leave you with a few of Dr. Adelaja’s insights. One is that China is eating our lunch in Africa, because it is much more flexible in dealing with African governments than is the West. Consequently, China is gaining traction in exploiting Africa’s oil resources and is establishing a long-term footprint on that continent.

One of the monetary realities in Africa is that the continent remains starved for capital. Another is that cash invested in the U.S. is gradually being repatriated due to the current instability of our financial system. He underscored that doing business in Africa is still risky, but that the return on capital is also higher than in the West.

Adelaja is an African native and descendant of a royal family. His dad turned down an opportunity to become king, despite being encouraged to do so. Adelaja described a growing middle class, particularly in those countries where entrepreneurship is beginning to take hold and where, according to him, there are many opportunities in the fields of banking, telecommunications, insurance, and engineering.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and warm in this time of cold.