Get to know Subomi Plumptre; she is the co-founder of Volition Cap, an investment cooperative that aims to help Africans build wealth and financial stability. Her mission is simple—to create prosperity for Africa’s middle classes. She is a former brand consultant turned financial prosperity advocate from Nigeria, according to CNN.
Established in 2018, Volition Cap has created a $30 million fund to finance film, real estate, and agriculture projects in Africa. “The fund employs a conventional cooperative investment approach with a specific focus on empowering the middle classes,” CNN wrote.
In the last thirty years, the middle class in Africa has experienced significant growth, reaching 34% as per the African Development Bank Group. In contrast, the middle-class population in Europe and America has declined, averaging 60% and 50%, respectively, according to the International Labour Office shows.
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“When people talk about Africa, they talk in terms of aid and in terms of helping the poor. But the middle class are the ones that create the most small and medium-scale enterprises. So my focus on the middle class is actually very deliberate, because I realize that the middle class is the economic destiny of Africa,” Plumptre told CNN.
Aside from the middle class being her major target, she also focuses on women because she believes they help in creating wealth in Africa.
“About half of our clients are women, and according to the World Bank, Africa is the only region of the world where more women than men choose to become entrepreneurs. So, again, if we’re going to really uplift Africa in terms of the economy and in terms of small and medium scale businesses, women actually create more businesses in Africa than men, so it is crucial to support them,” Plumptre said.
Building Volition Cap was influenced by Plumptre’s own personal tragedy. For 20 years, she was focused on climbing the corporate career ladder while ignoring other details.
“About maybe ten years into my career, I realized that I would be poor if I ever stopped working. Like most corporate people, I was honest, hardworking, and just loyal to my job,” Plumptre told CNN.
“I was completely illiterate when it came to investments, so I didn’t have any investment knowledge, and I didn’t have any investments of my own,” she added.
Also, the death of her parents in Nigeria was a rude awakening for her. “Around the same time, my parents were dealing with critical medical issues that required expensive healthcare,” she told Forbes.
“I could not afford to fly them abroad for treatment that was unavailable in my country. That was a wake-up call for me. I realized there were others like me, hard-working middle-class folk, who were one catastrophe away from poverty. I decided to change that by setting up Volition Cap.”
Apart from her work with Volition Cap, Plumptre is also into public speaking, coaching, and mentorship. She has also earned recognition for her work, with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently nominating her as one of the Goalkeepers — a global collective of changemakers advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
