China European International Business School recently inducted new members of its Nigeria Alumni Chapter in Lagos, where the school’s Executive Director, Prof. Gordon Adomdza, urged business leaders to build the capability to engage Chinese companies as China’s commercial footprint on the continent deepens.

The ceremony, held in Victoria Island, Lagos, also marked the launch of the chapter’s new alumni website. It drew alumni, executives, entrepreneurs and graduates of its programmes in Nigeria.

 CEIBS, whose Global EMBA was ranked the world’s second-best by the Financial Times in 2025 and whose MBA has ranked first in Asia for 10 consecutive years, has more than 33,000 alumni across 91 countries.

Professor Adomdza’s remarks came as China’s removal of tariffs on all Nigerian goods, effective 1 May, opened the widest market access Beijing has offered the continent. Trade between the two countries exceeded 28 billion dollars in 2025. Most Nigerian managers, he said, now deal with Chinese firms as suppliers, partners or competitors, often without the training to read how those firms operate.

“China is increasing its footprint on the continent. And so an African manager will either be directly dealing with a Chinese company or indirectly dealing with a Chinese company in most of what they do,” he said. “We need to make sure that they are conversant with what Chinese companies are doing, the models they are bringing on board, how to negotiate with them, so that we can build an Africa on our own terms.”

“An executive who does not understand how the company across the table operates will take the terms on offer, not the terms they could have negotiated,” Adomdza said. “That is what this education changes. We are not teaching people to be wary of Chinese capital. We are teaching them to engage it from a position of knowledge.”

He said CEIBS is built to close that gap by teaching executives to read business from both Western and Eastern vantage points rather than one alone. The goal, he added, is not imitation but adaptation: studying what has worked in comparable markets elsewhere and building local solutions on that evidence, rather than copying foreign models wholesale.

The Country Manager for CEIBS Africa in Nigeria, Saidat Lawal-Mohammed, said the school’s China immersion programme gives participants direct exposure to how Chinese businesses grew, beyond classroom theory. Participants study the steps China took from a starting point she compared to Nigeria’s, and meet small business owners, companies and trading hubs to see how deals are done in practice.

Saidat also confirmed that the school’s Women Entrepreneurship and Leadership for Africa programme, known as WELA, will run in Abuja for the first time, extending it beyond Lagos. Participants in the Federal Capital Territory and neighbouring states will attend classes in Abuja rather than travel to Lagos.

The Nigeria Alumni President, Yemi Chukwurah, an alumna of the school’s ODP and WELA programmes, said the new website gives the chapter a permanent home for mentorship, collaboration and business introductions among members.