Ocorian, considered as a premier global provider of corporate and private client services supporting family-owned businesses, advisers, and families with sophisticated end-to-end wealth structuring and administration solutions, hosted The African Legacy Summit on October 8-10 at the Intercontinental Hotel, Mauritius, in partnership with KPMG.
The three-day event featured practical governance workshops, succession planning sessions, and opportunities for deal-making, providing multi-generational family businesses and family offices spanning across Africa with the necessary tools to safeguard wealth and achieve responsible growth. The flagship forum was suited to the needs of family businesses from across Africa to build sustainable multigenerational wealth and governance practices, where Ocorian and KPMG hosted delegates from across the continent, with The African Legacy Summit reinforcing Mauritius’s role as a regional hub for private wealth and cross-border structuring.
“The African Legacy Summit creates a platform where family members and business leaders can plan purposeful transfer of wealth while keeping the entrepreneurial spark alive,” said Commercial Director, Africa at Ocorian, John Félicité. “Our goal is to equip African-based families with the practical tools and global perspectives to secure their legacies.”
While the Global Head of Private Client at Ocorian Annerien Hurter commented, “African family businesses play a key role in the regional economy; sessions on family structuring and responsible ownership transition provide directly applicable guidance for local participants.”
The Summit offered practical tools for integrating the next generation, helping families manage expectations while preserving entrepreneurial drive, coupled with providing frameworks for risk management that identify family and business exposures and convert them into concrete governance actions.
The event was also an opportunity for attendees to learn step-by-step approaches to responsible ownership transition designed to ensure continuity, long-term sustainability, and strong governance practices. Caryn, who works for a Family Office in South Africa and speaker at the event, emphasised the significance of long-term strategy: “I regularly ask the family what the decision they are making now will look like in 100 years. Yes, right now is important, but a family outlook should be looking not just to the next generation but the generation after that too. So, it is about steering them to think about their legacy as well as the here and now.”
Founder of the Family Business Hub and Executive Director at Barbex, Mary Asante-Asamoah, highlighted the importance of culture within governance, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and it is vital we instil the right culture in order to manage good governance and ensure the business can be passed down appropriately.”
The event also saw a governance fundamentals case study delivered, a hands-on workshop complete with templates and checklists that local delegates can implement immediately. While breakout sessions focused on M&A in Africa and family structuring, there was dedicated networking time for delegates to foster deals and partnerships.
