How Charles Lambert started Economic War

Charles N. Lambert, the economic activist spearheading Black Wall Street Economic war has revealed that his idea back then in 2003. He is one of his stories in his book ‘In pursuit of economic independence for Africa by Charles N. Lambert’.

I developed a strong interest in call centers as a huge job creation instrument in January 2003 in Tulsa Oklahoma. I was conducting interviews of applicants for a project and most of them had just lost their jobs in a call center which Bell Telecom decided to shut down. It felt like the whole town was employed by this one call center.

Arriving Nigeria and seeing the teeming youth unemployment, I saw an opportunity to build one. We found a suitable location with 3 brand new multi level buildings in one compound. The only problem which made the building undesirable, the road was a nightmare.

   I took the property to the landlord’s delight but utter amazement. Then I said, we will transform the road.

   Weeks after we took occupancy, I gathered a few of the teeming youth that followed my ideological positions on economic issues and told them we have to consider this road as Africa and turn it to a new world.

 I designed some magazines with other promo announcements of our upcoming programs and began to sell those magazines. As we sold, we began building the road. Then I decided we call it Profile Walk of Africa so we turned the road to a Street Museum with each African country names, profiles and identity neatly arranged on both sides. Then we used the 3 days party we hosted after construction to dedicate the road, to sell party tickets and recovered the money we used from the sales of the magazines. I truly felt I could have gone on with that process and built all the roads around if that was our goal at the time.

This is an extract from the book.. “In pursuit of economic independence for Africa by Charles N. Lambert”