Olawale Aganga-Williams is a young Nigerian entrepreneur born in Ojo area of Lagos but based in the United Kingdom where he has made an impact on the real estate sector across London, Manchester, and Leicester with his AGFRO limited. Aganga-Williams, kicked off his OAW Foundation a few years back and has continued to make an impact on lives and communities. In this interview with Baron Bada, he opens up on his achievements with the foundation, future plans as well as some of his achievements in the UK. Excerpts:
You started making a stir in Ojo area of Lagos state with your philanthropic gestures, what’s the reason for this?
In terms of our country, our problems are vast, if we decide to tackle it all at once with our little resources, we would end up not doing anything at all. So I and my team under the Olawale Aganga-Williams Foundation started with a food bank cum palliative system. So, we have a pack of different foodstuffs packed as a palliative food pack and give out to people who truly need it – especially in the Ojo federal constituency. We are also looking out to giving grants to people who will need these grants to help them in their daily lives and businesses. We are actually partnering with some charities in the UK and some companies in the UK have shown interest in joining us by providing shoes, clothes, and financial grants. Housing is equally important to me. I mean I was born in Ojo and had my primary school in that area before going to secondary school in Ogun stage and relocating to the united kingdom for my tertiary education. Some of the people we grew up together will always wonder if anything good can come out of Ojo and I will always reply by saying if anything good will come out of Ojo, I will be part of that one thing. I am giving back because I am aware of the problems in Ojo before leaving and many of those problems are still persisting. We have a mission to go state-wise and do more for the people of Lagos as a proud Lagosian.
You are clamouring for better conditions for people, is this as a result of your experience in the UK?
Actually yes, my personal experience in the UK where I was homeless for some time led to this. I was once homeless in London and slept in the car for some time, and my personal experience of going through that brought out my humanitarian part. Until you have actually been faced with difficulty or gone through difficulty, you won’t understand what other people go through because if you just see a guy begging or homeless, you tend to just drive past without understanding the psychological issues aside from other issues. I understand we can’t help everyone and we can’t solve everyone’s problem but I believe in small steps. If we build one shelter today, it would probably house 500 people. We would also give them set skills to further integrate them back to society and our partners are willing to even grant scholarships should these children look at going back to school. With the resources every country has, I believe we can do more for our citizens. The UK gives over 2 billion in foreign aid yet they still have homeless people, we still have various issues but it is way far better than what Nigeria is at the moment. There are more black homeless people than white people, of course, there are white homeless people too but they are very few. I think if you see a white man that is homeless, it is probably drug-related, the way the property and accommodation chain is in the UK, there are so many people on the waiting list. You register with the council for a council flat and there are many people waiting. Mothers are on the priority list, the sick people are high on the priority list, so they tend to give these sets of people accommodation a lot more quicker. If you look at it again, racism could be another factor as a white man might get accommodation quicker than the Blackman.
For me and my team, we invest in programmes that can cater to the needs of the people. These programmes are actually aimed at helping street kids become better and spend their time learning something, acquiring skills set than being outside and constituting menace to the society at large.
You spoke about building homes for people, how do you check to know those who are truly homeless?
Again, I am passionate about housing the homeless because this is what we have been able to achieve through some partnerships in the United Kingdom over the years. As I have always said, we’ve been able to do one arm of what we have in plan to do and these are feeding, training before housing. We have a short-term goal. That’s why I say the same programmes will start first. We have our short-term goals. And our long-term mission, which includes housing. And the reason why is because our resource is limited. So we have to stage it and move on to the next level and we have partners. We’ve done the something, especially with local governments, local councils, and the things we need in the Ojo area. They’re pretty much, I’ve just recently secured 500 hospital equipment for the general hospital. We can not just only secure hospital equipment, clothing books, all sorts of things that might not be used in the UK, now we can relate with people, you know, like shoes. I have driven past kids and I saw them with no shoes and I was like okay, come let me give you something. So in terms of if we’re going to be nested by the grace of God will be for them. Because I’m not just looking at a five-year plan. If you think your 20-year plan, and by the grace of God, what will be targeted for each of your goals, like the target for this year is to feed at least 10,000 people we’ve fed over 3000 and trained 20 people. We have also done our part in securing crutches and wheelchairs for people, who truly need them. We would be distributing it soon.
You sit behind a registered real estate firm in the UK, is the success of the firm why you are taking up the humanitarian steps in Lagos with Ojo as the first step?
So, our company in the UK is AGFRO Limited deals in properties. We buy to let, sales accommodation, we also help in acquiring commercial properties and our main targets is to help students get affordable homes in the UK because one of the issues most students have is when they move to certain areas for university mainly, they find it difficult to secure rooms because some people don’t want to live in the hostels, so they want a place of their own. Hence, I buy properties, break them down and turn them into self contain apartments where they can live in their own private space. We have a couple in Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester, and London. I have been doing that for almost six years but my foundation is registered in Nigeria and currently going to be registered in the UK.