Mama Udeme: “Oga, buy from my market.”
Buyer: “How much is the corn?”
Mama Udeme: “200 naira.”
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In that simple exchange lies one of the most profound philosophical constructs in the Igbo Nation: the conflation of product and market. To Mama Udeme, her product is her market. Her corn is not merely an item; it is an economy, a marketplace, a universe. This framing where “market” and “product” collapse into one is deeply rooted in Igbo worldview.
Among the Igbos, the market is not just a physical space. It is an existential metaphor. We say “uwa bu ahia”, the world is a marketplace. Literally, it speaks of buying and selling. But idiomatically, it speaks of life itself: a Stage where people come, transact their existence, and depart! And in metaphor, like the ancestral open markets of Oriendu Ovim or Nkwo Ezere. Markets open. Markets close. Life begins. Life ends!
Our ancestors communicated complex truths using the artefacts people understood, and those were markets, trade, exchange. The Aros, great merchants, diplomats, and system-builders, embedded themselves across geographies, exporting models of commerce and enterprise. They understood that everywhere is a market, and everything can become a market if properly understood.
In other words, the probability of everything in the world is anchored on the systems of markets, from power to prosperity to geopolitics. Today, Polymarket and Kalshi are built on the algorithms of those theses where every “event” is a market with probability outcomes!
So when Mama Udeme calls her corn a “market”, she is not wrong. Under the logic taught in my FUTO undergraduate days, this becomes valid:
If product = market
And market = world
Then product = world.
Meaning: her corn is her world. And if your product is your world, you become fanatical about improving it. You innovate because innovation sustains the world you live in. You differentiate because your survival depends on it. You push because stagnation is extinction.
And that is the message for entrepreneurs: whatever you sell is your world. Make that world better!
Beginning Feb 9 at Tekedia Mini-MBA academic theatres, I will open the sessions by exploring how entrepreneurs, from Mama Udeme to global category-kings, build, nurture, and transform their “markets” through innovation and excellence. Reserve a seat here.
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