Publisher's Synopsis
The Genius of Akure tells the life story of Adebayo "Bayo" Chenido, a Nigerian prodigy who rises from a middle-class background in Akure to become one of the most powerful and wealthiest figures in the world.
The novel is divided into four parts:
Part One: The Soil and the Seed explores his youth in a multicultural, multi-religious environment. We see his early genius for understanding systems, the discipline of his military father, the faith of his mother, and the profound lessons he learns about waste and inefficiency on his grandparents' farm. After his family is plunged into poverty by a military coup, his intellect becomes his weapon, leading him to win a national scholarship to study in the UK at age 15.
Part Two: The Falcon's Ascent covers his transformative years in the United Kingdom. He sprints through his studies at Cambridge and Cranfield, earning multiple degrees and his doctorate by age 20. During this time, he forms lasting friendships, travels Europe, files his first patents, and secretly begins trading stocks, making his first million pounds. This section also introduces Ji-hye Park, a brilliant Korean researcher who becomes his intellectual and emotional counterpart.
Part Three: Forging an Empire details his professional life. He spends five years as a star innovator at a global engineering firm before being headhunted by a London investment bank. Over the next decade, his mastery of financial systems and his proprietary trading algorithms make him a billionaire. He leaves to start his own hedge fund, Chenido Capital, and by his mid-thirties, his wealth is astronomical. However, he feels a growing sense of emptiness and questions the ultimate purpose of his fortune.
Part Four: The Return, triggered by a childhood memory of poverty and waste, marks his life's great pivot. He liquidates much of his financial empire to create the Chenido-Akure Foundation for Regeneration (CARF). Returning to his hometown, he launches a massive, privately-funded initiative to re-engineer his community from the ground up, creating interconnected systems for education, healthcare, agriculture, and infrastructure. The "Akure Model" is a spectacular success, which he then begins to scale across Nigeria and, ultimately, the African continent, all while starting his own family and finding his true purpose.
