At a breakout session during the 2019 ITU Telecom World in Budapest, Hungary, the discussion drifted to why tech billionaires and tech mega-rich do not flaunt their wealth in your face as do their counterparts in entertainment, fashion and other businesses. Many inside the hall agreed that tech billionaires are naturally introverted. The common strand in the debate was that their strength manifests in their silence.

Five years later, last week, at a dinner for techies in the home of a Nigerian tech mogul, this writer witnessed the same scenario. This time, it’s about why African tech billionaires and tech super-rich are quiet, almost with zero presence in the media. Despite being the enablers of the continent’s socio-economic life, which has been gaining traction in recent years, Africa’s tech moguls remain largely reclusive. The consensus at the dinner was that introverted lifestyle among the tech super-rich was not peculiar to Africa but a global phenomenon.

Elon Musk (Twittter/X), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Larry Page (ex-CEO of Alphabet, parent company of Google) among others are super-rich techies. They can afford to shut down every space and auditorium in celebratory frolic but they chose otherwise. They can afford some loudness in their dress sense but they dress lean and clean. Zuckerberg is always cute in his T-shirt as he shuttles the world looking for opportunities to create wealth.

Tech billionaires make big cash but don’t splash it on expensive, showy fashion accessories. Not that it would make them poorer. Never. It’s just a lifestyle they find comfort in. Before his death, Apple founder Steve Jobs thrilled us in his vintage chic black polo necks and dad trainers that made him oddly different but cute in the crowd.

The authoritative lifestyle magazine, GQ, once noted that tech billionaires dress like “someone in a hurry to the gym.” That hits at the head. “Most of them favour dad jeans, or cargo shorts, or Gap hoodies, or horrid sweaty grey T-shirts,” the magazine’s columnist Lou Stoppard wrote in his March 28, 2018 column. Aside their conservative dress sense, tech super-rich are not the traditional sociable, butterfly-like fluttering beings you find at every gathering. They love to be alone, withdrawn most times into their cocoon. Their introversion is not a weakness. It’s actually their strength and a character trait that runs across most of them.

Different studies have established a nexus between introversion and intelligence. Most introverts, such as is common in the tech space, are exceptionally brilliant people. It is in their quietness that they relapse into deep thinking.

In the West and Asia with a more open system including their equity markets, it is easier to track the actual wealth of tech super-rich. But not so in Africa. In some countries in Africa, some tech companies are not listed on the stock market. This makes it difficult to evaluate the real worth of the promoters of such companies. The reclusive lifestyle of the owners of these companies also compounds the challenge of determining the true worth of the companies and their founders/promoters.

Here, you think of John Obaro, founder of SystemSpec, developers of Remita. Whereas many Nigerians have heard or used Remita as a payment platform, many of such persons never heard of Obaro, the brain behind Remita. Obaro created one of Nigeria’s fintech platforms, Remita, but he remains largely unknown to users of the platform because the software guru keeps it low: Simple lifestyle, no lavish parties to mark anything, absent in ‘society’ gatherings except within his own IT fraternity.

Perhaps the African tech billionaire with the most mystique is Leo Stan Ekeh, the iconic ICT mogul who grew a type-setting start-up into a conglomerate with huge global flavour. Ekeh is evasive, keeps his life simple, indulges in self-drive. You could easily bump into him at the airport unaccompanied and carrying his luggage or any other add-on to his luggage. Decorated by Forbes with the Best of Africa Leading Tech Icon Award, he’s regarded as Africa’s most versatile serial digital entrepreneur.

Ekeh is selectively introverted especially on matters concerning his actual networth. Only a few Asians come close to him on matters of non-disclosure of their worth. He would rather flip the page than show you the balance sheet. Keeping a lid on his actual worth is part of the strategy to keep his life out of public radar. But no matter how much he tries to keep his life simple and away from the global audience, his digital house in a highbrow area of the United Kingdom is reputed to be among the most intelligent buildings in Europe. He easily downplays this, insisting that he would rather his net worth be measured by his impact on humanity, not by material wealth and cash flow.

While Ekeh has remained reticent on the worth of his Zinox Group, there had been reports that Konga, the e-commerce giant under the group, is preparing to list at the London Stock Exchange. This will surely provide more insight into the financials of this reclusive Africa Tech King. If Konga does and when it does, Africans would have a better and clearer picture on the networth of this unrelenting tech billionaire.

Ekeh shares the same simplicity with Zimbabwe’s Strive Masiyiwa, the gentleman founder of Econet Wireless, who fled his country to London. Masiyiwa’s $24.5 million mansion somehow advertises him as excessive but that’s cancelled out by his beneath the radar philanthropy in Zimbabwe and Africa. Nigeria’s Ekeh is coy about his philanthropic works through his family’s foundation. He believes that charity works are divine hence should not be subjected to media celebrations.

Africa’s tech super-rich, like their counterparts in the West, are largely introverted. They are not pretending about it. They are a part of a global culture that has seen techies recoil into themselves unlike their mega-rich colleagues in other businesses and professions. The tech mind is a curious workshop, but it’s more of a quiet ground that powers the whole of humanity with light-years-ahead ideas, services and products.

Moral: Parents and guardians should take a deeper interest into their children and wards. Don’t fret when your child is the quiet type who wants to be alone than rave with the crowd. He or she might just be another tech guru waiting to happen.

• Umoh-Akpan, a child psychologist, writes from Abuja