What About Tomorrow?
“And that’s just the core business,” he notes. “We do all kinds of investments and joint ventures.” Ngo estimates the current value of all of the projects Lemna is pursuing and implementing to be approximately $2.5 billion. More than 90 percent of Lemna’s revenues come from outside the United States.
In some cases, Lemna has needed to establish a separate business entity within a country to work there. About a dozen Lemna subsidiaries are located in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia for the marketing, manufacturing, and construction of ongoing projects.
Ngo wonders from time to time whether his company is overextended. “Sometimes we wished that we wouldn’t go so far, maybe retrench a little bit and focus a little bit on a few markets, instead of spreading all over the place,” he says. “We do that on and off.”
Ngo also admits it’s hard to implement long-term business plans in any African country due to unpredictable governments, supply chain interruptions, intermittent violence, and unstable resources such as food, water, and electricity.
But Ngo is still cheered about the progress he’s seen on the continent. And its challenges seem to stimulate his creativity.
“To me, Africa is a thrill,” he says. “I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.”
