Sir Sam Jonah, Executive Chairman of Jonah Capital
Sir Sam Jonah is a celebrated African business mogul whose business and investment footprints have earned him global acclaim.
After years in the belly of the earth in his native town of Obuasi where he worked in the mines, he rose to the corporate boardrooms of the Ashanti Goldfields Company and later to Anglogold Ashanti in Ghana and South Africa.
The contemporary history of Anglogold Ashanti can effectively be considered as the life and times of the 72-year-old who is currently Executive Chairman of Jonah Capital, an equity fund based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
But how is a typical day like for an accomplished businessman as Jonah, who still maintains a childhood culture of waking up by 5 am, blending that with morning gym, swimming, four-hour weekday office schedule, playing golf, eating only lunch and supper and watching TV before retiring to bed.
Sam Jonah shared his typical weekday on the ‘Ghana’s Greats’ program which aired on Joy News channel on Monday, July 19 and was monitored by GhanaWeb.
In his own words: A day in the life of Sam Jonah KBE
“After dinner, after seven o’clock I watch the news – one channel to another – till about 10 pm. I am usually asleep by 10:30 pm. I am up before 5 o’clock, from 5 o’clock, I am going through my emails and WhatsApp and all that.
“And then I go to the gym at 6 o’clock. The gym is in my compound so it is part of the residential arrangement. So I go to the gym and occasionally I will swim after that and now I have added playing the piano so I come straight and I play the piano.
“I will be ready to go to the office at quarter to nine… I don’t like breakfast… I am at my best on an empty stomach, so I don’t like breakfast. I go to work and I leave the office about quarter to one and then come home – which is about five minutes away anyway and then I have lunch.
“Then I shoot off to the golf club and I go and play golf from about 1:30 – 2 o’clock to about 5 – 5:30 pm, then I come back home and have dinner and the routine starts again.
“Of course weekends is different, Saturday morning at 6:30 am I am at the golf course, I play golf, I get home at about 12 o’clock,” he concluded.
