Africa's B-School Challenge

Its economy is growing, but the continent lacks a developed B-school network, says the head of the Association of African Business Schools

Nick Binedell
Gordon Institute of Business Science
Johannesburg, South Africa

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As one of the last economic frontiers, Africa is looking for leaders. Improving business schools that can produce them is a key way to solve the problem, says Nick Binedell, director of the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In 2005, the Global Business Schools Network, which was funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), announced the launch of the Association of African Business Schools, a group with 12 member schools from various African countries that is developing partnerships among educators to determine best practices and help expand the management training available on the continent (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/26/05, "Give Africa's B-Schools a Boost").

Binedell, who is also the chairperson of the newly formed association, is hoping the group can improve communication among faculty in different African B-schools. So far, the association has already established itself with proper funding, named six board members, and put together a dean development program and case study database. Binedell recently spoke with BusinessWeek.com reporter Francesca Di Meglio. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

You recently said business schools in Africa have the potential to grow. How and why hasn't it happened yet?

I don't really have an answer as to why it hasn't happened. All I would say is that the timing has been good in the last few years. The African economy is growing annually by about 5%. There's a high appetite for insuring in every country that we have the requisite managerial skills.

One of the challenges of Africa is the very uneven nature of economic development. Some countries have fairly advanced economies and others haven't managed to develop their economies fully yet. There's a huge potential for management skill in the continent.

What kinds of management and training needs does Africa have?

I think, in many ways, [African managers need] the same skills managers need anywhere. When we spend time with Asian, European, and American business schools, we notice common needs.

On the other hand, Africa does have issues that are particular to it. For example, African business schools tend to use to excess American case studies about American practices and American companies. We've now established a database of over 160 case studies that are about African stories, successes, and challenges. The material starts to get at the challenges of managing in Africa, where infrastructure is not comparable with the U.S. When you're marketing to low-income economies, you need very different products and services than you would in the U.S. or Europe.

What's the biggest challenge to Africa as it tries to develop leaders through education?

We still have a long way to go when it comes to business schools. If you consider that we're a continent of 850 million people, the business school infrastructure is still considerably underdeveloped.

Determining how to enlarge the scope and role of business schools in the continent is the main challenge now. The debate goes from there to the economy. But for us as an organization, that's the key objective. How do we develop the capacity of African business schools?

One of the successful projects we've run was to bring together faculty from around the continent to work together to spend a week teaching and sharing case studies and developing the business school method. Much of the business education in Africa tends to be fairly traditional in its delivery. The sort of postgraduate, post experience, interactive case-based method is not used as extensively as it could be.