B-Schools Q&A November 2, 2006, 10:18PM EST

Africa's B-School Challenge

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Nick Binedell
Gordon Institute of Business Science
Johannesburg, South Africa

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We've been working with business schools like Harvard and INSEAD to bring their faculty to Africa and then pull together 60 to 80 faculty from 15 business schools at a time to spend a week working together on teaching the practice. One of the very big issues for us is assuring that we have the right faculty and the combination of academic and practical exposure.

One of the challenges for Africa is that a large number of African professionals don't live on the continent. These things will change when they're ready to change. For many professionals, the U.S. offers a much more beneficial environment for research and teaching. I think one of Africa's biggest exports is intellectual capital. I argue that the developed economies are benefiting enormously from the education systems of Africa.

Leadership is the critical resource of Africa, whether it's government or business or NGOs. It's very unfortunate that so many people leave Africa. I never criticize them for going because it's their right to do so. But it's very unfortunate that we train doctors and engineers with a good education and then they move elsewhere.

What we're trying to do is build a network of those who may not live in their country of origin and re-involve them in African projects. I think that will be very successful. They want to make a contribution. We've already seen that happen in India.

Is there key business research that's happening in Africa?

I think the kinds of issues that C.K. Prahalad has raised in his work on "the bottom of the pyramid" is particularly relevant, and cases are being written about those kinds of companies and markets (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/23/06, "Business Prophet").

The financial-services sector is a very interesting one in this economy, as is the telecom sector. Interestingly, in the telecom sector, cellular telephony has leapfrogged landline telephony. In many countries, you had very low landline penetration. But in fact, in the last five years, you've seen a very significant increase in connectivity through cellular telephony. Much of the research is about that and how we can use broadband, Internet, and online-based technology to build our markets.

How much of an impact is sustainable business having on the continent, and how is that affecting the type of business education that is needed?

That's a key issue in the continent. In many low-income states, the government is the key part of the economy. In many of the economies, multinationals have a strong presence, and perhaps there has been less development of African-owned businesses. In much of the continent, although it's dangerous to generalize, African businesses have been small-scale enterprises based on agriculture. That's what needs to change and that's why business schools can play a constructive role (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/19/06, "Good to Great, a B-School Staple").

Are there unique skills that leaders in Africa need?

Resilience. It's a very challenging continent and a very exciting one, because there are huge opportunities. Africans tend to be very passionate about what they're doing. I think we still need to build large-scale entrepreneurship. But when I go to Lagos or Nairobi, I see that the people put great energy into what they do.

We have the energy of entrepreneurship. We just need to build the infrastructure and legislative environment around it. In many countries in Africa, there's a very heavy-handed bureaucracy. That's a major challenge.

What can U.S. B-schools do to make a contribution?

We have met with a large number of leading business schools, and I think they can make an enormous contribution. The U.S. remains the powerhouse of business and business education. We build relationships with individual schools, and we'll be making trips as members of the association. We've just written to the [accrediting organization] AACSB to see how they can profile what we're doing at their conferences, so people can understand our association better.

Here in Johannesburg, we have large number of [American] MBA students who come to Africa to experience a completely different continent in the same way as they would go to India or China. Individual schools looking at the future of the global economy inevitably come back to the question, "Is Africa the last frontier for economic development?" And I think in a world of 6.5 billion people, 850 million people matter.