African business schools are striving towards advancing the African brand of education to the world. Over the years, trends on the continent have helped to inspire and inform some of the world’s largest businesses.
Consider the example of Uber’s biggest global rival, Lyft. The idea for the e-hailing service, which is valued at $5.46bn, came when one of its co-founders travelled to Zimbabwe and witnessed informal ride-sharing among locals almost two decades ago.
Another example is the mobile payments revolution driven by Safaricom and Vodacom’s M-Pesa platform.
While tensions between China and the US, and other geopolitical challenges, threaten to wipe out some gains made by globalisation, there is still recognition of the value of exchanging knowledge about commerce and trade.
Business schools, particularly those in Africa, are playing a big role in making this happen, by bridging knowledge gaps and taking local learnings to the world.
“South African and African continental education is showing significant shifts in admission trends, [and] we see a rise of international interest in the African brand of education,” Zaheer Hamid, academic director at the Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa), tells the FM.
“South Africa remains a beacon, an African education destination, and the South African brand of education is highly desirable from a mobility and employability perspective.”
It helps that some South African business schools are ranked among the world’s best. Besides attracting foreign students, they — and a handful elsewhere in Africa — are also in demand for collaboration with overseas schools.
Hamid points out that South Africa offers a distinct research landscape. Local universities tackle challenges relevant to the developing world, such as sustainable development, water management and issues of public health in Africa. This can be a valuable perspective for international partners.
However, there’s more to it, he says. The partners’ desire to collaborate with South African and other institutions on the continent “is not always driven by the interest to advance education, transformation, access and continental impact, but rather by the interest to expand into the African education markets”.
Hamid says: “Inflation, rising debt ratios and declining market sizes in the north drive these institutions to look into emerging economies in the south.”
Inflation, rising debt ratios and declining market sizes in the north drive these institutions to look into emerging economies in the south
— Zaheer Hamid
This collaboration takes a number of forms. There’s the tried-and-tested method of student exchange, where learners experience education in another nation.
Recently, students from the European School of Management & Technology (ESMT) in Berlin participated in a study tour offered by the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) to learn about the complexities and opportunities of doing business in Africa.
“Many of ESMT’s African partners are operating as social enterprises, addressing societal issues while being profitable,” says Flavia Rizzato, social impact programmes manager at the German school. “This dual focus on profit and social impact can teach students the importance of creating businesses that contribute positively to society. Understanding impact investing can broaden their perspective on sustainable and inclusive growth.”
A significant portion of Africa’s economy is driven by the informal sector and grassroots businesses. “Learning about these can provide students with insights into alternative economic models and help them understand how informal businesses can be formalised and integrated into the larger economy,” says Rizzato.
She adds that, in a tough global economy, African business offers lessons on how to be resilient. “African businesses prove to be more resilient and are more challenge ready and community focused than most Western businesses,” she says.
“When we look at the environment where African businesses are operating, they are frequently facing challenges such as political instability, economic fluctuations and infrastructural deficiencies. Despite these challenges, they demonstrate resilience and adaptability, as well as the capacity to come up with creative and innovative solutions.”
South African universities and business schools act as a bridge between developed and developing nations and can provide a research environment that combines advanced knowledge from abroad with the practical needs of Africa, and vice versa.
GSB director Catherine Duggan says: “Today, even more than before the pandemic, people need to understand how to manage volatility, uncertainty and new leadership challenges.” She and her team “are focused on understanding complex environments, [and] understanding [how to do] business in Africa is a critical part of that”.
She says: “We have a very global approach. We have a global network. Our students and faculty think globally, but they’re also thinking about how to manage complex environments ... down the street from them.”
In the same vein, schools such as Henley Africa, as part of a wider international network, understand their role in bridging competencies across borders.
Henley Africa dean and director Jon Foster-Pedley tells the FM: “We have gone out of our way to decolumnise and decolonise the programmes that we provide. By this we mean lowering the traditional barriers to education, which are affordability and geography, while ensuring that what we teach is relevant by creating practical tools based on the best business knowledge from around the world.”
He adds: “But especially [based on knowledge of] our own [world], so that the solutions we create are crafted for South African and African situations rather than solutions that have been cut and pasted from textbooks drafted in another environment and grafted onto local conditions.”
Later this year, Milpark Business School will send students to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study experience, in collaboration with the College of Business & Economics at the UAE University, gives students an opportunity to gain strategic insights into international business and emerging economies.
“These are not hypothetical cases, shared online or in the classroom,” says Milpark academic Mark Peters. “We visit actual businesses, debate real-world issues and engage with local entrepreneurs and experts.”
Students are expected to submit a business plan for a project in the UAE or South Africa at the end of the visit. “Working towards an assignment makes the trip very practical. The goal is to learn about leadership in developing economies and how to apply it,” says Peters.
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