Three South African business schools have been ranked among the top 100 in the world for their executive MBA (EMBA) programmes. The question is: which is the best in Africa?
The UK-based QS Global Executive MBA Rankings place Henley Business School 57th, the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) 73rd and the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) 97th.
Henley, part of the UK’s University of Reading, is ranked on the performance of its global activities, including those of its South African operation, Henley Business School Africa. Thus the local school says its EMBA is rated “No 1 in Africa”.
The claim, however, is also made by GSB, as a home-grown South African school. It says its programme is “the leading EMBA in Africa and the Middle East”.
Henley Africa dean Jon Foster-Pedley says about a third of Henley’s global EMBA students are African. The rest study through campuses in the UK and Scandinavia. He says: “You graduate [in South Africa] with two qualifications: the full UK degree and the full South African qualification. That matters when your career doesn’t sit neatly on one continent. The careers worth having rarely do.
“At Henley, you’re not forced to choose between African business and global business. You’re built for the seam where they meet, which, increasingly, is where the real value lives.”
GSB director Catherine Duggan says her school’s EMBA “is designed to help senior leaders deepen their leadership skills, develop new strategic insights and gain international perspective so they can lead more effectively within their organisations, across the continent and around the world”.
Programme director Camille Meyer says: “This ranking underscores our ongoing commitment to delivering a transformational journey to the executives in our EMBA programme.”
The EMBA of Oxford University’s Said Business School, in the UK, was ranked top by QS. Second was HEC (France); third, the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US); fourth, IESE Business School (Spain); fifth equal, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management (US) and Yale School of Management (US); seventh, London Business School (UK); eighth, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; ninth, Insead (France); and 10th, Warwick Business School (UK).
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