Thomas Howard - Africa

AFRICA: THE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION CHALLENGE

AFRICA: THE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION CHALLENGE

BY

HOWARD THOMAS

Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, Singapore

MICHELLE LEE

Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, Singapore

LYNNE THOMAS

Writer and Researcher, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK

ALEXANDER WILSON

Loughborough University, Business School, UK

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2016

Copyright 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78635-622-2

This book would not have come about without the funding support provided by The European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). In particular, Eric Cornuel, Director General and CEO of EFMD, and Sangeet Chowfla, President and CEO of GMAC became the catalysts for this project which examines the evolution of management education in Africa. They readily embraced the vision and enthusiasm of the lead authors for Africa and the important aims of the research concept. They not only provided the core funding for the research but also offered insightful advice and facilitated the projects progress through constructive feedback from Matthew Wood, Director, Operations at EFMD, and Ron Sibert, Director for Africa at GMAC.

The book would not have been completed without the further collaboration, help, and support from a number of key people and sources. First, Howard Thomas research unit at Singapore Management University (SMU) The Academic Strategy and Management Education Unit has provided some basic project research assistance, data analysis, and administrative support. Second, President Arnoud De Meyer (SMU), with his quiet, effective friendship and leadership, rewarded Howard Thomas with a much appreciated sabbatical leave during 2015 following his retirement from the Deanship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at SMU. This sabbatical created the opportunity to do the research interviewing on the ground in Africa. Third, gratitude is owed to Daneel Van Lill, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Management at The University of Johannesburg for arranging a distinguished visiting professorship at the University of Johannesburg in the Spring/Summer of 2015. This enabled the study of a very large African-oriented undergraduate business program. Fourth, following attendance at the Association of African Business Schools (AABS) annual conference at The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and with the help of Dean Nicola Kleyn, Howard Thomas was invited to join the Inaugural Advisory Board at GIBS and through that GIBS has provided access to the African Management Institute (AMI) and other sources such as GIBS Centre for Dynamic Markets and its Enterprise Academy.

We also wish to thank all the individuals (well over 70 and climbing) interviewed who were highly supportive, open, warm, and frank in sharing their opinions and insights about Management Education in Africa.

We owe a debt of thanks to many colleagues at SMU who offered helpful comments. In particular, our sincere appreciation goes to Jes Ong (Howard Thomass PA at SMU) for organizing all the milestones required to bring this first volume of this research to successful completion. Her professionalism in executing the typing and revision of various book drafts and in motivating all of us authors, research assistants to meet deadlines was very important.

Finally, the quality and readability of the books argument is largely due to the outstanding professionalism of our consulting editor at EFMD, George Bickerstaffe. However, we recognize that we alone are solely responsible for the book. We sincerely hope you enjoy it!

Howard Thomas

Michelle Lee

Lynne Thomas and

Alexander Wilson

Flicking through an in-flight magazine around two years ago we were struck by the maps showing the airlines global routes, in particular by one page. In contrast to the spiders web of routes over most regions, Africa seemed to be isolated with few ways to get to it. International accessibility, globalization, and the expansion of world trade seemed to have passed the continent by.

At the time we had been mulling over ideas for our next research project and had decided that having previously focused on management education in Europe, it would be interesting for us, and hopefully of value to the management education community, to undertake similar research in a very different environment.

The denuded route maps piqued our curiosity about Africas uniqueness, culture, context, and economic development. And when we then discovered how little had been written about management education in Africa, our desire to learn more was reinforced.

While we knew some basic facts about Africa and had a general sense of some of the struggles that had taken place there, it was only as we started to study it in more depth that we understood its sheer size, huge diversity, complex history, and the magnitude of the problems it faces.

There are many different stories to be told about Africa. Nancy Kacungira, an award-winning Ugandan TV journalist, writes simply and clearly about Africa and sets the scene for much of what we discovered (The African Story, BBC News, Africa, October 22, 2015).

Kacungira argues that although many people focus on the poverty, war, and disease in the continent and these are indeed serious issues there is another side to Africa. It is not true that crisis is normal and that good news about the continent is an exception. Not all countries are in a state of perpetual war nor is it appropriate or realistic to think about there being one Africa.

Africa is an enormous continent, into which you could easily fit the entirety of the United States, China, India, Europe, and Japan together. The 54 African countries do not have the same political, economic, and socio-cultural fabric and cannot be viewed as one country.

Africas rapidly increasing population (currently over one billion people) encompasses more than 3,000 distinct ethnic groups speaking over 2,000 languages. There is no collective identity and it is impossible to define Africa in simple terms. How Africa should be viewed depends on which part of it you are talking about. It is impossible to generalize.