Tag: Travel

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Business management programs travel to Africa

African cotton NY Times
Businessweek reports on French business school, HEC, which is leading the way by taking the management programs to Senegal. The program’s focus is on the African cotton industry. Could this be a new trend in African business development?

We need to adapt to local contexts and cultures. When we go to Africa, we need to respect the local specificities but at the same time we have to adapt our own approaches to the reality in those countries. We cannot import our own view. We have to have a different perspective and be open to different views. This is what corporate social responsibility is all about. We think we have a responsibility to contribute to these countries. – Bertrand Moingeon, Associate Dean for executive education and professor of strategic management.

Also the NYTimes reported on the African cotton industry back in January.

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This week in African Style 4/7 – 4/13/07

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Bill Clinton talks Rwandan healthcare at TED 2007

The good folks at TED have released this video of former US President Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech as a winner of the 2007 TED prize. In his speech Clinton speaks about his Clinton Foundation‘s pilot health care system in Rwanda which is based on the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti. In 18 months the Clinton Foundation’s efforts, in partnership with the Rwandan Government, has shown potential as a model for the entire developing world. Clinton’s TED wish was to help him “build this system in Rwanda, to bring world-class health care to a people who have overcome deadly hatred to rebuild their nation”. In a previous interview by the BBC when asked about the one incident that he wishes he could have rewritten or handled differently during his time in office, Clinton responded, “I wish I had moved in Rwanda quickly. I wish I had gone in there quicker, not just waited ’til the camps were set up. We, we might have been able to save, probably not even half those who were lost but still a large number of people. I really regret that. I care a lot about Africa and I don’t think that these … wars are inevitable and these kinds of murders are inevitable. And I’ve spent a good deal of time in the last ten years trying to make it up to Africa in general and the Rwandans in particular – so I regret that deeply.” I guess his current efforts are part of his do over. Watch the video below.

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Chosan performs Blood Diamond from Bling is Dead

A few months ago some New York-based artists and arts organizations organized a concert to benefit Nah We Yone, a grassroots nonprofit organization that helps rebuild the shattered lives of refugees, asylees and asylum seekers from the African diaspora who have fled to the New York Metropolitan area due to ongoing political instability throughout the African continent. The title of the concert, “Bling & Blood”, set the tone for various African artists to voice their opinions about the effects of the blood diamond trade on the African continent. Here’s a video of Sierra Leonean hip-hop artist Chosan performing his song “Blood Diamond”, a song he penned as part of the Bling is Dead project. Thanks to director Dante Kaba for the footage.

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Wharton Business School on entrepreneurship in Nigeria

Nigerian President Olusegun ObasanjoWhile I’m on the subject of entrepreneurship in Africa, here’s a podcast from the Wharton Business School’s Knowledge website where Peter Bamkole, General Manager, Enterprise Development Services at Lagos Business School, talks with Olayinka David-West, a lecturer in information systems at Lagos Business School. The two men discuss Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s ambitious goal to have Nigeria become one of the world’s top 20 economies during the next two decades. Listen here and let me know what you think.

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Inc. Magazine’s ease of global business map

As a follow up to my previous post on my concerns about going home to do business, here is a link to Inc. magazine’s interactive map which plots the ease of doing business around the globe. The map shows the rate of growth for a country’s gross domestic product – according to World Bank data – and helps entrepreneurs evaluate the risk/ease of doing business in countries around the globe. To construct the map for it’s new Going Global issue the Inc. magazine staff says,

“We consulted a variety of sources including the most current research from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor consortium, and the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. We also interviewed academics, government officials, business consultants, and business owners based around the world.”

The map allows you to zoom in on specific countries and, combined with the Treasure Map pdf, is certainly a good referenence tool for African investors.
Inc. Magazine GDP map

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Going home with a business plan

Ghana BeachOn the train ride home last week I ran into a Ghanaian friend of mine and we got to talking about what else, doing business in Ghana. As we compared stories and ideas, my friend expressed to me his frustration with building a house in Ghana. Granted he still lives in the US, it is taking him 3 years to begin the process due to land disputes. The way he tells it, the land he purchased had been sold to another person by the same chief who was now dead. And because of the “light” record keeping, he was now stuck trying to haggle with another developer who stood to gain a lot more from the land. The discussion brought about one of my many fears of going back to Ghana with a Western mentality of doing business. I’ve heard from more than enough people about the complicated processes which slow down or even halt business in many countries on the continent, and at least for now I can’t get my head around it. In my rationale it serves a government entity, or even a businessperson, well to maintain processes that allows for ease of enterprise, particularly when that entity already has a bad reputation with foreigners. I’m not saying that we should kneel to foreign investments, but it doesn’t do anybody any good to run things as if it were a personal household. When we are in a position where we need all the help we can get, it serves us well to go beyond our comfort zone to make things easier for both foreign and domestic businesses. I guess Ghana in particular is in a transitional stage right now, with many of us returning home after living for so long in the UK and US, and trying to create a way of life we are already used to. In an allafrica.com article Benin highlighted in his Africa Investment series we are made aware of the Ghanaian ambassador’s investment “tour” of the US. In the article the ambassador, Dr. Kwame Bawuah-Edusei, says,

“The right environment should be created in the country so that those who have shown interest in setting up businesses in Ghana would not be frustrated. For example, the registration of businesses should take a day not days or weeks. That is the only way we can attract more investors into the country.”

This is good to hear from a government official especially since Ghana has been posting GDP gains for six consecutive years and is currently the most stable country in West Africa according to Inc. magazine. For those of us looking to retire to our homeland, I can only hope that processes and infrastructures back home back up the efforts of the ambassador. But despite the problems, I will continue to see the glass of opportunity as half full.

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Maasai herdsman/model talks Gisele Bundchen, American Express, and maintaining maasai culture

<img id=”image289″ src=”http://annansi.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/amex_red_ad.jpg” alt=”Amex RED ad” align=center”/>
In the news this week were features on the previously unknown Maasai herdsman who appeared with Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen in this ad for American Express’ new card for the much-criticized RED campaign. Having seen the ad quite a few times in fashion magazines such as Vogue, I often wondered what the effect on the Maasai man had been. Here now, the Maasai herdsman is making news in multiple media outlets telling his story about his experience. What makes the story worth noting is that the herdsman, though having been paid $5000 for his efforts – an amount five times the annual wages in Kenya – has chosen to return to his life in his Maasai village. “To be honest all I was thinking about when I was with this woman was my cattle and goats,” Keseme Ole Parsapaet told The Associated Press, confessing to sleepless nights worrying about who was looking after his herd. Now that’s love for life and culture. How many of us would have taken the money and abandoned our simple lives.

“It is a good experience to work and make some money, but I believe people should be proud of their country… one should always return,”
– Keseme Ole Parsapaet

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This week in African Style 3/17 – 3/23/07

• Virgin Atlantic opens East Africa route and competes with British Airways.

• Innovation and investment at Oprah’s African schools.

• Tragedy of 5 lost in Bronx fire lead American media to Mali’s red earth.

• Russia looks to sign energy, metals deals in Africa.

• Americans milk Africa to death.

• Queen Latifah competes against Botswana’s Health Minister for detective role.

• The cost of a free Zambian education.

• Google bets on Africa.

• Innovation happens in unexpected places: mobile banking in Kenya, and mobile tv boost in North Africa.

• Governmental inaction and decay of public infrastructure in Africa.

• Pan-African businesses: Do they exist?

• Zimbabwe under fire, pleads for African solidarity.

• Sing the African alphabet.

• Rise of West African tourism.

• “Hip-Hop Colony,” African hip-hop explosion film available on dvd.

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Selling African culture Bollywood-style

Bunty Aur Babli movie posterReading this article about Bollywood and the brand new Kenyan film commission has me thinking about the African film industry and how it can grow. As some of you might already know, for the past year I’ve been consulting with the African Film Commission in developing and promoting the African film industry. This article about the Kenyan Film Commission’s growing relationship with both Hollywood and Bollywood has got me thinking about what impact Indian film and culture has been on my own African experience and how African countries can learn from Bollywood in marketing themselves. Growing up in Liberia I cannot remember a time when Indian film and culture were not a part of our daily experience. At that time (before cable and satellite) television was scheduled for a short time daily and the second main source of programming content, besides American films, was Indian dramas. Similar to Saturday Karate flicks in the US, Bollywood movies were a much anticipated indulgence of my daily childhood TV viewing. While I never always understood the context of the movies (same as with the American imports), the general themes of love, deceit, and camaraderie were familiar to all us Africans. We even adopted some of the sayings and mannerisms we saw in the films. Now with the Bollywood industry growing exponentially and reaching into Africa for inspiration, the relationship we Africans have with one of India’s greatest exports deserves some analysis.

Similar to Hollywood, as Bollywood has grown it has come to depend on Africa for production resources and content inspiration. What makes the Bollywood-Africa relationship interesting is that the Bollywood audience couldn’t be farther removed from Africans. For the most part Bollywood films are targeted to South Asian audiences though it continues to widen. Beyond the exoticism of the films, it is hard for someone who is unfamiliar with the culture to understand certain concepts without knowing the cultural reference. And though the films have adopted a global appeal, they are innately cultural. The fact that Bollywood movies can maintain their cultural perspectives and still appeal to different culture is a perfect example of how African cultures can export content that promotes their culture. I think Kenya is getting it right in organizing and creating a structure to nurture this relationship with foreign film companies to create a brand image, promote tourism, and inject foreign money into their economy. The lesson in this article for other African governments is that there are rules and procedures which, when implemented, will allow us to re-brand ourselves and promote our cultures to the world. And without certain structures such as a government created film commission, it becomes a free-for-all and stands to be ineffective in promoting tourism. Part of what makes India one of the hottest business destinations is the country’s ability to learn the rules of global business, create/maintain structures that encourage foreign investment, and – through their film industry – promote the uniqueness of their culture. I hope other countries look at the benefits of the business model Kenya is trying to implement and realize that they too can reap the benefits of such a relationship. They just need to understand how the game is played.