Research Summary
Research Summary
Overview
Description
My main topics of interest in research all center around Africa. It is my ambition to take HBS more into Africa and to bring Africa more into HBS. I am particularly interested in a) the building of businesses in Africa. I want to focus on those elements that an HBS MBA program may not touch upon at present. Of necessity, we have been very much focused on Europe and North America in the past. However, there are many questions to address in Africa. For example, how do you build a business in a region where there is very little data, infrastructure is so poor, the government so overpowering and capital is available in only small quantities, mostly short term and at exorbitant interest rates? b) I am very interested in the different burdens of leadership that CEOs in Africa carry. What do they need to succeed on the continent? How do you lead organisations where many of the staff have skills and knowledge deficits and are often riven with ethnic and religious loyalties? How do they allocate their time between government relations on the one hand, and on the other problems of strategy or raising capital? c) How do these businesses scale and how to they move from single nation businesses to continental businesses?