Investing in Africa’s Next Generation of Leaders

• With a fast-growing GDP and the world’s youngest workforce, Africa is poised for rapid economic development, which business schools are well-positioned to support.
• Business leader Judy Dlamini calls on business schools to contribute to Africa’s development by promoting entrepreneurship education, fostering industry collaboration, and commercializing their universities’ intellectual property.
• To ensure Africa’s growth is inclusive, Dlamini noted, business schools must make their programs and research widely accessible and involve Indigenous voices in academic discussions.

Nine of the 20 fastest-growing economies in the world belong to African nations, with Niger, Senegal, Libya, and Rwanda topping the list. According to a report released in February by the African Development Bank Group, real gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow an average 4.2 percent across the continent—significantly higher than the 3.2 percent growth expected worldwide.

At the same time, Africa will boast one of the youngest populations in the world, which will only add fuel—and ingenuity—to the region’s progress. How will these trends impact economic productivity, entrepreneurship, and enterprise development across the continent? How will—and how should—business schools respond?

Judy Dlamini speaks in July at AACSB’s Africa Conference.

These questions and more were on the agenda at AACSB’s inaugural Africa Conference, held in July on the University of Pretoria’s Future Africa Campus in South Africa. The 111 participants—from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America—came together to discuss the event’s central theme: “Empowering Tomorrow’s Business Leaders.”

Setting the tone of the conference was a keynote speech by Judy Dlamini, chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg; she also serves as nonexecutive director at the SA SME Fund, a multisector collaboration that allocates investments in small and medium-sized South African enterprises. An author and businesswoman, Dlamini was on Forbes’ list of Africa’s 50 most powerful women in 2020 and on its list of “50 women over 50” leading the way in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in 2022.

At the conference, Dlamini explored the questions at top of mind for conference participants: What’s next for the African economy? And what role should business schools play to support that future? Below are the top takeaways from her presentation.

On Africa’s Biggest Challenge…

One of Africa’s most critical questions involves how to ensure that there are employment opportunities for the continent’s growing youth population. As Dlamini pointed out, “more than 60 percent of
the population is under 25. By 2030, it is estimated that African youth will constitute 42 percent of global youth.” 

She added that McKinsey predicts that Africa will add more than 750 million people to the workforce by 2050. At that point, the continent will boast the largest and youngest population in the world.

“Africa has the human capital and natural resources to accelerate productivity and reimagine its economic growth—which is, more than ever, vital for the welfare of the world,” Dlamini said. “However, there is a challenge of lackluster productivity and economic growth. African countries with low growth over the past two decades formed 75 percent of Africa's GDP in 2019 and are home to 50 percent of the continent's population.

“How can this giant be invigorated to contribute significantly to the shaping of a prosperous world?” One way, she stressed, is through widspread access to business training.

On How Business Schools Can Support Africa’s Growth…

To harness its “untapped potential,” Dlamini noted, Africa will have “to invest in the next generation of leaders in general—and business leaders, specifically—in order to drive innovation, create sustainable jobs, propel our economies forward, and, hopefully, narrow the inequality gap that exists within countries and across different countries and continents.”

Without making such a “collective and deliberate investment,” Dlamini warned, Africa will be unable to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—especially SDG 10, which focuses on reducing inequality.

“The journey of shaping leaders begins with access to quality education for all,” she emphasized. Africa will need “education that equips our future leaders with critical thinking skills, skills that will enable them to adapt in a continuously changing world and … lead the desired change.”

On the Necessity of Entrepreneurship Education…

Here, Dlamini referenced a 2006 paper co-authored by Martin Binks, Ken Starkey, and Christopher Mahon, “Entrepreneurship education and the business school.” The authors, she explained, “advocate for making entrepreneurship education mainstream at business schools.”

Specifically, Dlamini continued, the co-authors call on universities and business schools to invest more heavily in three areas on their campuses: the delivery of entrepreneurship education, the business of technology transfer and the commercialization of university-based intellectual property, and the formation of external business networks.

“Africa has the human capital and natural resources to accelerate productivity and reimagine its economic growth—which is, more than ever, vital for the welfare of the world.”

“It is my view that our economies should invest in entrepreneurship education from early childhood. There has to be better seamless integration across the different stages,” from early childhood to graduate to postdoctoral education. At every stage, she said, schools should invite contributions from the business community.

She pointed out that the United Nations stresses that entrepreneurship development will significantly contribute to the attainment of six out of the 17 SDGs (1, 5, 8, 9, 16, and 17). This will be especially true in developing economies.

“No one sector can do it alone, but collaboration across sectors—especially higher education, government, and small and big business—is key,” she said.

Dlamini pointed to the example of the SA SME Fund. Founded eight years ago by government and business, “the fund was created to stimulate growth through small and medium enterprises to address the high unemployment rate in South Africa.” Its contributions include a technology transfer fund, through which the collaboration co-invests with campus-based tech transfer offices to commercialize universities’ intellectual property.

“The fund connects small businesses to big businesses and offers benefits such as formal mentorship. It provides the much-needed funding in three forms: venture capital, private equity, and debt,” Dlamini noted. “This is only one example of what can be achieved through collaboration across sectors to address local society challenges.”

On the Inclusion of Indigenous Voices…

Management education and research can provide training and insights that will be critical to Africa’s economic development. However, that development should not come at the expense of local voices and experience, Dlamini emphasized. “There is a school of thought amongst some African scholars that the African contexts are missing from global management knowledge, and that Indigenous values and practices are trivialized,” she said.

Local languages are important expressions of each nation’s “values, identity, and practices.” For that reason, higher education institutions should include local voices “alongside the foreign languages that were inherited from Africa's colonial past,” she said. “There is a lot to be learned from the development of Afrikaans to be an academic language in South Africa.” Bringing local language back into academic contexts, she added, “is possible with determination, self-pride, and investment.”

On Bridging the Digital Divide…

Technological development is reshaping businesses worldwide—ensuring that African nations can take full advantage of those developments will be central to Africa’s future, Dlamini noted. “Technology and innovation are known to drive long-term economic growth and can lead to much-needed modernization in economic activities across agriculture, manufacturing, and services. However, different forms of the digital divide continue to grow between large formal and micro-sized informal enterprises—and between the young and old,” she said.

“Business schools have an opportunity to collaborate with local experts to create digital learning material in local languages; develop courses centered on regional business practices, culture, and language; partner with tech companies to develop language-specific learning platforms; encourage mobile applications and e-learning tools tailored to local languages; and involve local businesses in creating case studies and real-world projects.”

Dlamini mentioned the University of the Witwatersrand’s Wits Business School, which started its own case center 25 years ago. “Global context starts with local context and relevance,” she noted.

“There’s an African proverb that says, ‘When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind,’” she added. “Business schools have an opportunity to ensure that digital learning is inclusive, accessible, and contextually relevant to the communities they serve. They cannot do it alone, hence the importance of collaboration across sectors.”

On Integrating Tech Into the Curriculum…

Dlamini referenced GMAC’s 2024 Corporate Recruiters Survey, which shows that almost three-quarters of employers want to hire graduates who are competent in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. “It is vital for business schools not only to teach candidates how to use AI, including the ethical and social responsibilities it brings, but also to implement it themselves into their working practices,” she said.

AI also opens new opportunities for business schools, Dlamini added. Using predictive analytics, AI can help schools deliver more personalized learning experiences and targeted interventions to students. AI technology provides schools with a powerful tool to keep “the curriculum relevant through analyzing industry trends and job market data,” she said. Moreover, as the technology develops, business schools should take every opportunity to collaborate with the tech industry to co-create data analytics and AI courses, while also attracting private sector funding to support new initiatives. 

On Fostering Adaptability, Creativity, Ethical Leadership…

“Business schools need to build an environment that embraces diversity and that encourages and nurtures creativity,” Dlamini said. She added that today’s technological landscape is perfect for inspiring “innovation, thinking outside the box, and challenging the status quo.”

Given the ethical challenges that AI presents, she stressed that it also will be essential for business schools to promote cultures “where ethical leadership is a non­negotiable, and where business success is measured not only in profits made, but also by the positive impact the business has in society and its role in the preservation of a healthy environment for future generations.”

“What our nations need for current and future prosperity and sustainable democracies are ethical leaders who are accountable to the people that they lead—who are adaptable to the changing world and serve for greater good with integrity.”

In this, she added, business schools have an opportunity “not only to be co-creators of knowledge with business, but to be networking platforms between big business, small business, government, and the community. They need to lead training on governance and ethical leadership across sectors in collaboration with other disciplines within their universities and across universities.”

Schools that take on these challenges, she said, will not only build cohesive communities, but also are likely to attract financial support to sustain their efforts over the long term.

Dlamini then emphasized the element that will be most essential to Africa’s future success: a steady supply of adaptable, responsible, socially conscious leaders.

“What our nations need for current and future prosperity and sustainable democracies are ethical leaders who are accountable to the people that they lead—who are adaptable to the changing world and serve for greater good with integrity,” she said.

On Meeting the Needs of the Future…

Dlamini ended her presentation by reinforcing the idea that healthy development in Africa will depend on factors more wide-ranging than access to business training. To further this point, she shared a quote from Sebastian Pinera, former president of Chile, who said, “To have a stable economy, to have a stable democracy, and to have a modern government is not enough. We have to build new pillars of development: education, science and technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, and more equality.”

“That,” Dlamini concluded, “is the challenge to our business school leaders.”