In Zimbabwe, serious questions are being asked as to whether President Robert Mugabe is bent on stirring the country back to the political chaos of 2008 as his party Zanu PF stalls the constitution making process prior to elections Without

Read the rest of Mugabe Pushing Zimbabweans to the Brink? – By Marko Phiri »

East Africa is about to experience a hydrocarbon induced economic boom. However, the disconnect between what oil and petrol companies say is happening regarding the development of oil and gas resources, versus what international NGOs, academics and ecologists say is

Read the rest of East African Oil and Gas: proper environmental planning needed to avoid disaster – By Thembi Mutch »

So I had dinner with an African country chief of one of the world’s top 5 most recognised brands. And in the course of conversation he confided in me that his relationship-building efforts in the country are being hampered. He can’t take

Read the rest of African Business Culture Tips: Part 5 – Courtesy Should be a Line Item »

It is not always a sign of rudeness for someone to barge in without an appointment. Sometimes it is a simple sign of affection. It is fine to come out shake their hands, smile, and explain that there are a

Read the rest of African Business Culture Tips: Part 4 – Sentiment Matters »

This is hard. There is a long-running battle in the social sciences about which worldview – the cultural or the structural –best explains human systems. You are not going to solve it by putting a ‘tiger team’ together. But be cautious about

Read the rest of African Business Culture Tips: Part 3 – Don’t Confuse “Culture” with “Structure” »

There is a very deceptive paradox in the fact that in places like Africa the conversations around CSR are hopelessly archaic while at the same time the way CSR is done can be quite broad-minded. Words like “social enterprise”, “social innovation”, and

Read the rest of African Business Culture Tips: Part 2 – CSR is Dead »

A common complaint I have heard business partners and employees of global (‘westernised’) companies in Africa often make is that the latter are too obsessed with exactitude. The more “formalisation” has pervaded corporate planning, and gone the way of the Daniel Prajogos

Read the rest of African Business Culture Tips: Part 1 – The Cult of Precision »

There is a tradition dating back at least 3 decades in the Western world that technical innovation on its own is rarely the make or break thing in the competitive advantage of a business. The Economist Paul Geroski, for instance,

Read the rest of Five Business Culture Tips from An African Perspective – By Bright Simons »

In all the depressing headlines about Mali becoming West Africa’s ‘new Afghanistan’, or the frustrated editorials about the country’s apparent political paralysis (the ICG’s Gilles Yabi recently said “it’s as if Mali has fallen into a coma”) it sometimes seems

Read the rest of Mali: time to assert continuing cultural diversity after the coup – By Celeste Hicks »

A couple of years ago when still a political analyst for Nedbank, one of South Africa’s leading banks, I was asked by a fund manager in Edinburgh how sustainable I thought South Africa was. He asked how deep the South

Read the rest of Economic Growth in South Africa: has the ANC got it wrong? – By Moeletsi Mbeki and Refiloe Morwe »