The World Comes to Africa

As the World Cup gets underway this week in South Africa—the first ever to be held on the African continent—the world media is turning its attention there.

Typically, coverage of Africa by the international media is limited to stories about intractable problems—disease, war, famine, and corruption. Many of the World Cup stories are taking a similar tact. Stories about the South Africa’s five new stadiums underscore the nation’s mounting debt while other pieces highlight its security concerns.

A lot of the coverage reflects the world media’s skewed view of Africa as a monolithic place that’s plagued with tragedy. Severe challenges do exist, but many African societies are quietly building their institutions and infrastructures.  It’s time the outside world views Africa through a broader, more accurate lens.

Scale and Diversity

Africa is a vast and diverse continent where triumph and despair co-exist with everything in between.  It’s the “in-between” that tends to be overlooked in coverage about Africa.

Outsiders tends to underestimate Africa’s scale. As writer John Reader points out, the U.S., China, India, and New Zealand, together with most of Europe, could all fit within Africa’s coastline. This enormous continent contains almost a quarter of the world’s land mass.

The continent is amazingly diverse. The continent’s billion people inhabit 53 countries and speak over two thousand languages arguably making it the world’s most diverse region.  Africa’s diversity extends to its topography, climate, and culture.

Despite its remarkable diversity, most outsiders tend to picture Africa as a homogeneous region instead of as a melange of distinctive ethnic groups and cultures that influence everything from art and music to social structures.

Author Richard Dowden observes, “Every time you say ‘Africa is…’ the words crumble and break.  Every generalization must exclude at least five countries. And just as you have nailed down a certainty, a defining characteristic, you find the opposite is true.”  Stark contrasts and rich diversity are Africa’s defining features.

Failed States and Model Nations

One need only look at Africa’s recent history to get a sense of its diversity. During the last decade, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was ravaged by an incomprehensibly violent civil war where millions perished. Somalia maintained its role as one of the world’s most lawless and dangerous states. Zimbabwe, endowed with abundant natural resources became known for its delusional ruler, Robert Mugabe, who decimated his nation’s economy. It’s understandable that such dire cases grabbed the headlines and shaped the world’s perception of Africa.

But during the same period, Botswana, Seychelles, Mauritius and, to a lesser extent, Senegal, Zambia, and Namibia encouraged private investment, grew their economies, and improved their living standards.  Kenya focused on building its tech sector and similar initiatives were launched in Ghana and Tanzania.  Oil-rich Nigeria took steps to reform its institutions and diversify its economy.

In light of Africa’s stark contrasts and rich diversity, it’s fitting that the World Cup is hosted by South Africa, a nation where eleven languages are recognized as official and many more are spoken.  South Africa has the continent’s largest and most diversified economy, but it faces serious challenges including steep unemployment and the world’s highest HIV/AIDS rates.  Here, too, great promise and opportunity co-exist with poverty and despair.

I’ve been traveling to Africa since the mid-80’s and whenever I think I’ve found an explanation for why things are the way they are, I’m proven wrong.  There’s always an exception. Diversity rules in Africa.

I’ll be watching the World Cup matches and rooting for the six African teams who qualified. They’re all underdogs, but I’ve learned never to count Africa out.

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Post-script:  It was a treat to experience the World Cup from Accra, Ghana. The country’s Black Stars team beat the USA to make it to the quarter finals.  Here are images from that trip.

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What do you think? As always, I’d appreciate your perspective.

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Downtown Cape Coast, Ghana

Pulsating business scene

I spent the last couple weeks on assignment in Accra, Ghana. On this trip, I’ve seen more growth than any time since my company started working there in ‘07. This is a period of unprecedented business activity and promising new projects within and beyond the mobile sector.  Meanwhile, new competitors from around the world are streaming in. This corner of Africa’s business scene is pulsating.

Astute businesses here are taking steps to preserve their client base and deepen relationships with their customers. We’re privileged to work with a new generation of African business leaders with the courage and determination to transform their offerings to meet the needs of an emerging class of consumers.

These are exciting times to work with African business leaders who take seriously their mandate for investing in new technologies and business practices.  We’re helping them gain competitive advantages by improving the service systems that support touch points, by adding new service channels, and by harvesting business intelligence, among other initiatives.

Building competitiveness

The most effective strategy for businesses to gain a competitive edge here is to understand and meet the customer needs better than their rivals.  Forward-thinking leaders here know that competing on service will help preserve their customer base and attract new customers even as the marketplace grows more crowded with aggressive new entrants.

Developing insights about customers’ preferences and purchasing drivers helps companies here achieve competitiveness as well as profitability.

It also creates jobs. Thriving regional businesses are Africa’s greatest engine of job creation and economic growth.  That’s why we’re committed to collaborating with leading African businesses, knowing that their success means more jobs and higher living standards across the region.

What it takes to work here

This question comes up frequently in my circles. I think Western companies operating here require a distinctive set of leadership and communication skills. Traditional business skills are necessary but not sufficient to address the complexity and scale of challenges on this continent.

But what’s needed for Western companies to operate effectively in this environment? We’ve explored this question with business leaders in various sectors as well as academics, entrepreneurs, and technology innovators.

Our conclusion is that it’s not enough to bring an open mind. We must be skillful listeners. That means checking our assumptions at the door and listening with the intention of gaining deeper insights about the market and, most importantly, the customer.  Deep collaboration with partners and clients is key.

Africa’s dynamism and complexity require going beyond merely tolerating ambiguity. Ambiguity, a ubiquitous feature here, must be embraced.  “Leaning into” uncertainty is critical to problem-solving in this market.

It’s critical to drop the need for control, otherwise it’s tough to handle the inherent ‘push-pull’ of a region that’s steeped in tradition while it grows so rapidly.

The ability to consider competing, often “fuzzy” options helps us work with stakeholders here to produce the imaginative, yet practical solutions that the region demands.

Finally, operating in the region requires extraordinary levels of patience and perseverance.  Change rarely happens in sweeping strokes here. Instead change occurs through “successive approximations”.  One step forward, two back but always moving ahead.  Patience — never my strongest card — is essential.  (Note: I’m working on it.)

People, Process and Technology – Redux

Succeeding here requires mastery in choreographing people, process and technology, and we help clients focus on all three dimensions — what we refer to as “service systems”.  Of the three, ‘people’ is the most critical and challenging to optimize.

Africa’s leading companies are now investing heavily in their people because they know, in the end, that this the only sustainable ‘differentiator’.

On this trip, I observed how one company in particular, a leading business process outsourcer and partner, transformed its organization into a high performance business by nurturing its talent.  It accomplished this feat by fostering competition among its teams while encouraging buy-in and autonomy among team members.

Watching their evolution over time has been both heartening and instructive. Today, I’d stack them up against any competitor in the world. This kind of innovative, customer-focused organization is poised to meet the needs of customers in any market.

Lessons from Africa

Like all prior trips to Africa, this one was a valuable learning experience on several levels.  I encountered a new generation of leaders and was impressed by their willingness to invest in becoming more competitive. The vitality of the continent’s nascent mobile-web industry is breathtaking.  Keep an eye on this exciting space…

I also learned more about my company on this journey. I’m reminded that what separates us from our peers is our passion for and commitment to producing substantial results for our clients and their customers across the sub-Sahara.  It’s energizing to work on a continent of one billion people whose economic growth is only surpassed by China, and I never forget what a rare opportunity it is.

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What do you think?  I’d appreciate hearing your perspective.

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Want more info on this subject?  You’re not alone.  There’s a plethora of books about conflicts and coups in Africa, but there are fewer resources about doing business on the continent.  I’ve previously recommended Paul Collier’s ‘07 book, The Bottom Billion, which remains relevant.

In ‘07, TED organized Africa: The Next Chapter, a series of talks which included the first TED conference held on the continent.  The series featured a stellar lineup of speakers on a range of topics about Africa.  Since then, TED has added new presentations about business development in Africa to the series, and  I heartily recommend it.

Here are some of my prior posts about the sub-Sahara.

I’d appreciate hearing your recommendations about resources on this topic.

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In my lifetime, conditions have grown immeasurably better, freer and more prosperous for a majority of humanity, yet hand-wringing about the miserable remains the reflex mode for most coverage of planet earth.

Nowhere more so than in Africa, from which I’d just returned when the e-mail landed. During a short stay in Ghana, which will hold free elections in December, Vodafone had bought a majority stake in Ghana Telecom for $900 million (entering a fiercely competitive mobile-phone market) and I’d heard much about 6 percent annual growth, spreading broadband and new high-end cacao ventures.

Accra, the capital, is buzzing. Russian hedge funds are investing. New construction abounds. Technology enables people in the capital to text money transfers via mobile phone to poor relatives in the bush.

I think most of Cohen’s points are well taken. He doesn’t mention the discovery of oil off Ghana’s coast and the country’s fiber projects or the investments being made by multinationals in the country’s business infrastructure.  The business climate in the region is improving, albeit in successive approximations.  The country’s services sector — chiefly teleco and financial services — are contributing to Ghana’s high annual growth rate.  Inflation is a growing concern, but so far it’s been manageable.  The process leading up to this December’s election should be interesting.  So far so good.

It’s also true that Africa’s success stories aren’t newsworthy to many news consumers.  We mostly hear about war, corruption, disease and rampant poverty.  On this point, I recommend Charlayne Hunter Gault’s “New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance,” — it’s  chiefly about South Africa, but pertinent to the problem of media coverage across the continent.

If Ghana’s political environment remains stable and forward-looking, the country will be in a position to contribute even more of its stalwart intellectual capital to a “globalized” resource (R=G) community in the coming years.  So, even if the global media is fixated on the region’s challenges, the numbers will support a different story.  So look for Ghana and other gazelle nations of the sub-Sahara to lead the way.

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Here’s an interesting piece in Time (July 31, 2008), The Creative Capitalism Roundtable, featuring a conversation with Bill Gates, CK Prahalad and others sharing their views on creative capitalism and the Bottom of the Pyramid.  Their conversation led to a discussion of the telecom industry at the BoP:

 Stengel [Managing Editor - Time]: C.K., I know that Bill was influenced by, by your work, and one of the questions I have, and I guess it’s a question both about creative capitalism and how you see it, is that, when it comes to cell phones for Kenyan farmers for example, isn’t this just good old fashion capitalism in the sense that it’s a recognition of a market that people hadn’t figured out how to profit from, and now, and now they are.

Prahalad: I think it is, but there’s a twist to it, and I think it’s an important twist. If you look at traditionally how we have looked at all this product and services especially high-tech products like cell phones, we would never have gone to the poor. But, I think that growth opportunity is there, as the cell phones have demonstrated. Also, it is changing the asymmetry of information, be it the farmer, who can now get prices, weather conditions, or someone who can make small transactions with SMS messaging, suddenly the asymmetry of information which is the essence of poverty — that is why people are poor, they don’t have access to information — that is changing very, very dramatically. What is happening in the cell phone industry, three billion people are connected for the first time in human history, I think it will be four billion soon. That I think gives me tremendous confidence that we can really take Bill’s idea and see it through to its logical conclusion, which, for me, is how to democratize commerce.

Food for thought…

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Throughout Africa, business knowledge is crucial to economies at every stage of development. It enables companies to establish more effective capabilities necessary for developing thriving businesses. Knowledge transfer between companies makes sense. Well-structured collaborations are thriving and the benefits flow in both directions.

Efforts are mounting to raise awareness. In 2007, an unprecedented string of high profile events placed this agenda on the radar screen. After the Davos symposium and the much lauded TED events in both Monterrey and Arusha, Tanzania, African entrepreneurial successes are getting lots of attention.

In a more modest French conference hosted by Insead last April, “Nurturing Business Education in Africa,” a diverse group of educators focused on practical steps for transferring knowledge. “We will be looking for practical ways that business schools and their professors can strengthen the capability of African schools to train the continent’s future managers.”

A recent CNN Int’l article notes, “Africa is in desperate need of qualified and talented management to help its economies, not only running companies but helping entrepreneurs and ensuring more effective corporate and legislative governance policy”.

The publicity that Africa is getting seems mostly helpful and is growing more so as it attracts not just luminaries, but pragmatic entrepreneurs whose early forays are informing the business community about the region’s market potential. But, a looming concern is this becoming a flavor of the day movement.

Like all trends, it runs the risk of being discarded, supplanted by the next, new shiny idea. Another issue is the process being co-opted by global companies seeking to enhance their images. This may dampen the aspirations of those who genuinely want to make things happen.

This project isn’t for short term thinkers. Gains typically come through successive approximations. It takes patience and perseverance to develop opportunities across cultural divides. But, we’re finding that it’s worth the effort.

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