Africa

Johannesburg, Lagos, Nairobi

HBS continues its efforts to build a deep understanding of and expertise in global business practice and innovation around the world, including throughout Africa, a region that is assuming an increasingly vital role in the world economy. The school opened the Africa Research Center in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2017 followed by an office in Lagos, Nigeria in 2019, and an office in Nairobi, Kenya in 2022. This center plays an important role in helping HBS develop and strengthen relationships with business and academic leaders across sub-Saharan Africa, while our Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Research Center based in Istanbul, plays this same role for North African countries. Support for HBS engagement and activities across the school are enabled by these locations. The School strives to deepen faculty's understanding of and exposure to African management issues, trends, and practices, as well as develop locally relevant case studies and course materials for use in business education programs around the world. The Africa Research Center also supports alumni engagement, webinars and faculty case discussions, executive education, and admissions and outreach activities on the continent.

Locations

1st Floor Block C, Rosebank Office Park
181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North
Johannesburg, South Africa

Lagos, Nigeria

Nairobi, Kenya

News & Highlights

May 2023
EVENT

The Entrepreneurial Journey: Lessons from Keroche Breweries

On May 10, the Africa Research Center hosted Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell in Nairobi for an exclusive event on entrepreneurship, business model design, and new venture growth featuring lessons from Keroche Breweries. The session was inspired by Tabitha and Joseph Karanja's journey in the Kenyan alcoholic drinks industry, starting with their effort to provide low-income consumers with cheap and safe alternatives to informally brewed alcohol and culminating in Keroche's "big bet" entry into the Kenyan beer market. The event was co-hosted by the HBS Alumni Club of Kenya with nearly 70 alumni and community members attending the event.

May 2023
EVENT

The Confidence Journey: Strategies and Frameworks to Unlock Your Full Potential

This May, the Africa Research Center hosted two events in Nairobi, Kenya and Johannesburg, South Africa for Professor Archie L. Jones. Both events focused on exploring leadership capital and understanding how to develop the assets and skills that are integral to realizing company goals. The events were co-hosted by the HBS Alumni Clubs of Kenya and South Africa and were attended by over 60 HBS alumni and community members.

May 2023
MBA EXPERIENCE

Kenya FIELD Global Immersion

Between May 5th and May 18th this year, current first year MBA students travelled to Nairobi, Kenya for the first FIELD Global Immersions since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The FIELD Global Immersion (FGI) is a semester-long first-year (RC) MBA course that culminates in a one-week Immersion at the end of the semester. The course is a capstone of sorts, and it requires students to build on learnings from their first-year courses and apply them to real-world business problems. The students had several meetings with business leaders, corporates, and alumni in Nairobi, Kenya to understand how business is done there.

May 2023
Executive Education

Senior Executive Program — Africa

In early May, the Senior Executive Program — Africa held the first module of the 2023 cohort in Nairobi, Kenya. Senior African Executive MBA students congregated in Strathmore Business School in Nairobi for MBA classes in strategy, digital innovation, and leadership. They were taught by HBS professors Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Sunil Gupta, as well as faculty members from Gordon Institute of Business and Strathmore Business School. There were several networking events including dinners and mixers with HBS alumni, Kenyan executives and other Strathmore Business School Executive MBA students. One mixer included a presentation from the Equity Bank Group CEO, James Mwangi, highlighting some of the opportunities expected from the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement.

New Research on the Region

August 2023
Case

Self-Driving Cars and the Ethics of Autonomy

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Tom Quinn

As autonomy became a more significant part of modern life – most notably in autonomous vehicles (AVs), such as Teslas – ethical debates about whether and how to impart ethics to machines heated up. Utilitarians pointed out that autonomous vehicles crashed much less often than human-driven cars, making their adoption a net positive in terms of lives saved; deontologists worried about the implications of programming a car to swerve to kill its passengers instead of pedestrians, for example, among other high-stakes “trolley problems.” Ethical issues abounded across different levels of automation and across borders. How should AVs be programmed for complex, uncertain, ethically challenging situations? Was there anything innately human about moral reasoning, or could companies imbue AVs with sound ethical frameworks?

August 2023
Case

Floward

By: Krishna Palepu and Namrata Arora

In 2022, Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani, CEO and co-founder of Floward, an online flower and gifting company established in Kuwait in 2017, contemplated the firm's growth trajectory. Floward, an e-commerce enterprise that offered fresh-cut flowers sourced directly from global growers and had control over the entire delivery chain, had expanded its footprint to 32 cities across nine MENA countries and had ventured into the UK. Witnessing a remarkable CAGR of over 160% between 2020 and 2022, Floward was valued at $152.5 million during its Series B investment round in 2021. Having served over 400,000 customers and recently diversifying into the broader gifting sector, Al Loughani faced pivotal decisions: Should Floward pursue further global expansion or solidify its gifting vertical in the Gulf? And, considering its aggressive growth aspirations, should the company opt for an IPO, and if so, which stock exchange should they target?