By Adam Wakefield
The subject of succeeding on the continent was the focus of the Ornico GIBS Business School Open Africa: Continental and Business Intelligence book launch at GIBS’ Illovo campus on Thursday, 9 September.
The launch took the form of a panel, where Orinco CEO Oresti Patricios moderated a panel discussion featuring Honorary South Africa-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce CEO, Dianna Games, CEO of Hollard International, Brooks Mparutsa, Alphamin Resources Corporation CEO, Boris Kamstra, and Professor Lyal White, founding director of the Centre for Dynamic Markets and the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
It was Patricios who opened the evening, noting that Africa is not one country and; “We don’t want the CNNs and the BBCs telling our own stories. We need to tell our own stories”. He then asked each of his panellists to make an opening statement.
Games was first, who while recognising the often fraught business relationship between Nigeria and South African, with many a tit-for-tat story, companies cannot blame a country for not being able to succeed in it.
“These countries have evolved organically on the whole and the business culture has worked around the challenges,” Games said.
Mparutsa followed Games, immediately telling the audience; “We should never say in Africa because we are in Africa”. A statement like that is why South African businesses are often despised by the African countries they invest in.
“We cannot have a cookie-cutter approach to the challenges we have in Africa. We should say ‘In the rest of Africa’,” he said.
A lot of people Mparutsa had met across the continent had an extremely negative view of the “pinstripe suit brigade spending a couple of days flying in and flying out, because what happens is we never really localise”.
To understand Africa means absorbing local culture, both learning and educating, and being patient. Succeeding in Africa is not overnight success.
It was then Kamstra’s turn to take the floor.
“Extraordinary returns can be made but a lot of it depends on your approach in Africa. When you’re going into Africa, you need to decide, are you going to be a South African business operating in that country or are you going to be a local business?” he said.
He then spoke about the work Alphamin had done at its Bisie mining operation in Walikale district in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of ,if not, the most important tin deposits in the world, Kamstra said their use of local suppliers, staff, businesses, skills and local resources made their business far more robust and effective.
It was then White’s turn, who began by saying; “As much as you can look at our numbers and read the reports, going to a place and seeing, smelling and feeling the different locations is the most important part of the analysis and the most important part of due diligence.”
From White’s point of view, the greatest deterrent to development in Africa is connectedness. A key to China’s economic development was connecting the Eastern seaboard with the interior, and as White said later, “the biggest driver of economic innovation is the movement of people”.
As the evening progressed, a number of points were made when working in Africa. These included having a high degree of patience, finding the right local people to fill critical roles, and using local management teams because they understand the nuances of the local market better than any outside team could.
Further, success in Africa means a incorporating as many values adds as possible, ensuring local employees have something to lose were the venture to fail, having an effective social development plan, participating and negotiating in good faith with recognised local representatives, and innovating.
Innovation in local markets, according to Mparutsa, can only be driven by people truly invested in that community.
Patricios also pointed out, with the panellists nodding in agreement, that a middle class in Kenya, for example, is very different from how the middle class is conceptualised in Uganda. If an organisational does not take the time and effort to do the due diligence in a local African market, they will likely suffer the consequences.
As White said as the evening came to a conclusion; “Nothing beats going. You have to go see it. If you don’t see, you won’t ever know”.
The
Open Africa publication is available
here.