The Africa Report published recently their list of Top-500 African companies in terms of turnover (2015 figures). Let’s focus on the Top-10. As the tables below show, at the level of the continent there’s hardly any variation relative to the previous rank, while sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) shows more action. Top climbers: Energies Nouvelles (#233), construction, […]
Trading across borders
Last week, in the post Reforms that make doing business easier, we discussed the Ease of Doing Business rankings. These appear in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report. We focused on a few sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, and what they did recently to improve their ranks. There are many important that the World Bank takes into […]
Reforms that make doing business easier
These days I’m teaching a course on Managing Corporate Growth in IESE’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program. One of the issues we’ve discussed is international expansion. We touched upon the difficulties of getting data in the African context. We discussed the shortcomings of official statistics — if you follow this blog regularly, you may know that […]
Strategic Agility
My last visit to Nairobi was right after Brexit. As everywhere else, this was a major topic of conversation. In a casual chat with a group of CEOs, we talked about the uncertainty that the British move has created, and we went on discussing other factors that create uncertainty. I ventured that African companies may […]
Cultural Differences: What’s Our Attitude Like?
Last week, I talked a bit about the Pre-Doctoral Workshop that I led recently at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi. Today, I would like to consider the cultural differences and what our attitude should be like. On the last day of the Workshop, participants received a certificate of attendance that I had to sign. As soon […]
