{"id":16,"date":"2013-12-19T11:13:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T10:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2014-03-05T14:21:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T13:21:16","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Blog: a Learning Journey to Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The talk down the hall is about Africa as &#8220;the last emerging frontier.&#8221; Some buy into it; others are skeptical. These are the same reactions as I got when I started telling people about my\u00a0<strong>learning trip to Africa<\/strong>. Some: &#8220;What a great opportunity!&#8221; Others: &#8220;Are you sure about this&#8230;?&#8221; Yes, I am sure I want to spend my precious sabbatical time in Africa\u00a0learning about\u00a0Africa. And I want this to be<strong>\u00a0a joint learning journey<\/strong>: I will share my experiencess and views, and hope that you&#8217;ll be willing to share yours.<\/p>\n<p>Africa is very diverse. Out ot the three large regions that compose it,\u00a0<strong>my interest lies on Sub-Saharan Africa and on the South-African region<\/strong>, thus leaving aside Northern Africa. Why this interest?<\/p>\n<p>First, I was meant for this: being born in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Melilla\">Melilla<\/a>, one of two Spanish cities located in Northern Africa, I&#8217;ve always heard the call from Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Second, IESE provides the right context to develop this interest given our long time association with African Business Schools created in the Continent (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lbs.edu.ng\/\">Lagos Business School<\/a>\u00a0in Nigeria,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sbs.strathmore.edu\/\">Strathmore Business School<\/a>\u00a0in Kenya, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mde.ci\/\">MDE Business School<\/a>\u00a0in Ivory Coast). We also support a number of projects which have crystallized in the <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/iese-and-africa\/\">Africa Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Third, \u00a0as my colleague\u00a0<a title=\"Mike Rosenberg\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/rosenberg\/\">Mike Rosenberg<\/a>\u00a0put it in one of his recent posts,\u00a0&#8220;<strong><a title=\"Things are moving in Africa!\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2013\/12\/16\/africa-is-the-next-china\/\">things are moving in Africa!<\/a><\/strong>.&#8221;\u00a0Things are cooking here, and I want to know what&#8217;s like before it&#8217;s all cooked!<\/p>\n<p>Thus, I decided to initiate this learning journey. Let me provide an overview of it. Right now, I&#8217;m visiting the Lagos Business School working on a project titled &#8220;<strong>Africa-to-Africa<\/strong>&#8221; that focuses on African companies that internationalize within the Continent, and in April I will visit Strathmore Business School until the end of the summer.<\/p>\n<p>But my journey is longer that this: it began in January 2013 when I attended the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/aom.org\/Multi-Media\/Africa-Conference\/Academy-of-Management-Africa-Conference-Summary.aspx?terms=africa%20conference\">Academy of Management Africa Conference<\/a>\u00a0held at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gibs.co.za\/\">Gordon Institute of Business Science<\/a>\u00a0in Johannesburg, and I hope it will last for a long time once I&#8217;m back to Barcelona. I hope you decide to join this learning journey and make it more estimulating!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The talk down the hall is about Africa as &#8220;the last emerging frontier.&#8221; Some buy into it; others are skeptical. These are the same reactions as I got when I started telling people about my\u00a0learning trip to Africa. Some: &#8220;What a great opportunity!&#8221; Others: &#8220;Are you sure about this&#8230;?&#8221; Yes, I am sure I want [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-16","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}