{"id":1195,"date":"2015-07-09T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T07:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1195"},"modified":"2016-10-27T15:24:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T14:24:39","slug":"going-to-africa-routes-to-failure-and-to-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/07\/09\/going-to-africa-routes-to-failure-and-to-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Into Africa: Routes to Failure and Success!"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I told a\u00a0Spanish friend about my engagement with Africa, she said: \u201cI\u2019d love to go there and get them organized!\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0I thought to myself,\u00a0\u201cThank God you\u2019re not going!\u201d My friend\u2019s attitude is the same as that of some MNCs and NGOs: it’s\u00a0an ethnocentric perspective that doesn\u2019t recognize country differences<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 not to mention\u00a0the value of those differences! This is a surefire route to failure.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Adapting<\/a>
Adapting to the local distribution system<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A good\u00a0example<\/strong>\u00a0was shared with me by Jennifer, a top manager of an international Kenyan company with a large MNC supplier from the US.<\/strong> I won\u2019t reveal the name, but I have no doubt you know of it \u2013 you are likely using some of their products. The two companies held a meeting attended by both Kenyan and US managers from the supplier.\u00a0It was clear to Jennifer that the Americans were clueless. For instance, they were planning to collect and analyze certain data according to zip codes. \u201cZip codes? Don\u2019t they know that it doesn\u2019t work like that here?<\/strong>\u201d was Jennifer\u2019s reaction. Even worse, they hardly allowed their Kenyan colleagues to speak during the meeting. And when they dared say anything, the Americans \u201ccorrected\u201d them believing that they were teaching them how things work.<\/p>\n

In a previous post, I talked about how it takes local management to succeed in Africa.<\/a><\/strong> And local means \u201clocal\u201d: not just African but people from the host country. I have found this to be the case across the continent: East, West, and Southern Africa.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Nigerian friend once told me, \u201cThere are foreigners, and there are foreigners\u201d, meaning that there are those who understand the need to adapt to the local context, and those who just try to do things the same way they do at home because \u201cthey know best how to do things\u201d \u2013 like my Spanish friend.<\/p>\n

When companies learn the lesson, they are en\u00a0route to success.<\/strong> This was the case for\u00a0a Nigerian company operating in Ghana<\/a>, and a Kenyan bank operating in Uganda<\/a> and Tanzania. At first they fell into the trap of operating abroad the same way as they did at home. As soon as they realized that was a mistake and that they needed to consider country differences, they involved locals in their management teams and changed their approach. This was key for re-vamping their international operations.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can you share successful stories of local adaptation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I told a\u00a0Spanish friend about my engagement with Africa, she said: \u201cI\u2019d love to go there and get them organized!\u201d\u00a0I thought to myself,\u00a0\u201cThank God you\u2019re not going!\u201d My friend\u2019s attitude is the same as that of some MNCs and NGOs: it’s\u00a0an ethnocentric perspective that doesn\u2019t recognize country differences \u2013 not to mention\u00a0the value of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":1197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85385,77626,99106],"tags":[80751,100412,80747,100411],"class_list":["post-1195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doing-business-in-africa","category-entrepreneurship-in-africa","category-future-and-perspectives-for-africa","tag-internacionalization","tag-local-management","tag-management-style","tag-zip-codes","megacategoria-mc-leadership-and-people-management","megacategoria-mc-strategy"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1195"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1209,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions\/1209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}