{"id":433,"date":"2014-06-18T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=433"},"modified":"2016-10-28T14:54:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T13:54:17","slug":"tribal-attributes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/06\/18\/tribal-attributes\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribal attributes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a comment to an <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/04\/16\/from-nigeria-to-kenya\/\">earlier post<\/a>, Christian referred to <strong>how strongly Kenyans feel about tribal attributes<\/strong>. I think he has better insights about this than me but let me tell you about what I&#8217;ve heard, and maybe he and others will add some comments.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tribes_of_Kenya#Ethnic_groups\">Kenya&#8217;s ethnic diversity <\/a>is high<\/strong>. The various tribes can be traced back to <strong>three main groups:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Bantus<\/strong> of Niger-Congo origin,<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nilotes<\/strong> from the Nilo-Saharan area, and<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cushites<\/strong> who are Afro-Asiatic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The tribes that I hear about the most are Kikuyu (a Bantu tribe), Luo and Maasai (both Nilote tribes).\u00a0<strong>Kikuyus are business-oriented<\/strong>, concerned with acquiring land and saving for the future. In contrast, <strong>Luos are said to be more intellectual<\/strong> (I understand many university professors come from this tribe), and concerned with the external image they project. Apparently, a young woman would rather date a Luo man than a Kikuyu man:\u00a0<strong>Luos are more fun than Kikuyus,<\/strong> they say, and they&#8217;ll be happy to spend their money on her. You can recognize <strong>Kikuyus<\/strong> when they speak English because they <strong>pronounce the &#8220;L&#8221; and the &#8220;R&#8221; the same way<\/strong> (as Japanese do).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maasais have kept their traditions most faithfully<\/strong>, including their tribal attire. For instance, a friend explained that on one occasion she had a problem with her car on a road with not much traffic. Fortunately, a motorbike stopped to help: and there he is, a Massai man dressed in his traditional garb but with a leather jacket and a helmet.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_438\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-438\" style=\"width: 261px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/06\/20140617_0809571.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-438\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/06\/20140617_0809571-261x300.jpg\" alt=\"This ad could be targeted to the Kikuyus\" width=\"261\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/06\/20140617_0809571-261x300.jpg 261w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/06\/20140617_0809571-893x1024.jpg 893w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/06\/20140617_0809571-624x715.jpg 624w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/06\/20140617_0809571.jpg 1630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 261px) 100vw, 261px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-438\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This ad could be targeted to the Kikuyus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>These<strong> attributes have business implications.<\/strong> One is that you need to <strong>take them into account in advertising campaigns<\/strong>, as different arguments resonate with different ethnic groups. What other implications would you think of?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m back to Nairobi now. After my short visit to Accra, I went to Copenhagen to attend a number of activities related to the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/strategicmanagement.net\/\">Strategic Management Society<\/a> <\/strong>(SMS). We had the planning meeting for the <a href=\"http:\/\/madrid.strategicmanagement.net\/\">annual conference,<\/a> which will be held in <strong>Madrid, September 20-23<\/strong>, with the theme <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/madrid.strategicmanagement.net\/\">&#8220;Strategies in a world of networks.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>And there&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/madrid.strategicmanagement.net\/extensions\/toledo.php\"><strong>one-day conference extension<\/strong><\/a> on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/madrid.strategicmanagement.net\/extensions\/toledo.php\">&#8220;Strategic management in Africa&#8221;<\/a><\/strong> <strong>(Toledo, September 24).\u00a0<\/strong>Registration is open to non-SMS members. Christian is one of the organizers: thanks for putting it together, Christian! See you there if not earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a comment to an earlier post, Christian referred to how strongly Kenyans feel about tribal attributes. I think he has better insights about this than me but let me tell you about what I&#8217;ve heard, and maybe he and others will add some comments. Kenya&#8217;s ethnic diversity is high. The various tribes can be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100235,85385],"tags":[272,85369,13860,951,80748,100331,80768],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-differences-within-africa","category-doing-business-in-africa","tag-advertising","tag-africapitalism","tag-cultural-differences","tag-kenya","tag-life-style","tag-traditions","tag-tribal-differences","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","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=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}