Africa: The World’s Most Overlooked Management Laboratory

Walk into almost any MBA classroom and ask students to name globally significant companies.

The answers come quickly: Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Samsung, LVMH, Alibaba.

Most MBA students can explain Apple’s ecosystem strategy, debate Tesla’s competitive advantages, discuss Samsung’s diversification model, and analyze Alibaba’s platform business. Yet many graduate without ever studying a single African multinational.

Now ask a different question:

Name five African companies that have transformed industries, created new business models, or expanded successfully across borders.

The room often becomes noticeably quieter.

That silence is revealing.

Africa remains largely absent from the way business schools teach business.

Over the past several years, we have had the opportunity to engage with business schools, accreditation bodies, investors, corporations, policymakers, and educational leaders across multiple continents. One pattern has become impossible to ignore.

When people discuss North America, they talk about innovation. When they discuss Asia, they talk about growth. When they discuss Europe, they talk about competitiveness. And when they discuss Africa, they talk about development.

That distinction matters.

The language we use shapes the investments we make, and the investments we make shape the future we create. For decades, Africa has been viewed primarily through the lens of its challenges rather than its enterprises. We discuss poverty, infrastructure, governance, and sustainability. Far less attention is paid to a different question:

Who is helping build the next generation of African companies?

Every prosperous economy in modern history has benefited from public investment and strong institutions. But prosperity has ultimately been driven by competitive enterprises capable of creating jobs, generating innovation, and sustaining economic growth.

PROSPERITY FOLLOWS ENTERPRISE

History offers few examples of countries becoming wealthy because they mastered the art of receiving assistance. It offers countless examples of countries becoming wealthy because they built globally competitive companies.

South Korea’s rise was powered by firms such as Samsung and Hyundai. Singapore became a commercial and entrepreneurial hub. China’s transformation was built on industrial ambition and enterprise. Even Europe’s post-war recovery was ultimately measured not by the size of the Marshall Plan but by the strength of the businesses that emerged from it.

Prosperity follows enterprise. So do jobs, tax revenues, innovation, and resilience.

Yet when Africa is discussed in classrooms, boardrooms, and international forums, enterprise often remains a secondary conversation.

This is not an argument against development. Infrastructure, education, healthcare, and institutional capacity remain essential foundations for prosperity. The problem is not development itself. The problem is when development becomes the dominant lens through which an entire continent is viewed.

When that happens, enterprise becomes secondary.

Spend time across the continent and a different picture emerges.

Across Africa, entrepreneurs are building businesses in financial services, logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, renewable energy, education, and technology. The continent has already produced remarkable companies.

Dangote transformed cement manufacturing across West Africa. MTN built one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks across emerging markets. Safaricom pioneered mobile money innovations that reshaped financial inclusion globally. Ethiopian Airlines became one of the world’s most successful aviation growth stories. Companies such as Flutterwave and Onafriq are building the infrastructure that increasingly powers African commerce.

These are not development projects. They are enterprises creating jobs, capabilities, tax revenues, and competitive advantage.

The challenge is not entrepreneurial talent. It is visibility, access to capital, and the ecosystem that allows successful local firms to become regional champions and global competitors.

BUSINESS SCHOOLS ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM

Business schools frequently position themselves as engines of entrepreneurship and economic transformation. Yet when it comes to Africa, many have unconsciously adopted the same narrative as the broader development community.

We teach students how to help Africa.

We spend far less time teaching them how to invest in Africa, partner with African companies, scale African businesses, or learn from African entrepreneurs.

Consider the average MBA curriculum. Students spend years studying Silicon Valley, European luxury brands, Asian manufacturing giants, and global consulting firms. Yet many graduate having encountered few African companies in their coursework.

This absence matters.

Visibility creates legitimacy. Legitimacy attracts attention. Attention attracts capital. Capital fuels growth.

What business schools choose to teach influences what future leaders choose to value.

AFRICA: THE WORLD’S MOST OVERLOOKED MANAGEMENT LABORATORY

The argument for studying African companies is not simply that it would benefit Africa.

It would benefit everyone.

African firms routinely operate in environments characterized by institutional uncertainty, fragmented markets, infrastructure constraints, stakeholder complexity, and political volatility. For decades they have learned how to build resilience under conditions that many organizations elsewhere are only beginning to experience.

In an era increasingly defined by disruption, uncertainty, and fragmentation, African companies may represent one of the world’s most underappreciated management laboratories.

How do companies grow where institutions are evolving? How do leaders navigate competing stakeholder demands? How do businesses innovate under constraints? How do firms build trust where formal systems are incomplete?

These are not African questions. They are increasingly global questions.

As supply chains become more fragile, geopolitical tensions intensify, and stakeholder expectations multiply, many of the challenges African firms have long navigated are becoming common elsewhere.

Business schools that overlook African companies may be overlooking some of the most relevant management lessons of the twenty-first century.

If Africa requires a grand economic strategy, it is not simply a development strategy. It is an enterprise strategy: a deliberate effort to identify, support, finance, connect, and scale African businesses.

The objective should not merely be to reduce poverty; it should be to create prosperity.

Strong businesses create employment, build supply chains, generate tax revenues, and strengthen economic resilience. They create the foundations upon which sustainable development ultimately depends.

A DIFFERENT FUTURE

Business schools cannot build roads or negotiate trade agreements.

But they can shape narratives.

They decide which companies become case studies, which entrepreneurs are invited to speak, and which markets are viewed as opportunities.

Imagine if leading business schools committed to documenting and teaching thousands of African business stories over the next decade. Imagine if students graduated seeing Africa not simply as a development challenge but as one of the most important economic opportunities of the twenty-first century.

That shift alone could unlock enormous investment, talent, and entrepreneurial energy.

The most important question for business schools is not whether Africa can be developed.

It is whether Africa can produce the next generation of globally significant companies.

History suggests that nations prosper when they build enterprises capable of competing, innovating, and enduring.
Africa’s future will be shaped not only by the policies it adopts or the infrastructure it builds. It will be shaped by the companies it creates.

The challenge for business schools is simple:

Will they continue teaching Africa primarily as a development story?

Or will they help build the next generation of African champions?

And in doing so, might they discover one of the world’s most overlooked management laboratories?

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Lite Nartey is Affiliate Professor of Strategy at INSEAD and Academic Director of the INSEAD Africa Initiative. Benjamin Stevenin is the former Director of Business School Solutions and Partnerships at Times Higher Education.

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