Prelims

Half Title Page

Responsible Management in Africa, Volume 1

Endorsement Page

If you ever thought that ‘Africa is a country’, this book on responsible management in Africa with chapters from the diverse regions of the continent will quickly erase that error. The book gives you two for one; an insightful history on the different peoples and how that history shaped their perspectives on managing responsibly. It is amazing how much indigenous wisdom is condensed in one proverb such as the basotho’s ‘give me, give me, makes one hungry’ and the hausawas’ ‘the grass which you disregard will injure your eye’. Responsible management styles which are effective in Europe may barely hit the mean in the African continent. An example is the local practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) discretion in Algeria and in many north African countries as against the standard western practice which may be regarded with scepticism by the peoples of that region. This book is a recommended read for anyone doing, teaching, or thinking of doing/teaching business in Africa.

Africa Ariño, Professor, Strategic Management Department, Holder of the Joaquim Molins Figueras Chair on Strategic Alliances, IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain

This book offers a colourful array of Africa’s rich history for responsible businesses and principled entrepreneurship, and shares evidence about traditional and informal responsible management systems that existed in the continent long before the adaptation of western management practices. The book draws on the diverse indigenous African ethnicities that could positively complement the current global responsible business management movements and in turn advance the African responsible management discourse. I am looking forward to using its many chapters in my classroom and integrating parts into my assigned course readings.

Sherwat Elwan Ibrahim, Associate Professor of Operations Management, and Director, EMBA and MBA Programs, School of Business, The American University in Cairo, Egypt

Title Page

Responsible Management in Africa, Volume 1

Traditions of Principled Entrepreneurship

EDITED BY

KEMI OGUNYEMI

Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria

OMOWUMI OGUNYEMI

Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria

AND

AMAKA ANOZIE

The Lagoon School, Nigeria

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Editorial matter and selection © 2022 Kemi Ogunyemi, Omowumi Ogunyemi and Amaka Anozie.

Individual chapters © 2022 The authors. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80262-438-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-437-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-439-7 (Epub)

Dedication Page

to Chinonso Anozie and Omotara Ogunyemi

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Figures

Tables

About the Contributors

Fonteh Amungwa is a Lecturer and the Chief Technical Adviser at Grassfield Project, Bamenda at the University of Buea, Cameroon.

Amaka Anozie holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Theology (summa cum laude) from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Italy. She works at The Lagoon School, Lagos, while leading and facilitating sessions in youth leadership programmes for tertiary institutions across the country.

Ruqayyah Baderinwa Ruqayyah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and a Master’s in Sociology from the University of Lagos. To further her research skill, in 2019, she completed a course in Social Science Research at the Harvard Extension School. She currently works as a research assistant at the Christopher Kolade Centre of Research in Leadership, Lagos Business School. Previously, she lectured undergraduate students at the University of Lagos where she taught cultural studies. Her academic interests lie along the lines of responsible leadership, human flourishing, identity and belonging.

Jotham Byarugaba Mbiito (PhD) is a Lecturer at the University of Makarere University Business School. His interests are in marketing research, service quality perceptions with emphasis in the Uganda mobile telephone industry.

Esther Chachu is a development enthusiast and social entrepreneur (at heart), skilled in robust negotiations, strategic decision-making and stakeholder management. She is the Programme Coordinator at Leading Ladies Network, a non-profit organisation which supports women and girls through leadership and education and mentoring. She holds a BSc Business Administration degree from Ashesi University and has previously served in various roles for the United Nations Development Programme (Ghana) and the Association of Ghana’s Elders (Ghana). She loves volunteering to work on causes related to childhood development and women empowerment. She also enjoys dancing, singing off-key and fashion illustration.

Robert Frank Kyagaba is a PhD student at Makerere University studying Human Resources Management Visibility. His research interests are in HR, role clarity, social identity and career identity. He holds a Master’s in Management Studies (Human Resources Management) from Uganda Management Institute. He studied Education specialising in English Language and Literature in English at under-graduate at Makerere University School of Education. He is a Lecturer in Human Resources Management, Management, Project and Organisational Behaviour at Ndejje University. He heads the Quality Assurance Unit for the Faculty of Business and Management at Ndejje University where he has taught for over 12 years.

Dr Samuel Mafabi (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Makerere University Business School. His research interests include positive psychology and knowledge management.

Khali Mofuoa, PhD, is a Research Associate at the Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria. He has a PhD in Professional and Applied Ethics from Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is an experienced Ethics Practitioner and governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) Professional with a great passion for ethics. He previously worked for Vodacom Group and most recently, Road Accident Fund as a Head of Ethics Office responsible for ethics management. He is a Seasoned Corporate Ethics Training Facilitator for more than 15 years. He is a certified Ethics Officer and an Associate of the Ethics Institute. He is a member of South African Institute of Chartered Accountants Ethics Committee. His life motto is ‘Cur non ego – why not I’.

Kigozi J. C. Munene, PhD with an Industrial Psychology background, is the PhD Programme Director in Makerere University Business School, a role he has occupied for the last 15 years. He plays an active role in practice and action research based on his consultancy work most of which is focussed on the Uganda and East African Public Services. With an institutional development focus, he has been able to intervene and publish in different sub-sectors such as Primary Health Care, Universal Primary Education, Capacity Development and Poverty.

Kemi Ogunyemi is an Associate Professor who holds a degree in Law from the University of Ibadan, an LLM from the University of Strathclyde and MBA and PhD degrees from Pan-Atlantic University. She currently teaches Business Ethics, Managerial Anthropology, Self-Leadership and Sustainability Management at the Lagos Business School. She is also the Director of the Christopher Kolade Centre for Research in Leadership and Ethics as well as the Academic Director for the School’s Senior Management Programme. Her consulting and research interests include personal ethos, work–life ethic, social responsibility, sustainability, governance and anti-corruption risk assessment. She has authored and edited numerous publications including Responsible Management – Understanding Human Nature, Ethics, and Sustainability, Teaching Ethics across the Management Curriculum and African Virtue Ethics Traditions for Business and Management.

Omowumi Ogunyemi obtained her first degree in medicine and surgery. She worked as a Medical Practitioner in Nigerian hospitals before her post-graduate studies in Philosophy. She holds a licentiate degree (Master’s) and a Doctorate in Philosophy (Anthropology and Ethics). She currently teaches Philosophical Anthropology, General Ethics, Life Skills and Other Courses in the Humanities. Her research interests include interdisciplinary studies between philosophy and practical sciences; virtue theories (including indigenous African virtues) and their implications for professional life and human flourishing; the temporal experience of humans and narrative self-understanding; and self-development, self-leadership and character building over time.

Elizabeth Olofin creates and executes Strategy, Learning, and Development Solutions. She is Yoruba and was born in Lagos to Mr Augustus Adesanya and Mrs Christiana Mosunmola Coker, both from Abeokuta, Ogun State. She has worked for over 15 years in management positions in business as well as not-for-profit organisations. She is a member of the Rotary Club of Lagos. She has mentored entrepreneurs and is a member of the Humanistic Management Network and National Steering Committee of the Global Environment Facility-Small Grants Programme, Nigeria, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme. She holds a BSc degree (Zoology), and a Master’s in Educational Management, is an alumna of Lagos Business School. She participated in the US Government-sponsored International Visitor Leadership Programme and LEAD Africa Fellowship Programme in Leadership for Sustainable Development.

Robert Dumisani Zondo (DCom) is a male and born in the rural area of Port Shepstone (i.e., Mehlomnyama), South Africa, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. He has worked in a number of entities (i.e., from the government, State-Owned Enterprises and the Private sector). In his role at the middle management level (e.g., at SEDA KZN and SARS KZN Regional Offices), he had to report to the top Regional Managers for the KZN province of the respective organisations. He is a Senior Lecturer, who has published in national and international journals and has presented in conferences around the world. Over and above teaching, learning and assessment, he is the Head of the Department for the Entrepreneurial Studies and Management at the Durban University of Technology.

Promise Zvavahera is the Deputy Registrar-Human Resources and Administration at Africa University, Zimbabwe. He holds a PhD in Human Capital Management from the National University of Science Technology, Zimbabwe. His research interests are in leadership in higher education, talent acquisition and management, branding, corporate governance and online learning initiatives.

Foreword

Responsible Management in Africa

The anthropological record will show that Africans have long lived in harmony with nature and have sought to ensure the survival of all species, through various practices. Religious, medical, cultural and social engagements often connected effective human existence to environmental sustainability. In many places across the continent, nature was believed to represent the Creator and was therefore revered. Indigenous knowledge about the cosmos, nature and even military sciences have been found to have been far advanced in historical Africa. Yet, discourses on responsible business tend to ignore the African experience. Advancements in these and other areas of African existence were rudely interrupted by colonial imposition. The African philosophies that supported the responsible human–nature balance was distorted by colonialism but have struggled to survive to this day. Responsible Management in Africa, therefore, has managed to outlive the colonial assault.

For purposes of rendering the African inferior, the colonial project and its discourses painted a distorted picture of knowledge in Africa: a continent where no form of knowledge existed before the colonial order was imposed; a continent where people are so preoccupied with survival instincts that there is no time and effort, or even the ability, to think of anything else; a continent that remains totally dependent on Western ideologies to shape her own histories in Africa. Using various instruments of colonial rule, a caricature of Africa was created. That seems now to represent the worst in human existence – war, famine, disease, primitivism and savagery. Sadly, there exists a latent process that continues to entrench such beliefs around Africa and African inferiority.

In this book, indigenous African knowledges and histories are being reconsidered to represent the truth about Africa. The collection of chapters in the volume speaks to Responsible Management in Africa towards demonstrating the strength of African-grounded discourses in enhancing responsible management knowledge in the global sphere. Covering a broad spectrum of areas from history, philosophy, sociology through several other disciplines, the volume presents a vibrant outline of African indigenous knowledge to suggest the active role that Africa has played – and continues to play – in responsible management. Together, these chapters share only a small bit of the wealth of African knowledge with the rest of the world, not the mention that such knowledge sharing interrupts the flow of negative information about Africa and Africans.

‘Africa is various’, as the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has suggested. The continent is large enough that it will be easy to fit China, Europe, India, Japan and the United States of America together into it. The 54 countries that make up the continent do not have the same political, cultural and economic systems. Recognising this diversity, the collection of chapters in the volume attempts to capture both the geographies and knowledges of the entire continent – North, South, East, West and Central. About 77% of the continent’s population of over one billion people are under the age of 35. That is, the continent’s peoples are very young, with an ever enlightened sense of African identity; yet there is no singular or collective African identity. The growing interest among the youth in African histories, clothing, languages and other markers of identity underlies the need for more research to overthrow the dominant African discourses that are often in reference to Western imagination.

This volume, Responsible Management in Africa, is one avenue for such an effort. While offering a critical perspective in entrenching the value of Africa indigenous knowledge into the global discourse, the chapters in this volume, as a collective, take a reconciliatory approach to establishing an objective record. The approach is in sharp contrast to the colonial approach of imposition. The chapters are presented in a manner that one can appreciate the facts and arguments towards reasonable conclusions – hopefully in line with the authors’ views. This does not mean a singular understanding and interpretation of the chapters. After all, ‘the author is dead’, as Roland Barthes would argue. However, the chapters contribute to a story, regardless of the diversity of possible interpretations. Though not written as a conscious rebuttal to the colonial discourse, the chapters in this volume come together to remedy the idea that African indigenous knowledge is inferior and of no value to the rest of the world. They speak of history, science, business, culture, power and poverty that reside in African imaginations of past and present, pointing to the idea that Africa is knowledge itself.

Imagine Africa as a recognised part of the global research agenda on Responsible Management. Impact!

This is only the beginning as you join this journey of rediscovering African through indigenous methods and practices that inform Responsible Management in Africa for the world. Welcome to Africa!

Samuel K. Bonsu

Professor of Marketing and Responsible Business

Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA)

Accra, Ghana

November 30, 2021

Acknowledgements

The notion of responsible management in Africa is one that is very much in need of elaboration and exploration. This project which contributes to the dialogue on the discovery of indigenous wisdom and how they connect to western concepts of responsible management was made possible through the efforts of many people. We thank all those who contributed to making it a reality.

Gratitude is due to each chapter contributor, author and coauthors, for providing a wealth of information gotten through their research. The authors often had to interview people from across the continent and we are grateful for their willingness to assist in making the project a robust exploration of the topics. We wish to thank Dr Imelda Wallace for her support and willingness to review chapters and her helpful comments for improving the drafts. We thank Dr Mohamed Eid, the Director of the Internationalisation Office, The British University in Egypt, for his invaluable contribution to the chapter on Egypt and for his readiness to respond to questions from the authors and editors.

We wish to thank the publishers for their readiness to support the project through its different phases and for their availability to clarify whatever doubts arose.

Finally, our appreciation goes to all our families and friends, especially to everyone who spared some time to participate in the voting process on the book cover choice. Without your support and understanding, it would have been difficult for us to work.