• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Nigerian MBAs take on continent-wide problems at African Business Conference

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Young Nigerians students learning about what a business is, how it works and where it thrives best and what talent mix is needed to sustain enterprises have taken on the challenge of coming up with strategies to boost intra-African trade.

Intercontinental trade accounts for a large percentage of continental trade figures but the percentage of intra-continental trade is still high in most continents except Africa (Europe – 69percent, Asia – 59percent, North America – 31%, Africa – 17 percent). By comparison, it is obvious that the level of intra-African exports to its total exports is lower than its foreign counterparts. This is the gap students in Master of Business, Administration (MBA) at the Lagos Business School decided to tackle at 2019 edition of their African Business Conference (ABC).

With the theme ‘African Solutions for African Problems – An Intra-African Trade Perspective’ the Conference targets business leaders, financiers and policymakers across Africa and the world as well as investors seeking to do business in Africa with the aim of generating insights and gaining mindshare on current trends in Africa that would have positive effects on business in Africa and propel the continent to the fore-front of advanced economies in the world.

“We plan to design and formulate strategies for different sectors of Nigeria’s economy represented at this conference and send them out to participants. We will be open for feedbacks and the possibility of consultancy services as the Lagos Business School trains us to use our skills for profit but we are also taught to make an impact,” Oluwaseun Egbeola, president ABC 2019 and an MBA student at LBS said.

This initiative is remarkable because global full-time MBAs hardly have any engagement and impact on the city in which they live and study for up to two years. If local authorities knew they were there, they could use these students to help solve social problems. City governments could tap networks and tackle myriad problems by implementing some of the methods used by innovative companies.

“While there are obvious benefits for a city that discovers and capitalises on a highly-skilled MBA talent pool, the benefits for MBA students are also clear. Through collaborating across disciplines to solve social challenges at a local level, students can develop the entrepreneurial skills they will need to become infinite learners throughout their careers,” Ivan Bofarull, director of global insights and strategic initiatives at Spain’s Esade said in Financial Times opinion article.

In this light, MBAs at the LBS have decided to solve the problems that might hinder Nigeria and Nigerian businesses from taking advantage of the opportunities that the African Continental Trade Agreement (AfCTA) will open up. The Agreement integrates a 1.2 billion people strong market. This is to ensure that enterprises in Nigeria start having conversations around how to be position themselves.

“The area covered by the trade agreement is one of the worlds largest. The biggest problems remain infrastructure, logistics and the need to liberalise and deregulate in order to free up the movement of people, goods, and services seamlessly across the continent. Africans need to solve Africa’s problem,” Enase Okonedo, Dean of the Lagos Business School said.

Seventy percent of the expenditure businesses incur occurs in solving infrastructure-related operational problems, they have to generate their own electricity, provide water and fix roads. Food inflation sped-up to an 11 month high in the month of October largely due to the border closure, which stopped the free flow of people, goods, and services.  Government officials know this. “We think businesses need to be better prepared and the best way to achieve this is by bringing industry experts and leaders together in at ABC,” Egbeola said.

Beyond AfCTA, Nigeria now faces an upward hill task of making it beneficial for her citizens and businesses. Policy initiatives are needed to enhance industrial capacity – power availability, port efficiency, access to trade information and access to finance especially for the micro small and medium enterprises (MSME).

“It is fitting therefore that the Presidential Impact and Readiness Assessment Committee of AfCTA came up AfCTA readiness intervention that is focused on addressing these limitations,” Tope Fasoranti, executive director at Zenith Bank Plc said.