Strategies That Go the Distance in Africa

What do you need to know to expand your operations across the African continent? Quantitative data and statistical analyses are meaningless unless they go hand-in-hand with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the non-traditional factors that make growing a business there possible. This article shares the collective wisdom of African business leaders on the do's and don'ts of internationalizing in Africa, based on first-person interviews the author conducted during a research sabbatical there. Managers agree that a hands-on approach to get at the soft variables yields far richer clues to make informed strategic decisions than relying on the hard numbers alone. Above all, any business strategy in Africa must have socioeconomic transformation at its core.