The easiest way to part icipate in Africa’s exponential growth – in Africa, from Africa
- Francois Burger (pictured below) and Pieter Louw (opposite page), Deloitte Business Process Solutions
Too little too soon.
When it comes to execution of expansion strategies, the desperate shortage of skilled management resources in Africa’s developing economies makes most organisations too dependent on a few key people, most of them being expatriates. Thus, the war on talent is becoming increasingly fierce, triggering a high staff turnover in business-critical areas such as financial, procurement, human resources and technology management. Succession planning is almost unattainable, putting business continuity at risk.
Without the skills and experience required to design and implement them and without the information systems to subsequently monitor them, business processes are woefully immature. Reporting is irregular and infrequent, controls are random and often ad hoc, and governance is theoretical at best. Process workarounds are the norm.
F
oreign direct investment in Africa has increased strongly over the past decade, and capital inflows are forecast to reach US$ 150-billion by 2015. Inevitably, this improvement in investor perceptions is the basis for global business leaders to include Africa in their strategic plans. However, this rapid expansion and capital investment are placing an intolerable pressure on the people, processes and technology currently available to organisations intending to participate in Africa’s development.
76 Management Today | March 2012
Technology, which should be the means of catapulting Africa into the mainstream global economy, is very often limited by ageing legacy systems, the lack of infrastructure to support high speed, the lack of secure data exchange, inadequate system and network support and insufficient direction of technology strategy. Professional services are thin on the ground and highly fragmented, with limited integration across different functional service areas.
The answer already exists As is often the case, however, the challenges of Africa’s growth contain within them their own solution.
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