Nume Ekeghe
The Association of African Business Schools (AABS) is to hold a meeting in Nigeria to seek ways on how to promote inclusive growth in African economies as well as identify ways of helping member-schools in attaining maximum performance.
A two-day international conference, which commenced monday targets not only academics, but also business people. The annual event with the theme: “Exponential Africa; including everyone in expanding economies,” seeks to explore what governments and organisations can do to manage the exponential growth, but at the same time make the growth inclusive.
Chairman, African Business Schools, Edward Mungai: “We are in Nigeria and everybody knows that Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa. So we chose to come with that theme: exponential growth, because that’s what you have. But part of what we are discussing is how that can be made inclusive so that everyone participates; so that we don’t have gap between different hierarchies in the economies.”
Mungai said that the association had identified partners both in Africa and outside who can support the mission of the association. These organisations, according to him would be presenting to member schools things that the schools can take advantage of; saying that they are associations that can increase the quality of the students.
Also, the Dean Lagos Business School, Mr. Enase Okonedo stated: “We are just looking at everyone in expanding economies. If you look at the fastest growing economies in the world, over the last 8-10 years, about four of African countries have been featuring. And it’s important that the growth in the economy is an inclusive growth.
“So we feel there’s a nexus between businesses and business schools, and so far we have not exploited the ways in which we can work together to ensure that there is relevance with what we offer in business schools and the universities; and that we are meeting the needs of industries. Of course that can only happen if there’s a conversation that is taking place between business people as well as academics.”
According to the LBS dean, conferences such as this need to foster this objective of the association to bring people together to talk about the needs of the industries; as well as look within the universities and business schools to prepare people better to meet the needs of the industries.
