With our or my lack of understanding and ignorance towards what is going on in many African areas we find it hard to believe there is a global need for business development and leadership techniques for these areas. Many people in the western world that do not already have business ties to African nations have no clue really what is going on there. I can genuinely say I am one of those people, I think of Africa and have all the images that are stereotypical to what we have been given through media outlets. I can say I know there is more to Africa than AIDS, Ebola and rich westerners on safari hunts, but don’t know what businesses and companies have large influences in the areas.
Upon reading and conducting some research I have found that it really depends on where you will be conducting business, Africa is divided up into several areas all with its own types of ethics, business sense and cultures. All this things play important parts in how to globally conduct business skills management there.
For example East Africa or the Horn of Africa is considered poor, not just poor as far as money but poor in every sense of the word. They have poor infrastructure, poor schools which leads to poor overall educational backgrounds, poor governments and seemingly the only one that are not poor are corrupt and do not look out for the masses there.
As the texts states there are large parts of Africa that are doing well, farming affectively, schooling children and essentially living normally. This is not what we hear about though; we consistently hear the problem areas and how it is affecting the U.S. or other western countries. If the areas that are striving could somehow find its way to the areas that are struggling, Africa could change for the future. This statement, I know, is vague and easier said than done but should be looked at as a viable way to allow the people in East Africa to police themselves instead of outside countries pushing their leadership onto them.
I sometime feel that “our way” is not always the best way. In this case the areas are so much different than what you or I can even understand. The global outlook on leadership traits and skills might not be the most effective in all areas. We will need to take a step back and see where things are working and use their own ideas to make better decisions in global interaction with such places
Moran, R. T., Harris, P. R., & Moran, S. V. (2011). Managing cultural differences: Global leadership strategies for cross-cultural business success (8th ed.). Oxford: Routledge.
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