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The purpose of this chapter is to identify African financial management practices, highlight their origin and explain how they differ from their Western counterparts. The study identified indigenous African financial practices using literature review, archival sources and library research covering the five areas of Africa comprising Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa Western Africa and Southern Africa. The study found out that pre-colonial indigenous African financial management features prevalent use of trade finance, trade credit management, investment management and accounting. While there is also evidence of modification of Western financial management practices to suit African contexts, it is on the whole scarce. This is suggestive of the fact that they were in existence in the first instance. The clear conclusion is that many indigenous African financial management practices pre-dated and foreshadowed their Western counterparts. Yet, it is confounding that this has been largely lost sight of, and both scholars and financial management practitioners depict the former as inferior. There is clearly a need to remedy this situation. Educators need to focus on incorporating ethno-finance concepts into the entire curricula chain from basic to higher education. The anchor point for such curricula is Ubuntu philosophy. Financial management practitioners, on their part, need to shed notions that the indigenous practices are inferior and seek to journalise their day-to-day work experiences to build a body of documented practice.

In particular, it is worth mentoring new and more efficient solutions that can meet the increasingly specific needs of each company, especially in food management. A business intelligence (BI) solution can help your food company better understand and manage business processes more effectively. Management information is essential for all levels of an organisation to make quick and correct decisions. However, what exactly is BI, and what can it mean for a food company?

The PRISMA stands for (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and content analysis strategy used the SLR (systematic literature review) methodology to examine 151 papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals and industry reports between 2016 and 2023.

The findings show that artificial intelligence and digitalisation are linked to the UN 2030 Agenda. BI management ranks first (66%), followed by crop and land mapping systems (40%), agricultural machinery monitoring tools (39%) and decision support systems (31%). The road to digital transformation remains extended, with the main impediments being more compatibility between enterprise systems and a shortage of expertise.

The section relating to methodological perspective adopts the PRISMA methodology for systematic review. Interoperability is easily managed by assigning qualified teams to projects. The added value of a consulting firm with extensive project management experience in the food industry is closely related to the results achieved.

BI: What exactly is it, and why a data-driven culture is essential in the food and beverage industry?