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There is no doubt that there is a need for new traditions, that is, wisdoms for enhanced responsible business in Africa. As one of the oldest world economies, Africa has a rich history of responsible indigenous business traditions that have sustained and supported her people’s principled business entrepreneurship over the centuries. However, there is little knowledge about these African responsible indigenous business traditions in the international literature. Currently, internationally familiar Western responsible business traditions dominate global responsible management knowledge and practice. The chapter explores responsible indigenous business traditions amongst the Sesotho-speaking people of Southern Africa called Basotho, bringing to light an aspect of responsible indigenous business management knowledge and practice from Southern Africa. These Basotho’s responsible indigenous business traditions embedded in Mokorotlo business model are Seahlolo, that is, communal, or mutual aid sharing, Letsema, that is, communal work party, Tsimo-ea-lira, that is, the field of enemies, Moelela, that is, food paid for work at threshing time, and Mafisa, that is, communal livestock loaning. The chapter concludes by suggesting that these Mokorotlo business traditions are prima facie attractive to be taken seriously in the global responsible management knowledge and practice.

From the 1960s onwards, students and members of the academic community on growing numbers of college and university campuses in the United States chose to confront the issue of apartheid by advocating divestment from corporations or financial institutions with any sort of presence in or relationship with South Africa. Student divestment advocates faced serious opposition from university administrators as well as opponents of institutional divestiture both at home and abroad. Despite these challenges, the academic community in the United States was one of the first arenas where anti-apartheid activism coalesced. This chapter examines the campaigns of students and educators who participated in the debate over divestment – to engage with the South African government and apartheid through dialogue and communication or to disengage completely from the country through withdrawal of financial investments. The anti-apartheid efforts of the academic community at Michigan State University, one of the first large research universities in the United States to confront the issue of apartheid and divestment at the university level and beyond, serves as a window to view academic activism against apartheid. The Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC), a consortium of students, faculty, and community members dedicated to aiding the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, led the efforts at Michigan State and collaborated with allies across Michigan and the United States. SALC focused most of its efforts on South Africa, though the organization also confronted the issue of South Africa's controversial occupation of South West Africa and the ongoing civil war in Angola.

Purpose – The paper attempts to locate the debate on corporate governance in a social and cultural context.

Methodology – It draws on the traditional African philosophy of ubuntu and articulates how this might affect corporate governance frameworks. The paper utilises multiple methods that include interviews, a review of documents, and case studies. It analyses incidents from across Southern Africa that demonstrate how notions of ubuntu influence corporate practices.

Findings – The incidents in selected organisations reveal how multinational corporations are involved in the delivery of social welfare programmes to their employees and local communities. Such practices underscore the differences in perceptions about corporate social responsibility in the West and Southern Africa.

Practical implications – It highlights the implications of these practices for multinational corporations and auditors who do business in Southern Africa.

Originality – The paper argues that ubuntu informs corporate practices and influences perceptions on what constitutes ‘good’ corporate governance and ethics in Southern Africa. Finally, it proposes an alternative corporate governance framework informed by ubuntu, communitarianism, and stakeholder theories. Arguably, such a corporate governance framework will take into account the social and historical context of Southern Africa.

Research limitations – The proposed corporate governance framework might suit only those communities who subscribe to ubuntu values and communitarianism.

This chapter examines US Africa Policy under Obama with a particular focus on the Southern African region. The author examines American policy from a historical perspective to give credence to his view that while certain changes have occurred in American global and Africa Policy in particular, it is the issues that have changed, and the drivers of that policy change but the fundamental basis of the American policy has not changed much. American policy has remained anchored on global hegemony driven by the increasingly frayed Washington consensus as expressed initially in its Cold War rhetoric and stance against the former USSR and its perceived allies and now against terrorism.

This work examines the existing literature on Southern African history and politics written by scholars and observers including regional heads of state like Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. This study also draws from the author’s knowledge and experiences as a citizen and observer over the years of the many facets of vicissitudes of regional politics and is interface with international foreign policy pressures and interests. This work thus, draws from the literature on and about regional politics and international relations over the years coupled by the author’s personal experiences.

This chapter makes clear link between Cold War politics and current American foreign policy on African and the Southern African region in particular. In fact the US anti-terrorism rhetoric has remained consistent during and after the Cold War. During the Cold War, liberation movements in Southern Africa fighting to end colonial rule and racist apartheid regime were declared terrorist movements and hence the subject of US hostility especially given these movements’ support for arms and materials from the USSR and China. USSR was manufactured as the organizer of international terrorism. Proxy wars were waged to deal with these movements and their supporters such as the war in Angola where the United States supported dubious and questionable characters like Jonas Savimbi of the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA) and Holden Robert of the Front for the National Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and Zairian dictator, Mobutu SeseSeko. While FNLA was widely accepted as a CIA outfit, Mobutu was imposed by US intelligence support (CIA) against a popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, who was assassinated shortly after independence.

At the end of the Cold War a new form of terrorism manifested itself in the form of Muslim Jihadists who on the continent were seen to emerge in East Africa and the Horn of Africa and the American fascination has been to ensure that this terrorism does not afflict the rest of the continent and the Southern African region in particular. Support to African governments has shifted from the initial years of confused neglect complimented with ambivalent engagement and finally, to humanitarianism. This has taken the form of the support to Africa to fight HIV and AIDS so as to harvest a favourable ground among African governments. This was seen as helping to ensconce American support in the region and weaken the ground for the Al Qaeda intrusion, real or imagined. It was also hoped that this might help counter growing Chinese influence. It is not entirely surprising too that the economic and strategic focus has been to sustain a declining hegemonic position especially in a region where Chinese investments and influence have outstripped American and Western influence.

This article explores the ways in which hegemony and power impact on the emergence, development and conflict management function of regional organizations. It compares the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), both of which include a strong regional power. These powers have contrasting postures: South Africa is a keen regionalist, a reluctant hegemon and a pacific power, whereas India is a keen hegemon, a reluctant regionalist and a militarist power. The presence of the hegemon has stimulated regionalism in Southern Africa but retarded regionalism in South Asia. Despite these differences, SADC and SAARC have similarly failed to manage regional conflict effectively. This has been due in large measure to the conflictual relationship between the hegemon and another powerful state in each region, Zimbabwe in the case of South Africa, and Pakistan in the case of India. Some of these dynamics are well explained by neorealist theory, but other dynamics are best explained by constructivist and liberal positions. This supports the argument by Katzenstein and Okawara (2001–2002) that in the field of international relations an eclectic analytical approach is required to comprehend complex processes that combine material, ideational, international, domestic, contemporary and historical factors.

The learning outcomes focus on enabling students to view operational model changes critically, as they pertain to:

■ evaluating different management styles and uses of the ADKAR change management model in decision-making moments in times of crisis (such as COVID-19) in non-profit organisations (NPOs);

■ evaluating different ways in which NPOs pivot to sustainability, including the use of social enterprise models and change management;

■ anticipating and managing change in institutional formations through new technologies;

■ articulating trade-offs between grant and non-grant resource mobilisation for African philanthropy; and

■ application of change management theory to organisations’ sustainability journeys.

In May 2020, working from her home office just over one month into a nationwide lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Masego Madzwamuse, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Southern Africa Trust (the Trust), knew that it could once again be at a crossroads. In 2015, the Trust had found itself in a quandary when its primary donor gave notification of its intention to withdraw its funding. The Trust had responded by making changes to its structure and strategy. Now, with uncertainty rife throughout South Africa, the CEO knew that she had to consider whether the changes that had been implemented over the past five years had prepared the Trust not only to respond to, but also to survive the pandemic and continue its vital work long into the future.

Postgraduate Diploma in Management, MBA, Masters in Management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The impact of apartheid, destabilization, and warfare in southern Africa has especially taken a severe and unimaginable toll on the future and life chances of children in the region. Prior to 1990 when a series of significant events changed the social and economic landscape of the sub-continent, a number of disturbing profiles and trends pointed to a desolate situation for children and women by most child welfare, household, poverty, education, and health indicators. As a result of massive underdevelopment compounded by war and economic destabilization for decades, only aggravated by colonialism and post-colonial policies, the health and welfare of children in southern Africa had reached tragic proportions.

Capital market development has been identified as one of the critical underpinnings of economic growth, in the developed but more essentially in the developing economies. Evidence abounds on the virtues of adequately spanned capital markets to provide requisite capital needed to fund investment activities as well as infrastructural developments. Although, foreign capital may be sourced to supplement inadequate local capital base, the associated costs (both logistics and supervisory) are generally daring to consider as convenient alternatives. Various studies have examined the role of local financial market development on economic growth, but none have strictly generated a combined focus on the three major African groupings – the Southern, the Western and the Northern African regions. In addition, there is no documented study that has compared the economic performance of each of these three major economic groupings in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to fill these voids.

Various econometric techniques that include descriptive statistics, unit root tests, dynamic panel estimations and Granger causality tests.

Using data generated from the African development indicators between 1980 and 2012 in contemporary econometric estimations, this study finds that local financial markets play crucial roles in economic development of each of these groupings, albeit in varying magnitude. The study also observes that local financial market plays very little role in the overall economic development of the three groupings when interacted.

A limited dataset, which reduces the time span as well as the number of countries covered in the study. A wider coverage may have altered the result generated, especially for the pooled estimation.

That African countries should develop local financial markets in order to improve their level of economic growth.

Low rate of economic development has created a lot of social stress in Africa. Further, the fact that African leaders have largely not been able to grow their national economies in a meaningful and sustainable manner further unnerves skittish entrepreneurial underdevelopment on the continent, thereby exacerbates incidence and prevalence of poverty, and consequent social uprisings on a number of occasions.

This study finds that financial market plays an important role on economic growth, whereas the effects are lower in the Southern African region. More specifically, the effects of financial market development on economic growth are stronger in North and West Africa than in Southern African regions. Given that Southern Africa financial market is more developed than the other two regions, this finding buttresses the fact that financial market development is significantly more important as a growth-driver in less developed financial markets than in developed ones.