News & Highlights

  • May 2023
  • EVENT

The Entrepreneurial Journey: Lessons from Keroche Breweries

On May 10, the Africa Research Center hosted Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell in Nairobi for an exclusive event on entrepreneurship, business model design, and new venture growth featuring lessons from Keroche Breweries. The session was inspired by Tabitha and Joseph Karanja's journey in the Kenyan alcoholic drinks industry, starting with their effort to provide low-income consumers with cheap and safe alternatives to informally brewed alcohol and culminating in Keroche's "big bet" entry into the Kenyan beer market. The event was co-hosted by the HBS Alumni Club of Kenya with nearly 70 alumni and community members attending the event.
  • May 2023
  • EVENT

The Confidence Journey: Strategies and Frameworks to Unlock Your Full Potential

This May, the Africa Research Center hosted two events in Nairobi, Kenya and Johannesburg, South Africa for Professor Archie L. Jones. Both events focused on exploring leadership capital and understanding how to develop the assets and skills that are integral to realizing company goals. The events were co-hosted by the HBS Alumni Clubs of Kenya and South Africa and were attended by over 60 HBS alumni and community members.
  • May 2023
  • MBA EXPERIENCE

Kenya FIELD Global Immersion

Between May 5th and May 18th this year, current first year MBA students travelled to Nairobi, Kenya for the first FIELD Global Immersions since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The FIELD Global Immersion (FGI) is a semester-long first-year (RC) MBA course that culminates in a one-week Immersion at the end of the semester. The course is a capstone of sorts, and it requires students to build on learnings from their first-year courses and apply them to real-world business problems. The students had several meetings with business leaders, corporates, and alumni in Nairobi, Kenya to understand how business is done there.
  • May 2023
  • Executive Education

Senior Executive Program — Africa

In early May, the Senior Executive Program — Africa held the first module of the 2023 cohort in Nairobi, Kenya. Senior African Executive MBA students congregated in Strathmore Business School in Nairobi for MBA classes in strategy, digital innovation, and leadership. They were taught by HBS professors Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Sunil Gupta, as well as faculty members from Gordon Institute of Business and Strathmore Business School. There were several networking events including dinners and mixers with HBS alumni, Kenyan executives and other Strathmore Business School Executive MBA students. One mixer included a presentation from the Equity Bank Group CEO, James Mwangi, highlighting some of the opportunities expected from the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement.

New Research on the Region

  • August 2023
  • Article
  • Economic History Review

What About the Race Between Technology and Education in the Global South? Comparing Skill-premiums in Colonial Africa and Asia

By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg

Historical research on the race between education and technology has focused on the West but barely touched upon ‘the rest’. A new occupational wage database for 50 African and Asian economies allows us to compare long-run patterns in skill premiums across the colonial and post-colonial eras (c. 1870–2010). Our data reveal three major patterns. First, skilled labour was considerably more expensive in colonial Africa and Asia than in pre-industrial Europe. Second, skill premiums were distinctly higher in Africa than in Asia. Third, in both regions, skill premiums fell dramatically over the course of the twentieth century, ultimately converging to levels long observed in the West. Our paper takes a first step to explain both the origins of the Africa–Asia gap and the drivers of global skill premium convergence, paying special attention to the colonial context that shaped demand, supply, and labour market institutions.

  • August 2023
  • Article
  • ILR Review

Surveying the Landscape of Labor Market Threat Perceptions from Migration: Evidence from Attitudes toward Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco

By: Matt Buehler, Kristin E. Fabbe and Eleni Kyrkopoulou

Morocco, once primarily known as a country of emigration and transit to Europe, has become a destination country for migrants, the majority of whom are from sub-Saharan Africa. Using an original nationally representative survey of 2,700 respondents, together with data from two census waves and one migrant regularization wave, the authors examine Moroccan citizens’ labor market threat perceptions from this new migrant group. Consistent with findings from studies conducted in developed countries, less educated, poorer respondents express higher labor market threat perceptions. The authors also find evidence, however, that city dwellers and employed female Moroccans are the most likely to report threat perceptions, even after controlling for greater “exposure” to migrants. The article contributes to literatures on migration exposure and how rural–urban dynamics shape labor market threat perceptions in a developing country.

  • June 2023
  • Teaching Material

Roche: ESG and Access to Healthcare

By: George Serafeim

In May 2022, Roche Group, one of the largest healthcare companies in the world, hosted its first ESG investor event focused exclusively on its efforts to impact access to healthcare. While Roche had recently set an ambitious goal to double the number of patients that had access to its innovative medicines and diagnostic solutions within ten years, it was not at all clear how the firm should structure its resource allocation criteria, performance evaluations, reporting and incentive systems to align efforts internally toward these goals. Group CFO and CIO Alan Hippe was presented with two options, none of which he was particularly enthusiastic about. One was to lower the hurdle rate for projects related to ESG issues, thus relaxing profit expectations. The alternative was to incorporate a set of minimum ESG requirements in all of Roche’s new project proposals. In this case, however, the risk was to reduce the focus on ESG from a strategic priority to a compliance exercise. In the presentation shared with investors at the ESG event, access to healthcare had been positioned as Roche’s greatest contribution to society. This type of public commitment required more than a compliance-level of effort. In September, Alan Hippe would sit down with the executive committee to chart a path for integrating ESG issues into Roche’s project selection and business planning. Hippe went on to define three objectives for ESG at Roche, “we need to align on targets, we need to get resource allocation right, and we need to report both internally and externally.”

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Johannesburg Staff

Pippa Tubman Armerding
Executive Director
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Tafadzwa Choruma
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Anna Ngarachu
Senior Researcher

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Kuria Kamau
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