Business Environment in Sub-Saharan Africa


Book Description

In today’s global environment, making strategic business choices is key to successful decision-making. This book is intended to assist any multinational companies or executives to swiftly understand the business environment in the sub-Saharan African region and avoid common mistakes. It will also assist investors who are dreaming to familiarize themselves with the region’s business environment to know what is required to make a success of venturing in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, this book will also inspire the African entrepreneurs to be gifted players on the global marketplace. This unique text provides an occasion for an excellent strategic approach to its users to explore the economic, ethical, and moral practices and the political, legal, technological, and regulatory issues of the sub-Saharan African countries to better handle the challenges and opportunities managers will face while making their operational decisions. In addition to the topics aforementioned, issues such as economic development, exports/imports, natural resource inventory, the monetary system in different sub-Saharan African countries, and trade and foreign direct investment themes will also be addressed. Understanding the African approach to business and being mindful of the business culture will lead to great success while conducting business on the African continent.




The Blue Economy in Sub-Saharan Africa


Book Description

The blue economy, comprising coastal and marine resources, offers vast benefits for sub-Saharan Africa: of the 53 countries and territories in the region, 32 are coastal states; there are 13 million sq km of maritime zones; more than 90% of the region’s exports and imports come by sea; and the African Union hails the blue economy as the ‘new frontier of African renaissance’. Despite their importance, the region’s coastal and marine resources have been neither fully appreciated nor fully utilized. They are only now being recognized as being key to Africa’s potential prosperity. As the region grows, it has, in general, not taken adequate safeguards to protect these valuable resources. That is partly because some of the problems (pollution, for example) are regional and know no borders. All too often, short-term gains are made at the expense of the long term (overfishing, for example). This book provides, for the first time, a study of the constraints and opportunities the blue economy offers for sub-Saharan Africa. It includes an introduction and overview; sectoral analyses (including tourism, fisheries, mineral resources, culture, shipping and maritime safety); country case studies; and analyses of regional and international efforts towards better coastal zone and marine management.




Enterprising Women


Book Description

This book brings together new household and enterprise data from 41 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to inform policy makers and practitioners on ways to expand women entrepreneurs’ economic opportunities. Sub-Saharan Africa boasts the highest share of women entrepreneurs, but they are disproportionately concentrated among the self-employed rather than employers. Relative to men, women are pursuing lower opportunity activities, with their enterprises more likely to be smaller, informal, and in low value-added lines of business. The challenge in expanding opportunities is not helping more women become entrepreneurs but enabling them to shift to higher return activities. A central question addressed in the book is what explains the gender sorting in the types of enterprises that women and men run? The analysis shows that many Sub-Saharan countries present a challenging environment for women. Four key areas of the agenda for expanding women’s economic opportunities in Africa are analyzed: strengthening women’s property rights and their ability to control assets; improving women’s access to finance; building human capital in business skills and networks; and strengthening women’s voices in business environment reform. These areas are important both because they have wide gender gaps and because they help explain gender differences in entrepreneurial activities. It is particularly striking that while gender gaps in education tend to close with higher incomes, gaps in women’s property rights and in women’s participation in reform processes do not. As simply raising a country’s income is unlikely to be sufficient to give women equal ability to control assets or have greater voice, more proactive steps will be needed. Practical guidelines to move the agenda forward are discussed for each of these key areas.




Business Environment in Sub-Saharan Africa


Book Description

In today's global environment, making strategic business choices is key to successful decision-making. This book is intended to assist any multinational companies or executives to swiftly understand the business environment in the sub-Saharan African region and avoid common mistakes. It will also assist investors who are dreaming to familiarize themselves with the region's business environment to know what is required to make a success of venturing in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, this book will also inspire the African entrepreneurs to be gifted players on the global marketplace. This unique text provides an occasion for an excellent strategic approach to its users to explore the economic, ethical, and moral practices and the political, legal, technological, and regulatory issues of the sub-Saharan African countries to better handle the challenges and opportunities managers will face while making their operational decisions. In addition to the topics aforementioned, issues such as economic development, exports/imports, natural resource inventory, the monetary system in different sub-Saharan African countries, and trade and foreign direct investment themes will also be addressed. Understanding the African approach to business and being mindful of the business culture will lead to great success while conducting business on the African continent.




Africa's Private Sector


Book Description

Why is the private sector yet to take off in much sub-Saharan Africa? Drawing on a unique set of enterprise surveys, Vijaya Ramachandran and her co-authors identify the biggest obstacles: inadequate infrastructure (especially unreliable electricity and crumbing roads) and burdensome regulation. They then show how ethnic minorities dominate the private sector in many countries, inhibiting competition and demands for a better business environment, and thus impeding the emergence of an entrepreneurial middle class. Based on this careful diagnosis, the authors suggest investing in infrastructure and reforming regulation to lower the cost of doing business, and increasing the access to education of a broader-based business class that crosses ethnic divides. Book jacket.




The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation


Book Description

In the face of limited progress toward meeting Millennium Development Goals or addressing climate change and resource degradation, increasing attention turns to harnessing the entrepreneurial, innovative, managerial and financial capacities of business for improved social and environmental outcomes. A more proactive role for business in sustainable development is especially pertinent in sub-Saharan Africa, which has been plagued by conflict and poverty but shows signs of a brighter future as the world’s second-fastest-growing region. The book considers how the socio-economic context influences the objectives of social innovation and even our definition of what we mean by social innovation. Secondly, the book aims to show how social innovation initiatives emerge and fare in context of the limited ability of many African countries to provide public goods and services.




Sub-Saharan Africa


Book Description

3. Investing in people.




The Changing Dynamics of International Business in Africa


Book Description

The research papers and cases in The Changing Dynamics of International Business in Africa provide multi-disciplinary insights on the opportunities and challenges of doing business in Africa, as well as on the changing competitive dynamics in the region, as Western, BRIC and African multinationals intensify their fight for market dominance.




Which Way to Livable and Productive Cities?


Book Description

For African cities to grow economically as they have grown in size, they must create productive environments to attract investments, increase economic efficiency, and create livable environments that prevent urban costs from rising with increased population densification. What are the central obstacles that prevent African cities and towns from becoming sustainable engines of economic growth and prosperity? Among the most critical factors that limit the growth and livability of urban areas are land markets, investments in public infrastructure and assets, and the institutions to enable both. To unleash the potential of African cities and towns for delivering services and employment in a livable and environmentally friendly environment, a sequenced approach is needed to reform institutions and policies and to target infrastructure investments. This book lays out three foundations that need fixing to guide cities and towns throughout Sub-Saharan Africa on their way to productivity and livability.




Reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Case of Cameroon


Book Description

Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: A, University of Buea, course: LLM International Law, language: English, abstract: This work has engaged in refining current understandings of the possibilities for attaining environmental conservation objectives amidst the incessant struggle for economic advancement in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It has examined the inability of the region to properly assimilate sustainable developmental tenets as reflected in the weaknesses of the several legislations that exist. The analysis was done through the concept of the respect for the Rule of Law and considered all relevant factors in terms of structural and administrative changes as well as reflected needs of the region, using Cameroon as a case study. Through the doctrinal research approach, it demonstrated in theory, the correlation between environmental protection and economic development. Looking at the legal, policy and institutional frameworks for environmental protection within SSA and Cameroon, it has examined the effect of the several legislations on business and trade, and therefore the overall upshot on economic development. The work has consequently scrutinized the possibility of reconciling environment and economic needs through green growth and a green economy. Amidst these difficulties associated with the concept of sustainable development, the question was therefore contemplated whether the pressing international calls for the restriction of the use of Africa’s resources could be tantamount to a disguised neo-colonialist move by former imperialist nations to retard the region’s advancement. The findings of the work therefore revealed outweighing difficulties associated with presently attaining green growth within the region and how its efforts continually stifle economic growth and development. The weaknesses inherently associated with the concept of sustainable development, which are strongly reflected in the prevailing African situation established some misgivings about the good-faith propagated by the ‘rich North’ towards the ‘poor South’. The work therefore suggested that the region should properly weigh its needs and goals in the light of the environment and the economy, and not rush into commitments it cannot live up to. To achieve this, it would have to integrate the opinions of all stakeholders into the decision-making process, from public to private and to individual levels.