“Africa grows on you, it grows into you, it grows you”. By Onne Vegter
Each one of our team members selected our ICP project as their number one choice. We were all eager to work on a meaningful project that impacts underprivileged societies, more specifically in Africa.
Our client is a non-profit institution that generates agricultural innovations to improve livelihoods, enhance food and nutrition security, increase employment, and preserve natural resource integrity. They asked our team to develop a strategy to deploy their innovations across the African continent. What a challenging yet motivating task for our team! We have had 7 weeks to understand Africa’s challenges and issues and propose a go-to-market strategy that is tailored to each of the 15 African countries where our client is present. Impossible, you say?
Our coach, Professor Leif Sjoblom, is a passionate expert on working with African entrepreneurs and universities to develop their capabilities. We couldn’t be any luckier. His passion to help African societies has been inspirational to the team and a generator of ideas and recommendations for our client.
Traveling to the 4 different hubs in Africa was on the table, but this was very challenging due to the current situation. Instead, we travelled the whole African continent virtually through web conferences. On the way, several key managers explained to us the challenges they face in deploying an impactful strategy to help the small holder farmers and the youth.
We also had the opportunity to get in touch with the best innovators in various industries and understand their strategies to commercialize their products. Drawing from the lessons we acquired from these interactions, we are now in the final phase of proposing our recommendations to our client.
It is truly exciting to put all the knowledge we acquired through the MBA and build business strategies to improve societies. The world is full of challenges and inequalities, such as those in Africa. These require attention and solutions from top business leaders. One of our roles as future executives is to make sure that it will only be possible to do well by doing good!
