Africa’s business schools stand at a strategic inflection point, needing to decisively break with colonial structures of education and stop the continent from being a “field site” for testing Western models. These are the observations made by the Wits Business School (WBS), one of South Africa’s leading business schools, whose alumni include Investec bossFani Titiand Absa CEOKenny Fihla. Penned by professors Maurice Radebe, who recently left his role as the director of WBS, and Imhotep Alagidede, the research challenges African business schools to move beyond teaching and towards true transformation.
“For too long business schools on the continent have relied on borrowed case studies, transplanted theories and accreditation models that neither capture Africa’s complex realities nor equip its graduates to re-engineer them,” the authors say. “True innovation requires moving from teaching about entrepreneurship to building firms, from discussing technology to embedding it, and from consuming foreign intellectual frameworks to producing original African theories and enterprises. Innovation in African business education must entail a decisive break from imported orthodoxy, whether in curriculum design, scientific inquiry, technological adoption or governance practice.
The broader implication is that African business schools must become coalition-centred institutions, with collaboration hardwired into their identity.” Radebe, a former executive at petrochemical major Sasol, also serves as chair of the Association of African Business Schools. The research introduces the collaboration, innovation and impact framework, which calls for stronger partnerships across academia, industry and policy; future-ready curriculums powered by AI, fintech and blockchain; and a shift from ranking-driven performance to measurable societal change. South Africa’s leading business schools, including the UCT Graduate School of Business, University of Stellenbosch Business School, University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science, and WBS, consistently rank high.
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Radebe and Alagidede warn that without a deliberate agenda for collaboration, innovation and impact, the continent risks reproducing managerial elites detached from its developmental challenges, perpetuating dependency on imported frameworks and external accreditation. “Business education has traditionally been cast as a vehicle for knowledge transmission, producing graduates to feed managerial hierarchies in government, state corporations and private enterprise.
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