4. Poor pre-tertiary education

According to AMI, basic primary and secondary education in Africa is of a significantly lower quality than in developed countries. “Employees often arrive at a managerial level without having developed the strong numeracy and literacy skills, IT proficiency and critical thinking competences required.”

As a respondent from a Rwandan business school said, “We inherit students who are at 5^th grade English language – they are functionally illiterate. The challenges are huge.”

5. Operational systems: more tools, less muscle

Small owner-managed companies often fail to implement systems to reduce dependence on a strong founder or leader, explains the report.

AMI’s research shows that the problem exists because there is no systematic transfer of knowledge and a general lack of long term thinking.

According to a respondent from a Nigerian foundation, “We have so many mom and pop businesses that only grow to a certain level because they have no succession plan in place and no governance. We need more tools and less muscle. We have some really successful businesses, but when you remove the CEO, will it function? And is it functioning in a healthy way, according to international standards?”

6. Rural/urban divide

With urbanisation taking place all over the continent and the location of most business schools and training programmes being in urban centres, organisations in rural areas struggle to find, retain and develop strong managers.

A Ghanaian impact investor voiced this problem. “It’s really hard to find talented people that want to work for agricultural businesses. Young people in particularly just don’t want to work in rural areas.”

In order to address this problem, AMI said that “we need solutions that will use technology to reach remote geographies, and to creatively channel resources to rural areas”.