In February, I had the incredible opportunity to attend the Harvard Africa Business Conference (HABC) at Harvard Business School (HBS). HABC brings together over 1,000 people from across the African continent and its diaspora to assess and explore the potential for expanding Africa’s business potential. During the conference, topics such as underdeveloped capital markets, misallocation of resources, sustainable energy production, food insecurity and the infrastructure gap were addressed.
At the conference, I was honored to be part of a group that attended an HBS case class. The class I attended was a strategy class. On that day, the case at hand was market access for digital content for one of the America’s top newspapers. It was by far the best experience of the conference; I even got to have a lengthy chat with the professor, Daniel Gross, after the class. Later in the day, I attended a case workshop hosted by the Boston Consulting Group, which was really informative, even for people who had no prior experience with working cases.
I also attended panel-style discussions which were really engaging as well as informative. The panelists at the conference were from different fields, ranging from academics to industry, which offered different perspectives on the topics. There was also a career fair with a lot of companies that were recruiting for internships and full-time jobs. This was a massive networking opportunity for me and everyone at the conference.
I had a few takeaways from the conference, but my most meaningful one was from a conversation I had with Dr. Dennie Beach, one of the panelists on the Policy panel on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA). He told me about how his business had been struggling in the early 1990s when there was limited economic integration within Africa. Now, with the strengthening of regional economic blocks in Africa, his business is doing well. However, he acknowledged that there is still much that needs to be done. Through his narrative, I could more clearly see how impactful better regional policies are to businesses, and how having better leadership in Africa could translate into equitable gains from rising investment on the continent.
HABC was an amazing opportunity that has really defined how I view Africa’s business potential. I hope that I will be able to leverage the information as well as my expanded network in years to come.