Preparing to Engage with Africa

Meghan Mathieson
MBA Candidate 2014
Sauder School of Business, UBC


This summer began with questions. Our MBA internship project was to evaluate Sauder Africa Initiative and provide the Sauder School of Business with our analysis and recommendations for the future development of the program.

Many of the questions would not be answerable before travelling to Kenya, but nonetheless we tried to come up with answers using all other resources at our disposal. It turns out that the internet is actually an amazing resource, largely because it can lead you to people, the most amazing resource of all.

The questions we started with included:

·        What are UBC and Sauder’s objectives and interests in Africa?

·        What can the university offer that is unique, considering all the other organizations out there?

·        Will becoming entrepreneurs help Kenyan youth in slums improve their economic situations?

·        Do Kenyan youth want to become entrepreneurs?

·        Will our program enable them to become successful entrepreneurs?

·        How could our program become more useful and impactful?

·        What else could a Canadian business school do to be engaged in Africa that would also benefit Africa?

Internet search after internet search led us to many different organizations. Every organization’s website listed partners. Friends mentioned people they knew, who in turn connected us to other people. Our research quickly became a complex web of people and organizations all connected to the central goal of being engaged in Africa in a “net positive” way.

I was astonished by the generosity of (often) complete strangers. Almost everyone we contacted by email or phone was willing to share their time and knowledge with two MBA students on a rather vague mission. Additionally, and sometimes even more beneficially, they were willing to share their connections. Each person we talked to introduced us to additional people or organizations.

A list of the organizations we approached to start answering our questions, in no particular order and by no means exhaustive, is below:

·        Sauder School of Business – Dean’s Office, MBA Office, faculty members

·        UBC President’s Office

·        Sauder Africa Initiative Alumni

·        ACCESs Kenya

·        Dignitas Project

·        Junior Achievement Kenya

·        IHUB Nairobi

·        Imagine1Day

·        International Finance Corporation

·        Lundin Foundation

·        MasterCard Foundation

·        KITO International

·        ARC Initiative

·        Strathmore Business School

Armed with a broad range of perspectives and experience and knowledge, we prepared to leave for Nairobi, where we would put this information into practice in the classroom and the broader context of East Africa. We needed to see for ourselves how the program works (or doesn’t) and talk to people living and working in Nairobi. Only then would we be able to formulate answers to our questions.