HC Magazine April 2011

CONTENTS News

3

Appointments

7

Focus on Africa

11

Events

31

Management

41

Corporate Profile

59

Art, People, & Places

63

HC Magazine is a part of Maximise Potentials Group www.maximisepotentialsgroup.com 53 Skylines Village London Docklands, E14 9TS UK E-mail: publisher@hcmagazineonline.net Website: www.hcmagazineonline.net Phone: +44 207 001 7678

PUBLISHING TEAM PUBLISHER Shola Ajani GMD/CEO Maximise Potentials Group EDITOR Damola Ladipo RESEARCHER Korede Ayibowu GRAPHICS/DESIGN Akinyeledesigns 07540 989836 FEATURE WRITERS Opeolu Awolesi Principal Consultant, CapstoneBCTS, Warren Heaps Partner, Birches Group LLC Seun Babalola Principal Consultant at ValueBridge Consulting

Message from the Publisher We know you must be wondering why this edition was not released earlier. This has been due to a lot of unforeseen circumstances that were totally beyond our control. However, we do apologise and trust that you will find this edition just as fulfilling, if not more, than the first edition. This is because it is packed full with interesting and insightful articles.

Since the publication of the first edition of Human Capital (HC) magazine, the response from the Human Resources management community has been nothing short of very encouraging. There is a review of the last Human Capital Summit which took place in Lagos last year written

by Bode Olutunbi, Managing Partner and CEO of Peoplesource, an HR consulting firm in Nigeria, which shows the positive gains inherent in the convergence of brilliant minds. All these signal the fact that HC magazine and the HC Summit are here to stay as a means of contributing to and ensuring the sustained development of the HR community in Nigeria, Africa, and the Diaspora at large.

This edition is largely focused on Africa. It highlights the positive contributions made by seasoned professionals in the field, and the importance of the perspectives they provide, which cannot be overemphasized. You simply have to read through each one to fully understand what I am talking about. You’ll discover that there is a great deal happening within the HR community through the HR News articles, which discuss the developments and issues prevalent in Europe, Africa and Asia. This is followed by focusing on the re-branding of Nigeria’s foremost personnel management body – the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management in Nigeria (CIPM) and taking a look at new appointments made in different companies.

Once again, we would like to receive your comments, thoughts, and contributions. You can do this by contacting us via any of the contact details provided below.

Please remember that HC Magazine comes in three dimensions – the hard copy, the soft copy, and digital online version. Do avail yourself to any type which is convenient for your perusal.

Enjoy!

Shola Ajani, Publisher

HR News

Global Outlook of Recruitment Improves

A survey shows improved hiring expectations in 28 of 39 countries and territories, including the G7 countries of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, compared with a year ago.

28% in the autumn to 22% now. However, the general consensus was that this figure would drop to 25% over the coming quarter.

Globally, job market improves

The highest current hiring levels amongst the larger economies were in the UK (60%), France (53%), and Germany (41%). However many of the smaller countries bettered their larger neighbours, namely Belgium (66%), Netherlands (63%) and Switzerland (60%). The lowest levels of hiring were in Luxembourg at 29% and Malta at just 6%. More countries in Western Europe had experienced a drop in hiring levels than in any other geographic region.

A regular global survey of hiring and firing trends covering more than 9,600 organisations in 55 countries has found that job prospects for professionals and managers continues to improve.

The ‘Global Snapshot' project from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 9,672 companies in major markets such as Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA, whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was up from 53% of respondents at the beginning of the year to 54% now.

And the percentage of organisations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 55% to 58%. The percentage of organisations intending to shed staff had fallen slightly from

Western Europe

Eastern Europe and Eurasia The highest recruiting levels in this region were in Russia, (66%), the Czech Republic (61%), Romania (50%), Poland (47%) and Bulgaria (47%). Hungary's well-documented economic problems meant that it had the lowest level of hiring in the region with only 19% of businesses questioned actively seeking new managers or professionals.

Africa and the Middle East Saudi Arabia registered the highest level of recruitment at professional and managerial level (74%). However the UAE appeared to have staged something of a recovery with hiring up from 51% at the beginning of the year to 62% now. In Africa, the highest level of recruitment was registered in Egypt (75%). Hiring in Nigeria has dropped to 52% from 79% at the beginning of the year and in South Africa from 49% to 39%.

Asia Hiring levels have risen very slightly in China from 71% recorded in January to 72% now, and employers appear to be confident about recruitment plans for the coming quarter with 73% of businesses planning to increase headcounts. The percentage of organisations shedding staff at professional and managerial level has dropped markedly from 25% to just 17%.

In India, hiring levels have risen from 71% to 73% and look set to jump to 77% in the coming quarter. The percentage of organisations shedding staff has also dropped from 16% in January to just 11% now. http://snapshot.antal.com/

Nigeria’s HR Professional Body Re-brands, Worries over Quackery in Public Sector The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria has expressed concern over the growing rate of quackery in human resources management practice in the Nigerian public service.

The President and Chairman of Council, CIPM, Mr. Abiola Popoola, said that this had encouraged lack of professionalism in the sector.

He said, “We are concerned because in many public sector organisations and agencies, those who head administration in the organisations do not have the knowledge and the skills and you can call them quacks as well. And when you have a quack as the head of the HR unit, of course quackery will spread across the organisation.”

According to him, it is quite challenging for CIPM members, who work in HR units manned by non-professionals.

“Our major challenge has been that we have cases of our members, who have to work under heads of administration that are not professionally qualified. This is a challenge because if you have somebody, who does not understand the HR management, or the organisation, with professionals under him, it will affect the quality of the HR services,” he added.

He noted however, that the institute was ready to change the situation by first offering those affected the opportunity to upscale their skills through training. Besides, he said, the institute would, henceforth strongly challenge organisations about the qualifications of their HR professionals.

Popoola explained that the importance of effective people management could not be over-emphasised, especially as regards its impact on organisational growth.

He explained,”Organisations are organic and are meant to grow, which means they must expand their scope of activities. Your performance must improve yearly and we are in the world of competition; all organisations are in competition against each other.

“Now, if you do not have people that are good, you cannot compete, the people are the most important source of competitive advantage. It is like in a football team; your players are your most important resources.”

He added that it was in recognition of this that the CIPM, the foremost management institute in Nigeria, recently decided not only to upscale its services but to also embark upon corporate re-branding.

The new brand, which was unveiled in Abuja during the institute’s annual conference, represented everything it stood for going forward. ”This project of re-branding has been going on for a while, involving consultation with professionals in advertising and marketing. At the last conference we unveiled the new logo of the institute which was approved by council.

Our new logo is to let the public see us in the new light that we present ourselves.”

He noted that the institute‘s members were already feeling the impact of the new brand, as evidenced in the quality of services currently rendered to them.

”Already our members are feeling the impact of the CIPM in the quality of service provided, and in the quality of our responses. The support we grant to our members has improved over time and this re-branding is more or less to re-enforce that. CIPM is really evolving, we are on the move and we are marching very boldly towards our vision of being the foremost marketer,” he stated.

Popoola added,”By the collective opinion of the council, we felt that the brand and logo which we had before was not as refreshing and as dynamic as we would like it to be. It was not reflecting the new CIPM.” As part of the re-branding agenda, the institute has recently employed a new Registrar and Chief Executive Officer, Finance Manager, and Head of the Audit Department.

According to Popoola, the re-branding project did not happen overnight. It took consultations with image professionals over a period of time to arrive at the new brand, which included a new logo, approved by the council to reflect the new institute.

He said, “Our vision is to be the foremost human resource management institute in Africa, respected across the world. In pursuit of that vision, we have been upgrading our services to our members. We feel that to re-enforce that new standing position of the new institute, we also need to change our logo to reflect the new CIPM.

www.cipmnigeria.org/

NDE to create 350,000 jobs in 2011

THE Nigerian National Directorate of Employment(NDE) will create about 350,000 new jobs in 2011 through its skills acquisition programmes, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chief Emeka Wogu, has said.

The minister, who stated this at the 22nd Enugu international trade fair, observed that the job-creating agency has done well by exploring alternative job creation routes for the benefits of the unemployed.

Wogu, who is also the chairman of NDE, revealed that some of the exhibitors at the fair are among the 170,000 job seekers that benefited from the Directorate’s efforts in 2010.

Wogu also pledged to strengthen NDE to put more Nigerians to work, saying, “The Federal Government will continue to strengthen the NDE to effectively discharge its statutory mandate. Consequently, the Directorate is positioned to improve on its job creation records of last year as it plans to put a total of 350,000 Nigerians into productive venture this year through its various skills acquisition, entrepreneurship/business training, training in agro-based ventures, public works programme as well as robust collaboration with other stakeholders.”

He added that the NDE would continue to expose its beneficiaries to business opportunities such trade fair. He observed that it is through exposure that young entrepreneurs can learn the much-needed skills to navigate the challenging waters of the 21st century business world.

Wogu, who lauded the graduates of NDE programmes, said the Directorate’s pavilion won the most outstanding prize.

He described the theme of the fair, which was “Diversification of the nation’s economy for sustainable development” as timely even as Nigeria continues to search for alternative sources of revenue for national growth.

Stressing the need for the diversification of the economy for the realisation of development targets, the Director-General of NDE, Mallam

Mohammed Abubakar stated the urgent need to locate other sources of revenue.

He said: “From the 1970s when oil became the main stay of our economy, the need to develop other sources of funding our national budget and other developmental efforts became a major challenge to economy experts and technocrats. Other sectors of the economy such as agriculture, mining among others were abandoned for the newly discovered, more lucrative and easier oil sector. We all know where the adventure landed us. It left us with an economy that leaned heavily on the sale of crude oil with its attendant financial uncertainties and massive unemployment.”

He explained that on its part, the NDE has initiated projects that are aimed at re-focusing attention to agriculture, which he said is capable of catapulting Nigeria into a major player in agricultural produce exports.

The NDE helmsman revealed that the Directorate has introduced job creation strategies that will help stimulate Nigeria’s economy to fit into the spirit and concept of the Vision 2020 of the Federal Government.

He added that 730 persons have been trained and resettled under the solar and wind energy training scheme.

“In collaboration with the Nigerian Export and Import Bank (Nexim), a fresh impetus is available for Nigerian entrepreneurs to venture into exportation of Nigerian non-oil goods. Small and micro enterprises have continued to receive a lot of support through the granting of micro credit facilities under the NDE/Nigerian Agricultural Cooperatives and Rural Development (NACRDB) collaboration.

“The NDE recently graduated the first batch of young men and women trained to provide diverse critical skills in telecommunications, information technology, banking and insurance as well as customer care/ relations in major blue chip companies in Nigeria,” the NDE boss said.

Appointments

MasterCard Selects Nigeria as Base for East and West Africa and Indian Ocean Islands

M

ASTERCARD Worldwide has selected Nigeria as its operational base for East and West Africa and Indian Ocean Islands.

MasterCard also announced the appointment of a Nigerian, Mr. Daniel ‘Lanre Monehin, as Area Head of its business operations for the stated regions with the aim of advancing its business and investment activities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Through this appointment, MasterCard has become the first – and only – global payments company to date to appoint an executive resource in Nigeria. MasterCard cards were the first international payment cards issued by financial institutions in Nigeria in 2004.

Etisalat Names HR Head for Nigerian Unit

The appointment of Monehin aims to fast track the growth of the payment card market not only in Nigeria, but in all the regions under his administration in sub-Saharan Africa.

Etisalat Nigeria has announced the appointment of Abigail Isokpan as

Prior to his appointment at MasterCard Worldwide in Africa, Monehin was formerly the Vice President and Regional Finance Officer at MasterCard Worldwide in Canada, which encompassed all aspects of strategic financial management, analysis, planning, customer deals approval, accounting, reporting and taxation for the region.

Prior to joining Etisalat Nigeria in 2007, Abigail was General Manager/

the company’s Chief Human Resources Officer, a position she previously occupied in acting capacity.

Head of Human Capital Management at United Bank for Africa (UBA) where she was responsible for recruitment, policy, manpower planning, and career management.

Her responsibilities have also included performance appraisal systems, succession planning, and training and development at Nigerian Inter-

Having held senior positions at Fortune 500 companies and the Nigerian banking industry, Monehin has over 18 years of finance, consulting and relationship management experience spanning banking, manufacturing and distribution, technology and payment industries.

national Bank Ltd. (Citibank), SmithKline Beecham, and Centre for Management Development.

At the merger of UBA and Standard Trust Bank (STB) as well as at the acquisition of Stirling Health by SmithKline Beecham, Abigail led key HR and corporate values integration initiatives.

Monehin earned a B.Sc. (Honours) degree in Accounting from the University of Lagos and an MBA from Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. He is an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ACA), a Certified Public Accountant of Illinois, U.S.A (CPA), and a Fellow of the Certified Management Accountants of Canada (FCMA).

She was also responsible for employee-voice and change initiatives, as well as developing and implementing the performance management system, at Citibank.

According to Etisalat CEO Steven Evans, “Abigail is a consummate professional whose experience and contribution to the growth of Etisalat’s business cannot be ignored. It is a well-deserved elevation.”

Nestle Nigeria PLC Appoints Head of Human Resources

Nestle Nigeria PLC has announced the appointment of Mrs. Marie Owoniyi as Head of Human Resources (HR) following the resignation of Mr. Ola Ehinmoro from the position.

Business Partner for Generating Demand. In March 2010, she was transferred on full expatriation to Nestle Regional office in Accra Ghana as Regional Recruitment Manager,” the statement said.

According to a statement by Samuel Adenekan, Corporate Relations Manager, Mrs. Owoniyi, who joined Nestle Nigeria in November 2001, had a distinguished and meritorious career with the company. “She has held several key positions in the company.

Mrs. Owoniyi, a Chartered Accountant, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from University of lIorin and Masters Degree in Industrial and Labour Relations from University of Lagos.

Mrs. Owoniyi was at various times between November 2001 and February 2010 Manpower Development, Human Resources Manager (Employee Relations/Corporate Training). She was also responsible for Talent and Compensation Management as well as Human Resources

She has also attended several Management training programmes In Switzerland, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

Mrs. Owoniyi is a member of several professional bodies including ICAN, CIPM, NIM and NITAD.

Nigerian Becomes Coca Cola CEO

After many decades of successful operation in the Nigerian market, Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited has announced the appointment of a Nigerian, Kelvin Balogun as the Company’s new Chief Executive Officer effective February 1, 2011. Kelvin, the first Nigerian to occupy the position, succeeds Islay Rhind, who will be retiring from The Coca-Cola Company.

The new CEO joined the company in October 1999 as Strategic Planning & Business Development Manager. In February 2002, he moved to East Africa where he held positions of increasing responsibility in Kenya, Tanzania, and the Horn of Africa before assuming the role of Strategy Director for the Coca-Cola East & Central Africa Business Unit in May 2008 with responsibility for strategy development across 27 countries. Kelvin’s last role in East Africa was that of General Manager for the East Africa & Mozambique Franchise, leading Coca-Cola’s operations and market development in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique.

Reacting to the appointment, President of Coca-Cola North & West Africa Business Unit Curt Ferguson said “Kelvin is well grounded in the business and has a strong track record of performance. He successfully rebuilt some of the key business drivers for profitable growth in several East and Central African markets. We are confident that he will accelerate the growth momentum that our business has built in Nigeria and will lay a solid framework for sustainable market leadership”.

Kelvin began his career in 1989 as a Business Analyst at Accenture in Lagos, and rose to the position of Senior Manager & Head of Strategy Competency. He has an MBA from the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University in Atlanta and a Bachelors degree in Metallurgical & Materials Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. He is also an alumnus of the Lagos Business School and the Logistics Strategy School at Cranfield University in the UK. “I am excited by the opportunity to return home and help shape and drive the Coca-Cola business here” said Kelvin. “Nigeria is a strategic growth market; my colleagues and I will focus on strengthening the fundamentals of the business, deepening the bonds between our brands and our consumers and expanding our market leadership”.

Africa: New Appointments at Bharti Airtel Group appoints top executives with global networks technology and internal assurance expertise to offer unrivalled services on the continent.

Nairobi - As part of its strategy to offer unrivalled services in the continent, Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunications company has announced the appointment of two executives to steer its network and internal assurance functions across 16 countries in Africa.

Ms. Tay Kim Lee joins the group as the Director of Internal Assurance whilst Mr. Eben Albertyn will take up the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) role.

The two new appointees bring a wealth of experience gained in top management levels from various organizations across the globe.

Their appointments are in tandem with Airtel’s goal to connect communities across Africa by providing affordable and innovative mobile solutions to all.

Ms. Lee has a wealth of experience in the financial and telecommunications sector with organizations such as Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) and Singapore International Group (SingTel), a strategic partner of Bharti Airtel.

Her tenure at PwC saw her provide leadership in critical assurance; risk based financial audits and operational reviews for large corporations such as Compaq Asia, NEC, Fuji Xerox and

Globe Telecom, among others.

Her last position at SingTel International saw her drive the group’s international strategic plans and individual initiatives that drew synergies among the group’s operators whilst ensuring a common and collaborative execution platform. She is recognized as guiding SingTel’s successful operations and new business development initiatives in the Asian telecommunications market.

Mr. Eben Albertyn, an engineer by training, brings to Airtel a deep understanding of the dynamics of the African telecommunications sector, having worked with a leading pan-African operator across the continent. Notably, he has been credited with offering leadership to technical teams in Ghana and Cameroon that led to the turning around of businesses through vast improvements in network quality. As Chief Technical Officer spearheading network design, he provided the technical expertise in developing, modelling and implementing Africa’s first IP 3G/HSPA network in Ghana.

Speaking about the appointments, Mr. Manoj Kohli, CEO (International) and Joint Managing Director, Bharti Airtel, said: “Our intention to provide affordable and innovative mobile solutions in Africa will be backed by the passion and wealth of experience from the leadership team we are attracting and nurturing. Today’s appointments are a testament of our commitment towards the goal of providing unrivalled telecommunications ser-

vices and building a world class organization in Africa”.

“The two new leaders, Kim and Eben, will definitely add impetus to our leadership team, having gained high level global experience in diverse markets in Asia and Africa. Their expertise will also tap into existing talent and create the skills within their teams, which all successful brands require”, he said in a statement sent to newsrooms.

The two roles will provide an important fulcrum in Airtel’s business as they revolve around ensuring a successful business model on the back of a world-class network infrastructure.

The incoming Chief Technical Officer will be charged with instituting and maintaining a robust network enhancement plan in line with the next evolution in network systems.

As Internal Assurance Director Ms. Lee will play an important role in enhancing the control environment and corporate governance processes whilst identifying opportunities and implementing action plans to ensure efficiency of services.

Bharti Airtel has operations in Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

focus on Africa

McKinsey estimates that three-quarters of the continent’s expanding GDP came from a growing workforce and higher productivity, but will cutting red tape and boosting key sectors really find anything like the necessary 1.1 billion jobs for Africans by 2040, asks Sarah Rundell Swiss food giant Nestlé’s jovial Executive Vice President Frits van Dijk knows the 300-odd jobs coming on line at the company’s new Kinshasa factory will not dent underemployment in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But he is insistent of its significance none the less. "We’re starting small with a packaging plant but with double digit growth we will have a fullyfledged manufacturing sector in time," he said in an interview with Africa Investor from the company’s headquarters in Switzerland. "Our factory will create jobs in the whole supply chain. We have 14,300 staff across Africa but our operations create an extra 50,000 jobs in all."

Manufacturing plants like Nestlé’s CHF 40 million (US $41m) DRC investment throw a lifeline to governments battling fierce unemployment. It rages at 25% in South Africa and an estimated 20% in Nigeria, where the World Bank has warned Africa’s most populous nation it needs to create 24 million jobs over the next decade to halve unemployment. Urban and youth unemployment are the biggest problem, with urban rates put at over 25% in African cities and on the edges of towns.

The continent has 500 million people of working age but that is projected to exceed 1.1 billion by 2040 - more than in China or India. Countries have already put their demographic advantage to use and consultancy firm McKinsey & Company estimates that over the last 20 years, three-quarters of the continent’s increase in GDP per capita came from an expanding workforce and higher productivity. Governments have embraced the role of the private sector in job creation - gone are the days of central planning and public sector-driven growth strategies - but unemployment is stubbornly high and more needs to be done.

What are the solutions?

Job-creating sectors Investments such as Nestlé’s aside, most job creation will come from service and consumer facing industries like retailing, banking, and telecoms.

“Cheap Asian imports have made life very hard for Africa’s manufacturers; now the services sector is perceived as an easier way to create jobs,” explains JeanPhilippe Stigns at the OECD in Paris.

In Kenya the bright hope is outsourcing, where the government has earmarked 25,000 jobs by 2015. But Nick Nesbitt, CEO of Kenya’s largest outsourcing business Kencall, which employs 400 people and expects that to grow to 1,000 over the next year, says the government needs to nurture the sector for this to happen. It should act on plans to reimburse operators their high training costs and outsource the work currently done by government departments, he suggests.

"The one way the government could really help is by digitising its records and outsourcing departments to call centres," he says.

Governments are also pushing tourism hard. Morocco’s ten-year tourism development plan will make it the country’s second largest industry after farming, doubling receipts to $17bn a year and cutting unemployment, which has already fallen to 9% following job creation in the services and construction sectors. In Kenya, tourism accounts for 11% of GDP and is one of the main foreign exchange earners. A marketing push to new clients from Russia, China and India is starting to pay off with Chinese arrivals up 64% according to Kenya’s Ministry of Tourism.

Breaking barriers High costs, particularly wages, are a barrier to job creation. Egypt excluded, exports from economies including Tunisia, South Africa and Morocco have grown slower than other emerging markets because labour costs are two to four times higher than in China and India, reports McKinsey. A strike in 2010 in South Africa’s auto sector, which accounts for about 6% of GDP and is the country’s biggest manufacturing exporter, employing 31,784 people, forced the industry to raise wages well above inflation, which hit competitiveness.

“We suffered a certain amount of reputational damage from the strikes as our ability to manufacture vehicles was brought into question,” Chris Thexton, head of human resources at US car giant General Motors’ Port Elizabeth plant told Africa investor. “We lost both export and local orders and the slack was picked up by companies operating on an importonly basis.”

High wages also compound youth unemployment. In South Africa it accounts for about 50% of 18-24 year olds and is made worse by companies’ reluctance to hire young and inexperienced employees at salary levels dictated by powerful unions.

“It frightens them away - workers have lots of rights but it ends up counterproductive because it turns companies and investors off,” says Freddie Mitchell, an economist with Johannesburg-based Efficient Research.

Africa Can Work

Sarah Rundell,

Africa Investor

Seeking a boost More training schemes would help. Latin America’s Jóvenes programmes, where public and private organisations bid for contracts to offer training to unemployed and economically disadvantaged youth could work in Africa. Columbia doubled the number of training slots through employment offices and youth training institutes during the recession, which makes it even tougher to find a job. South Africa lost an estimated one million jobs in the recession and in Nigeria the banking crisis has left qualified graduates struggling to get a rung on the ladder.

"Entry level roles are non-existent," says Shola Ajani, CEO of Lagos-based recruitment company Maximise Potentials Group, which has 35,000 jobseekers on the books. "Banks were major employers at entry level but they’re still not hiring.

Everyone is staying put and there is zero mobility - the new guys can’t get in."

Unemployment is now at the top of many governments’ agendas and growing domestic consumption and consumer and services industries have become important employers. It’s these kinds of businesses that account for virtually all net job creation in high-income countries and for 85% of new jobs in middle-income ones, says MGI Research.

Urbanisation has prompted a construction boom that created 20% to 40% of all jobs over the past decade and governments are investing in other new sectors, like South Africa’s plans to boost the green economy. Most important of all, economic growth is forecast across the region. Although it doesn’t always affect the sectors that create real employment, it is the key to Africa making the most of its demographic advantage.

SMEs are another potential source of job creation. The World Bank highlights policies in middle-income countries like Poland, which have deliberately boosted SMEs’ ability to hire through the recession by facilitating access to credit, preferential treatment in public tenders and reducing taxes. It’s an altogether tougher climate in Nigeria.

"Our SMEs are restrained from a cash flow perspective," says jobseeker Abbey Onasanya, who lost his position with a Lagos-based SME last October. "After five months in the job I was told that they couldn’t afford my wages and that my contract was terminated."

Nigeria’s banks have tightened their lending criteria since the crisis, leaving businesses struggling to source long-term credit - bank credit growth to the private sector was stagnant at 0.3% in 2010 with lending rates as high as 20%. The effect of the Central Bank’s N500bn ($3.3bn) fund to allow banks to refinance loans to manufacturers has not been widely felt.

Nigeria’s much anticipated power sector reforms will have a direct impact on employment in the country’s manufacturing sector, where chronic power shortages leave manufacturing capacity idle.

If companies could run multiple shifts it would double, even triple, the number of people they employ but power costs make that prohibitive.

"We have about 240 people at our Lagos operation," says Tokunbo Talabi, CEO of the expanding Ikeja-based printing company Superflux International. "But at the moment our monthly power bill costs more than our monthly salaries."

"Entry level roles are nonexistent," says Shola Ajani, CEO of Lagos-based recruitment company Maximise Potentials Group, which has 35,000 jobseekers on the books.

"Banks were major employers at entry level but they’re still not hiring. Everyone is staying put and there is zero mobility the new guys can’t get in."

Is Africa Up for the Leadership Challenge?

The Issue of poor leadership is a serious threat to the development and growth of Africa.

Anita Wiafe, Managing Director of OML Africa talks about the issue from the HR perspective and offers suggestions as to how HR can take a leading role in the leadership challenge facing Africa.

Sadly, when you mention the words, leadership and Africa, many would argue that the two do not go together. Poor leadership has tarnished Africa for decades. Why? Well this is because in spite of the abundance of natural resources that Africa has been blessed with, our leaders have and continue to run it into the ground. When we think of leadership in Africa we think of leaders that do not take responsibility for their behaviour; a culture of shifting blame; self-centred management, indifferent to the progress of its people; incompetent people in positions of authority; poor performance and corruption.

However, even with this depressing view there is hope. If Africa is to change these destructive leadership styles and develop a new generation of exceptional leaders, then we need to begin by developing leadership cultures that are fit for purpose. How do we do this? African HR leaders and educational institutions have a key role to play.

From the HR perspective, as HR leaders operating in Africa, one of the challenges we face is the issue of leadership in our organisations. Leadership has presented numerous pressing modern-day management and leadership challenges for HR for years. This wide cultural spectrum with its value systems has posed the question of how to define a truly authentic leadership approach in Africa. If leadership is to offer real value in the workplace and impact on business objectives as well as develop new leaders for the future of the organisation and society, then we need to focus on developing effective leadership cultures among management and effective leadership training in our educational institutions.

This incorporates bottom-line thinking, business values like productivity, performance, people- centeredness and result- oriented strategies. We need to change mindsets and behaviour through positive reinforcement and

role models. We need to develop leaders with strength of character and integrity with the ability to problem-solve deep rooted challenges.

As African HR leaders, we are aware that training and development forms part of some of our labour laws aimed at encouraging employers to use the workplace as an active learning environment and to provide employees with the opportunities to acquire new skills.

Therefore, management education, training and leadership development should feature very prominently on our training agendas, in the form of personal development plans. Performance development is no longer adequate and is in effect redundant. However, we need to shift to performance improvement which is essentially what is needed.

So I pose the question, is Africa up for the leadership challenge? Yes, indeed we already have the human resources, and with the right action plan, commitment and perseverance, Africa can overcome its leadership challenge.

This will require for example, Africa tapping into the vast leadership skills that its Diaspora human capital can bring to the motherland. To battle this leadership challenge, we also need to talent manage Africans in the Diaspora back to Africa to share best practice as well as use local talent to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to ensure cultural fit.

To overcome this challenge will require locals and Africans in the Diaspora working together.

We need leaders with purpose-driven visions, transformational leaders who can think outside the box, people developers who develop future leaders, champion leaders with courage to withstand difficult times, quality leaders with emotional intelligence to manage their emotions and others to yield results and finally leaders with integrity and accountability.

Africa needs leaders with innovation who

can solve problems with new solutions.

If Africa is to succeed in the global market and to offer opportunities to individuals and communities for self-enhancement to enable them to contribute towards their society, then we need to develop people that can effectively lead the way by equipping them with the right skills coupled with the right temperament.

The success of Africa winning the leadership challenge is fundamentally dependent on the proactive partnership and interrelations between employers who are primarily represented by leaders and workers, as well as the invaluable contribution of Education, Training and Development practitioners and institutions.

Our leadership challenge is an opportunity for HR leaders to shine. Most of us agree that any organisation’s most valuable asset is its human resources. By HR directing people development-focused managers and leaders, HR can significantly boost performance and make up for some of the severe leadership skills shortage in Africa. The role of HR in directing the task of re-building African leadership will greatly contribute to making Africa a significant player as it works towards having a key position on the global market.

How We Lost our Human Resources to the West Chika Uwazie

Every year over 20,000 professionals migrate out of Africa, estimates the International Organization for Migration (IOM), based in Switzerland. This loss of skilled manpower, termed the “brain drain,” is one of the greatest obstacles to Africa’s development. Africans continue to face low morale, lack of academic freedom and collapse of tertiary education.

Rise of authoritarian regimes, hardship and paralysis ushered in by Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) and so forth – provoked the exodus of highly skilled Africans".

A United Nations report stated that many students sponsored to do post-graduate studies in technology, science and engineering abroad have stayed away at the end of their studies.

The government has not encouraged their efforts to do advanced research in the sciences and there has been a lack of funds to produce such research. In order to fill the gap of loss skills due to the brain drain, Africa spends $4 billion annually to recruit and pay 100,000 expatriates to work in Africa. As many has stated only Africans can solve African problems and these same funds spent on expatriates can be used to recruit from the vast pool of equally qualified and experienced African professionals living and working outside Africa.

Chika Uwazie is a May 2010 graduate from Bethune Cookman University with a BS (Hons) in Industrial Organizational Psychology and a minor in International Relations. Ms. Uwazie has a strong interest in African development and is Editor of The Nigerian Eagle that promotes progress and better development for Nigeria. Currently, she works at The Whitaker Group as a fellow who orchestrates innovative strategies for African and Trade investment in the US.

Scholars Advocate Human Capital Development in Africa

We must tap into the era in which Africa invests in our people, and the Diaspora is a great resource we can no longer ignore. There is a need for dramatic economic and social transformation for Africa or the dream of reversing the brain drain will be impossible to realize.

Dr Onosode pointed out that the virility of education was determined by the vision laid down by any country’s leaders, noting that no nation could make good progress without a concrete vision to develop its human capacity.

He further pointed out that education was very important for development, but lack of basic development to give quality education was the problem being faced by African countries, especially Nigeria.

He said that what the continent needed was to invest wisely in education, adding that lack of basic infrastructure on the continent prompted many Africans to go abroad for further studies, making them not to come back to develop the continent.

“I want to suggest that it is a must for the continent to invest far more than it is doing at the moment in education, particularly in higher education, because quality education is expensive and you cannot have quality education if you do not have quality primary and secondary school education. So, the whole structure or system of education deserves to enjoy much greater investment than we have now,” Onosode said.

He also explained that Africa as a continent had been facing human capital development since the inception, adding that the African nationalists had only one objective, which was nation-building.

The brain drain has threatened the evolution of an array of different economies due to Africans looking to seek better job opportunities abroad. Despite these scary statistics Africans refuse to come back to their motherland because of lack of job opportunities and security for their future. They also feel because of high unemployment from the economic crisis they would have a difficult time finding a job that would match their skill level and pay scale.

The number one sector that has been most affected by the brain drain is health care. Many Africans are urged by their families to go to medical school in order to bring status to their families, but after years of rigorous studies, they come out to jobs that are underpaid, accompanied by lack of proper equipment used in medical facilities. Who would they want to come home to strikes from doctors because of government’s refusal to improve a fairer pay structure? These issues continue to make it a difficult task for the Diaspora to migrate home.

How can Africa embark on effective change to reverse the brain drain to a brain gain? It is important that African governments recognize the issue of the brain drain and make efforts to create jobs for the Diaspora to go back to.

“Developing Africa’s Human Capital: The Multiplier Effect,” was coined from the challenges facing Africa as a continent in terms of its inability to build a concrete human capital for its development.

According to him, the need to develop the dream of ‘nation-building’ was marred by the intervention of soldiers in governance when the army struck and took over power in most African states.

(Dr) Gamaliel Onosode Emeritus scholars on the African continent have canvassed for the need for African states to massively invest in the development of human capital if the continent desires to compete favourably with its counterparts.

Specifically, the scholars were concerned about the rate of decline in the quality of graduates that are produced in the continent’s universities.

Speaking in Lagos at the weekend at this year’s public lecture of the London School of Economics (LSE) Alumni Association of Nigeria, a former presidential adviser on Budget Affairs and Pro-Chancellor/Chairman of the Governing Council, University of Lagos, Deacon (Dr) Gamaliel Onosode, noted that the theme of the lecture,

“To say that Africa is developed would be an understatement! But looking at the African economic perspective would give you an idea that the continent has been lagging behind in human capital development, when compared with her counterparts on the other continents.

He said that the number of African students in tertiary institutions had increased in the last 10 years, but that the quality of graduates produced had been a source of concern to African scholars, which, to him, was caused by lack of basic infrastructure for human capital development.

Other speakers also stated that the problem with education in the continent was not only investment of funds, but how to find a lasting solution to the quality of graduates produced.

He noted that for the continent to achieve the desired objective there was need to tackle the level of corruption in the society, re-orientation of Africa’s vision, massive investment in education, manpower training and review of the constitution.

Tapping into Diaspora skills Tapping into Diaspora skills – Ambassador Dr Ekow Spio-Garbrah commends President Mills.

The image of Ghana has changed dramatically since the heady days of the 1980s, when the country lost over 90% of her skilled labour.

Migration became a source of survival for majority of the country’s citizens through the remittance of its international migrants.

OECD countries became major destinations’ of emigrants from Ghana.

For Ghana, the remittances from her nationals abroad became an important source for the economic development of various communities, often spearheaded by hometown and professional associations. The remittances contribute not only to cover the deficit of the balance of payment but also to the entry of foreign currency in the country.

The 1980s also witnessed the mass expulsion of Ghanaian nationals from neighbouring countries as well as becoming the source of destination of refugee flows from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Togo and in 2002 from Ivory Coast through the western corridor.

Today there is another quiet revolution going on in Ghana that is helping to transform the country from an economic backwater to an emerging vibrant market led economy.

Today the dream of returning to the homeland is not only a reality shared by indigenous Ghanaians, but among many African Americans who, symbolically and historically, see Ghana as their homeland.

Today Ghana is the new “South Korea” of sub-Saharan Africa, thanks to her burgeoning economy, oil production, more discoveries of precious minerals and vibrant emerging middle class. Statistics point to that, with many arguing that Ghana is on the verge of breaking into the “club of middle income countries”. The many skilled migrants Ghana lost in the 1980s economic crisis are returning home, many with investments and savings to match their status. Many African Americans are returning to the land of their ancestors, Ghana, seeking to profit from the meteoric rise of its economy.

Since the early 2000 returning Ghanaians account for more than half the start ups in Accra.

One such émigré is this writer I met in New York, “Quincy (Kwesi)”, who is 48 years old, holds a PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Pennsylvania(speaks with an American accent and holds American citizenship), and is packing to return home to start an IT business. He said, “I have spent 30years of my life in United States. I came here as a student in search of freedom and opportunities.

After 30 years in America, owning my own real estate and married with 2 girls at college, I sat atop my Rockaway home, watching the planes and longing to fly back home”. He stated, “Most immigrants of my generation are haunted by this conflict. We came for the American dream, changing identities, choosing cultures and chasing opportunities, we leave our homeland but it doesn’t leave us”.

Quincy would get to return to the homeland, though, first in the early 1990s when Ghana was going through tremendous transformation, and on numerous occasions since.

Quincy’s family was fortunate to follow relatives to New York to escape from the hunger that hit their homeland. He said, “I really lost it at that moment, sitting on the plane at Kotoka International Airport. I remember looking out the window, crying, thinking I’d never return, thinking of my new friends at Commonwealth Hall, University of Ghana I had to leave behind, just waves of emotion”.

Quincy and his generation, the skilled migrants Ghana lost, migrated to seek opportunities. They are neither political exiles nor refugees fleeing from revolution. Unlike generations past, they can go back home and frequently do. These are the generation who are bringing much needed change to Ghana and Africa.

Since the nation began its journey from Structural Adjustment programs in the late 1980s, it has made remarkable strides as a market economy and a stable democracy in a very volatile region. Now boasting one of the fastest-growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana has been one of the only nations to experience consistent growth in the past decade.

In addition, Ghana’s real GDP growth rate of more than 5% over the past 6 years is a remarkable achievement under both John Kuffuor’s government and the current John Mills NDC administration.

professionals”.

Dr Garbrah said when one stops and thinks about all types of services that have neglected to set up in Ghana due to the economic climate under the last administration, now there are markets literally waiting to be tapped in back home.

Dr Garbrah, who is being urged by progressives to run for 2016 presidential elections said, “It’s been a gradual process, but it’s been a remarkable transition over the past 20 years.

Ambassador Garbrah said in the Diaspora reside some of Ghana’s most educated, entrepreneurial and wealthy citizens, thus by encouraging them to return, or at least invest in home would have a huge impact on the country’s development and job creation and speed up the process of reducing poverty across the country.

The rapid economic growth and stable demo cracy has made Ghana a prime target for foreign investors and a location of growing potential business owners, especially Ghanaian Diaspora and African Americans who are looking for the opportunity to reclaim their inheritance.

According to Ghana Investment Promotion Council, over the past 10 years there’s been a noticeable increase in Ghanaian Diaspora and others looking to go back for business purposes.

Like Quincy (Kwesi), Arthur (Atta Payin) works as a realtor in upstate New York with considerable holdings in the homeland. He first returned to Sekondi, Ghana in the early 2000s to visit his family after graduating from Stanford, but now he makes regular trips to oversee his investment in real estate in Sekondi-Takoradi.

During the Structural Adjustment years, often referred to “Ghana’s economic miracle” by the Britton Woods Institutions, people would go back, willing to take on chances on risky, at times murky ventures or more for sentimental reasons.

Arthur said, “Dual citizenship has increased the ease of process of going back and forth between Ghana and America”.

In an interview with Ambassador Dr Ekow Spio-Garbrah, former Ambassador and Minister in Rawlings NDC government, said, “In spite of risks that come with investing in a young economy, the idea of returning to the homeland and giving back is enticing to many

Quincy (Kwesi) who left home at 18years old said, “Now when I get off the plane in Ghana, I look out and see hope for my homeland”.

Although he speaks and act very much American, he said, “I’m very, very passionate about Ghana and Ghanaians in general. I think it is my duty to give back to the homeland.

Although I am an American, I still consider myself Ghanaian. Both identities matter to me and I don’t want to pick one or the other”.

Ghana’s Diaspora, estimated to number over 3 million, is very real, with recognizable and dynamic communities in Atlanta, Chicago, London, Düsseldorf, New York, Paris, Rome, Sydney and Toronto, to name the most prominent. Ghanaians and children of Ghanaian immigrants have achieved widespread recognition as hard working, upstanding citizens, with a track record of achievement in almost every area of endeavour. The challenge for the Ghanaian government is how to bring them back home. Many of the children of the immigrants are beginning to take advantage of the opportunities that the homeland offers as is the case at the last world cup in South Africa.

Dr Garbrah said, “We need these overseas skills and we need to find ways to make their repartition attractive, even if it means paying the market rate for them. At the same time, we need to provide incentives to those here, who have for too long been neglected as the working poor”.

Ambassador Garbrah said it is not the first time that such an idea has surfaced in public discourse. He said almost every government has at one time or another spoken of the importance of tapping into the Diaspora and not only interested in the money they remit to the homeland. He said it is a positive way by the Mills government of looking at the problem.

He said the best way to use Diaspora skills more strategically would be in capacity building, training and mentorship, with a view

to rebuilding our public institutions and putting in place sustainable systems, with strong emphasis on human resource development. He also called for the establishment of University of Agriculture in Volta Region as a matter of urgency. He explains that although Ghana is at the take off stage, the country must be self sufficient in mechanized food production first and foremost.

He said the Diaspora skills transfer would address critical shortages in areas of health, education and rural development.

Dr Garbrah commended Mills government for looking at ways other countries, including Israel, India and the Philippines have successfully mobilized their nationals abroad to contribute to their home country’s development process.

“I’m very, very passionate about Ghana and Ghanaians in general”.

Diaspora-Based Development can be a Powerful Resource Tapiwa Gomo

It is refreshing to note that the debate on the role of Diaspora in the development of Zimbabwe has re-emerged from the trenches of political polarity that pre-occupied the pre-GNU discussion. The maturity with which the debate has been handled by the different players is quite promising. This is inimical to the negativity and myopia in which Zimbabweans based abroad were viewed.

The pre-GNU political order associated Diasporans with deserters, border jumpers, traitors, political victim impostors and ‘enemies of the struggle’. Whether this was by design or choice, the arguments by that political order deliberately annihilated the role played by the Diaspora during the liberation of the country. Some Diasporans mobilised resources for the liberation war while others looked after some of the Delegates during the Lancaster House talks.

The narrow minded and myopic view of Diasporans as enemies eludes a simple fact that Diasporans are not only a consequence of social, economic and political situations of a home country but can be a result of the high demand for skilled work force in other countries. This doesn’t conclusively mean that people automatically turn against their country. Zimbabweans unlike other nationalities are known to love their country so much that they sometimes defended policies they don’t agree with.

History and facts show us that if allowed space, Diaspora can be a vital cog not only in resuscitating ailing economies but in national development.

Globally the Diaspora is believed to remit approximately over a billion dollars to the deve-

loping countries. Diaspora remittances have a direct impact on poverty reduction, since they tend to flow directly to poor households and are used primarily for basic needs such as food.

During those dark years, Zimbabwe too was a recipient of millions of dollars from the Diaspora which went towards consumption as the hyper inflationary environment couldn’t sustain any investment or savings. But development experts argue that even if remittances are not used for “productive” investment, just sustaining human life represents an investment in human capital as well as injection cash flows, which has a multiplier effect to the economy.

However, in a fairly stable economic and political environment, Diaspora remittances have shown that, in the presence of conducive economic policies and open dialogue, they contribute towards the growth of a sustainable economy. Ireland is one of the success stories where the government created a conducive environment for investment, and social and political discussion for its Diaspora human capital.

The Diaspora mitigated the impact of Asian economic crisis in the late 90s. China, India and Taiwan offer three different businessoriented models in enlisting Diaspora contributions to development. Taiwan invented a “brain trust” model designed to attract its human capital from the Diaspora, while China set out to attract direct investment and open trade opportunities through its overseas Chinese communities. India’s initiated Diaspora policy is multi-pronged, pursuing direct investment, portfolio investment, technology transfer, market opening and out-sourcing opportunities. All these three countries have succeeded to become among the leading global economies.

Instead of turning to the World Bank, IMF, East or West for credit lines, why not tap into the Diaspora potential, which doesn’t necessarily come with debilitating conditions?

Diaspora money, in a normal environment helps in improving balance of payment and trade and injects foreign currency in an economy. Assuming at least 4.5 million Zimbabweans outside country contributes just $10 towards national development that would give the country an income of $40 million a month and 480 million a year. This may not be enough to solve all the problems in Zimbabwe but it will surely ease the financial strain. But then, a culture of trust needs to be cultivated in order to create confidence among the Diasporans. The money lying idle in offshore accounts is clear evidence that no one, even those in power, can trust the current environment.

Since the times of Homelink and its peripheral projects, there has been a dearth of interest in pursuing the Diaspora national development agenda by the government. Perhaps this was on the misinformed assumption that most Diaspora have a political agenda or that the political environment was not appropriate for such a call.

But recent debate has not only shown hunger to participate in national development but that Zimbabwean Diasporans is not only about politics but the development of Zimbabwe.

They don’t only need to come back home, but they can be useful in market development, tourism, political contributions, and more intangible flows of knowledge, new attitudes, and cultural influence.

Tapiwa Gomo is a Development Specialist based in South Africa.

Now’s the Time to Invest in Africa Paul Collier and Jean-Louis Warnholz

Over the years many misguided pronouncements have touted the improved economic prospects of Africa, home to a large proportion of the world’s billion poorest people. The late 1990s even saw a slight economic resurgence, dubbed an “African renaissance,” but it fizzled, and a gloomy view of the continent as too unstable for investment other than in mining and oil seemed to settle over corporate boardrooms.

But reliable data show that a number of sub-Saharan nations have emerged from conflict in stable condition and that new macroeconomic forces are poised to have a profound effect – despite the global economic downturn. For example, the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook, released in October 2008, projected economic growth of 6.3% for sub-Saharan Africa in 2009, with Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria exceeding 8% growth. Our research on African companies indicates that the continent offers competitive manufacturing sites, IT outsourcing, and construction services. There is real opportunity on the ground in Africa.

Multinationals and investors should bear these developments in mind: Stability: The periods of catastrophic government action that slowed growth in past decades have become much less frequent. The failures in Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s were profound learning experiences for those countries, which have joined the list of today’s success stories. Nigeria, for instance, has paid off its external debts, enacted prudent fiscal rules, and cleaned up its banking system.

Policy: The more favourable laid the groundwork for growth: ple, qualify for duty-free access within African countries have for instance, has made informagies the cornerstone of a new Park in Kigali, its capital.

policies of developed nations have Many of Ghana’s exports, for examto EU and U.S. markets. Policies boosted local economies: Rwanda, tion and communications technologrowth strategy, setting up the ICT

Profits: Our study of 2002–2007 financial data from all the Africabased publicly traded companies for which data were available (a total of 954, mostly in manufacturing and services) shows that many of these firms are highly profitable.

(For foreign-owned companies we looked only at the performance of the African entities.) In part because of low labour costs and gains in operational efficiency, the average annual return on capital of the companies studied was 65% to 70% higher than that of comparable firms in China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The median profit margin was 11% –better than the comparable figures for Asia and South America. Our analysis of World Bank data on 1,869 African companies confirms these findings.

Opportunity: Construction companies call centres, and IT services are among the region’s most successful businesses. The engineering services company Gasabo 3D Design, located in Kigali’s ICT Park, uses computer technology to transform drawings into three-dimensional models for customers at a highly competitive hourly rate of US$10.

Years have passed since investors updated their view of Africa’s promise. The time is ripe for multinationals to rethink sub-Saharan opportunities and simultaneously to help the region achieve its promise by contributing much-needed capital, business skills, and global connections.

Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion (Oxford, 2007), is a professor of economics and the director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford in England. Jean-Louis Warnholz is a researcher at the Centre for the Study of African Economies and a consultant on business development in emerging markets.

HR is the acronym for human resources. HR in South Africa is the element within a company which deals with the personal aspects/needs of workers. It is also the name of the function within an organization charged with the overall responsibility for implementing strategies and policies relating to the management of individuals (i.e. the human resources). Many companies have an HR department within their structure, which may provide a broad range of services to its employees.

A HR department is a critical component of employee well-being in any business, no matter how small. Most of the employees who work in HR in South Africa would be considered as part of the department. But there are many people outside of such a department that are somehow linked with the activities of the HR department.

This has to do with “the human element” of working with employees. For example, when a line manager wants to employ a worker, they will work side by side with the HR department in finding the correct employee for the job.

The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavours are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process.

The emerging trend in HR in South Africa is clearly toward the adoption of the HR approach. This helps the organisation benefit in two ways: 1. An increase in organisational effectiveness 2. The satisfaction of each employee’s needs.

Rather than addressing organisational goals and employee needs as separate and restricted, the HR in South Africa approach holds that organisational goals and human needs are mutual and like-minded.

Key functions of HR In simple terms, an organisation’s HR in South Africa management strategy should maximize return on investment in the organisation’s human capital and minimize financial risk.

HR managers seek to achieve this by aligning the supply of skilled and qualified individuals and the capabilities of the current workforce, with the organisation’s ongoing and future business plans and requirements to maximize return on investment and secure future survival and success.

In ensuring such objectives are achieved, the HR function is to implement an organisation’s human resource requirements effectively, taking into account Governmental laws and regulations; ethical business practices; and net cost, in a manner that maximizes, as far as possible, employee motivation, commitment and productivity.

African Cities among Most Expensive Places for Ex-pats

Luanda in Angola, Africa, is the world's most expensive city for expatriates to live, according to Annual Research.

Two other African cities – N’djamena in Chad and Libreville in Gabon - also feature in the world's top 10 expensive places in a survey by HR consultancy Mercer, which highlights the growing importance of Africa to multinational companies.

The top 10 also includes three Asian cities: Tokyo (second), Osaka (sixth), and Hong Kong (joint eighth most expensive city with Zurich).

Europe's most expensive city is Moscow (fourth), followed by Geneva (fifth), and Zurich. London is ranked joint 17th in the survey alongside Paris.

After London, the UK's most expensive cities are Aberdeen (149), Glasgow (155), and Birmingham (158). Belfast (182) is ranked as the UK's least expensive city.

The survey covers 214 cities across five continents and measures the comparative cost of more than 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.

Multinational companies and governments use the survey to help decide employee compensation, according to Mercer.

Nathalie Constantin-MĂŠtral, a Senior Researcher at Mercer, said: "In the past couple of years, corporate assignments have become truly global, with expatriates and 'global assignees' being transferred across all parts of the world.

"However, global mobility is still an expensive undertaking for companies, so selection of the right candidates and a real understanding of the costs involved in relocating staff to other countries are essential especially in today's economic environment." http://www.mercer.com/costofliving

Organisational Culture on Efforts to Enhance Human Resource Competitiveness in Egypt

S

kopos Consulting, a leading Organisation Development (OD) solutions firm in the Middle East and Africa, conducted a special discussion about the impact of organizational culture in driving business performance during a speaking engagement hosted by the Egyptian Human Resource Management Association (EHRMA) yesterday at the Conrad Hotel in Cairo, Egypt.

The discussion, which was attended by EHRMA members and other HR professionals in the country, provided a closer look at how organizational culture can help enhance organizational outcomes and boost business longevity and success.

invest in efforts to clearly define their organisational culture have benefited from enhanced decision-making capability, optimal use of professional competencies, improved job satisfaction levels and increased employee engagement, among others.

Dr. Hussein El Kazzaz, Managing Director, Skopos Consulting Group, served as the keynote speaker of the event and focused his discussions on strategies related to organization development and organizational culture that ultimately contribute in reinforcing Egypt's human resource competitiveness.

The speaking engagement organized by EHRMA is a great opportunity to share Skopos' practical experiences in helping to redefine the organisational cultures and consequently improving the business performance of leading institutions in the Middle East and Africa," said Dr. El Kazzaz.

"Adopting constructive reforms in organizational culture is vital as it helps optimize the working environment and subsequently increases the productivity across all levels of the business enterprise. Companies that

Skopos has been a leading proponent of culture development and change management through advanced executive coaching, corporate team building, and soft skills development across the MEA region.

Egypt pyramid at sunset

By MWAURA KIMANI

Weak Economy Poses Hurdle for HR Managers in Kenya A subdued economy since 2008 has not been kind to human resource managers in Kenya’s executive suites. Step into the office of any head of corporate human resources today and the first thing they will tell you is how hard managing human capital has become of late.

Still smarting from strained mutual trust between them and workers following costcutting measures introduced by firms in the wake of the biting economic slowdown last year, HR managers have had to shift gears yet again in managing employees as the economy gradually recovers.

Last year, most Kenyan firms found themselves fighting for survival by slashing costs rather than racing to meet targets, resorting to pay and promotion freezes, changes in pension schemes, cuts in recruitment and lower training budgets. These combined with poor communication, eroded the bonds of trust between some employers and employees, said a recent report by audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Among the challenges facing employers are higher pay demands and stiff competition for talent. Business Daily’s Mwaura Kimani spoke with David Ssegawa, Coca-Cola Human Resource Director in charge of East and Central Africa, on the emerging trends and challenges in the human resource docket in Kenya.

What are the emerging issues and trends in managing human capital in Kenya?

The Kenyan human capital landscape is probably one of the fastest evolving on the continent. First, the country has seen an influx of multinational companies, making Kenya the business hub for the region.

As such the level of professionalism has been rising day by day, with each player trying to replicate global workplace as well as professional standards to the way business is executed. Most companies are increasingly realising the competitive advantage the best-in-class human capital management delivers, heightening the already stiff war for talent.

Apart from defining distinct skills and competencies for each profession and function, most organisations are developing multi-pronged talent sourcing strategies, training and development tactics, performance management processes as well as reward management frameworks to drive performance excellence.

What are the main challenges multinationals face in the local market in terms of sourcing and managing the right human capital skills?

Just like any player in the labour market, our business also faces a challenge in attracting and retaining great talent given that the experienced talent pool is not growing at the same pace as the businesses.

There has been concern over Kenya’s human capital with concerns that universities are churning out half-baked students. What is your experience?

Employees’ career aspirations and expectations are increasingly becoming more complex, making it constantly important to review the employee value proposition, especially around the remuneration mix and the work environment, against the back-drop of tough economic times and a very competitive landscape.

The curriculum in the universities is largely academic as expected, yet the business challenges today require ready-to-hit-the-groundrunning professionals. It’s unlikely that the curriculum will change any time soon to suit employer needs, and as such companies have to incur heavy costs in training new employees. It takes patience, trade-offs and reasonable investment to strike the right balance.

What impact has the recent subdued performance of the economy and high cost of living had on employment trends, HR management and payroll in regard to hiring expatriates?

Our view on the deployment of expatriates is more motivated by the need to bring in rare, hot, skills from all over the world than by costconsiderations. In fact, given our multi-country coverage, it makes sense to have a workforce that is as diverse as the markets in which we do business.

Expatriation is also a great avenue for motivating and developing our talent as they harness international experiences as they grow their careers.

In terms of cost, Kenya is not any more expensive than other regional hubs like South Africa, Nigeria or Egypt.

At the end of the day, it is advisable to look at the business case for expatriates in terms of the return on investment than just absolute cost.

The cost-of-living in Kenya has not been a hindrance to expatriation programmes yet, in my view.

Noteworthy is the fast growing mix of demographics, with generations X and Y aspiring for value propositions that are significantly different from the traditional ways of driving employee engagement.

Prospects are growing that Kenya’s economy will rebound by end of next year. What does this mean for HR practitioners?

The rebound is great news for any investor in talent in this market. What it means is that there will be more jobs created and employee value propositions will improve.

Supply for talent will probably grow ahead of demand and consequently less panic-recruitment which tends to raise the cost of employment owing to premiums being offered in the market today.

With job cuts freezes diminishing, there will be an opportunity to invest in talent for longer careers in the company and to offer broader learning experiences.

Worker productivity could also grow. But that comes with the challenge to market players to raise their game in building robust talent strategies and employee value propositions that will enable them to attract the best in a fast growing market. pmkimani@ke.nationmedia.com

Use of Psychometric Test as a Recruitment Tool in Africa There are many organisations that are realising the benefits of psychometric testing in the selection process.

If these psychometrics assessments are used properly and in a professional and informed manner, psychometric testing can make a significant value in increasing an organisations efficiency and effectiveness. Psychometric assessment can play a key role in placing the right type of individual in the right kind of career and to ensure that they receive the correct training to enhance their own skills by using scientifically reliable methods.

Organisations are also realising the need to assess future employee’s ethical stance and their intrinsic qualities. Due to an increase in theft, fraud, drug use, alcohol problems and violence; psychometric testing is becoming an increasingly important predictor of potential future behaviour to rule out future high-risk employees.

Even with the continuous growth in psychometric assessment there are still a few criticisms relating to psychometric instruments with the main criticism being that of reliability and validity, and the over reliance of psychometric assessment to predict future performance in industry especially relating to complex positions like management. Another criticism relating to psychometric testing is to the extent to which tests might discriminate against a particular person or a group of people.

Psychometric testing tries to attempt some type of objectivity in selection decision making. The numerous tests used in selection fall in various categories including: personality, ability, aptitude, knowledge and integrity tests.

Personality tests This psychometric test includes the quantification of traits that are of importance to the job and would be much more difficult to measure by any other means.

There are numerous tests that can be taken to measure personality but the most frequently used is that of written tests.

The measure that is most often referred to as the basic dimension for personality tests is the ‘The Big Five Test’. The Big Five is a test that measures the five components of personality including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience.

Ability tests This psychometric test is concerned with an individual’s skills and abilities that the individual already has. These tests measure if when an individual is given the opportunity to perform that person has the ability to perform the tasks.

There are three main categories that fall into measurable abilities that can show potential and these are: psychomotor (perceptual speed and accuracy); physical (manual dexterity and physical strength); and cognitive (verbal and quantitative).

Aptitude tests These types of psychometric tests analyse the potential that an individual possesses in order to complete specific tasks. The type of tests that they may complete includes verbal reasoning and numerical aptitude tests.

Knowledge tests Knowledge test are psychometrics test that give away an indication of an individual’s overall analysis of their mental ability and assess a person’s knowledge on a particular item. These tests do not attempt to access the potential of an individual’s future but rather to inform the interviewer where that person knowledge is at the time of the test.

Integrity tests There has been a lot of recent work on the efficiency of integrity tests and it is becoming more common in organisations due to the attention that the tests have been given. The term ‘integrity’ is a compressed word of many factors including honesty, trustworthiness, contentiousness and reliability.

Together with the primary test scale, many other test publishers include other scales that

have been shown interest such as customer service orientation and violent tendencies. A number of countries have challenged these tests due to the infringement of human rights, but apart from this the popularity of these tests are increasing in industry.

With all the psychometric tests that an organisation has at its disposal a person can see why they play such an important role in the selection process.

Psychometric testing, offers organisations a way of discriminating between large amounts of applicants in a rather rapid and often costeffective manner. Even more so, the power in using psychometric assessment in predicting future successful job performance is among the highest of any selection tool.

Challenge in psychometric assessment There are various factors that have placed a greater emphasis on effective selection and development of human resources in an African context. These factors range from unemployment and equity considerations to rapid occupational change due to technological advancements. This has led to a greater demand on psychological assessment in the organisational setting and by doing so, ensuring a significant value is put on assessment that is responsible, ethical and equitable.

Testing was for a long time viewed in the past as discriminatory and unfair but the perception of psychometric assessment is slowly changing. Sound assessment is extremely useful for the use of measuring individuals and practitioners are becoming aware of its advantages.

The improvements of these psychometric tests have led to the implementation of crossculturally fair tests. Psychometric assessment in the workplace is used to measure the performance and potential of current and future employees through the use of selection and performance management respectively.

New! Africa Migration Report SUBMITTED BY DILIP RATHA With about 30 million Africans living outside their home countries, migration is a vital lifeline for the continent. Yet African governments need to do more to realize the full economic benefits of the phenomenon, says a new report by the African Development Bank and the World Bank.

The report, Leveraging Migration for Africa: Remittances, Skills, and Investments, presents data from new surveys. The report finds evidence that suggest migration and remittances reduce poverty in the origin communities.

Remittances lead to increased investments in health, education, and housing in Africa.

Diasporas also provide capital, trade, knowledge, and technology transfers.

“Migration pressures will only rise in the future as a result of demographic changes of rising population in Africa and falling labor forces in Europe and many developed countries,” said Hans Timmer, director of development prospects at the World Bank. “Therefore, adapting policy responses to demographic forces and crafting multilateral arrangements for managing future migration is essential.”

Two-thirds of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly poorer migrants, go to other countries in the region, while more than 90 percent of migrants from North Africa have moved outside the African continent. The top destinations for African migrants are France (9 percent of total emigrants), Cote d’Ivoire (8 percent), South Africa (6 percent), Saudi Arabia (5 percent), and the United States and the United Kingdom (4 percent each).

Shantayanan Devarajan, chief economist of the Africa region at the World Bank, said, “Migration of skilled labor is particularly high in small and low-income African countries, which already have low levels of human capital. Fragile and post-war countries face even bigger challenges because of the flight of human capital. African governments and policy makers should focus on increasing education and skill levels and establishing an environment in which high-skilled workers have productive opportunities at home.”

“African governments need to strengthen ties between diasporas and home countries, protect migrants, and expand competition in remittance markets,” said Dilip Ratha, main author of the report and lead economist at the World Bank. “Otherwise, the potential of migration for Africa remains largely untapped.”

One innovation worth considering are diaspora bonds, which are sold by governments or private companies to nationals living abroad. These bonds have already been successful in tapping into assets of Israeli and Indian citizens living abroad. According to Ratha¸ Sub-Saharan African countries can potentially raise $5–$10 billion a year in diaspora bonds. Countries with large diasporas in high-income countries that can potentially issue diaspora bonds include Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia in Sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia in North Africa.

“African banks can improve their access to international capital markets by issuing bonds that are securitized by future remittance inflows,” said Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist of the African Development Bank. “The African Development Bank, the World Bank and bilateral donors can play a significant role in facilitating remittance securitization and mitigating the risks to African countries of issuing these remittance-backed bonds. Efforts can include technical assistance in project design and creditworthiness analysis, prudential debt management, and helping African countries obtain sovereign ratings.”

Recorded remittances into Africa, which grew fourfold between 1990 and 2010 to reach nearly $40 billion in 2010, are the continent’s largest source of foreign capital after foreign direct investments. Recent surveys show that investments such as land purchases, building a home, and starting a business were the highest uses of remittances sent home by African diaspora. As a share of total investment, these represented 36 percent in Burkina Faso, 55 percent in Kenya, 57 percent in Nigeria, 15 percent in Senegal, and 20 percent in Uganda. Education was the secondhighest use of remittances from outside Africa into Nigeria and Uganda, the third highest

into Burkina Faso, and the fourth highest into Kenya.

However, official remittance flows to Africa are significantly underestimated, with only about half of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa collecting and reporting remittance data with any regularity.

The report finds it is still very expensive to send remittances to African countries, particularly within Africa. According to Ratha, these high costs encourage the use of informal channels and are an unnecessary burden for African migrants and remittance recipients.

The report recommends that post offices, savings and credit cooperatives, rural banks, and microfinance institutions that have large branch networks can play an important role to expand access to remittances and financial services among the poor and in rural areas.

But they should avoid exclusive agreements with money transfer operators, which limits competition and tends to increase the cost of sending money. There is also a need to assess the implications of telecom companies in Africa offering mobile money transfers and other financial services for banking stability and systemic risk.

About the Report Leveraging Migration for Africa: Remittances, Skills, and Investments fills important knowledge gaps on African migration, remittances, and diasporas. It is produced jointly by the African Development Bank and the World Bank as part of the Africa Migration Project. The project has the financial support of the African Development Bank; the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); the Department of International Development (DFID); the French Ministry of Immigration, Integration, Asylum and Solidarity Developme nt; the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Africa as an Outsourcing Destination Pumela Salela , BPO/ITeS Consultant, World Bank

Africa has the essential ingredients to be a force to be reckoned with in the global BPO space, and addressing the challenges it faces will enhance its value offering.

In the past, Africa with its 53 countries, was known as a continent of starvation, disease, war, conflict, famine and hunger inhabited by those which Franz Fanon called “The Wretched of the Earth”. Today, Africa presents a different face to the rest of the world. A face characterized by economic growth, regulatory and political reform. To date, Africa is estimated to have one billion inhabitants, the majority of which are of working age population group.

A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) indicates that today, Africa’s collective GDP is $1.6 billion, roughly equal to Brazil’s or Russia’s. Tomorrow (year 2020) Africa’s collective GDP is estimated to reach $2.6 trillion. Real GDP rose 4.9% per year from 2000 through 2008, more than twice its pace in the 1980’s and ‘90s. Telecom, banking, and retail are flourishing. Construction is booming. Foreign investment is surging. South Africa recently hosted the first FIFA Soccer World Cup to be hosted on the African soil and delivered a spectacular world class event. Africa surprised all in the area of mobile phone subscriptions, as its subscribers have increased steadily since year 2000 to reach 316 million to date. Interesting to note is that African countries are seen to be equally competing with other emerging markets and are as productive as other countries such as India and China.

The MGI study estimates that by 2040 about 1.1 billion Africans will be of working age. This is significant, in an era where the working age pop-

ulation amongst other countries is shrinking. Furthermore, 128 million African households are predicted to be having discretionary income by 2020. Finally, 50% of Africans will be living in cities by 2030.

What does this mean for the Globalization of Services in the form of Business Process Outsourcing & Off shoring?

Hope in BPO Part of Africa’s growth can be attributed to the growth of the Services Sector within Africa. The Services sector contributes to more than 60% of the GDP in those African countries wherein it is developed. In these countries, Services sector accounts for the majority of employment creation. Business Process Outsourcing and Off shoring, presents a new hope for Africa, whereby the continent will no longer be seen as a continent for aid, but rather a continent ready for trade in services.

If we look at the necessary ingredients of a country strategy for building the BPO&O sector, we will realise that Africa is making significant strides in developing its BPO sector. A summary of Gartner’s Top 10 Criteria, AT Kearney Global Services Location Index, McKinsey Location Readiness Index and Hewitt’s International Benchmarking Model reveals that the top five building blocks of a country strategy are: Talent Development, Infrastructure, Business Environment, Incentives and Marketing. In the discussion that follows, we will illustrate how Africa fares in each of the pillars identified.

Talent As earlier mentioned, Africa is home to one billion people, the majority of which are of working age. Africa has a highly educated workforce, both within the continent and in the Diaspora. African Countries are investing in training and skills development initiatives, to ensure that a readily available pool of labour is at hand to feed into the global services model. Egypt, for example, has a system of converting graduates from other fields of study, to be BPO sector ready and provides subsidies for the training and conversion thereof. Nile University, which is housed within Egypt’s Smart Village (A BPO Park) also, trains students in the areas of ICT Enabled Services. Talent development is seen to be related to job creation, whereby African countries have specific targets to the number of jobs they wish to create in the sector, within stipulated time frames.

Infrastructure Across Africa, changes in broadband connectivity are underway. A number of undersea cables are scheduled to be completed by 2011. On the West side of Africa, in addition to the existing SAT3 cable, there shall be the WACS (Q2 2011), Main One (Q4 2010), ACE (2011), GLO1(Q4 2009). On the East side of Africa, in addition to the SAFE cable, the EASSy (Q2 2010), Seacom (2009) and TEAMs (Q3 2009) cables have recently been launched. This signals a positive change from a continent that was only served by the SAT3 cable on the West and the SAFE cable on the East. This will improve not only the quality of telecommunications in the continent but also the costs thereof, as some of these providers promise to slash telecommunications prices by up to 80% of the current market price.

African governments are engaging the private sector to develop other critical infrastructure such as energy including electricity, water supply, roads, rail, air connectivity, hotel amongst others. Real Estate is becoming a big draw card as governments , together with private sector , are building readily available “plug play” facilities for BPO Operators.

Examples of these can be found in Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Business environment On a macro-level, the 2009 Africa Competitiveness Report came out amid the most significant financial crisis in generations. In this context, the state of Africa’s financial markets figures was among the main topics analyzed in the Report. The analysis finds that some African countries— namely South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Egypt—are well poised to bounce back from the crisis. This is because these large economies enjoy competitive banking systems and have functional regulatory systems, the consequence of financial-sector reforms adopted since the early 1990s. On a micro-level, the rest of the African countries involved in the outsourcing sector are doing everything possible to lessen the burden of starting up a business, thus improving the ease of doing business in the respective countries.

Incentives Countries in Africa have woken up to the need for incentives as “sweeteners” to outsourcing deals. These vary from CAPEX and OPEX, talent through to tax breaks. Morocco, for example, offers a tax exemption of 5 years and imports of hardware and software is charged at 2.5%.

On the other hand Egypt offers a corporate tax of 20% and customs duty of 6.2%. Countries which do not offer tax breaks, for example South Africa and Kenya, offer CAPEX, OPEX and talent development tailor made incentives.

Marketing Increasingly African countries are seen as key exhibitors and participants in the global BPO conferences, summits and seminars.

Each country involved in the BPO space is creating awareness about its value proposition, demonstrating its readiness to take on outsourcing of

off shoring work from global clients. Ghana is amongst those countries.

Through, the leadership of Avasant, a global sourcing advisory firm, Ghana is making strides in showcasing itself as a viable outsourcing country, within Africa.

BPO Country Developments Sub-Saharan Africa Ghana An industry association called GASSCOM was formed. An article by Lewis (2010) indicates the Secretariat of Ghana's Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) wants to establish e-governance and electronic voting in his country. The Secretariat has even disclosed that BPO would be contributing millions of dollars to the country's economy. He anticipated that it would help Ghana to become the fastest developing nation in the world. It is mentioned that English is the official language in Ghana which means that “the people of Ghana won't be facing any problem dealing with US or UK based service buyers”. The country sees itself as having the right kind of resources for attracting all sorts of French BPO jobs including French call centres. In addition to that, the country sees huge potential in the areas of graphic design, business enquiry and legal processes outsourcing among others.

South Africa South Africa was one of the first movers into the BPO space within Africa. As early as 2006, the country had identified BPO as a priority sector for development. As a result, all the necessary strategic pillars were put in place to position the country globally as a contender in the BPO space. To date, the country has managed to attract some of the world’s top BPO investors in the form of Genpact, Aegis, and Teleperformance, amongst others. Recently (October 2010), a new value proposition was launched which positions the country as a gateway and delivery centre for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, a near shore destination to Europe-particularly the United Kingdom and a Dutch language outsourcing hub due to its history and Dutch language capabilities.

According to the Global Competitiveness Index, South Africa’s education is ranked higher than that of India and China. A research conducted by Everest in 2009 indicated that South Africa has three times (3x) the number of qualified actuarial scientists than India. South Africa has mature service offerings in Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, Telecommunications, IT Outsourcing, Knowledge Process Outsourcing and Legal Process Outsourcing. South Africa prides itself of having an English language whose accent is neutral and augers well with the country's cultural and product affinity with Europe and the United States.

Malawi Malawi is new in the game but is set to make its mark. In September 2010 the country held a workshop facilitated by the Commonwealth Secretariat, with the aim of developing a roadmap for the country to grab a slice of the BPO Global space. In its initial offering, the country will focus in the lower end of the value chain, focusing on English and its Customer service capabilities.

Nigeria The World Bank has recently (November 2010) published a paper titled: Developing an African Off shoring Industry - The case for Nigeria. The purpose of the policy note is to raise awareness of Nigeria’s potential as an African off shoring hub, and it is aimed primarily toward policy makers, potential private sector investors, and development partners.

The note addresses the following questions: what can Nigeria do to take advantage of the benefits of global trade in services; how can the country brand itself as an off shoring destination for international investors; and what government policies are required to ensure that Nigeria plays a role in the growing ICT off shoring sector?

In the same paper, Nigeria’s main strengths as a potential off shoring destination are identified to lie in its relatively low-wage and cost structure. The country’s large size and youthful population are also seen as assets for companies wishing to establish large-scale call centres and similar operations. Along the same vein, Nigeria’s good record on contract enforcement and flexible labour market regulations are viewed as having a potential to increase its competitiveness, as do recent steps to streamline business registration.

Mauritius Mauritius prides itself for ease of doing business as the country states that a new business can be set up within 3 days. The country indicates that it has 15,000 available bilingual talents (English and French) from Knowledge Worker to Cadre level. It cites a low fiscal regime as one of its strengths (15 % harmonized personal and corporate tax, 0% tax on dividends, and free repatriation of profits). In terms of Service offerings, Mauritius is strong in the following: CRM (Tele-marketing, helpdesk) , Application Development ( Software Design and Development, Website Development, IT Consulting) ,IT Services ( Data Centres including hosting, IT Help Desk, Disaster Recovery ), BPO / KPO (Finance & Accounting, HR Outsourcing, Publishing and Content Development, Procurement, Architectural & Engineering Design, Legal). The country is positioning itself as the regional hub of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning infrastructure and services for the global service provider community.

Kenya The country has a world class captive in the form of Safaricom and a well known BPO third party service provider, KenCall. Kenya is driving innovation. Safaricom launched the world’s first mobile phone service that allows money transfers by phone: MPESA. According to the Kenya ICT Board website(www.ict.go.ke) Kenya’s BPO strengths lie in Call Centres ( Inbound Customer Services & Support, Outbound Sales + Marketing, Market Research, Event Management, Print Media); Back Office Processing (Online Database Management, Email & Forms Processing, Data Entry & Conversion, Corporate Communications and Graphic Design); and Software Development (Website Development and Animation). Kenya purports that the cost of operating a 1,000 seat BPO centre in Kenya is lower than in competing destinations such as India and the Philippines largely because an average FTE cost is $300 in Kenya as opposed to $425 per month in India). One of Kenya’s key competitive strengths is that it has a well developed financial services sector, and is developing into a regional (East Africa) hub. As one of the indicators of this strength, ATM numbers in Kenya have grown by 41% per annum.

North Africa Egypt Over the past few years, Egypt has been striving to enhance its ICT infrastructure through national initiatives and projects implemented jointly by the public and private sector. Egypt has extensive availability of high quality and low cost/subsidized support infrastructure and services such as power, telecoms and internet. According to Data Monitor, Egypt’s Outsourcing sector is expected to grow rapidly due to increased offshore interest from Western Europe as well as the United States and Canada. BPO country studies by A.T. Kearney (2009) place Egypt in the 6th position globally, out of the 50 countries surveyed.

Itida reports that “Egypt is proving to be an attractive location for world leaders in the ICT industry, surpassing its competitors in the developing world – India and the Philippines – and attracting the attention of

major corporations in the developed world, notably Orange, Vodafone and SQS. These corporations are investing heavily in Egypt as a coveted ICT outsourcing location.” Egypt has a number of initiatives to support the BPO sector, from SMME incubation, through eduEgypt (training initiative) to international marketing support for established BPO operators in the country. Egypt has various language capabilities which include French, German, Arabic, English and Spanish.

Morocco Morocco is seen as the African country that is leading in broadband penetration and telecommunications networks, foundations which are solid for the BPO sector. Morocco has been included in the Gartner list of the Top 30 Outsourcing destinations. The country’s strategy was developed by McKinsey through the so called McKinsey 2006 -2012 Impact Plan. Morocco has a number of BPO Parks for example, Morocco Techno park, Casashore, Rabat, and ForeShore. Two additional techno parks are going to be created in the near future. There are strong incentives for start ups. The government ensures that it receives a Return on Investment (ROI) on projects. Companies normally pay 40% salary taxes. If they are BPO operators, they pay 20%.

This means that it gets cut into half. Morocco has Spanish language capabilities which allowed it to attract a BPO service provider Atento.

Dell established helpdesks in Morocco to serve its French and Spanish customers, creating about 1,500 jobs. The country currently has about 200 call centres, including 30 of significant size, that employ a total of over 18,000 people.

Tunisia

Challenges

A website (www.bpovoice.com ) indicates that in Tunisia , ICT & outsourcing of services are the beneficiaries of a significant level of investment, amounting to some 3.5 billion Euros for the period 2007-2011, compared to just 230 million Euros for the period 1992-1996. Tunisia, as a country, is strategically positioned as a gateway to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Its population has French, Arabic and English speaking capabilities.

In sub-Saharan Africa the first challenge worth highlighting is Perception! Perception! Perception! A number of countries in the developed world still see Africa as backward and underdeveloped. My belief has always been that “Seeing is Believing�. I would encourage each Executive that is exploring location options to book a flight to Africa and touch the ground. The reality is definitely different from how Africa has been perceived. Many parts of Africa are on par with western standards from a professional business point of view, to world class infrastructure.

Many European companies have set up BPO operations in Tunisia to capitalize in order for Tunisia to serve their French speaking customers.

Tunisian engineers are said to be 80% lower than Europe cost wise.

Alcatel's R&D centre in Tunisia was first tasked with assisting the company's Paris and Milan centres in the development of products. It evolved later into an independent design and implementation centre. SR Teleperformance, a multinational call centre, currently employs about 1,000 workers in Tunisia that serve French clients.

With 200 call centres, Tunisia is one of the leading call centres and outsourcing destinations in Africa and in the Arab world. There are procedures adopted by the government to strengthen investment in call centres and remote support centres, through the activation of the network structure of the Internet Protocol (MPLS) at the national level in addition to the extension of the El Ghazala (a pool of more than 3900 people: 2000 engineers, 140 teachers & researchers and 1700 students) which specialise in ICT activities and research. Tunisia seeks to attract 2,000 new outsourcing jobs by the end of 2010. It is envisaged that Tunisia could become a regional business hub for companies operating in the space and aeronautic sector as there are already 20 foreign companies that are currently operating in the sector, including major names such as Latecoere, Zodiac and Sogema.

Education Linkages could be cited as another challenge, in the sense that some school leavers and university graduates have the qualifications yet at times, these qualifications are not directly suitable to meet the needs of the outsourcing sector. A process of training and skills development is sometimes required before the school leavers and graduates can be absorbed into the workforce.

Lack of tax breaks is seen as a hindrance by potential investors. The Tier 1 BPO destinations such as India offer tax breaks. Potential investors usually assume that all other countries follow suit. Yet, there are African countries that are vehemently opposed to tax breaks, who would not mind giving other incentives which could take the place of tax breaks and have the same effect on the bottom line.

The Inhibitors, in North Africa, according to Data Monitor are the following: Perceived regional instability. There are misconceptions revolving around certain locations in North Africa.

Labour Availability. There is belief that there is outward migration to the European Countries and that the labour pool is tightening sharply. The outsource backlash is seen to be a hindrance together with the concern over lost domestic jobs in Western Countries.

Corruption. Western Business practice is something that is relatively new in North Africa, according to Data Monitor.

Across Africa (North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa), the similarity of value propositions has made it difficult to differentiate one location from another. The volatility of the currency is also cited as one of the challenges that make investors feel uneasy. However, interviewing current BPO investors reveals that they are able to mitigate the risks and make the necessary profits.

Conclusion The key reasons behind Africa’s growth surge as highlighted in the MGI report are improved political and macroeconomic stability and macro economic reforms. African governments increasingly adopted policies to energize markets. They privatized state-owned enterprises, reduced trade barriers, cut corporate taxes and strengthened regulatory and legal systems. As a result, six of the African countries mentioned above (Egypt, Ghana, Tunisia, Mauritius, Morocco, and South Africa) are in the AT Kearney 2009 top 50 Global Services Location Index. This signals that Africa has the essential ingredients to be a force to be reckoned with in the global BPO space. The challenges identified are something that the various African stakeholders are engaging robustly on, ensuring that they are addressed in order to enhance the Africa value offering.

EVENTS

Managing the people dimension in an organisation can be engrossing, and given the fast paced and highly dynamic nature of the Nigerian business environment, things often get more daunting. So when I heard about the Human Capital Summit (HCS) and Exhibition, an event which would bring a hundred or more busy HR Directors, Managers, Executives and Consultants together for three days, in Lagos October 2010, I knew it was a rare opportunity I didn’t want to miss. Eventually, I ended up not only participating but also being involved, and what an experience it was!

The Summit was convened to review trends, best practices and developments in global human capital management with a view to gaining perspectives on local application and providing strategic insights for HR and business leaders in Nigeria.

Delegates had access to a high quality networking opportunity, a breadth and variety of sector exposure, numerous shared experiences in HR practice, a forum to assess challenges, realities and opportunities for change as well as gain cuttingedge best practice ideas, all set within the context of the local business environment. Indeed, the event represented immense value and everyone who had invested in attending, certainly got much more than their money’s worth.

If you were at the Summit, you’ve probably got a picture of me in mind right now; the enthusiastic compeer whose excitement was at times almost contagious. Mind you, my zeal remains unabated and I’ve taken things a step further by telling my colleagues to book the dates for the next Summit in 2011 into their diaries. If you weren’t at the event, you’re probably wondering what could have been so impressive. Well, for the rest of my time with you, let me share what we experienced and simply leave you to be the judge of its quality. I’m also keen to share a few of my perspectives from the summit with you.

The Human Capital Summit featured a highly experienced faculty which included seasoned Nigerian HR practitioners and a number of heads of the function from leading organisations in the country. Mrs Ayodele Jaiyesimi, Head of Human Capital Management and Development at First Bank Plc started off the programme by taking an experiential look at how we transform HR’s role and contributions to the business and addressing the challenge for practitioners to become catalysts for change within their organisations.

Other speakers included Mallam Musa Rabiu, CEO Salsabil Consulting and Former Registrar / CEO CIPM, Akin Ayoola, Chief Human Resources Officer at Oando Plc, Chizoba Mojekwu, HR Director at the ECOWAS, Miyen Swomen, Director, Human Capital Management at Bank PHB, Femi Olowoyeye, Group Head, Human Capital Management at Wema Bank Plc, Tunji Ojikutu, MD/CEO, E Strategia, Joseph Olofinsola, a Senior Partner at H Pierson & Associates.

Review of Human Others where Tosin David, MD at the Training Directory and a former Head of HR at Citibank, Nigeria, Titus Osikoya, Head, Business Process Management at Access Bank Plc, L.M Tsalhatu, former HR Director at BUA Group, Ope Awolesi, the Principal Consultant at Capstone BCTS (UK) and Dickson Ojukwu, Coordinator Learning and Development at Airtel Nigeria.

Capital Summit 2010

Clearly this was a lengthy list of speakers each worth listening to and I must commend the organisers for bringing such a quantum of value together under one roof.

Areas of focus included the development of coaching and mentoring within organisations, achieving employee engagement, what the CEO really wants from HR, how HR can achieve access and impact in the boardroom, the quest for High performance, the growth of HR Outsourcing and trends to watch out for in the future, how to measure the return on investment on HRs activities, effective implementation of e-learning, gaining people management effectiveness through a Six Sigma approach, HR business partnering and its story so far as well as perspectives on its future, succession planning, the management of people risk in organisations and much more.

Beyond the quality of speakers, breadth of focus and depth of content, the event proved to be an effective forum for sharing cutting-edge best practices. Daily schedules included syndicate sessions which provided delegates with the opportunity to reflect on the issues tackled in the main sessions with a view to identifying key challenges which they were grappling with in their roles. It also created a forum to share ideas, perspectives and potential solutions which I am sure many took away and implemented successfully thereafter.

I must highlight an often unnoticed yet very impacting outcome from the Summit which for me was one that left an indelible mark on my mind. I call it the stories of personal impact on delegates and their careers or on the flip side, we could see it as the talent spotting opportunity it afforded organisations represented at the Summit. As the event drew near, its sponsors, First Bank Nigeria Plc and Silverbird Group agreed to subsidise the fees for the unemployed and HR students who could not afford to pay for their participation.

It was a unique example of how organisations can give back to the community in very simple ways and I had the opportunity of meeting a few such delegates who had taken advantage of this offer. They all shared the view that it had exposed them to a more strategic understanding of HR and its role in organisations. It was clear they had experienced a step change in how they saw the profession and their careers and they would not have otherwise gained access to the benefits they enjoyed nor would they have met the senior HR practitioners with whom they discussed, had lunch, shared ideas and even sold themselves as potential talent.

Let me share a success story which proves that the summit did serve as a viable talent pool for HR teams in participating organisations. A young lady, who I will call Miss A, had been unemployed for quite a while. She heard about the summit and thought to attend as a way of enhancing her knowledge and meeting

potential mentors in the profession whilst still looking for her first job in HR. I met her at the Summit and kept in touch with her thereafter. Reading an email from her recently brought smiles to my face as she confirmed she had just started her first job as an HR Officer with a leading fast consumer goods company in Lagos. A number of HR Managers from the company had attended the Human Capital Summit and she had apparently met with and sold herself successfully to them. Now, given the quality of perspective and ideas she has been exposed to at the summit, I would say her new employers were pretty smart to have picked her off the market knowing she had the right foundation to excel and contribute strategically in her new role.

The event was concluded with the launch of the Human Capital magazine; the second edition of which you are probably reading now. Aptly titled HC, this publication seeks to contribute to raising the bar of HR practice in Nigeria and that is one area I am really passionate about.

So do permit me to share a few thoughts on the subject. Some are rather controversial, but I will share them anyway so we remain open to conversations that will lead us forward as a profession. Having mulled over many of these ideas since attending the Human Capital Summit, these ideas have already influenced the way we do what we do at my Consulting firm and I hope it does the same for you.

Coming out of such an impacting three days, the question on my mind was… what next?

What is the future of HR in Nigeria? How can we as practitioners overcome the challenges we face today? What actions must we take to achieve the lofty quest to maximise the value of HR in organisations in Nigeria.

I recall a very thought provoking question fired at me by a Professor while I pitched my first business idea to a group of “dragons” at the business school many years ago. The question was; what business are you really in?

Put in other words; where is the value generated in what you do? I believe this is a question every forward thinking HR professional must ask his or herself today. We need to focus more on where the value is in what we do. HR is a broad area of expertise but it will help us to see our role from two simple dimensions; designing and equipping a winning organisation and developing its capability to achieve objectives and strategy.

Everything we do dovetails into either of these dimensions at some level and we must recognise this and allow it to shape how we apportion time and effort. We must also focus more on transformational actions that can deliver and enhance value rather than executing routine operational and procedural activities to maintain the status quo. This will give us the much needed credibility within our organisations and make the link between our activities and the bottom line of the business

clearer to our colleagues in line management, senior management, the Executive Office and the board.

We must face the challenge of change headfirst by turning what we know into what we do.

There is simply too much theory and too little application of best practice HR at the moment.

At this point, I hear many someone say…it’s the Nigerian factor, its organisational politics… it’s our CEO who doesn’t understand the value of HR…..it’s….it’s…it’s everyone but me. Well, if we truly believe HR excellence maximises opportunities for the business and gives it a unique competitive edge, we have to start by looking at things from the inside out.

We will need to take a personal stand and challenge alternative paradigms by leading through example and remaining committed to what we believe in, even when this endangers our longevity in the job. This requires passion, ownership, commitment, professionalism and a willingness to spend time to sell our vision to others who might not understand or support it.

what next? What is the future of HR in Nigeria? How can we as practitioners overcome the challenges we face today?

What actions must we take to achieve the lofty quest to maximise the value of HR in organisations in Nigeria.

Bode Olutunbi Bode is the Managing Partner and CEO of Peoplesource, an HR Consulting firm with offices in Lagos, Nigeria. Please email comments, ideas and thoughts on this article and any other general enquiry to bode@gowhereurcelebrated.com

As practitioners we must enhance the overall quality of our skills, professional competence as well as strategic and commercial awareness.

The HR professional of the future is a curious individual who has an active interest in the internal and external business environment and is open minded with a bias and willingness to learn and enquire. He or she is a decisive thinker who demonstrates the ability to analyse and understand data and information quickly, use information, insights and knowledge in a structured way, and makes wise, robust and defendable decisions.

We must be skilled influencers who are able to influence across a complex environment and can gain the necessary commitment, consensus and support from a wide range of diverse stakeholders.

We must be driven to deliver and possess a consistent and strong bias for action, taking accountability for the delivery of results and actively planning, prioritising and monitoring performance so others can be held accountable.

We must think and act collaboratively and work effectively and inclusively with colleagues, clients, stakeholders, customers, teams and individuals within and outside our organisations. We must be personally credible with a track record of reliable and valued delivery using relevant technical expertise and experience and exhibiting integrity and objectivity all through the process.

We must have the courage to challenge and the confidence to speak up even when confronted with resistance or unfamiliar circumstances and we must be seen as role models who consistently lead by example, act with integrity, impartiality and independence and apply sound personal judgment in all our interactions.

Without developing these qualities, our vision for the stronger recognition of HR’s value and worth in the organisation; for more respect and for a voice at senior management and board level to enable us impact the business in a more meaningful way, will remain simply an aspiration.

Let me end this piece by paraphrasing a very simple yet poignant statement made by Chizoba Mojekwu during her session, which in my opinion captures the key to the future success of HR and its practitioners in Nigeria; “are your aspirations matched by equivalent passion for what you believe in? Passing the passion test doesn’t always guarantee success, but without it, the journey can’t even begin.”

I’m off to conclude arrangements for a place at the next Human Capital Summit. See you all there!

27 - 28 October 2011

3rd Human Capital Summit 2011 Global Trends and Practices in Human Capital Management

Sheraton Hotel & Towers

www.humancapitalsummit.org

World Day for Safety and Health at Work – 28 April 2011 28 April 2011, Geneva The 2011 World Day for Safety and Health at Work focuses on the implementation of an Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) as a tool for continual improvement in the prevention of workplace incidents and accidents.

An OSHMS is a preventive method to implement safety and health measures which consists of four steps and incorporates the principle of continual improvement. Its principles are based on the PDCA Cycle: PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT. Its purpose is to establish a comprehensive and structured mechanism for joint action of management and workers in the implementation of safety and health measures.

OSHMS can be an effective tool for the management of hazards specific to a given industry, process or organization. The ILO has prepared a report to serve as a background to this theme, a poster and other promotional materials for the occasion and invites you to join us in promoting this important day.

Launch of HC Magazine

HC Magazine is the magazine for all leaders and anyone who aspires to lead others. Its is educative and informative; a tool for today’s leading manager to effectively manage workplace issues, human capital, develop people, and build capacity.

HC Magazine keeps you up to date with emerging laws and legislations, best practices and global trends in the world of work and people management issues.

Published quartely, HC Magazine is complemented by daily updates online @ hcmagazineomline.net HC Magazine also has a digital version, which enables interactive media, video, music, etc.

HC Magazine is our contribution to Human Capital Development in Nigeria.

Shola Ajani, Publisher

HC Magazine Subcription & Advertising Rate Individual

4 Editions Annually 4 Copies Annually Access to Online Version Access to Digital Version N10,000:00 Per Annum Corporate

4 Editions Annually 15 Copies Pert Edition Access to Online Version Access to Digital Version N100, 000:00 Per Annum Single Edition Advertising Rate Inside Front Cover N300,000:00 Inside Back Cover N300,000:00 Full Page N250,000:00 Half Page N150,000:00 Centre Spread N400,000:00 Back Page N350,000:00

CIPD Recruitment, Resourcing and Talent Management Conference 15 -16 June 2011, London, UK www.cipd.co.uk

26 -29 June 2011 Las Vegas, USA http://www.shrm.org

27 - 28 October 2011 Lagos, Nigeria www.humancapitalsummit.org

HR Directors Business Summit 2012 23- 25 Jan 2012 Birmingham UK http://www.hrevent.com/

managment Knowledgeable football fans are perhaps familiar with the historical fact that the oldest national football association, the English FA, was formed in 1863. Although football or soccer so as not to confuse it with the American variant, had been played recreationally, the English FA was the first governing body to regulate and lay down the rules and regulations for both amateur and professional competitions. Football, correctly known as soccer, started a long while back precisely in 1863 in England. If people from that era were to get in a time machine to see what the game has become now, they would surely be amazed! The size of the pitch, players’ glamour, salaries, skill levels, and the quality of jerseys, soccer boots, commercial endorsements, and associated glamour would definitely make them gape in awe.

Watching a soccer match makes me wonder at times exactly how the Manager of an English Premiership team manages eleven millionaires on the field of play from motley cultures, with different temperaments and technical abilities?

I guess it would be quite intriguing to find out!

At first glance, it might be difficult to fathom that there are lessons that can be gleaned from the soccer pitch that would be relevant in a corporate boardroom of a Fortune 500 company.

However, most top clubs are actually run like Fortune 500 companies! If the primary goal of any organisation is to create wealth or, blandly put, to ‘make money’, then soccer clubs can be money spinners. Some would argue that the ‘money spinner’ appellation is too optimistic but it is a known fact that while some clubs have a huge debt burden, the well-managed ones actually make good profit.

Arguably, the most important figure in a soccer team is the Manager. The Manager ‘manages’ the team formulates and drives the team strategy. The Manager is hired by the Board of Directors and has a dotted reporting line to the fans who are mainly “emotional shareholders”.

FOOTBALL INC Olufemi A. Oladele

Femi works @ Human Capital Management Department of First Bank PLC

The fans are crucial to the fortunes of the club as they spend their hard-earned money for season tickets and club-branded merchandise while being unofficial marketers of the club.

What can we take from the field of play into the corporate boardroom?

Strategy! Strategy!! Strategy!!!

Strategy gives direction to any venture.

Without a clear strategy, an organisation would be like a ship without a rudder, no direction, no logical destination! Strategy is a critical success factor that is cascaded and drilled down from the executive management ranks down to the individual level, by means of a modern management tool known as key performance indicators (KPIs).

The most successful soccer Managers have a long-term strategy that they often fine-tune prior to the beginning of a new season. The Manager has his KPIs defined up-front; for example, win trophies, generate revenue and ensure talent continuity. All these factors are interwoven in such a way that make them coherent (*Companies should take note that soccer KPIs are clear, understandable and not too many to be confusing). The Manager has big decisions to make at the beginning of each season; on what formation to play, putting the right players in the right role, getting suitable replacements in case of injuries, facilitating potential feeder team players that can break into the first team, and so on.

When these are done correctly, potentially what you get is a trophy-winning team, which invariably should generate ample revenue for the club and guarantee talent continuity. KPIs achieved all at once!

Fluidity in Strategy A lot of companies get bogged down and distracted by day-to-day activities without actually pausing to understand how dynamic the market could be. Fluidity in strategy is the

ability to read your competition and market while being able to make intelligent and informed decisions in achieving a competitive edge. In other words, it means thinking faster than the competition and acting first to get the desired result. At the risk of sounding cliché, it actually involves having a helicopter view!

Have you ever watched soccer match involving two top clubs with highly technical Managers?

It’s a thing of beauty to observe tactical formations being put into practice right before your eyes at a live match or on television screens, as the case may be.

Although the view of the field is at eye level, successful Managers have the ability to completely detach themselves from the beautiful passes, footwork displays and noise from the crowd. They try to get a helicopter view of the pitch, based on experience, to make that decisive change in formation by replacing one player with another, and possibly change the game positively. What you get is a tactical change that might eventually be a match winner!

Focus on a Goal Organisational goal explains how an organisation intends to go about achieving its vision. The vision is aligned with the organisational strategy. In essence, everyone has a laser beam focus and understands how their efforts contribute to the overall success of the organisation.

It is a similar process also in soccer. At the start of a new campaign, Managers ensure that players are focused on the main goal of the season. Usually, it would be to win a particular trophy or an array of trophies. It sounds easy and straightforward, right? Wrong! There are so many factors to consider that you might get a headache trying to wrap your head around them.

The Manager has the unenviable, headbanging job of trying to keep players from different cultures, who speak different languages, and with clashing egos, focused on the goal of winning laurels. Believe me, it’s a very daunting task!

Talent scouting and youth management structure This is a decisive part that cannot be ignored for the sake of business continuity.

Attracting the right people, at the right time, into the right places and, dare I add, at the right price! Quality manpower is a strong competitive advantage and achieving that quality can be very challenging. Tellingly, this

Samson Siasia Nigeria’s Super Eagle Coach

is an imperative for every company willing to grow and remain in business. It’s a continuous process! It is a renewal process!

Developing young talent is a key part of the long-term strategy for most clubs. It allows for versatility, freshness and superior performance. All the top clubs in the world have what is referred to as a ‘feeder team’. From the term, it is a team made up of very young football talents discovered from a very early age in order to ‘replenish’ the more experienced and older first team. These sets of young players are usually signed to the club at a young age to instil in them the discipline, training and culture of the club. They are monitored closely to ensure that they reach their full potential.

By the time the Manager feels they are ready, he begins to use them as substitutes in the first team, and gradually introduces them literally into the big leagues.

Furthermore, the club is always on the lookout for ‘ready-made’ players. These are experienced players who can hit the ground running without too much fuss. These initiatives keep the top clubs in sustained contention for key trophies, year after year.

Training According to the free web-based encyclopaedia, called Wikipedia, the term ‘training’ refers to “the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that

relate to specific useful competencies”.

Increasingly, many companies are discovering that the difference between a leading company and a lagging one may be down to the attention paid to staff training. Training has become the secret formula, that secret weapon that companies use in getting ahead of competition.

Globally, in any football club, training is like breathing! It is a given that as a footballer, you would need to have a training regimen so that you can survive the rigours of the game. Of course, top clubs have cutting-edge training programmes, equipment and special nutrition that make their conditioning superior to that of lesser clubs. For a Manager, the quality of training his players undertake might be the difference between winning and losing.

In conclusion, company bosses need to start looking beyond the obvious, stepping out of their comfort zones, and thinking out-of-thebox. The corporate world is changing so rapidly that it takes a nimble and fast-thinking CEO to be able to embrace new opportunities and innovations as they materialise. From the foregoing, it is quite obvious that there is a plethora of lessons that can be migrated from the football field straight into the corporate environment.

How Social Networking Has Changed Business Bill George Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

A year ago, many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of — or because of — its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.

Leaders like IBM's Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Carlson's Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria are all active social network users.

Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach.

They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voicemail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering.

Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.

The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers,

who may become obsolete when they are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work — designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services — to step up and lead without a hierarchy.

Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages.

Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities.

PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can't hide on your social network when you're revealing who you are and what you really believe.

Transparency is essential here.

Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last 10 years. That's why social networking is the most important business development of the year.

Bill George is Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School.

James M. Citrin and Dayton Ogden

James M. Citrin co leads Spencer Stuart’s North American board and CEO succession practice.

Dayton Ogden, formerly Spencer Stuart’s CEO and chairman, now leads the firm’s efforts in succession services.

It’s been eight years since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, and despite all the work and worry it created for corporate directors, the new regulation did bring about one unambiguously positive change: It led boards to finally wrest control of CEO succession away from incumbent chief executives, who often held too much power over the process.

Today, corporate boards are more proactive about (and simply better at handling) leadership succession, but they still face a significant challenge in picking the right candidates. That’s partly because succession decisions have been guided by too little data and too much reliance on rules of thumb, anecdotes, and even fads. During the mid to late 1990s, for instance, after Louis Gerstner’s brilliant turnaround at IBM, boards tended to focus on big-name outsiders as the CEO candidates of choice. In the past decade, the sentiment has shifted, and a procession of thinkers—some of them writing in HBR— have argued forcefully that internal candidates are the better bet.

To give boards guidance based on real evidence, Spencer Stuart conducted an 18-month study of the 300 CEO transitions at S&P 500 companies that took place from 2004 to 2008. The results contained several surprises. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our analysis showed that insiders and outsiders have performed about the same—plenty of each fell into the highest and lowest performance categories. Whether a company chose a CEO from inside or outside did matter—but whether the choice turned out to be wise depended mostly on the health and competitive position of the company at the time of succession.

Another surprising finding: Board members who stepped in as CEO outperformed all other types of candidates. Often a board member is a last resort, someone who is turned to in desperation when a company can’t find other suitable candidates. But in fact, directors-

turned-CEOs represent a strong blend of insider and outsider. They have more company knowledge than a pure outsider, but they don’t have the constraints of a pure insider when it comes to making unpopular decisions or leading painful changes. Having been on the board, they have deep knowledge of a company’s strategy, finances, and organization, and just as important, they understand the dynamics and the expectations of the board. And of course, some have already been CEOs of other companies, which give them an advantage.

The worst-performing CEOs turned out to be a group we call insider-outsiders—outsiders who are hired into a company as president or chief operating officer and promoted to CEO within 18 months. HR directors have favoured this approach, and in theory it makes great sense: The candidate has a chance to get acclimated to the culture, learn the company, and settle in before ascending to the top job. But the approach often sets the new leader up for failure. The two-step succession process requires the candidate to “audition” for the top position while serving under the incumbent CEO, and that tends to makes him or her beholden to the current chief executive. What’s more, the sitting CEO remains the primary conduit to the board—making it more likely that the outside hire will play things safe and be deferential to the status quo. Ten insideroutsider CEOs were appointed between 2004 and 2008, and our analysis found that none of them achieved top-quartile performance.

Our research also found that many of the criteria boards use to evaluate CEO candidates turn out to be unimportant in predicting performance. These include candidates’ ages, where they went to college or grad school, what degrees they earned, whether they needed to relocate or commute to take the job, or whether they began their career at a blue-chip company. Boards should ignore those variables; they simply don’t correlate with performance.

In our view, the most important factor in

determining which type of CEO candidate to select is the health of the company. Insiders are best when the company is performing well; outsiders do better when the company is in crisis. This may be intuitive, but when we’ve shown this data to board members, they’re surprised by how compelling the numbers are.

What’s the Best Route to the Top? The leadership challenges presented by a stable, growing company are fundamentally different from those faced by an organization in trouble. Of the 300 transitions we studied, 218 involved companies that were stable or growing—and in that situation, boards chose insiders more than three-quarters of the time.

Those insider appointments, in turn, were three times more likely to achieve outstanding performance than the outsider appointments.

When outsiders were hired into healthy companies, they were twice as likely as insiders to suffer poor performance.

Why do insiders do better at healthy companies? For one thing, companies that are doing well tend to attract strong talent in the first place. They also have more resources to invest in management development. High-performing companies often develop cultures that make it difficult for outsiders to fit in, partly owing to long-time employees’ suspicion over whether an outsider can adapt to company values. The boards of healthy companies are more apt to devote sustained time to the work of leadership development and succession, because they’re less busy putting out fires.

When a company is in crisis, however, the data overwhelmingly show that outsiders outperform insiders: The CEOs in our study achieved outstanding performance at three times the rate of insiders. That’s because insiders are more likely to be captive to the culture that got the company into trouble in the first place, while outsiders bring a fresh perspective and have more freedom—even permission—to implement big changes.

Examples of how the health of the company should lead the board to look inside or outside abound. At Disney, long-time executive Robert Iger succeeded Michael Eisner in 2005.

Despite the boardroom drama that accompanied Eisner’s exit, Disney was fundamentally healthy, and as an insider Iger has proved to be the perfect pick. His rededication to storytelling, transformative acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel, embrace of technology, and strong team-building skills have helped Disney outperform rivals in a tough economic climate.

In contrast, consider Philip Schoonover at Circuit City. Hired away from Best Buy in 2004, he served as merchandising chief and president before ascending to become Circuit City’s CEO in 2006. By then Circuit City was in tough shape, with Best Buy and Wal-Mart stealing market share, but Schoonover failed to aggressively shift strategies. To cut costs, he laid off 3,400 of the chain’s highest-paid (and most experienced) sales associates, a move that backfired as customer service plummeted. He resigned in late 2008—and a few weeks later, Circuit City filed for bankruptcy. For a company that faced such profound challenges, the fresh perspective of a true outsider may have been a better choice.

CEO selection will always be part art, part science. This data can help guide boards’ choices.

But the process also relies on intuition—and even experienced directors can make the wrong call. A few years ago, our firm placed a CEO at a large technology company. We did all our due diligence and believed he was the perfect leader for the job.

Soon after he was brought in, however, he began speaking disrespectfully about his predecessor. He quickly launched a hit new product largely developed under the former CEO’s watch and then took a disproportionate amount of credit for it. He performed very well for a time, but he wasn’t able to get the company to innovate or reignite its product development pipeline. Within a couple of years, the wheels fell off and he tendered his resignation.

It’s a sobering reminder that even as boards have become far more engaged and effective in succession issues, making the right decision can still be very challenging indeed.

How We Crunched the Numbers We examined CEO transitions at S&P 500 companies from 2004 to 2008. Over this time, 300 new CEOs were appointed. The CEOs fell into five categories: insiders, outsiders, board members, former executives brought back to retake the helm, and insider-outsiders (executives brought in as the number 2 and then promoted within 18 months).

We began our assessment by looking at more than 25 variables, including company condition, industry sector, whether the new leader was a first-time CEO, his or her functional background, whether he or she had prior public-company board experience, and how many direct reports were replaced in the first year of

tenure.

We then evaluated the company’s performance under the CEO on the basis of three quantitative measures: shareholder returns relative to peer companies and the overall market, revenue growth, and profit growth. To gain a qualitative sense of company performance under the new CEO, we conducted interviews and examined public information. Specifically, we analyzed changes in the company’s reputation, evidence of innovation, and the board’s evaluation of the CEO’s performance.

We then ranked the CEOs into four quartiles: the top quartile of CEOs were “outstanding,” the middle two were “solid,” and the bottomquartile CEOs were “poor.”

What’s the Best Route to the Top? There are no hard-and-fast rules about which types of candidates make the best CEOs. But our analysis found some solid trends. Among them: Board members shouldn’t be a last resort, and “insider-outsider” candidates (who are hired from another company and apprentice under the outgoing CEO before taking over) rarely bring success.

Outstanding Performers

Insider-Outsiders: 0%. In theory, insideroutsiders should work really well, but in practice they don’t. Their apprentice role makes them too deferential to the incumbent CEO and too invested in the status quo.

Former Executives: Charles R. Schwab, Charles Schwab. Like Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, and Michael Dell, Schwab is a founder who returned as CEO when his company hit hard times. From 2004 to 2008, he led a near-perfect turnaround and groomed a new successor.

Solid Performers

Outsiders: Starwood Hotels. Frits van Paasschen, former CEO of Coors, had no hotel industry experience.

Board Members: James McNerney, Boeing.

He was CEO at 3M and a director at Boeing when the airline manufacturer’s chief resigned following a sex scandal. McNerney took over in 2005, winning solid reviews despite delays on the Dreamliner 787 program.

Former Executives: John Mack, Morgan Stanley. Pushed out in 2001 by CEO Phil Purcell, Mack returned in 2005 after Purcell’s management style led to a talent exodus.

Mack, who retired in early 2010, steered the bank through the financial crisis.

Poor Performers

Insiders: Robert Iger, Disney. For years Michael Eisner resisted finding a successor, but since Iger took over in 2005, he’s led acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel, embraced technology, and renewed the firm’s commitment to storytelling.

Outsiders: William D. Perez, Wrigley. After stumbling as an outsider at Nike, Perez became the first non-Wrigley family member to lead the chewing gum company. Within two years of becoming CEO he negotiated Wrigley’s sale to Mars, earning shareholders a 28% premium.

Board Members: Delta Airlines. Gerald Grinstein, a former railroad CEO and Delta board member, served from 2004 to 2007.

Insiders: Philip Schoonover, Circuit City.

He presided over the chain’s demise, resigning six weeks before it filed for bankruptcy. Most notable move: laying off the chain’s most experienced sales associates, which hurt customer service.

Outsiders: 26%. When outsiders are hired to lead healthy, growing companies, they under perform—partly because these companies often have strong cultures that are slow to accept newcomers.

Ten Steps for Building a Salary Structure Warren Heaps - Birches Group LLC

A salary structure is commonly used by employers to set out the range of pay, from minimum to maximum, associated with each salary grade or band. By associating each position with a grade or band, employers can use a salary structure to help manage compensation in an optimal way.

Here are ten steps to develop a salary structure for your organization, with some special considerations for international developing markets: 1. Establish your compensation philosophy.

Each employer needs a policy which outlines their desired market position. What percentile of the market is your target? Which comparators are appropriate? Is the target the same for all grades? Which pay components are considered in your scale? A well-articulated compensation policy provides valuable guidance for the development of a salary structure. In large organizations, there is often a corporate policy which forms the basis for local policies.

If not, create one for your company with the input of senior management.

2. Gather market data. Identify surveys with your desired comparators (as specified in your comp policy). Most employers prefer at least two survey sources. In international markets this can be challenging, especially in developing countries and smaller markets. Consider sector-specific surveys as well as multi-sector options - certain jobs are found across many employers, not just your sector. In smaller international markets, leading employers often provide a better proxy for the most competitive market than do sector surveys with many less sophisticated employers. Don’t overlook international organizations like the World Bank and the UN; they pay very competitively and are often well-established in the smallest of countries.

3. Identify benchmark jobs. Benchmark jobs are those that are representative of roles found across many organizations - standard roles such as Manager, Accountant, Payroll Administrator, Secretary, Clerk and Driver. Benchmark jobs are easy to understand and match to, and will appear in multiple surveys, enabling the use of multiple sources. For professional roles specific to your sector, sector surveys could be a good source. In other cases, and with multi-sector survey sources, look for those that utilize well-developed career ladders, enabling easy cross-occupational job matching. As an example, such an approach would examine Analyst positions across different functional areas (e.g., finance, HR, pro-

curement, marketing, etc.).

4. Measure your market position. There are several ways to do this. If you have a lot of benchmark jobs, tabulate the average of all of the roles in the same internal level or grade.

Weighted averages incorporating number of incumbents associated with each survey data point is a common approach. Select the market reference from the survey most appropriate under your policy. In developing countries market data is more volatile. A good approach is to use minimum and maximum values to “bookend” the data in these markets. This helps eliminate outliers and capture more realistic market survey values. Don’t forget to consider non-salary items such as allowances and in-kind benefits. In Nigeria, for example, we’ve seen allowances and in-kind benefits account for over 35% of total compensation!

5. Calculate the compa-ratio. This is the ratio of your data to the market -- 100 means fully comparable, while a ratio under 100 indicates a below market position, and over 100, above market. There are different approaches to summarizing the data -- by position, by grade, etc.

Whatever approach you use, the compa-ratio analysis will illustrate which parts of the organization are competitive against the market and which ones require some attention!

You can also use compa-ratios to capture the average penetration in your internal scale, i.e., a compa-ratio of 97.5 means that on average, incumbents in the grade level being examined are 2.5% (100 less 97.5) below the midpoint or market reference. This helps for budgeting salary increases as well.

6. Check your budget. This is a critical step.

In Step 5 you can calculate the average difference between your current scale and the market. This indicates about how much of an increase would be required to make your scales fully comparable to the market. Your internal budget constraints, though, will dictate how close to this ideal you can achieve. In addition to internal budgets, consider the average market movement in your surveys, and the general inflation rates (never use inflation to determine how much more to pay staff - this is determined by cost of labour, not cost of living).

7. Start allocating. This is the start of an exercise which will repeat many times, until you get the desired result. Build a model of your organization, ideally with the number of incumbents in each grade. Using your overall percentage of market (Step 5) and budget number (Step 6), start increasing your scale (use midpoints, or the mins and maxs). See

how close you can get to fully comparable to the market, and how much it will cost. Does it jive? If not, tweak the data a bit. You can adjust the percentage each grade is increased, as well as examine the spans (range from min to max) and inter-grade differentials (percentage increase from one midpoint to the one above or below it), in order to gain better market alignment. Obviously, the incumbent count of each grade will impact the overall costing model.

8. Final adjustments. Once you have built your new scale and matched it to the market as closely as possible, and within your budget, give it a once over. Does it make sense? Are the increase amounts distributed in a pattern which will cause unrest amongst your staff?

Strive to achieve a scale which will reflect your comp policy and enhance internal cohesion in the organization. This step is the art of compensation, not the science.

9.

Management approval. Review your proposed scale with management, presenting your rationale, budget and overall market comparisons. Discuss concerns you may have uncovered about specific positions or grades, and educate your management about the process used. Outline your implementation plans.

10.

Communicate. Develop appropriate communications for managers and staff. Let them know all of the work that went in to the exercise, and how the organization compares to the market. Be careful here -- you need to obviously put on a positive spin -- that’s why statistics are so flexible!

You’re done! That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now you need to figure out how to allocate individual increases, taking into account performance and other factors. But that’s another story!

About the Author Warren Heaps is a Partner with Birches Group LLC in New York City, a human resources consultancy specializing in compensation surveys in developing countries, including all of Africa. He has over twenty-five years of experience, most of it focused on international HR. Warren brings strong knowledge of compensation, benefits and expatriate compensation.

Warren is also the co-founder and editor of the International HR Forum blog, where this article first appeared in July, 2010, and the host of the Developing Markets Compensation and Benefits Group on LinkedIn.

Risk Management: Bridging HR & Business Ope Awolesi,

Principal Consultant, CapstoneBCTS, London, UK enquiries@capstonebcts.co.uk

My participation at the last Human capital summit in October 2010, to be precise, confirmed my earlier perception of HR practitioners as self motivated individuals and people who are passionate about what they do. Nevertheless there still remains a gap between the practice and the “business”.

Business here refers to the mind of the directors. Do I mean this is common to all organisations? Certainly not! There are organisations with fantastic Business-HR relationship.

For any organisation to achieve its goals and objectives, it must have equally capable HR professionals. Every organisation thrives on having the right people doing the right job. This is core to any performing HR unit. Whilst practitioner focuses on achieving this core, they often times forgets to consider the cost to the organisation and where it is considers, there appears to be no way of measuring the impact to the business.

On the other hand, business is about making money. The viability of any business is the profit or dividend declared at the end of its financial year. As such every business will want to optimise the use of its financial resources by keeping its expenses as low as possible.

These two conflicting perceptive is the reason for this gap. It’s like a story of conflicting language. Organisations will do better if both HR and business understands and values their diverse interpretation of the organisational goal.

I delivered a session on how HR practitioners can use Risk management methodology as a tool to communicate their intentions to business and how these will impact on the ability of organisations to deliver its promise to stakeholders.

For any organisation to deliver on its promise to shareholders, it must mitigate against potential risk facing the organisation. The simple truth is that most processes in our company, regardless of the technological input, have the human factor to reckon with. Humans are a perfect example of an intelligent system and as such would take decisions in time that is prone to errors or mistakes due to several other factors whilst machines or technology most times will always give the same output.

Thus machine-risk is less likely than human-risk.

If this is true, one wonders why most investment in technological risk takes priority over human risk.

Discussing with various HR professional during the HC summit shows that whilst an aspect of risk management forms the basis of their decisions, they often times do not realise it. On the other, as a stakeholder in a few businesses, I know that managing risk is utmost in my mind.

Now, the question is: can Human Risk management not be a common language between HR and other business stakeholders? Certainly Yes! Imagine the impact your core personnel’s’ absence have on your business. How do we mitigate against the risk of having someone not fitting into our organisation’s culture or ethic? How do we determine our induction strategies? How do we keep motivation going? How do we ensure performance? All these are areas of HR where a risk management strategy can come to play.

HR risk management will surely save an organisation from the effect of a personnel not performing to his or her optimum if the adverse (risk) occurs.

learning & development Knowledge Harvesting or Retention of Corporate Knowledge Kim Heptinstall The greatest proportion of knowledge in an organisation resides in the heads and hearts of its people. Unfortunately these people leave and take their knowledge with them. Trying to suddenly gather this knowledge in the final month before a staff member leaves is probably a flawed process. As soon as a staff member realises he is being tapped for information, he will probably resist and do everything to sabotage the process. A method or company practice of harvesting at least some of that knowledge and experience is required.

Tacit knowledge is the unspoken or implied knowledge that is often an undercurrent of knowledge that runs through the company and which is generally accepted as being there.

IT people communicate without even thinking about this understood but unstated knowledge.

This is knowledge that cannot be captured.

Implicit knowledge is the similarly unspoken knowledge that is contained in a field of study or expertise but has the potential to be captured. It is embedded in the daily operation of the environment but takes someone with know-how to detect it and document it.

Explicit knowledge - has invariably been captured, is in plain sight and is unambiguous.

Much of this knowledge is captured in technical descriptions and other supporting documents.

The knowledge capture exercise would therefore have to be a planned foray which used ex-

plicit knowledge as a reference point to gather some of the implicit and tacit knowledge that almost certainly exists and without which the company's specialist functions would never be achieved. The problem is who would do this?

It would take a subject matter expert (SME) to be able to communicate with the source and understand the knowledge before being able to identify it.

So the exercise will not be a simple one.

One of the first and probably most elementary steps that the company should take is to document every employee's processes. Particularly where the employee has a mission critical job, a documented process will immediately indicate what types of specialist knowledge are being used and what additional types of knowledge are required to enable the use of the specialist knowledge. Undocumented processes in the company create many holes where the knowledge has the potential to leak from the organisation.

There are additional benefits to fully documenting individual's processes in that training needs can be perfectly identified. Training can then be evaluated and the company is able to determine the Return on Investment (ROI) without too much difficulty - simple before and after studies will reveal increases in productivity or reduction in costs.

To a greater or lesser degree, the employee's relationship with the company and team members around him (her) will also determine the employee's willingness to share knowledge. If the relationship is good, gems of information continually reveal themselves - it just takes a

very astute supervisor to capture that knowledge. The alternative is to have a corporate wiki site that is easy to access, and incentivise contributions to the wiki. Some internal process will have to be devised to make this work which would probably include moderation by team members and the award of points on a scale.

Incentives would be determined by the Human Resources Manager and Managing Director. There is an add-on to this activity in that interesting information can be flagged by other team members. If the number of flags reaches a pre-determined peak, the subject could then be presented as a tech-talk session by the originating team member, also with the necessary incentive reward. While this may not harvest knowledge and place it in a repository, the knowledge will at least have been transferred from the single source into a wider base of users.

A large amount of knowledge can be documented by getting team members to document best practices throughout their working lives. It eventually becomes a habit. There is of course the adage that you always know more than you can tell, and you can always tell more than you can write. So writing it down doesn't always gather the most information.

As a hedge against losing some knowledge when team members resign, a company-wide process of knowledge retention must be introduced. This process must be one that is open and accessible and one to which all employees agree.

The crux would be that employees resigning must within two weeks of handing in their resignation deliver a presentation with necessary slides and graphics that answer/discuss the following items: 1. What are the most memorable projects that you have worked on while in the organisation?

2. Who are the most influential people in the organisation and why and what impact have they made on your time with the organisation?

3. Which customers did you work with directly and what did you learn from them?

4. What are the biggest challenges you have overcome?

5. What information do people often ask you for that you are able to supply?

6. What information do people ask you for that you are not able to supply?

7. Who do you go to for advice and what are the topics you generally ask for advice on?

Possible headings under which to answer these questions could be: 1. Personal Network (internal, external, social platforms) 2. Business Knowledge 3. Project Knowledge 4. Leadership Knowledge 5. Organisation of Work 6. Corporate Culture The presentation can be recorded (video or audio) and kept for reference. This information package of slides and voice transcript are then made available via the Enterprise Content Management System and the various cataloguing mechanisms.

It may well be necessary to incorporate a sentence in the letter of appointment which covers the mandatory requirement to share accumulated knowledge, particularly in the notice period before leaving the company.

Whatever path the organisation chooses to follow, some proactive attempt at retaining knowledge and skills must be made. Companies that focus on this area of enterprise content management reap rewards at a number of different levels and propel themselves forward rather than slow down as staff-churn continues.

Kim Heptinstall is the owner of Kingfisher Consulting, a consultancy operating out of Cape Town, South Africa and specialising in technical environments in Africa. The consultancy specialises in technical management in electronic and software product development, quality systems, project management, documentation writing, configuration management and technical training. http://www.kingfisherconsulting.co.za

Emerging Training Trends Training conferences provide insight into what is happening in the field of training and development.

Multimedia and Online Training If you are not a fan of multimedia or online training, you had better be thinking about it.

Recent conferences featured less multimedia, but online providers of educational sessions proliferated it. Even though the current move in organisations has been to offer training on CDs, Web-based training (WBT) is not far behind.

Additional Topics Generated by Web Based Training (WBT) This move to online learning has created several sub-conversations. One is Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) that deals with the interface between people and software.

Another is creating and offering courses that trainees will actually finish; the dropout rate in self-monitored training is high.

In a less positive direction, some providers of traditional training were attempting to move traditional, manual-based courses online. The resultant courses looked like training manuals online and did not tap into the advantages of the Web including interconnectivity and the ability to publish real-time, up-to-the-minute information.

Finally, training professionals were discussing how to integrate a real, live instructor and peer interaction with Web-based or CD training.

Performance Consulting Human Performance Technology or performance consulting is changing the face of the traditional training department forever. Few training organisations offer trainer-led, generic classes as the only, or even major solution to organisational challenges and opportunities anymore.

Emphasis is now placed on providing a range of potential solutions and assists that include in-depth needs assessment via interviews, surveys and focus groups. Alternatives to training offered by progressive human resource departments include coaching, organizational development or planned change consultation and interventions, facilitated planning sessions and large group processes. The training that is provided is often custom-designed with stated outcomes congruent with the direction of the business.

Performance Management Another trend that is sweeping the field of human resources is the integration of training and development into an entire performance management system. Organisations are moving away from the long-established, one-on-one appraisal or performance review with a manager held on a yearly basis. Instead, they are designing performance management systems that provide an individual with personal and professional developmental goals and training opportunities.

In a performance management system, people receive more frequent feedback from many points of view including peers, direct reporting staff members and the manager. The feedback, known as 360-degree feedback, provides a more balanced set of observations for the employee.

The performance management system also integrates a performance development plan for the individual. This plan assists the employee to continue to develop their skills and abilities. For these plans, preference is accorded to integrated corporate university courses and internally custom-designed and presented training.

Performance development plans may include coursework, but also provide learning activities on the job, such as special projects, serving on cross-functional teams, and tasks to develop appropriate job skills.

Conclusions about Training Trends One training trend is for sure; traditional classroom training is no longer the only medium employed. The market for training that includes new, unconventional ways of learning is exploding and the trend is here to stay. I look forward to watching and participating in their growth and change.

Employee Career Development – From Mirage to Reality Oluwaseun Babalola GPHR

Career development refers to the growth of employees through the attainment of new capabilities, or deepening existing ones, relevant to professional growth and development in their careers. A career capability is any quality possessed by an individual that increases the likelihood of success at various career opportunities, usually progressive, in the direction of the employee’s aspirations. This can include competencies (knowledge, skills and attributes), reputation and even relationships.

Typical career development activities include on-the-job training, exposure to new jobs or projects, coaching, self-learning, training courses etc.

Few organizations today are able to confidently assert that they have successfully developed a system that enables employees pursue and achieve their career expectations in a predictable, concerted and coordinated way. This is often in spite of their size, age or staff strength.

In some countries like Nigeria, an organization might even expect praise for providing jobs and alleviating the national unemployment situation. To expect anything more, such as their offering employees careers instead of just jobs, will be asking for too much.

Both staff and HR people in organizations are acutely aware of the problems that occur when staff are not able to grow and achieve their career aspirations in the organization. In an age where some things happen faster than the speed of thought, employees feel stifled and frustrated when there is no clear view of what their future may hold. Loss of productivity, employee aggression and disengagement are just few of the symptoms of such frustration.

Management is left to wonder why staffs are not appreciative and responsive to their ‘equitable and competitive compensation and benefits systems’, huge bonuses, ‘robust training programs’ and other well-meaning offerings.

They fail to appreciate that progression is a basic need of man, and is closely linked to need for security—second in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This implies that once the worker satisfies the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter (also called basic ‘take-home’ salary), the next thing is the need for security which includes future progression.

The lack of a Career Management System (CMS) in many organizations is understandable, but untenable. Yes, it appears difficult –sometimes impossible—(on the surface) to ‘manage’ the aspirations of thousands of workers through the steep pyramid that epitomizes

most organizational hierarchy. The task becomes even more daunting because many organizations now operate a flat structure with few hierarchies. However, much as we would like to wish the problem away, factors such as the increasingly young workforce, the demanding and entitlement characteristics of the Generation Y employees, globalization and technological advancement, are not going to allow the problem disappear.

Many organizations will remain a camp of discontent, but willing ‘prisoners’, sometimes with golden handcuffs, waiting for the right environmental conditions to move on to where the grass looks greener. Even organizations whose staffing models are built on assumptions of high attrition rate cannot remain productive in the long-term with such workforce. They will be unable to achieve a vibrant and constructive organization culture.

Espousing the benefits of a Career Management System and consequences of lack of one, to employees and HR people (who constitute the majority of my reading audience) will be preaching to the converted. Besides stating the obvious need for successful career management systems, my objective is to highlight the important considerations and broad steps towards designing such a system. It is not simple to design, develop and operate a successful career system, but it is possible and it is well worth it. Big organizations argue that managing careers is simpler and more practicable for smaller organizations and smaller organizations argue that bigger organizations have more opportunities and more pathways for staff to grow, and are therefore better able to successfully launch such systems. Whichever category your organization belongs to, the need, benefits and aspirations for a career management system remain the same, and so is the process for creating such a system.

The Career Management System of an organisation should provide for employees to manage their careers and align their aspirations to the company’s mission, goals and objectives.

Rather than allowing employee careers to “just evolve” spontaneously, the system would ensure that the company continues to provide means, information, guidance and tools to guide staff career aspirations.

It will enable formal discussions and documentation of staff career aspirations and opportunities, chart clear career paths and provide career development activities for staff to meet their career aspirations. The ultimate objective is to produce a flexible workforce of dedicated staff that can continue to deliver on the company’s current objectives and are prepared to meet future challenges.

At ValueBridge we use a model to structure our approach to designing and developing Career Management Systems (CMSs) for clients.

The model guides the process and ensures that nothing is left out that should be done.

The model as shown in Fig. 1 captures the essential elements, considerations and linkages necessary to develop a successful career management system. In organization development, any effort to introduce anything new or to modify an existing system is regarded as a change effort and must be approached as such. This means there are preliminary activities that should take place before a go-ahead is obtained for a CMS. Some of these include developing a business case to demonstrate and justify the need, obtaining the buy-in of top management, and more importantly, assessing the change readiness of the organization.

Assessing the change readiness of the organization involves determining whether the organization is ready for the CMS at that time and whether the prerequisites for introducing a CMS exist in the organization or need to be developed.

“At ValueBridge we use a model

to structure our approach to designing and developing Career Management Systems (CMSs) for clients”.

Figure 1: Model for Career Management System Development

Change readiness assessment is important to avoid issues such as organizational change fatigue and wrong timing in introducing a CMS. The important prerequisites are as shown in the model include an enabling organization design, a functional performance management system, strong management will or commitment, and where possible, a competency model. These prerequisites are essential for a CMS system to work. For example, some organization structures are like cities built without roads. Career mobility is difficult because the organization design does not enable employee growth and development. This needs to be fixed either before or as part of introducing the CMS. Once the prerequisites are present and change readiness assessment suggests a go ahead decision for the CMS, it is good practice to constitute a project team (no matter how small) that will manage the design, development and implementation of the CMS. The designer(s) can then progress with the assessment of the “Design Considerations.” The Design Considerations are the variables that determine the type of CMS that is designed for a particular organization. Because it is highly unlikely that they are all the same for any two organizations, they are the factors that make one organization’s CMS different from another’s. That is why copying another organization’s CMS is often a bad idea.

A careful review, analysis and evaluation of the Design Considerations will then lead the designer to develop a CM Strategy for the organization. This is done with the input of key stakeholders including staff, management and important sub-groups within those two groups. In heavily unionized, regulated or governmental institutions, it may be necessary to include external stakeholders in the discussions, like those that perform oversight functions for the organization. The CM Strategy

will articulate the external and internal factors influencing the design of the CMS, strategic considerations, the CMS objectives and the high-level approach towards meeting those objectives and evaluating the success of the system.

The CMS objectives are of particular importance because the system must be designed to meet those objectives, and the evaluation of the system will be based on them. Likely objectives of a CMS may be to enable performing staff satisfy their career aspirations; make the organisation an employer of choice; strengthen the organisation’s capability to solve future challenges; or increase employee motivation and reduce turnover.

With the CM Strategy in place, designer(s) can proceed to the core of work –defining and designing the elements of the CMS. The main elements that need to be defined and designed are Career Paths and Tracks, Career Movement Options, Career Development Planning and Implementation Process, the Policies and Procedures to guide the process and the support structures which include enabling technology, tools and aids, training and education, responsibilities and the team that will manage the process.

Career Paths represent the logical and possible sequence of jobs and experience through which employees can progress. Career Tracks are performance and career potential-related indicators that determine how quickly an employee can progress in the organization.

The Career Development Planning and Implementation Process enable formal discussions at different levels that aid in defining employee career goals and development plans, and programs to achieve them. Career Movement Options define the possible directions an employee can progress during their careers e.g. laterally and vertically. The Principles and

Procedures provide clear rules and steps for implementing the process. They ensure that the process is fairly and consistently implemented without ambiguity and that potential issues are addressed. The System Enablers include tools, technology, responsibilities, teams; training, counselling, and education that are needed to implement and provide support to the process when launched.

Finally, the linkages of the CMS to other systems in the organizational would be defined.

This is a very crucial step because the CMS cannot succeed in isolation. The implications for recognition and reward, internal recruitment, performance management, organization design, learning and development, and even financial systems need to be thought through and worked into the systems if it has not already been done. This will ensure there are no conflicts or gaps in the successful implementation of the system.

In practice, the process is often not as simple and straightforward as the above description might suggest. This is partly because organizations are never static. They are in a continuous state of flux with different challenges and business realities every other day. As such, the design/ redesign and development of the system is sometimes faced with constraints and simultaneous developments in other organizational systems that impact or are impacted by the career management system. Strong leadership buy-in and commitment, and skills in project management and change management are therefore essential to successfully design, develop and install a viable career management system.

The author is Principal Consultant at ValueBridge Consulting where he assists clients to make the most of their people through design and development of tailored HR and learning solutions.r

Compensation Management: Developing a Strategic Approach With the continued globalisation of business across the world, it is apparent that conflicts in management styles, policies and procedures will arise. This is attributable in part to the extent to which a company’s culture (particularly in the area of human resource management) could be transferred from the parent company to a local subsidiary in another country.

It also takes into account the practices of local companies. The desired goal for compensation management is therefore to establish an appropriate compensation structure, which recognises the political, societal and cultural settings of the country. Compensation from this perspective refers to all forms of financial and non-financial rewards and benefits (direct/indirect) employees receive as part of the employment relationship.

Collectivism and Trade Unions For this change in compensation to be of strategic importance, the company needs to be guided by employee preference and local contextual factors. The result of a recent empirical study reveals that a cultural characteristic, such as collectivism is significant in determining compensation structure. One unique result of the study is that this collectivism does not imply representation by the trade unions only.

The even distribution of membership/nonmembership of trade unions across the case study companies confirms this. The study on the other hand, confirms the relevance of employee representation in the work place. However, this development represents an important turning point in the development of industrial relations in Nigeria. Furthermore, whilst this development can be viewed positively, it does confirm the resilience of employee representation in the work place and therefore compensation management.

Prior to the Trade Unions (Amendment) Act, 2005 trade union formations were based on a central national union. However, this change by the state has encouraged freedom of association which is being given several interpretations. One school of thought expresses the view that employees can revert to the branch union approach (which led to the proliferation of trade unions, with its attendant challenges during the early 1960s). Another school of thought is of the view that the freedom of association relates to national unions only. The state is yet to provide a clarification to the debate, but it is evident that the trade unions have to establish their relevance or risk a decline in membership. The continued rise in the literacy level of the population implies that the hitherto claim of lack of education (by the Trade Unions) as an important reason for employee representation is gradually fading. Several studies confirm an increasing literacy level across the work force in some developing countries, such as Nigeria. This may therefore be a clarion call

Dr. John Opute, Faculty of Business, London South Bank University, UK

to the trade unions to establish their relevance or risk decline in membership.

Focus on Monetary and Non-Monetary Compensation As a result of deteriorating social infrastructure and associated economic challenge to the average Nigerian employee, there is a clear motivation for monetary and non-monetary compensation. Some of the empirical studies confirm the drive for increased wages through additional part-time work or extra working hours at the work place. Besides, the lack of adequate social services by the state implies that the cost of living remains high. Furthermore, the lack of reliable data implies that monitoring inflation is a guess work and planning is severely inhibited. Therefore, this study in some respect is providing current information (though limited) on the contextual issues of compensation in a developing economy, such as Nigeria.

Many primary sources of information have established that direct/monetary payments (such as base salaries/allowances) are covered by national collective agreements. On the other hand, many non-direct/monetary payments (such as medical benefits, canteen facilities, social loans), are covered by local/enterprise negotiations. Considering the importance attached to these non-direct payments (as the study reveals) the issue is therefore not necessarily the choices to be made between monetary and non-monetary compensation but understanding the significance of each. Whilst many HR practitioners (according to the outcome of a structured/open ended interview) believe that collective bargaining will be driven by a national focus, the preference is a shift of some of the items (previously reserved for national negotiations) to revert to local/enterprise collective bargaining table.

This is a rather interesting development for industrial relations in Nigeria. The advocates of this approach believe that the enterprise relationship provides a more pragmatic approach to the expectations of the employees, because both parties are familiar with local conditions.

It is argued that people who are uncomfortable with uncertain situations in their working environments may develop anxiety and therefore work less efficiently. There is no doubt that uncertainty pervades the Nigerian society, particularly with many inconsistencies in state policies. Accordingly, non-direct monetary compensation tends to provide the employer with appropriate response and support to employee conditions. However, a review of the procedural agreement is required before changes to the levels (enterprise versus national) of collective bargaining can be made.

Either party can request for this review which though will require an agreement of both par-

ties, is usually based on mutual consent rather than negotiation. A procedural agreement unlike a collective agreement is not time bound.

Implication for Industrial Relations This study provides new frontiers for industrial relations. It highlights new initiatives that are emerging in the work place for employee engagement. These evolving initiatives have improved co-operative relationship and also provide feedback for compensation initiatives.

Although, the industrial relations system is generally perceived as driven by a tripartite arrangement of the state, employers and trade unions, there is little evidence to suggest established theoretical or empirically framework for compensation management in Nigeria. The compensation conceptual model (which takes into account cultural, societal/environmental challenges) does not ignore the importance of the tripartite arrangement. Rather, it identifies the significant contextual issues, which the actors in this tripartite arrangement must understand as embedded in compensation management.

Although, various studies highlight the importance of strategic compensation in the HR literature, there are limited literature and empirical studies that identifies the specific contextual issues that are embedded in compensation management in many developing economies. This research brings original evidence concerning some of these contextual factors (collectivism, paternalism, welfare and evolving economy) and how they impact the system (culture and industrial relations) in establishing a compensation strategy and thus a competitive advantage for company efficacy.

Conclusion This review therefore highlights the critical contextual factors that are embedded in compensation management in some developing economies, particularly Nigeria. The knowledge and understanding of these factors will bring about new impetus in the formulation of compensation strategies. These contextual factors are collectivism and paternalism as they impact on culture, welfare services and evolving economy as they impact on industrial relations. Conclusively, compensation can be used as a strategic tool for company efficacy and competitiveness provided the organization understands what in the context of compensation matters rather than searching for the ‘one’ right compensation strategy.

corprate profiles

NAIJASERVE.COM We set out to be pioneers in the vanguard to improve the way Nigerians operate their businesses by offering a platform where credit can be given.

Nigeria has a population of more than 150 million, the most populous in Africa and the eighth in the world. Up to 40 % of its population are young and active population which gives it a huge market when you consider the fact that the country is still not well developed.

The economy is one of the fastest growing in the world; the International Monetary Fund projected a growth of 8.3% in 2009.

Mobile communication Technology became available in 2002/2003, and it remains affordable in terms of tariffs when compared to other countries. With this advent, Internet Services is becoming commonplace in Nigeria, although, bandwidth is still very slow with concerted efforts by Service Providers to construct direct international cable links to increase bandwidth and bring down cost which is still very high.

Nigeria has a conservative estimated 15 to 20million of her citizens in the Diaspora globally. Nigeria is a great country and is an "essential Nation" in Africa. Remittances from Africans in the Diaspora is the highest rate of foreign exchange inflow in some African countries as Africa accounts for about $2 trillion of globally recorded remittances and Nigeria takes the largest chunk of it.

As the business world continues to expand and Nigeria is increasingly becoming a major player, cross trade between Nigerians on both sides of the Atlantic in turn begins to increase.

However, this has encountered many obstacles in its path, which includes lack of Business/ Company information for ease of communication and transactions.

NaijaServe, the Nigeria Business Information Portal, is poised to bring Nigerian and Nigeriarelated Business information together into one global portal. The strategy that sets us apart in this huge task includes scattering the internet, direct contact and to put together a consolidated database of Nigeria- related Business Information, irrespective of their size, business or geographical location across the globe.

A business person resident in Nigeria and on a business trip to either the UK or USA, is about to ship some goods/consignments back to Nigeria. There are quite a handful of Nigerian Cargo/Freight businesses in the UK or USA. Ideally, one of these businesses will best serve the interest of this business person, but unfortunately both parties are losing out due to the lack of information that serves the interest of Nigerians across globe.

We set out to be pioneers in the vanguard to improve the way Nigerians operate their businesses by offering a platform where credit can be given. We are not and do not intend to be a watchdog for businesses, but we will strive to encourage the practice of good Customer Service and Corporate excellence amongst Nigerian businesses irrespective of their geographical location.

Web: http://www.naijaserve.com Email: info@naijaserve.com

After many years of working with the most prestigious companies in the world, a team of Nigerian software developers and internet experts have come together to create an exciting new organisation: EasyWare.

Our aim is simple EasyWare is creating world class software to help Nigerian companies compete with the best organisations in the world. We build and install powerful, yet easy-to-use and affordable business and consumer software. Our software systems help to cut the cost and increase productivity in both commercial industries and government organisations.

Why is our work important?

Software is embedded in so many of the devices we use today, and in future, the world will become even more reliant on it. It affects and helps to improve every facet of our lives immeasurably: work, play, leisure, education, food, travel etc.

Nigeria - like many African countries - lags behind in terms of software development. EasyWare is one of the new breed of companies trying to change this. We concentrate on creating solutions for everyday problems faced by our society.

Try our services and steal a march on your competitors.

What we can do for you Below, are just a few of the scenarios where EasyWare can help: Problem 1: A company with 500 staff spends hundreds of man hours every month, manually calculating the pay, tax and pension entitlement of each of its employees.

Our solution EasyWare Human Resource Manager (HRM).

The powerful and easy-to-use HR and Payroll system created specifically for Nigeria. For those already using a less suitable payroll system, we are happy to migrate their data from existing software to HRM. Unlike our competitors, we own 100% of our source code and can customise it in any way our client requests Problem 2: A new media organisation wants to set up a TV broadcasting company or an existing broadcast company requires a new strategy to attract more customers.

Our Solution EasyWare has many years of working in Interactive TV and New Media. We are comfortable setting up broadcasting head ends and creating value-added TV applications. Our Java-based middleware - EasyWare TV - has excellent features like games, video-on-demand, TV exam revisions etc that would certainly boost subscriptions to any broadcasting corporation.

Try our services and steal a march on your competitors.

Problem 3: An airline or a hotel that accepts payments with cash and cheques but requires a faster, automated and secure system where clients can book services and manage these bookings over the internet.

Our Solution With several years building eCommerce software, we can build secure online payment and management sites that would accept payments with both Nigerian and foreign credit and debit cards.

Problem 4: A local government requires a sophisticated but easy to use budgeting system, to control its expenditure and reduce fraud.

Our Solution EasyWare Nigeria has the skills to develop bespoke software to deal with any business problems. Tell us your requirements, give us your deadline and we will create a tailor-made solution for you.

Problem 5: Just about any organisation that requires a solution to help improve the way it works.

Our Solution We will help bring your business in line with modern global practices and give it an edge over its local and international competitors.

Developing Nigeria’s Software Industry Whatever project we undertake, we intend to use as much local talent as possible. Where we cannot get local people with the requisite skills, part of the remit of the foreign contractor will be to pass on their skills to the local workforce.

We are a country of 150million people, yet we run to China for our basic software needs. We have large groups of unemployed youths roaming our cities, yet we outsource our IT work to barely literate foreign developers. Without a robust software industry, Nigeria will remain underdeveloped.

Partnerships EasyWare is happy to work in partnership with reputable organisations interested in the promotion of software development in Africa. If you are a reputable organisation and have any mutually beneficial ideas about how we can work together, please get in touch with us.

We are also seeking software marketers and contractors who can help push our products and services in this new and exciting market.

EasyWare UK 76b Brookbank Road, London SE13 7BZ Tel: +4420 8692 6986 Email: contact@easyware.co.uk Web: http://www.easyware.co.uk EasyWare Nigeria AIICO PLAZA (1st Floor), Plot 12, Afribank Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Post Office Box: 55713 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos.

Email: contact@easyware-ng.com Web: http://www.easyware-ng.com Agents: http://www.easyware-ng.com/agents. php

art, places & people

Maya Angelou Book Review by Eugene Bradford Review of Maya Angelou's : The Complete Collection of Poems by Maya Angelou.

This is a "got-to-have" for anyone interested in the poetic genius of the famous Poet. The book gives you a chance to look back in her early writings and see how she moves you as she advanced in her skills. I rather enjoyed the book because it inspires me to write my own poetry.

I have given very nice books of poetry as Christmas gifts to people I know she could awaken their desires to succeed. This particular reference has all the best of Maya and you can feel the poems affect you daily. I have given this book a 5 star rating because it's so enjoyable.

Women are "leaving the door open for a guy to get away with something...

Here's what's happened over the years," says comic and radio host Steve Harvey.

"Women's standards and requirements have lowered over the years. And as men, we know that. We have taken advantage of it. We've created terms that we feed to women that allow us to exist as we do," he told Belinda Luscome when discussing his New York Times best seller, co-authored with Denene Millner, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. For example, Harvey said (and I'm abbreviating) ...

1. We created the term "nagging."

There's really no such thing as nagging.

As soon as a woman starts registering her complaint, we call it nagging. We let you know it will drive us away.

2. When you first meet a man, so you don't ask a lot of personal questions, and questions about his business, we created the term gold-digger. Now why would a woman not be concerned about her financial future?

3. Three things men want from women: support, loyalty and "the cookie" (sex): "We'll take a lot of things from a woman. But we have to have these three things. You take away any one of them, you lose a man's affection."

4. Three ways men show love to women: profess, provide and protect: "We have to define love in some kind of way. The problem with women is they have this great spectrum of what love is, and they want it reciprocated the same way they give it out. But we men can only nurture to a certain degree. It's not in our DNA ... We want to profess our love. We tell everyone," he told an Atlanta audience.

5. "Men are driven by who they are, what they do, and how much they make. ... These three things make up the basic DNA of manhood-the three accomplishments every man must achieve before he feels like he's truly fulfilled his destiny as a man..., and until he's achieved his goal in those three areas, the man you're dating, committed to, or married to will be too busy to focus on you" Harvey wrote in the book.

Book Review by Kare Anderson "I've had two divorces myself. I understand. What I was never able to convey until I got a little older was why I was missing in action... trying so hard to be somebody ... not as emotionally involved," says Harvey who adds that he "could have written it (his book) in "about 35 pages.... because we're guys.

We are that simple," he added in the interview.

Sometimes Harvey he sounds like he's offering 1950s Mad Men-era advice, yet not as much as Whitey Casey in The Man Plan. It gets men nodding and some women giving heated responses to him on call-in talk shows: * Take your husband’s last name. It supports men's desire to protect women. * Men still expect women to keep a clean home. * It is ok if women don't know how to cook as long as they "cook" in the bedroom.

Three things to ask a man "to decide if he is worth keeping", suggests Harvey, are (and these are just as valuable in reverse for men to ask women) are his: 1. Short-term goals and whether they match his long-term goals.

2. Views on family and kids.

3. Relationship with his mom

By Amanta Usukpam Ukpaghiri I finished reading Half of a Yellow Sun and was left with a lingering sense of sadness at having completed the novel too quickly. I wished it continued and that l continued to read it, perhaps, for a very long time. It is a masterpiece of a work, destined to be a classic; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has trod where many others have feared to tread. She has taken the pain and suffering and horror of a people - the Igbos -- and given them novelistic prominence, and by so doing, asked historical questions that still demand answers. She, in effect, stands athwart the current amnesia in Nigeria and requests that the country comes to terms with the Igbo sub-nationality and either accept it as a full member of the polity -- or leave it alone to its own devices. Admirably, she is (as she said in an interview) "insistently and consciously" Igbo - and unlike several economic climbers in today's Nigeria, is never shamelessly apologetic that she is Igbo.

This book is truly more than a novel - although even as a novel, it is extremely well crafted, brimming with characters that come alive and leap off the pages and embody events that unquestionably took place in the history of Nigeria. Indeed, this book is a form of historical narrative that tells the story of Igbos' vibrant engagement with Nigeria in the 1960s before the civil war, the massacres of tens of thousands of Igbos following military intervention in politics, and the period of the civil war itself from 1967 to 1970.

Chimamanda has achieved several noble things with one stroke. She has furnished literature with simple, elegant and sharp sentences and a (albeit horror) story beautifully woven together in paragraph after paragraph.

She has also written a history of the Igbos during a certain period of time. Finally she has presented a literary monument to love and relationships and hope and human dignity. Her characters - - their lives, their triumphs, and their failures - speak to the enduringness of love and truth and the dominance of the human spirit.

It is simply amazing that Chimamanda is only 28 years' old -- she was born 7 years after the war ended. Yet she tells her story with a level of insight, maturity, compassion, knowledge and deftness that belies her age. It is abundantly clear that her writing is the product of tremendous research on her part of the events that led up to and including the civil war. This is fiction based on facts - or "faction."

Chimamanda's characters are seen in every day life in Nigeria. Ugwu exists in several houseboys in Nigeria with ambition and intelligence who continue to rise by dint of application of their brains and hard work and focus to attainment of lives of accomplishment. Ugwu's sense of ownership of his Master, Madam and Baby is quite widespread among faithful houseboys. Odenigbo - the professor of mathematics at University of Nigeria, Nsukka -- is the quintessential intellectual, perhaps, with his head caught up in the clouds with numerous ideological constructs and deconstructs. Kainene and Olanna are extremely human characters whose sisterly relationship with each other ironically blossomed in the midst of the war - and became warmer as they came to experience the horrors of the civil war together. Richard comes across as familiarly tragic - wanting to belong to and in Biafra and never belonging or never accepted as belonging.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Which brings us to the concept of belonging. It is a concept that Chimamanda explores in her novel. Miss Adebayo was never seen as belonging; and of course, neither was Richard. Indeed, the Igbos who had lived in the Northern part of Nigeria for several decades were never seen as belonging. Nor were the Igbos who had lived in Lagos: Chinua Achebe escaped death in Lagos during the massacre of Igbos by a hairsbreadth. The parallels between Igbos and the Jews are really striking. Belonging is a potent concept; witness the current acrimonious debate raging in the industrialized countries over immigration, which is inextricably linked to who belongs and who does not.

This is a story that has universal applications even as it is largely set in Igbo land. It tells the story of political conflict and war and love and hate and betrayal and oppression and human affirmation that is contemporary and resonates with the human condition.

It will be eminently interesting to see how this "transcendent novel" in the words of Publishers Weekly - which has been received with great literary acclaim in the United States and Europe - will be received in Nigeria. It is safe to predict that it will be seen in certain quarters through dogmatic lenses that will uncritically seek to brazenly question the novel's premises. But this will be largely besides the point - because Chimamanda has rendered a classic and has told a story about a historical necessity - the defense of and by a people from being wiped out from the face of the map.

Just a few quibbles. It was 20 and not 50 pounds that was vengefully decreed by the Government of Nigeria as the amount to be (and which was) given in exchange for all the money held by each former Biafran. Before the war, Cross River Igbos would have been referred to as Bende people and not Imo people. And the settlement in Port-Harcourt would have been called Umuokirisi and not Rumuokirisi - that came after the war. But these are mere quibbles and do not affect the historical accuracy of the novel regarding the lives and times of the Igbos before and during the civil war.

Chimamanda has rightly been described as the 21st-century successor to Chinua Achebe, and she indeed displays the same sophisticated simplicity in her writing and similar deep historical insights laced with philosophical wisdom. Indeed, Achebe describes her as being "endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers" and asserts that she "came almost fully made." The serious bent of her writings is to be widely applauded. There surely is a literary ferment afoot among young Nigerian writers in the diaspora. And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is at the crest of that ferment. To end with Achebe's words: In writing Half of a Yellow Sun, "Adichie knows what is at stake and what to do about it."

The World’s Black Billionaires The world needs more black billionaires. Out of 1,210 billionaires, only 6 of them are people of color. These are the lucky, privileged few:

Alike Dangote Africa’s Riches Man -Forbes Magazine In the past year Aliko Dangote’s fortune surged 557% to $13.8 billion, up from $2.1 billion, after he consolidated all his public and private cement holdings throughout Africa into the continent’s largest cement manufacturer and took it public on the Nigerian stock exchange in October.

Dangote Cement now has a market value in excess of $13 billion, and accounts for a quarter of the Nigeria Stock Exchange’s total market capitalization.

The dearth of native suppliers to meet increasing cement demand is driving the stock price. Dangote projects demand at 72 million metric tons and growing because of the drive to build infrastructure in Nigeria, Africa’s most populated nation, as well as other countries; current supply is 67 million metric tons, a shortfall of 5 million metric tons.

For perspective, he is now richer than longtime white South African billionaires Nicky Oppenheimer of Debeers and Johann Rupert of luxury goods group Richemont, which owns Cartier, Dunhill and other premium brands.

For now he’s gearing up to introduce Dangote Cement to foreign investors. Companies listed on the Nigerian stock exchange are required to have a minimum free float of 25%, Dangote initially listed 5% of shares.

According to analysts at Thaddeus Investment Advisors, the Nigerian market is too shallow for a stock of Dangote Cement’s size to be listed on the exchange; this is why the balance of the free float will be listed outside of Nigeria. Dangote, who recently bought himself a $45 million Bombardier aircraft for his birthday, has been shuttling back and forth to London for months, in anticipation of a public offering in London later this year.

Aliko Dangote Country: Nigeria Source: sugar, flour, cement Net worth: $13.8 billion Africa’s richest man is looking to list his biggest asset, Dangote Cement on the London Stock Exchange later this year. It’s already listed on the Nigerian stock exchange. He started trading commodities at age 21 with loan from uncle, fabled millionaire tycoon Usman Dantata. Rapidly grew business into conglomerate with interests in sugar, flour and cement. Embracing philanthropy: Recently donated $18 million to a Nigerian government program that loans start-up capital to small business owners.

Mohammed Al-Amoudi Country: Saudi Arabia Source: oil Net worth: $12.3 billion Saudi billionaire remains true to his Ethiopian roots. (His father is Saudi and his mother is Ethiopian.) His massive investments in the former war-torn country include a gold mine, a 5-star hotel and a massive farm where he grows rice, corn and other staples for export to Saudi Arabia. Started investing in Sweden in the 1970s. Major assets include oil companiesSvenska Petroleum Exploration, which produces crude oil in Africa, and refinery operator Preem.

Patrice Motsepe Country: South Africa Source: mining Net worth: $3.3 billion Born in Soweto, the South African mining magnate trained as a lawyer, became first black partner at law firm, Bowman Gilfillan. Set out to start own business, buying up low-producing gold mine shafts and turning them profitable. Went on to build mining giant African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) which mines everything from platinum and gold to nickel, iron, coal and manganese. Also owns a 5% stake in Sanlam, a publicly listed financial services firm and Mamelodi Sundowns, a South-African soccer team.

He is certainly one to watch. After a lucrative career in trading, Dangote ventured into manufacturing pasta, salt, sugar, and flour in 1997, in part encouraged by the policies of former president Olusegun Obasanjo. Eventually Dangote went from importing and rebagging cement to production as well; he was awarded the government’s then state-owned cement business and began building his own plant in 2003. Cement revenue which has been primarily based on imports grew 15% a year between 2001 and 2005; once the Obajana plant was fully operational in 2007, revenue quadrupled; in fiscal 2009 revenue was $1.2 billion.

Dangote Cement now owns three cement plants and two terminals in Nigeria where he both produces and still imports cement. The Obajana plant is Dangote’s largest to date and controls the largest market share in Nigeria; Dangote terminals at Lagos and Port-Harcourt have the highest import quotas of all local companies. With additional capacity coming on line this year, total capacity is expected to reach 26 million metric tons by the end of 2011. (also helping boost profits: Dangote’s newly combined entity is tax exempt through 2017.)

But he won’t stop there. Dangote has started building investments in cement plants and terminals across Africa including Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo, Ethiopia, Cameroun, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Ghana.

Oprah Winfrey Country: USA Source: Television Net Worth: $2.7 billion The world’s most powerful celebrity is also its richest black woman.

Queen of all media partnered with Discovery Communications to form Lifestyle-themed Oprah Winfrey Network. Her Harpo Production spawned the careers of Dr. Phi, Ray Rachael and Dr. Oz.

Mike Adenuga Country: Nigeria Source: oil, banking, telecoms Net worth: $2 Billion Reclusive tycoon got big break hobnobbing with former Nigerian military leaders. Worth it: Cornered juicy contracts to build military barracks; secured oil mining license. Holdings now include a bank, an oil exploration and marketing firm, real estate and his most prized asset: Globacom, a West African telecoms outfit. Reportedly spent over $2 million on a wedding ceremony for one of his daughters in April 2010.

Art – Living Legends

Mo Ibrahim Country: United Kingdom Source: telecoms Net Worth: $1.8 billion Sudanese-born telecoms magnate founded Celtel, a mobile phone company that serves 23 countries in Africa and the Middle East. Sold it in 2005 for $3.4 billion; pocketed $1.4 billion. Founded Satya Capital, a $150 million private equity firm committed solely to investing in African companies. His Mo Ibrahim African Foundation has not awarded its $5 million African leadership prize for the past two years.

Bruce Onobrakpeya A printmaker, painter and sculptor, Bruce is one of Africa’s best known and most highly respected artists. He has been described as a ‘living legend’ that was 'responsible for the renaissance in contemporary art in Nigeria'. With a career spanning several decades and many notable exhibitions at the Tate Modern Gallery, London, National Museum of African Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden to name a few.

Bruce is a well renowned and established name in art circles around the world.

Fela on Broadway – A Review

The show covers a lot of biographical territory, ranging through the United States as well as Africa, though with far less strain than in its Off Broadway incarnation. Set in the Shrine on the eve of Fela’s planned departure from Nigeria, months after a violent government raid on his compound that left many of his followers wounded and his beloved mother dead, the production shifts between past and present via an assortment of sophisticated theatrical tools (including magical lighting by Robert Wierzel and video design by Peter Nigrini, with top-grade wrap-around sound by Robert Kaplowitz).

Making Music Mightier Than the Sword

By BEN BRANTLEY New York Times There should be dancing in the streets. When you leave the Eugene O’Neill Theater after a performance of “Fela!,” it comes as a shock that the people on the sidewalks are merely walking.

Why aren’t they gyrating, swaying, vibrating, in thrall to the force field that you have been living in so ecstatically for the past couple of hours?

The hot (and seriously cool) energy that comes from the musical gospel preached by the title character of “Fela!,” which opened on Monday night, feels as if it could stretch easily to the borders of Manhattan and then across a river or two. Anyone who worried that Bill T. Jones’s singular, sensational show might lose its mojo in transferring to Broadway can relax.

True, this kinetic portrait of Fela AnikulapoKuti, a Nigerian revolutionary of song, has taken on some starry producers — including Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith — and shed 15 or 20 minutes since it was staged Off Broadway last year. But it has also acquired greater focus, clarity and intensity. In a season dominated by musical retreads and revivals, “Fela!,” which stars the excellent Sahr Ngaujah and Kevin Mambo (alternating in the title role), throbs with a stirring newness that is not to be confused with novelty.

For there has never been anything on Broadway like this production, which traces the life of Fela Kuti (1938-97) through the prism of the Shrine, the Lagos nightclub where Fela (pronounced FAY-lah) reigned not only as a performer of his incendiary songs (which make up most of the score) but also as the self-proclaimed president of his own autonomous republic.

As brought to the stage by Mr. Jones — the show’s venturesome choreographer, director and, with Jim Lewis, its book writer — “Fela!” doesn’t so much tell a story as soak an audience to and through the skin with the musical style and sensibility practiced by its leading man.

That style is Afrobeat, an amalgam of diverse cultural elements that will be parsed and reassembled during the show by its performers and the wonderful Antibalas, an Afrobeat band out of Brooklyn.

Irresistible music is always more than its individual parts, though. The sum of them here captures the spirit of rebellion — against repression, inhibition and conformity — that dwells within all of us, but which most of us have repressed by early middle age. It has been surfacing in wave after wave of jazz, funk and rock ’n’ roll since the 1920s. And it has been translated into smooth Broadway-ese over the years, in shows about restless youth like “Hair,” “West Side Story” and even “Bye Bye Birdie,” all currently in revival.

The form that spirit took in popular music in

Nigeria in the 1970s, though, was more visceral and more far-reaching than anything Broadway gave birth to. That was when Fela was at the height of his popularity as a recording star and political agitator who understandably frightened the Nigerian military dictatorship.

It wasn’t just what Fela said about a country broken by corruption and oppression. It was how his music said it.

The astonishment of “Fela!” is that it transmits the force of this musical language in ways that let us feel what it came out of and how it traveled through a population. When you arrive at the theater, just look at the stage — transformed into an eye-awakening, graffiti-decorated shrine by Marina Draghici (who also did the celebratory costumes) — and you’ll see the source of that pulse: it’s in the bodacious, miniskirted hips that can be tantalizingly glimpsed swaying in and out from the stage’s wings.

As choreographed by Mr. Jones, an eminence of contemporary dance who won a Tony for his work on “Spring Awakening,” “Fela!” leads with its hips. Its star, who makes his entrance through the aisles amid a human locomotive of shoulder-rolling men, identifies that pelvic motion as “nyansh,” what you hear — and feel — in the bass.

Nyansh is Afrobeat’s foundation, over which are layered elements explained in a number called “B.I.D. (Breaking It Down),” which traces the musical education of Fela from his youth in Lagos (where highlife jazz dominated) to his student days in London (where he listened to John Coltrane and Frank Sinatra). Somewhere along the way, the sounds of Chano Pozo and James Brown entered his aural landscape, and Fela heard a synthesis that he believed would change not only his life but all of Africa.

But it’s the music and the movement that tell us most about the man and his world. “Fela!” never stops dancing, and Mr. Jones uses his ravishing ensemble to evoke everything from joyous sensuality to the kind of governmental oppression that turns people into zombies. Both actors portraying the pot-smoking, sax-tooting Fela lead their ensemble, which winds up including us, with charismatic authority.

Mr. Ngaujah, who originated the role and now appears in it five times a week, has an insolent, instinctive majesty that feels utterly organic, as if it’s been conjured by the music itself. Mr. Mambo wears his pain, his rage and his humor closer to the surface; he’s a slightly less compelling musical presence, but a more lucid storyteller.

As commanding as both these men are — and as spirited as the male dancers (including the brilliant, sui-generis tap artist Gelan Lambert) are — it’s the women who ultimately rule this universe. Saycon Sengbloh shimmers as the seductress who introduces Fela to Marx and the American black-power movement.

And Lillias White plays Funmilayo, the government-baiting feminist who was Fela’s mother and whose ancestral spirit haunts her son. As anyone who saw her in “The Life” knows, Ms. White’s voice can penetrate the heavens, so it seems perfectly plausible that Funmilayo could become the goddess that Fela visits in the afterlife, in the show’s most elaborately conceived and fantastical sequence.

But the heart, soul and pelvis of “Fela!” are located most completely in the phalanx of female dancers (I counted nine, but they feel legion) who stand in for the 27 women Fela married.

Fela called these beauties his queens, and they are hardly your traditional chorus line.

Imperial and exquisitely self-contained, these women never sell themselves with the smiling avidity you’re used to from Broadway dancers.

They don’t need to. Their concentrated magnetism draws you right to their sides, whether they’re parading among the audience or wriggling onstage.

By the end of this transporting production, you feel you have been dancing with the stars. And I mean astral bodies, not dime-a-dozen celebrities.

FELA!

Film Review: Africa United 2010 This co-production between the United Kingdom, Rwanda and South Africa is a cheerful, good-natured road movie in which three Rwandan school kids take a wrong turning when heading to Kigali to audition for a warm-up act at the 2010 World Cup. They are an 11-year-old Aids orphan who lectures on condoms and safe sex to his peers, his younger sister who wants to be a doctor, and a middle-class soccer star. They end up in war-torn Congo, escape from an orphanage with a tough, traumatised fugitive child soldier and push on to South Africa for the opening match. On the way they're joined by a resilient young prostitute, and the quintet bond on the hazardous journey. The middle-class lad throws his mobile into Lake Tanganyika to break away from his censorious mother; the child soldier casts his revolver into a river to signal his rejection of tribal violence.

This somewhat ramshackle affair is packed with action, is handsomely photographed, and has enough realism and danger to keep the lurking sentimentality at bay. It makes an interesting comparison with Alexander Mackendrick's 1963 movie Sammy Going South, recently released on DVD, in which a 10-year-old British lad orphaned in the 1956 bombing during the Suez invasion makes his way to relatives in South Africa across a very different Dark Continent.

The White Lions of Africa The White Lion exists and has for over 400 years. They’re not talked about often, are very very rare…but they actually exist in the real world! It’s like a dream come true. Such perfection should be love, cherished and obeyed. African elders recognized the beauty and took the presence of a White Lion as a spiritual symbol and an ancient prophecy fulfilled. In fact, the Kings of African marked the site of the White Lions as sacred (Timbavati region in South Africa).