I was talking about African business education with a friend when she asked me a challenging question: “What do you think works well?”

I thought back on GBSN’s experience during its first 8 years. What does “working well” mean? To me, it means that students, managers and leaders who graduate from programs offered by local business schools acquire skills that are: (a) valued by employers, (b) enable them better to grow their own companies, or (c) empower them to launch successful start-ups. Whether they work in businesses, non-profit organizations or government, the test of program quality and relevance are individual and social returns.

What do we know about these returns, both social and individual? Surprisingly little, and that is true even in the United States and Europe. At least there, business schools and various ratings or “scoring” agencies routinely collect earnings data. This captures individual returns, but not social returns such as additional jobs created, or improvements in the way organizations function. In most of Africa even earnings data are hard to gather.

Of course, where students pay fees that cover the costs of their education, the labor market is the best indicator of individual returns. The best business schools on the Continent are all faced with excess demand, suggesting that individuals, their families or companies for which they work are satisfied with the schools’ value propositions.

As to social returns, I know of three surveys that capture some of management education’s value-creation. The Pan-African University’s Lagos-based Enterprise Development Center traced a third of the 600 participants who earned a Certificate in Entrepreneurial Management between 2005, when the degree was first offered, and 2011. After graduation from the EDC program a majority of their small companies (averaging about 10 employees) became more profitable and increased employment. Norwegian researchers of NHH Business School, Bergen, assessed the impact of business training on microfinance borrowers in Tanzania; and a similar survey was done in Peru. The results are positive. Still, to put it bluntly, three small surveys are only a modest start.

The reason that more empirical evidence of social returns is badly needed is that emerging markets in which poverty is still widespread can ill afford to waste resources on low-quality or irrelevant programs. Over the years I have observed characteristics of schools and pedagogy that, in my own view, contribute to success.

• Leadership is all-important: the most successful business schools were led by passionate and single-minded deans or directors.
• De facto autonomy is highly desirable and perhaps a sine qua non for success; schools must be able to innovate and fund their operations largely from student/participant fees. Schools that are run as part of a university, especially public sector universities, have a much harder time meeting market and social needs.
• Strong links of business school deans and faculty to peers and “gurus” who understand their day-to-day challenges are a huge plus; breaking out of isolation from what is going on in the rest of the world is key to sustaining success. This is an area where I believe the Global Business School Network and the Association of African Business Schools (AABS), which emerged from an early GBSN program, have made very positive contributions.
• Solid bridges between business schools and the local business community, for example a governing body that includes prominent local industrialists, bankers, etc. Odd as it may seem to Americans, the former British and French colonies still suffer from Britain and France’s traditional separation of “town” and “gown.”
• Participatory pedagogy, most notably “case teaching,” is enormously helpful in three extremely important ways. First, cases based on real-life issues confronted by local companies, NGOs, etc. prepare students for jobs or for creating a company where they live. This is in contrast to most off-the-shelf courses and cases borrowed from Europe or America. Second, company research leading to writing local cases immerses faculty in the realities of companies, and so helps to strengthen bridges between academia and the business community. Last but not least, the prevailing models of organization throughout Africa are very hierarchical. Interactive pedagogy exposes participants to an alternative model centered on brainstorming, networking and critical thinking that is far more conducive to innovation. This is why GBSN and AABS have, from inception, placed great emphasis on case pedagogy.

While I cannot answer the question: “What works well?” to my complete satisfaction, I am confident that the existing research and our experience in the field suggest that there are significant individual and social impacts from high-quality management education, as outlined above. As our network grows and matures, I look forward to further discussions and research on what works, and what doesn’t, in Africa and around the world.