Leading in an Agile World – Can We Usefully Redefine Leadership?

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A colleague of mine recently circulated an email asking several of us to respond to his juxtaposition of leadership and catalyzing, reflecting the notion that the former is passé and the future is ‘catalyzing’ as the key concept. The response was quick and definitive…although “Concepts of leadership are evolving to keep pace with the disruption, transformation, and agility demands of today’s organizations,” as I noted in my last blog, most respondents believe that leaders still need skills grounded in experience while integrating catalyzing skills  for existing and future challenges.

This I believe is the core of agility: recognizing, mobilizing, enabling, empowering, and sharing leadership throughout the organization so that the culture reflects a blend of human and digital capacity geared toward innovation and collaboration. Now the challenge comes in several forms: the first is that not all companies are equal, in size, complexity, structure, and business model. Some are client or customer centric and have high brand recognition. Others offer specialty products that require strong R&D components to be competitive; while others are service-providers to emerging niche markets. Mixtures of bricks and mortar and virtual POS and distribution are not uncommon.

So while the structures and operational priorities may be dissimilar, the missions and goals can be reduced to “make money, keep customers happy,  stay happy.” This core of profitability and satisfaction are at the center of how leadership, whatever styles are effective, is exercised. Why “styles?” We learned ages ago that leadership defined by functions can range from directing and evangelizing to coaching and coercing, and at least a dozen more characteristics.

Leadership is a shortcut to conflate those traits that enable leaders in whatever context to lean forward, lead from behind, and construct and organizational culture that emphasizes continual innovation, adaptation, and a competitive edge, mirroring Jack Welch, former CEO of GE’s mantra of change leadership.

Michael Hamman and Michale K. Spayd put it this way in their White Paper, “The Agile Leader.” “An organization’s agility is not a function of “‘scaling’ current team-based delivery practices…Simply put, agile leadership entails a move from driving to results to creating environments that generate results.

Agile leadership is no accident. There is a clear methodology for enacting agile leadership.” They use the phrase ‘enterprise agility’ to express their assumption that “At the heart of sustainable enterprise agility is an adaptive, agile leadership.”

To value leadership in both its complexity and its simplicity, it is vital to remember that at the heart of leadership principles are, at least for now, human beings who make assumptions every day about how to succeed in a fluid and competitive environment. Back to Hamman and Spayd, “Fundamentally, it is as much about the interior—of individuals, of organizations—as it is about the exterior. It is as much about developing people as it is about building systems. It is as much about creating an agile culture as it is about adapting structures and processes.”

Catalyzing in this context is about aligning talent, resources, systems, objectives, and expectations to support agility, so that a catalyzing leader is an agile leader dedicated to mobilizing a coherent, consistent spirit of innovation shared by company teams that have transparent, respectful, reliable, and valued communications with their counterparts in- and outside the organization.

One could argue that because of the impact of technology and the yet to be understood tsunami called ‘AI’ that leadership is more difficult in today’s environment. On the other hand, it is also reasonable to point out that leadership in the past did not have the data, modelling options, robust algorithms, and highly developed technologies as learning aides. The uncertainty, complexity, and fluidity of today’s competitive environments, at all levels, demand a differently tuned skill set, which is why sometimes the strong survive, and sometimes they don’t. Change management has to begin within the individual, which is why companies have to seriously invest in driving agility throughout their organization and its processes and relationships.

The difference I believe is enabling the agility of leaders, teams, policies, communications, and the workforce to recognize, embrace, and capture change capabilities in order to survive and thrive. For success, mindsets need to be rewired to accept the inevitability of change and the acquisition of skills required to master its impact. These skill sets must extend beyond their particular silos and empower staff to collaborate across boundaries – and be rewarded for it. As employees recognize and accept agility as a means to mobilize and execute, they then become team members whose communications with others both assume and reflect the cultural values of the organization.

So for me, this is the role of leadership at all levels: to build consensus and collaboration around company strategies and communications that build agility internally and in its external relations.

 

Regional Merry-Go-Round – While Key Issues Continue to Dog Lebanon’s Government in Formation, End to Syria’s Civil War in Sight

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The muddle called the Middle East gets murkier

It has long been said somewhat cynically that Lebanon’s raison d’etre is to serve as the proxy battlefield for everything in contention in the region and beyond. Certainly, contemporary events bear that out as PM Saad Hariri struggles to build consensus around a new government and ministerial statement while regional players continue to shuffle the policy cards to determine what’s next on their agendas.

Distinctions between the players’ existential concerns and their dominate current interests are muddled at best. The Assad regime draws closer to its immediate goal of restoring its punishing control over Syria; Iran seeks to strengthen its regional role despite rising domestic opposition; Turkey is…well Turkey; Russia and Israel look to their interests with fervor; and the Syrian refugees await their fate.

Here’s a quick summary of several current events that are adding to the continued uncertainty despite the latest battlefield outcomes in Syria, a small détente between Israel and Syrian government forces near its borders, Syrian refugees moving in larger numbers back home, and Hezbollah’s quest for meaning after Syria.

Lebanon-Syria relations, always contentious, seem to be the chicken bone in the throat of PR Hariri. Despite prodding from Speaker Nabih Berri, pro-Syrian members of Parliament, Gebran Bassil, the acting Foreign Minister and son-in-law of President Michel Aoun, and others, the PM is standing his ground that the ministerial statement, which outlines the new government’s priorities, will not address restarting formal relations with Syria. Can he hold out? There’s no immediate consensus as there are other MPs supporting the PM. Proponents of the move argue that the step is needed to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees, re-open border crossings to allow goods to transit to export markets to Lebanon’s neighbors, and potentially give Lebanon a piece of the Syrian reconstruction pie.

Syria meanwhile seems to be holding refugee repatriation hostage to resuming relations. Over the past two weeks, a number of statements have come from Syrian sources, as well as its friends in Lebanon, that formal relations are the key to accelerating recent repatriation actions. It is worth noting that despite allegations that the Assad regime has a list of a million or so unwanted returnees, it also craves to be recognized as a legitimate government that can manage the resettlement process.

The reality though may be much different, and Russia has already indicating that it will play a key role as well so that it can task the international community with the cost of reconstruction in exchange for pressuring Syria to work with Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey on refugee issues. So, as reported by Refugees Deeply, “Russia and Syria are seeking bilateral agreements to begin mass returns. This could be disastrous given that the Syrian government and its allies lack the capacity and perhaps the will to enable refugees to return safely and reintegrate into the country.”

The UNHCR is directly bound up in this quagmire as it serves as the mediating body for the international community on refugee affairs. It has outlined its criteria for conditions required to move ahead with large-scale voluntary repatriations in cooperation with the Syrian government. To date, however, the regime has imposed restrictions on UNHCR activities in Syria, which could leave returnees without adequate aid and exposed to more danger.

While some analysts believe that Russia and the US are winding down their roles in Syria, Israel is exerting greater efforts to ensure that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah do not become an even greater security threat. Israel is concerned with Iran’s role in the region, especially the increasing stocks of various grades and types of Iranian-supplied missiles in Lebanon and Syria; thus its insistence on Iran’s withdrawal from all of Syria. As Stratfor notes, “On the diplomatic front, Israel has focused its approach on the United States and Russia, striving to convince the two superpowers to heed its interests in Syria by containing and limiting Iran’s influence and presence in the country.”

What’s in the cards for Hezbollah’s hands in Syria and Lebanon is a subject of much speculation. Will it return to its traditional role as a political-military state within a state in Lebanon? Will it maintain a presence in Syria to enable Iran to continue to have a pressure point on Israel? Will it maintain an aggressive posture towards Israel so that Israel leans on Russia and the US to exercise what little leverage they have over the Iran-Hezbollah axis to keep tensions from boiling over?

If it remains in Syria, deployed in areas under its control, it is hard to imagine that, despite its alliance with Assad, the Syrian regime will allow it to exercise the same freedom it has in Lebanon. According to an article in Al-Monitor.com, “There is no withdrawal for now, only redeployments of troops in the various areas,” said one source. “If the situation stabilizes definitely, Hezbollah would pull out from certain regions, but there are areas it considers strategic that it will never leave.”

Nicholas Blanford, longtime journalist based in Beirut, describes the link between Hezbollah’s presence in Syria and Iran’s regional game plan. “Iran will play the long game in southwest Syria by relying either on Hezbollah or Iraqi militant groups. Tehran will also want to extend what Hezbollah has on its Lebanese frontier with Israel, to the Golan, and leverage southwest Syria in its confrontation with Israel in the long run. Iran is trying to shape its strategic interests in Syria as time passes by, to maintain its land bridge there against Israel.”

Ironically, Russia, which, it can be argued, saved the Assad regime, seems to risk a diminishing influence on Iran and Syria as it draws down its military role in the region. Having gained basing rights in Syria, the acknowledgement of all the local players that it is the top player in the region, and with its finger on any eventual peace and reconstruction effort, it is loath to act against Iran in Syria. As Blanford noted, “Israel and the US seem hopeful that Russia will serve as a block to Iranian ambitions in Syria, but this could be wishful thinking.”

So is the other great power, the US, still searching for a regional strategy? It appears that the Trump Administration has conceded that the war in Syria is now at a stage where the US should move on to focus on a formal end to the civil war and reconstruction. Jim Jeffrey, former US Ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), who served as the principal DAS for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, and deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, has been appointed as Representative for Syrian Engagement by Secretary Pompeo. His job is to run US negotiations with other regional players over Syria’s future.

He has extensive experience in the region that should serve him well. As Ambassador to Iraq, he opposed the US withdrawal from the country under the Obama Administration, arguing that without a tangible presence in country that Iran’s influence would prevail. So he has no illusions about Iran’s regional ambitions.

One of his first challenges is to ensure that the latest deal made by the Administration, to have others pay for Syria’s stabilization fund, is carried out effectively. In announcing the US cut of its commitment of $230 million in stabilization assistance, the State Department pointed out that the Gulf States and others have agreed to fund the program. Stabilization aid is intended to provide basic services that allow Syrian residents to return to their homes and some semblance of normal life after a devastating seven-year civil war.

Al-Monitor.com reported that the “US has elicited approximately $300 million in contributions and pledges from coalition partners to support critical stabilization and early recovery initiatives in areas liberated from [the Islamic State (IS)] in northeast Syria, including a generous contribution of $100 million by Saudi Arabia and $50 million pledged by the United Arab Emirates.” Other commitments have been made by Kuwait, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, the European Union, Australia. and Taiwan.

At the same time, a Reuters.com post noted that The US has also made it clear that “There will be no global reconstruction funding for Syria until a ‘credible and irreversible’ political process led by the United Nations is underway.” The State Department emphasized that “We will continue to provide life-saving, needs-based humanitarian assistance to vulnerable Syrians, support for the White Helmets and the UN’s International Impartial and Independent Mechanism to hold the [Syrian President Bashar] Assad regime accountable for serious crimes, as well as equipment and other measures to counter the effects of chemical weapons in northwest Syria.”

The spokesperson, Heather Nauert, explained that the decision “does not represent any lessening of US commitment to its strategic goals in Syria.” Which again raises the earlier question, does the US have a viable regional strategy that represents its long-term interests in the region?

 

 

Leadership in an Agile World

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Concepts of leadership are evolving to keep pace with the disruption, transformation, and agility demands of today’s organizations. I can remember working in the early 70s on executive leadership programs at the Institute for Training and Development at GSPIA at the University of Pittsburgh, where we always began with McGregor’s X&Y theories of leadership and Contingency Theory.

There have been numerous attempts since then to blend the attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of leadership in an inclusive concept. For example, a quick Google toggle gave me: [https://www.google.com/search?q=leadership+theories&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1]

  • Great Man Theory
  • Trait Theory
  • Behavioral Theories, Role Theory
  • Participative Leadership, Lewin’s leadership styles
  • Situational Leadership, Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership
  • Contingency Theories, Fiedler’s Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) Theory
  • Transactional Leadership
  • Transformational Leadership

And these styles:

  • Coercive
  • Authoritative
  • Affiliative
  • Democratic
  • Coaching
  • Pacesetting

So has this made us any wiser in terms of promoting a single leadership concept and style? Jack Welch, former CEO of GE and business savant, has much to say about core issues related to corporate culture, from leadership and strategy, to processes and metrics. Most of his statements can be found at Jack Welch College of Business, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CN [https://www.sacredheart.edu/academics/jackwelchcollegeofbusiness/aboutthecollege/ , and theJack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University [https://jackwelch.strayer.edu/ ].

First off, as some observers have pointed out, GE is no longer the leading conglomerate it once was as that model of aggregating unrelated businesses did not survived the last century. So listening to his take on what makes a leader great needs to be taken in the context of the environment in which that leadership is exercised [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojkOs8Gatsg&t=142s ]. Bottom line, it’s about people, regardless of the impact of AI on the workforce, it’s still about your human capital.

Welch says that a leader must be the chief “meaning” officer, clearly explaining where the organization is heading, why it is going there, and what the benefits are for all the stakeholder/employees. He noted that “people hate change,” and that is why clarifying the vision, mission, and strategy of the company is job #1. He then goes on to say that it’s important not to get rid of all the clutter because these linkages help breakdown silos and it’s more important to “broom away” the stuff that is in the way rather than the stuff that employees see as relevant to their everyday activities.

Finally, he talks about the importance of the “generosity gene” that celebrates when anyone accomplishes something. This includes having fun and celebrating all the little victories, not just the big ones.

Another perspective on leadership comes from an India-based consultancy http://thoughtleadership.in/.

From their experience, leadership is central to managing change. “A key leadership challenge is to initiate and lead systemic changes that will set the organization up for success in future. Indeed, nothing else perhaps sums up why we need a leader in the first place.”

In this regard, they emphasize the complexity and uncertainty in which leaders operate, “There are no guarantees that the chosen direction and pace will lead to a better situation, for the changes are too complex for anyone to understand and discern, let alone predict and assure.” One of the key demands on leaders is their ability to motivate and excite team members to embrace change and make it happen.

They identify 5 Key Behaviors that characterize a winning organization. It has a Growth Mindset, seeking new challenges that stretch their physical or cognitive skills; Staff have T-Shaped Skills reflecting both their expert knowledge and their ability to collaborate across boundaries. This leads to a willingness to help others create value, which builds a sense of reciprocity, which supports the development of winning teams that adapt as needed, with a core value of taking initiative.

How these notions come together in an agile organization is the topic of my next blog.

 

Is There Ever a Typical Organization?

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This is the first in a series of posts linked to articles on my website that look at contemporary issues in organizational development (OD). Although the term organizational development has been around since the 1960s, the last century, its focus on expanding the capabilities of people within organizations to effectively manage change and performance is always relevant. According to a UPenn citation, “OD is a process of continuous diagnosis, action planning, implementation and evaluation, with the goal of transferring knowledge and skills to organizations to improve their capacity for solving problems and managing future change.”

Among the various types of OD interventions are: Survey Feedback, Team Building, Sensitivity Training, Managerial Grid, Management by Objectives (MBO), Brain-storming, Process Consultation, Quality Circles, and Transactional Analysis. While this is not a complete list, it does highlight the need for at least three phases: diagnosis, solution development, action implementation. Today, concepts such as Organizational Agility capture the need for speed and effectiveness given that technology drives change with rapid and sometimes unpredictable results.

Of particular interest to me is working in the space of Organizational Culture. This concept focuses on the deeply seated norms (accepted guidelines for interactions), values, and behaviors shared by people in the company or organization. At AbiNader Advisory Services (AAS), we work with clients to consciously develop a direct link between commonly accepted communications behaviors that characterize how employees interact to the company’s vision/mission, strategy, values, and culture, as in this diagram. The key process outcome is to enable participants to speak to basic factors that cannot be observed – mission/vision, values, strategy, and culture – except through observable and measurable behaviors – in this case, their communications. Importantly, in today’s context, it also provides a platform for discussing key agenda related to diversity and implicit bias. There are a variety of training modalities that can be used in the process, from scenario building and survey instruments to analyzing tactics to breakdown silos and accelerate information distribution.

It is essential for management to recognize that the deeply seated norms, values, and behaviors their employees share derive from more than their current employment or assignments. Their individual cultures are the sum of their many personal and professional experiences. And from this recognition, leadership can work with designated teams to identify, cultivate, and promote an organizational culture aligned on five elements:

  1. A consistent, shared, and sustained commitment to the company’s vision and mission
  2. Transparent and effective communications throughout the organization regarding current and future goals and objectives that cut across teams – the company’s strategy
  3. Shared values expressed in both organizational (e.g. efficient, results oriented) and interpersonal terms (e.g. inclusion, acknowledgement) – these describe the company’s culture
  4. Agreed behavioral norms that define desired behaviors both vertically and horizontally – your culture working for your objectives
  5. Agreed behaviors and expectations of behaviors among employees, teams, departments, others

Concepts of work forces have changed as a result of advances in technology, shifts in the makeup of economies, and greater interest in direct customer contact. Labels such as “Gen X, Millennials, disruption, transformation, etc.” do not really add clarity to the continuous re-definitions that are occurring. What is clear is that a nimble/agile organization must be aware not only of how employees are evolving along with their roles/assignments, but how the shifting nature of their aspirations requires rethinking and redefining relationships from the board room to the operations floor.

Next time, I’ll look at leadership being redefined since it all begins at the top, for better and sometimes for worse…

 

 

 

World Refugee Day Challenges Our Humanitarian Sensibilities

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While I have often expressed my thoughts about the Syrian, Palestinian, and Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, even including the burdens carried by Jordan and Palestine, it is only a starting point for recognizing the awful global conditions of refugees, internally displaced peoples, undocumented migrants, and stateless people that live in all corners of the globe.

You have heard the numbers and they are all horrific, no matter how your rationalize them. For example, The Guardian published a list of the 34,351 people known to have died trying to reach Europe since the early 1990s. Ironically, according to vox.com, The UN defines a refugee as “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.” As of May, an estimated 25.4 million refugees around the globe have fled their homes to escape violence and persecution.

Yet the day is not for mourning, as vox.com notes, “It’s a day that the United Nations created to celebrate the resilience and courage of refugees and their contributions to society.” That is small comfort to the tens of millions of refugees, many fleeing persecution because of ethnic, religion, tribal, or other confrontations over identity.

More facts from the same story. By the end of last year, according to a recent UNHCR report, there were 68.5 million forcibly displaced people in the world, including 25.4 million refugees. The number also includes about 40 million internally displaced people — people who were forced to leave their homes but are still in their home countries — and 3.1 million asylum seekers, or people who have applied for refugee status but are waiting for approval.

2017 was the sixth consecutive year that the number of forcibly displaced people in the world surpassed peak World War II levels, and this year’s reports indicate that that number is probably going to keep going up. The majority of refugees right now are from Syria, where 6.3 million people have fled their country to escape the ongoing conflict there. European countries have also taken in asylum seekers from several other countries, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

So how is it possible to celebrate resilience and courage when refugees face separation from their families, may be interred in inhospitable facilities, and deprived of basic services and support? It is more an observance of the survival instincts of the human condition, both for the refugees and for their host communities when they open their homes and share their resources with strangers.

So while the Lebanese, Turks, Jordanians, Malays, Colombians, Ugandans, Pakistanis, and others are bearing the burdens of those less fortunate, the US and Europe, most recently Italy, are responding by shutting down their borders. Here’s a snapshot worth pondering: Last September, the US dropped the refugee cap, which is the maximum number of refugees from anywhere to the US to just 45,000 people, the lowest number in years. And even though Syrians are the largest group of people fleeing conflict right now, from January to April of this year the US reportedly only accepted 11 Syrian refugees.

World Refugee Day should be an observance of communities like Rochester, Minnesota, Portland, Maine, and Oakland, California, which have opened their hearts and cities to refugees and are benefiting from having inclusive and empowering populations driving sustainable economic growth. So, let’s salute those host communities, international and local agencies, and refugees in Lebanon and elsewhere who are facing the challenges of re-making their lives under very difficult conditions. And let’s continue to encourage the US and the international donor community to expand their humanitarian assistance to those in need.

 

Can Promoting Arab Women as Entrepreneurs Make a Difference?

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Or will age-old stereotypes relegate them to secondary roles?

The economic and business roles of Arab women have been discussed for more than two decades and initiatives have been launched on the consensus that their participation is worth promoting. With electoral quotas in several Arab countries to promote their political participation and with more women appointed to significant positions in the private sector, there are indicators that the roles of women are being taken more seriously. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, while there is a great deal of focus on women driving and flying, much less has been published about those women who make up the majority of Saudis enrolled in medical and pharmacy schools, teaching and research programs, and a number of scientific concentrations.

But I believe that the emphasis across the region on building up women on entrepreneurs will only bear fruit if the term applies broadly to women who create and run small and medium-size enterprises as businesses as well as their counterparts engaged in IT, programming, hi tech, and similar sectors where entrepreneurs tend to concentrate.

Recent enterprise program initiatives recognize that empowering rural communities, co-ops, neighborhood associations, and similar groups will enable them to act as proto-incubators for bringing greater business literacy to those who have been largely marginalized economic players. The cost of not including women as serious economic actors is severe and largely unnoticed. A Brookings Institution article noted that “The World Bank recently said that globally we are losing $160 trillion in wealth because of the gender gap in earnings, including $3.1 trillion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.”

Yet changes in legal codes, allocating more funding to female-centric programs, and building friendly ecosystems to support women in business still has to overcome the most significant barrier to women in the workforce – social and cultural stereotypes driven by a patriarchal society. As the Brookings article puts in, “In order to address the cultural barriers and the deep-rooted gender stereotyping concerning the division of labor, we must work closely with communities and with men specifically to raise the desirability and legitimacy of women working.”

Perhaps the reason that there is so much emphasis on promoting women entrepreneurs in hi tech is that these sectors are outside those traditional jobs tied to crafts and food processing or more male-dominated areas. An IFC article says it clearly. “It may surprise some to learn that one in three start-ups in the Arab World is founded or led by women — a higher percentage than in Silicon Valley. Indeed, women are a force to be reckoned with in the start-up scene across the Middle East. Because the tech industry is still relatively new in the Arab world, there is no legacy of it being a male dominated field. Many entrepreneurs from the region believe that technology is one of the few spaces where everything is viewed as possible, including breaking gender norms, and is therefore a very attractive industry for women.”

Digital platforms that are the backbone of many high-tech projects are one option for enabling women to spend time both at home and on the job. For example, “these digital platforms allow women to be unimpeded by cultural constraints or safety issues and lowers the implicit and explicit transaction costs of transportation, child care, discrimination, and social censure,” according to the IFC article.

So the future for highly educated women in the Arab world is not as regressive as for those with less education and access. In fact, “According to UNESCO, 34–57% of STEM grads in Arab countries are women, which is much higher share than universities in the US or Europe.”

Yet other statistics are not as supportive of a bright future for women. According to the IFC article, “In fact, 13 of the 15 countries with the lowest rate of female participation in the workforce are in the Arab World according to the World Bank. Restrictive laws in many countries across the region put women who wish to join or start their own businesses at a disadvantage, including prohibitions against women opening up a bank account or owning property, limited freedom of movement without a male guardian, or constraints on interactions with men who are not in their family, in addition to cultural and attitudinal stigmas.”

So it makes sense that the emphasis should be three-fold: opportunities for women at the community level through initiatives in traditional areas of crafts, niche foods, and specialty items (think argan oil and Zaatar); building ecosystems at the high end for university graduates who are well-versed in the digital economy and may apply those skills to upgrading those women at the community level (e.g. https://www.asilashop.com/, or http://deden.co.uk/heritage-natural-soap-by-tradition/), and those in-between who are eager to be active in their local economies and will excel if given training, resources, mentoring, and encouragement.

 

Women in Africa – Ready to Go, Almost

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Investing in women, who make up the majority of the population, is a necessity as well as a great idea!

There is little doubt that Africa will witness rapid yet uneven economic and demographic growth in the next 20 years. Information from multiple sources indicates that its rise can positively affect the global economy by introducing a decisive regional economic force that must be reckoned with. The very steps that will enable this progress such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, widespread investments in communications, transportation, and distribution infrastructures, a greater emphasis on advancing agro-industry, and broad changes in education systems to prepare market-ready graduates to fuel the continent’s rise, are lagging.

This is not new. Since the last century, Africans from diverse communities as well as thought leaders have lamented the lack of coherent strategies in individual countries, regional groupings, and Africa at large that address shortcomings identified by governments and multilateral organizations. The wide disparity among African nations, in terms of GDP, PPP, literacy, gender ratios in education, the workforce, and professions, and continuing concerns with inclusion, corruption, social and health services, and rule of law, aggravate constraints to continent-wide growth. And one cannot overlook the consequences of hundreds of years of dividing Africa north from south, east from west, and other consequences of its difficult history with outside powers and regional rivalries.

Today, as documented by many data sources, Africa stands unevenly at a decision point – either move proactively to reform and enable broad economic inclusion, or face continuing malaise in addressing the needs of the fastest growing population in the world. The World Population Review points out that “There is a high proportion of younger people within the Africa population as a whole, with reports that 41% of the African population is under the age of 15. The life expectancy is also low – less than 50 in many nations and averaging 52 across the continent as a whole. This has reduced considerably over the course of the last twenty years with a widespread HIV and AIDS epidemic taking much of the blame for that statistic.”

Women outnumber men both in the older age groups and those just entering school so investing in girls and women as full partners in the economic future of the continent makes good business sense. A good place to start is focusing on women across the business spectrum because that would create multiple returns by enabling and empowering entrepreneurs and enterprises across many sectors rather than largely focusing on high-end technology and programming.

This is also consistent with initiatives that upgrade the health and well-being of Africans, which is a key goal of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all of the African countries. And it is critical that the international community work in partnership with countries and communities to combat the debilitating conditions that challenge the continent’s future.

To be clear, again looking at the disparities in education, income level, structure of economies, and other factors that differentiate the university graduates from the semi-literate farm and harvesting people, countries need to expand programs beyond urban areas and services and move aggressively to shore up the agricultural sectors that represent the largest percentage of many national GDPs. There are some significant projects that already exist that can serve as models for other countries. It has been suggested that marrying innovative technology programming skills with applications to agri-business may yield mutual benefits to upskilling both IT and agriculture workers.

The challenges for entrepreneurs and business owners are similar for men and women but are compounded by various norms that disproportionately affect women. The World Bank and the UNDP have worked for several decades to promote women in business through a variety of projects and programs but the problem begins with the legal systems that discriminate against women on social, cultural, and religious grounds.

The World Bank has launched an index measuring a country’s legal system vis-à-vis how women in business are impacted. Sarah Iqbal, Program Manager of the Women, Business and the Law Project at the World Bank noted that “Progress in Sub-Saharan Africa is heartening. Despite the myriad challenges facing the region, many governments are working to rescind laws, often holdovers from the colonial era that discriminate against women. We believe that if you change the law, you change the world and we look forward to recording further progress on women’s economic inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Her optimism reflects the fact that fully one-third of all reforms carried out globally were in sub-Saharan Africa, a total of 34 reforms with DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia among the leaders. The full report and accompanying datasets are available at http://wbl.worldbank.org.

African women in the workforce is a continuing topic among World Bank bloggers. A recent blog put it quite well. “Walk around a major city in Sub-Saharan Africa and you will quickly realize that women are a highly visible part of the economy, selling all manner of products and services. In some ways, women are powering the economies of the continent to a greater degree than anywhere else in the world; Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where women make up the majority of self-employed individuals.” That bears repeating, women are the majority of small-business owners in Africa…that is why efforts to promote women in business must be broad-based to be inclusive of their efforts across the economy.

As the blog indicates, “What this fact conceals, however, is that on average women-owned firms have fewer employees, and lower revenues, profits, and productivity. In many cases, women’s businesses contribute little beyond basic subsistence. This limits the potential of women entrepreneurs and hinders economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa.”

This reality can be changed with policies and interventions that support business women through a comprehensive effort that includes literacy, business and financial skills training, mentoring, tactics for accessing financing, marketing, customer relations, and other inputs to making business succeed. As the author notes, “There is a huge opportunity to unleash women entrepreneurs, boosting economic growth and lifting millions of people out of poverty in the process. While in some cases removing barriers to women entrepreneurs may involve slow-moving policy debates, in other cases relatively simple interventions can make a huge difference.”

In multiple studies, it is clear that despite gender inequality, progress in opening up the business space by empowering and enabling women can be transformational for Africa. Limitations that must be dealt with were described in a posting in Africa.com.  Some of the unique challenges facing women include limited access to funding, a lack of mentors to provide guidance, stereotypes that block women from being accepted as experts and supervisors, self-limiting factors that discourage self-confidence and innovation, and social norms that continue to support male dominance in economic affairs.

Ironically, studies in micro-finance/credit and banking show that although “Women manage their credit better than men, the former still find it harder to obtain funding than the latter. A study by the African Development Bank finds that the financing gap for women in Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at above US $20 billion, and younger women struggle the most. According to the 2014 Findex report, only 30% of women in sub-Saharan Africa have access to bank accounts.” This statistic shows the importance of empowering women through financial inclusion.

This past week, South Africa hosted #sheinnovates, a project of the UN Women’s Initiative Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC) launched in 2017 that brings together UN women and key players from the private sector, academia, and the NGO community. “It aims to develop the innovation market to better support women and accelerate the process of gender equality and women’s empowerment by building awareness of the potential of women-developed innovation; identifying key barriers to the advancement of women in the fields of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship; and working collaboratively to identify and address such barriers at an industry-wide level.”

Another noteworthy initiative is the US-funded African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP) based on the assumption that the more that women network across borders and within communities, the more capable they will be to innovate, mentor, organize, and empower themselves and others. According to the State Department, “AWEP alumni have created more than 17,000 jobs and established 22 women’s business associations across Sub-Saharan Africa that are transforming societies and spurring economic growth.”

The website states that “In Africa, women are the backbone of communities and the continent’s greatest potential to unlocking economic growth as they provide the majority of labor with the least amount of resources. Reductions in the gender gap in education, health, political participation, and economic inclusion will result in an increase in the continent’s economic competitiveness.”

The program “Seeks to dismantle the obstacles to business opportunities and economic participation that African women face, “By identifying and building networks of women entrepreneurs [and business owners] sub-Saharan Africa is poised to transform their societies by owning, running, and operating small and medium businesses, and by becoming voices for social advocacy in their communities.”

As more and more resources are invested in African women in business, the continent will reap the benefits of empowering the majority of its population!