HEC Launches Lead Campus Certificate for Africa
HEC Paris has created Lead Campus 2019, an international leadership program designed to understand and navigate the major economic, geopolitical, technological, social and environmental challenges facing Africa. Five countries will host the yearlong course for executives and senior managers across the continent. It starts on November 25.
Lead Campus/Sustainable Leadership in Africa, is a unique results-based program in both English and in French. HEC Paris has co-developed its five modules with partners AFD, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, the I&P impact investment group and the University of Cape Town Graduate School (GSB) of Business. “Lead Campus addresses a diverse population,” says co-director Benedicte Faivre-Tavignot. “Its participants are from diverse horizons and structures yet they all share professional on-the-ground profiles: senior managers, owners of small and medium-sized companies, entrepreneurs and directors in major international companies in Africa. We are also reaching out to managers in the public and para-publics sectors, and senior figures in social enterprise.”
Lead Campus has geared itself to anticipate and understand current developments in Africa and to imagine effective and innovative business models to accompany initiatives in the economic, environmental and social spheres. “Africa is booming and the continent is hungry for skills, investment and wise leadership,” notes Cape Town’s GSB, which is part of South Africa’s oldest university. Adds HEC’s co-director Christelle Bitouzet: “The program allows current and future leaders of Africa to understand the continent’s mutations and current stakes in an environmental, social and societal perspective.”
Collective and Individual
The seven-month course breaks down into five modules hosted by five countries. It kick-starts in the Moroccan cities of Ben Guerir and Rabat where participants are exposed to the major challenges and trends of the continent. They then move on, first to Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital Abidjan, then Nairobi and Cape Town, before culminating in June 2020 in the French capital. “It is important for HEC Paris to offer an ambitious syllabus,” insists Bitouzet, “both accessible and didactic, capable of training enlightened and responsible leaders. That is why we propose online and in-class courses alongside field visits to operational stakeholders and immersions into organizations that play a key role in the development of the host nations.”
Capping the program is an individual project designed to address a key challenge on the ground. Each participant must propose a transformational assessment and business model, aided and advised by a personal tutor who will accompany this individual leadership project during each module.
HEC Paris has designed Lead Campus for business leaders in Africa. They are to become agents of change, going beyond market competition and profit maximization to embrace sustainable business models and collaboration in both a pragmatic and human approach. Crucially, the itinerant program creates strong ties with companies playing a key role in the development of the continent. It also forges networks with diverse global stakeholders and builds bridges between Africa and the rest of the world.