News & Highlights

  • November 2023
  • EVENT

Professor Paul Gompers’ Visit to Africa

November 2023, Professor Paul Gompers visited six cities in sub-Saharan Africa (Abidjan, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kigali, Lagos, Nairobi) as part of his research on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Emerging Markets and in preparation for his course Entrepreneurship Outside Silicon Valley. During this immersion trip, Professor Gompers and members of the ARC team met with leading members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the cities visited, including entrepreneurs, investors, incubators, and other representatives of relevant organizations. The trip provided an important opportunity for Professor Gompers to engage with HBS alumni, Africa Advisory Board (AAB) members, leading businesspeople, and industry experts to share his research and learn about the progress of entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • October 2023
  • EVENT

Global Initiative Staff Summit

In late October 2023, the ARC team attended the HBS Global Staff Summit in Boston. The Global Summit brought together over 65 HBS staff from 16 research centers and offices worldwide to find areas for collaboration amongst themselves and with HBS faculty and staff based on campus. During the Summit ARC together with each of the other centers made a presentation to the broader HBS community about the center’s work. In its presentation the ARC team highlighted megatrends on the African continent and the opportunities and challenges they presented for African organizations. The ARC team also highlighted the various cases, roundtables, immersions, and research projects that it had worked with faculty on. In its presentation the ARC also shared information about its support of various HBS admissions and alumni events on the continent.
  • October 2023
  • EVENT

HBS Executive Education Africa Roadshow in Lagos, Abidjan, and Johannesburg

The Executive Education team supported by HBS Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, faculty chair of the Senior Executive Program for Africa (SEPA) hosted three events for HBS alumni, potential executive education participants and other stakeholders in Lagos, Nigeria; Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire and Johannesburg, South Africa. The events enabled conversations with prospective participants in the SEPA program. In a week, the team hosted close to 200 participants and held three African case study discussions. The roadshow also featured two inspiring African women, Fatim Cisse (SEPA 2016) in Abidjan and Catherine Day (SEPA 2022) in Johannesburg, who shared their HBS experiences. The ExecEd team was also honored to meet with Mamadou Sangafowa Coulibaly, the Minister of Mines and Energy for Cote d’Ivoire and an HBS alumnus (AMP202).
  • October 2023
  • EVENT

MBA Admissions Tours

Between September and October 2023, the ARC supported HBS admissions’ visit to the region. Jay Katatumba and Vai Schierholtz, both from MBA Admissions, hosted multiple in-person information sessions in Africa. The sessions were held in Abidjan, Accra, Cape Town, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Kampala, and Nairobi. These events were designed for prospective MBA applicants to learn more about the MBA Program, life at HBS, and the post-MBA experience through the voices of alumni and other community members. The events gathered more than 100 attendees.

New Research on the Region

  • April 2024
  • Case

Market Dynamics and Moral Dilemmas: Novo Nordisk’s Weight Loss Drugs

By: Joseph L. Badaracco, Tom Quinn and John Schultz

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk was owned by a charitable foundation, and since its founding in the 1920s had focused on producing insulin to treat diabetes. In 2017, however, it released Ozempic, a diabetes treatment with the revolutionary side effect of safe, effective weight loss. As demand in the U.S. reached a fever pitch, Novo faced opportunities and challenges. The case covers the markets in which Novo could expand, the manufacturing shortfalls it faced, the competition that was expected to arise, and the moral issues that came with selling a product that affected so many people worldwide.

  • April 2024
  • Article
  • Personality and Individual Differences

Loneliness and Emotion Regulation in Daily Life

By: Lameese Eldesouky, Amit Goldenberg and Kate Ellis

There is a growing understanding that emotion regulation (ER) abilities can be an important buffer for loneliness. However, most of this research is cross-sectional. Thus, it is unknown whether loneliness is associated with ER in momentary evaluations and can predict within-person changes in ER. We addressed these questions through ecological momentary assessment, where 169 Egyptian adults reported their loneliness and ER (social sharing, suppression, reappraisal, positive reframing, rumination) five times daily for 14 days. Loneliness negatively predicted social sharing at the within-person level and positively predicted rumination at the between-person level. However, loneliness was not linked to reappraisal, positive reframing, or suppression at the between or within-person levels. The results indicate that the global associations between loneliness and ER replicate previously established results for social sharing and rumination, but not suppression, reappraisal, or positive reframing in daily life. At the same time, the effects of loneliness on different strategies in daily life depend on whether they are at the within-person or between-person level.

  • March 2024
  • Case

Kashat: Navigating the Uncertainties of the Egyptian Fintech Market

By: Paul A. Gompers and Ahmed Dahawy

Karim Nour, the founder of Kashat, an Egyptian nano-lending fintech company, is contemplating how to manage the growth of his startup. Over the summer of 2022, Kashat's loan disbursements had grown by nearly 40%, fueled by macroeconomic instability in Egypt. However, economic uncertainty had also deterred investors from investing in the region. Nour soon began to realize he did not have the funds to maintain the company's rapid growth, in fact, he may not even have the capital to keep the company running. The case explores Nour's journey as he grapples with the concept of 'hibernating' the company, halting lending operations and preserving Kashat's invaluable data algorithm. Within the case, Nour weighs the risks of hibernating versus holding out for funding as he prepares to meet with Kashat's board. He also considers the possibility of being acquired as a means of continued survival for Kashat.

See more research

Johannesburg Staff

Pippa Tubman Armerding
Executive Director
→ Biography
Tafadzwa Choruma
Administrative, Research and Program Assistant

Lagos Staff

Temitayo Lawal
Senior Researcher

Nairobi Staff

Kuria Kamau
Senior Researcher