News & Highlights

  • AUGUST 2024
  • ALUMNI EVENT

Alumni Event with Prof. John Macomber in Dakar

In August 2024, the ARC Executive Director joined Professor John Macomber on an Africa immersion to Dakar, Senegal. During the visit, Prof. Macomber engaged with business leaders, corporates, Harvard alumni and other stakeholders to gain insights into the local business environment. The HBS Africa Research Center in collaboration with the HBS Business and Environment Initiative hosted an in-person Alumni event on Climate Adaptation and Urban Economic Development led by Prof. Macomber. The event saw over 20 attendees engage in a lively discussion.
  • AUGUST 2024
  • ALUMNI EVENT

Alumni Dinner with Prof. Ebehi Iyoha in Lagos

In August 2024, the HBS Association of Nigeria (HBSAN) hosted a dinner in Lagos, Nigeria to honour Ebehi Iyoha, Assistant Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. This dinner marked the conclusion of Professor Iyoha’s visit to Lagos, during which she conducted in-depth case study interviews with senior executives of select companies and engaged in strategic discussions regarding future case collaborations. The evening was highlighted by high-level networking and a shared commitment to advancing entrepreneurial excellence in Africa. Members of the HBSAN and ARC in attendance, expressed their gratitude for Professor Iyoha’s contributions and looked forward to the valuable case studies that would result from her visit.
  • May 2024
  • FIELD Global Immersion (FGI)

Reception and Dinner with Prof. Hakeem I. Belo-Osagie in Nairobi

In May 2024, the ARC Executive Director joined Professor Hakeem I. Belo-Osagie, his students, and members of the Harvard alumni community at a reception and dinner hosted by the Harvard Club of Kenya in Nairobi. Professor Belo-Osagie and his students were in Nairobi for the FIELD Global Immersion (FGI), a first-year MBA course that enables students to learn about business in markets outside of the United States. FGI culminates in a one-week immersion in several emerging market cities around the world, including Nairobi and three other cities in Africa (Kigali, Accra, and Morocco), requiring students to build on and apply learnings from their first-year courses into real-world business problems. During the FGI in Nairobi, students engaged with business leaders, corporate leaders, and alumni to gain insights into the local business environment.
  • May 2024
  • ALUMNI EVENT

Alumni Event with Prof. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell in Johannesburg

The HBS Club of South Africa, in collaboration with HBS Executive Education and GIBS, recently hosted a successful networking event featuring a talk by Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell. The event coincided with Prof. Casadesus-Masanell's visit to Johannesburg for the Senior Executive Program-Africa (SEPA). Africa Research Center staff, SEPA Senior Director Philip Cacouris, and HBS Executive Education Regional Director Stephane Sinimale also attended the event.

New Research on the Region

  • January 2025
  • Case

Untapped Global: Financing Africa’s Missing Middle

By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli

In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion funding gap for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets. By financing digital lenders who provided asset-backed loans to SMEs, Untapped combined flexible repayment structures with real-time data tracking, achieving strong results across 15 African countries. However, as both an investment fund raising capital from limited partners and a fintech startup seeking venture capital, the company’s dual structure had created operational challenges and conflicting priorities. This case provides an opportunity to examine the potential of RBF to address SME financing gaps in emerging markets and to explore the strategic and organizational decisions required to scale a mission-driven business operating at the intersection of finance and technology.

  • November 2024
  • Teaching Material

Social Enterprise in the MENA Region

By: Brian Trelstad and Ahmed Dahawy

This research note provides an overview of the socio-economic landscape of social enterprise in the Middle East and North Africa. It highlights the diversity of players in the region including social enterprise organizations (in their many forms) and supporting agencies, funders, and regulators. The note also dives briefly into the demographics of social entrepreneurs in the region as well as the common social objectives they aimed to address through their organizations.

  • September 2024
  • Case

InfraCredit and the Project Inception Facility

By: John Macomber, Namrata Arora and Maagatha Kalavadakken

Around the world, large infrastructure projects are frequently stymied by the high cost and high uncertainty of the project inception phase: the research and engineering and planning prior to financial close and start of construction. Could there be a new kind of project inception financial product that would open up capital sources and development expertise? InfraCredit, a leading Nigerian infrastructure credit enhancement firm, is at a pivotal juncture. The firm currently only gets involved with credit support for projects that have cleared the inception stage—but there is a very small flow of incoming deals that qualify for InfraCredit’s guarantees. Accordingly, the firm contemplates backward integrating its operations to raise capital to fund project inception, potentially increasing its influence over a larger pipeline of infrastructure projects in Nigeria. While this strategic shift promises significant growth opportunities, it also introduces considerable financial risks, reputational concerns, and strategic focus issues. The prospect involves navigating complexities such as quality and capacity of project developers, pension fund strength, regulatory environments, revenue uncertainty, and currency risk management. Historically, InfraCredit has focused on large pools of local capital to invest in projects in local currency and eventually repay obligations in local currency. This is attractive to insurance companies, pension funds, endowments, and other entities whose near-term cash receipts and long-term payment obligations are both denominated in local currency as well. InfraCredit must now assess whether to stick with its proven credit guarantee mode, or to take on the added risks and potential rewards of project inception funding. Should InfraCredit go ahead with the new product, what must be its role in the product, and how will this impact its core offerings?

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Johannesburg Staff

Pippa Tubman Armerding
Executive Director
→ Biography
Tafadzwa Choruma
Manager for Adminstration and Progamming
Maagatha Kalavadakken
Senior Researcher

Lagos Staff

Nairobi Staff

Agnes Wairegi-Regeru
Senior Researcher