Columnist: The African most abundant but neglected natural resource
By Abraham Temu, Co-founder at Afrotal.com, Greater New York City Area
Given, most investors prefer to build a business within a stable environment, with a stable currency, stable interest rates; and a stable legal framework, and good security. Those are known quantities in most parts of Africa.
But one of the Africa biggest and perhaps most impeding factor to its economic advancement, which never get much discussion in any forum is the issue of talent. Of all the blessings we have in the continent of Africa, mostly known for its natural resources and arable fertile land, talent is perhaps the best asset the continent possess.
To create wealth as an economy or a company there are two things that you have to do very well. First, you have to steward your intellectual capital optimally. Secondly, you have to direct your financial capital optimally.
These two components go hand in hand, and is the basic foundation for wealth creation and sustainable economic growth within any given community.
Intellectual Capital:
In the western countries, talent is the elixir to which most battles are won or lost. More potently however is an environment which allows freedom of creativity and imagination. I personally never understood this as a young man while growing up in Africa, till I had migrated to the West post high school to pursue further education, and later joined the workforce. Not a surprising fact perhaps is, that most African students pursuing their education overseas excel well, if not better than their western counterparts. Post graduation, once in the labour force that is given the opportunity to work, you realize how managers and the company proclivity to promote best performers, just to keep them happy. Notwithstanding, that worst performers tend not to survive under the same system, but managers and companies are keenly aware that their survival depends on, the best talent not ending up onto their competitors. Having lived in the west for nearly past 20 years now, I would say the secret sauce in the advancement of the western countries is their respect and nurture of talent. Let me repeat that, the best-kept secret of the western development has nothing to do with the having natural resources at their backyard, but respect and nurture of the individuals education, performance, natural ability, and knowledge.
Apparently, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Brazilians have waked up to this fact that, what sustains institutions, companies and nations are not necessarily natural resources, but the ingenuity and talent of its workforce. To turn a natural resource, or knowledge into a product or a service, you need to create an environment where, educated, knowledgeable, and talented individuals can thrive.
So what is talent? By a definition is the special aptitude or natural ability towards certain occupation. Talent is usually acquired as a result of either or education, training or innate ability toward certain faculty. This endowment, capacity, facility or expertise of individuals towards particular interest must be observed carefully and harnessed optimally for any societal progress.
In Africa, there is nothing more overlooked, neglected and perhaps more abandoned than talent. I’ll share with you few examples that most of us who grew up in Africa would relate to. If you grew up in Africa, it was common to see kids who could never spell the word engineering, but would disassemble the entire car engine and then reassemble it, without any sort of a diagram or schematic. If that same kid had grown up in the USA, perhaps he or she would have ended up as a top engineer or designer in one of the American car companies. Or possibly you knew of a friend who could paint any subject, and make it look like a digital photograph. That same person is now most probably working as peddler of some Chinese made toys or European second hand clothing on some neighborhood in Accra or Dar-Es-salaam. If that person had grown up in America, he would have become a highly valued architect or designer.
To date one of the common occupational emigrations to the western economies is that of African medical professionals. These are well-trained doctors and nurses, often at a very high cost by the countries and of critical need to their economies, only to be properly valued at the western economies. Similarly, one of the greatest example to this phenomena is the African football players on the top European leagues, who where taken for granted at their home countries. These African professional players are now highly valued at the leagues around the globe.
Enlarge the list by individuals who are highly educated, experienced both domestically and abroad, who would never get the opportunity to showcase their talent perhaps because, they happen to be of a different tribe, religion, gender, colour, philosophy, political party or simply due to lack of meritocracy and absence of an organized labour system to place such individuals where they would naturally excel.
Yet, these are common occurrence across all of Africa that is never part of the larger picture discussion into economic planning process. Most of the common discussion into the failure of these economies is sighted as lack of capital. Strange as it may, because most of the economies with their own currencies, could self finance their development process, if they had better the talent management requisite to do the job.
Talent Management:
Africa economies, corporations and institutions must learn better ways to perform recruitment, selection, development and retention of local talented workers. Currently, they must begin by identifying all misallocated talent resources domestically and abroad and put them to good use. Second, at a macro level, these countries must create a long-term and self-sustaining ecosystem that would evaluate, produce, hire, and reward, talent based on merit. Such initiative must include high level of planning at all levels of economy include private sector involvement by aligning long-term vision of the country with economy requirements and use this valuable information to generate budgets, policies and business case for education and training institutions.
Following a recent example of report by the South Africa human capital management group (Adcorp); which highlighted a country gap of highly skilled workers, citing as many as 829,800 unfilled positions across a wide range of occupations. While at the same time SA’s economy is experiencing 25-30% levels of unemployment across the board. This mismatch between jobs availability and workers would point out two critical elements. One, the misalignment of country labour requirements with economic long-term vision due to poor planning. Two, poor management of talent across the economy, whereby efforts should be currently underway to lure back a number of professional South Africans overseas to fill out these positions.
Perhaps, a vivid example of African governments failure to plan is illustrated by the fact that most countries with an abundant of natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals, have not produced engineers in the mining, metals, petroleum, and metallurgical fields. It is further inconceivable that even today, most of these countries are not sending their engineering students overseas to acquire these faculties.
Africa economies, corporations and institution must know that talented individuals working for them are susceptible to their competitors and must remain flexible by creating both challenging and rewarding environment. It should be understood that money is not always great motivator, talented people want a good salary of course, but surprisingly often they are more attracted to new opportunities and challenges. Most talented individuals are usually conscious of their own value. The currency of that value might not necessarily be a huge salary and a bonus, but the opportunity to prove themselves and sometimes to run the show on a daily basis. One of the way to do this is by inviting them to take responsibility and control for the new venture you will motivate them to do great things. Once you get to that virtual cycle, your reputation is known and then you attract best and the brightest, smart, energetic and creative people. Delegation is not only a powerful tool, it is the only way to maximize and truly incentivize your most precious asset- the people who work for you. As the hierarchy employee become, the more hands-on they should become. Lastly, the best and the brightest have high expectations of themselves and also the organization.
African employers must also realize that environment that fosters favoritism or prejudice, based on political, religion, cultural, gender or colour tends to scare away talent and is not good for long term business or economic prosperity. Moreover, insecure leaders, incompetent managers, and poorly managed organization will fail to attract and maintain talent. African leaders and managers must learn to be confident in hiring and managing talent who are highly educated or more talented than themselves. Talent is indispensable though its always replaceable. As a leader or manager, the power to hire and fire is always available, especially when talent is not performing. Promote and allow young managers to make mistake without humiliating them or criticizing them, unless is a frequent occurrence. Only those who have been in a leadership or management position in a competitive environment will confess to the fact that being surrounded by talented group of people makes them sleep a bit better at night.
African employers must understand that there is no substitute for talent. In fact one can make assertion that African should be in business of talent management instead of resource management. Management of economy assets, which include natural resources, is a derivative of better talent management. Countries that neglect to foster, promote, and place its educated, knowledgeable and talented individuals in their respective environment, would fail to realize the its economic potential to the benefit of their neighboring countries. Equally notable is the fact that talent comes in every shape, size or form, colour, gender, tribe, or religion. Hence, a meritocracy based system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement has to be a dominant factor in attracting and retaining talent. Most of all local leaders, managers and entrepreneurs must regain confidence to manage their organizations without fear or over reliance of foreign experts.
Ultimately, African countries must face the fact that they are part of the global market in competition against each other, as well as with the western countries. More importantly, talent is a global commodity that can be exchanged. In order for African economies to become competitive at global market, through quality products and services, they must deliberately and actively pursue, attract, train and nurture its local talent. Talent is the key to sustained growth, and growth is the key to sustainable wealth.
temuah@yahoo.com
Abraham Temu runs investment firm Abbey Capital and is both a co-founder of Africa Online Career firm Afrotal, and Finance & Business Africa News Source, Sokohisa, in NY, NY
This article was originally posted on West Africa Business Communities
Are you interested in Market Research, Recruitment and Business Leads?
Join the Africa Business Panel, powered by Africa Business Communities.
www.africabusinesspanel.com.