Business & Economy

Whitman hosts second annual African Business Conference

Monday, May 23, 2011, By News Staff

The Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University will host the second annual African Business Conference, sponsored by the Africa Business Program in the Kiebach Center for International Business Studies, through May 24. This year’s theme is “Entrepreneurship in Africa,” as it relates to current work on entrepreneurship in Africa by researchers from around the world.

Through paper presentations, panel discussions and keynote addresses, participants will seek to understand the pivotal role of entrepreneurship in Africa’s economic development. Researchers from around the world will present their findings and offer diverse perspectives on Africa’s budding marketplace.

The conference is hosted in partnership with the Makerere University Business School (Uganda), Université Paris-Dauphine (France), Université Laval (Canada) and SUNY-Oswego. Peter Koveos, chair of the Kiebach Center, Whitman School Dean Melvin T. Stith and Pierre Yourougou, managing director of the Africa Business Program, will open the conference and welcome participants.

The program includes sessions on opportunities and challenges faced by African entrepreneurs, cross-country comparisons of entrepreneurship and global experiences, financing entrepreneurship in Africa, fostering development through entrepreneurship, gender and entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, fostering entrepreneurship through education and public policy, investment and markets in Africa and microfinance and microenterprises.

A keynote address, “African Economic Growth Prospect, Constraints and Risks,” will be presented by Ben Amoako-Adu, Economical Insurance Group Professor of Finance at the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada). The address is Monday, May 23, at 3:45 p.m. in Room 402 of the Whitman School building, 721 University Ave.

The panel of speakers for the conference includes experts from SU, in addition to others from universities, colleges, business schools and institutes located in the United States, Africa, France, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Canada.