Iâve been thinking a lot about Ghana, mostly because we will soon welcome the GBSN community to Accra for GBSN Beyond 2025. Thinking back, my first ârealâ encounter with the country was not through an airport terminal. It was through the pages of Taiye Selasiâs debut novel called Ghana Must Go. My dad wouldnât be surprisedâhe used to say I was âmore book smart than street smart.â
The story, one of family fracture and reconciliation, has long faded from my memory. But Iâll never forget that the novel took its title from a painful experience in West Africa: Nigeriaâs mass expulsion of Ghanaians in 1983. More than a million people were forced to leave, many carrying their belongings in cheap woven bags, known hurtfully as âGhana Must Goâ bags.Â
Knowing a little about this event has been helpful to me. It provided me with a local perspective on the way Ghanaians think about immigration and current protests under the provocative banner of âNigerians Must Go.â It caused me to ask different questions about the future of ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. It piqued my curiosity about two Francophone countries, Togo and Benin, situated between Ghana and Nigeria. Having read something about Ghana and the region, I wasnât completely ignorant when I finally landed in Accra for the first time two years ago.
I love books, but like Dad, Iâve always been skeptical about how far books can take us, especially in understanding the way people think and feel. Although I studied enough to have a basic understanding of the history and policies of the West African region, Iâll never fully understand how the experiences of 1983 affected the people of Ghana and Nigeria, their sense of belonging, their feelings of rejection, their attitudes towards each other. Â
How can we better understand the world as others experience it?
Regular readers of my blogs will know that I have been preoccupied by questions like this one. See, for example, âThe Tragedy of the Commonsense Morality.â To me, it is the most important question when the objective is to enable the growing number of humans that thrive on the same, shrinking planet. The world is more connected, in more complex ways, than everâand the stakes for people and planet are frightening. In our changing world, it is our attention to the implications of business as usual for society that makes answering this question so important. Â
Letâs go back to Ghana to illustrate. Most business executives know that global gold prices have gone up, kickstarted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and reinforced by uncertainty regarding tariffs, trade, and inflation. Fewer people know that this rise has led to a dramatic increase in illegal mining in Ghana, which in turn has caused extensive environmental degradation and a wide range of serious health problems in affected communities. Similarly, foreign executives in the chocolate industry will likely know the âgold rushâ reduced cocoa production in Ghana by more than a third, as cash-strapped farmers (already struggling with the effects of climate change) sold off their land to miners. But fewer will care about the safety threat to Ghanaâs local food supply (rice, fish, vegetables, livestock) by the release of higher amounts of mercury into the land and water. We can go on. The point is that the more we consider the implications of business for society (and, more long term, our horizon), the more complicated things become and the more important it is to understand events and experiences from a local point of view. Â
Achieving a deeper, more empathetic level of global understanding is not really getting easier. On one hand, managers can now instantly access and process information about the world. Real-time news, economic data, and expert analysis are available at the click of a button. Sophisticated models and data analytics tools help managers to interpret a wide mix of signals and predict changes more accurately than ever. On the other hand, the sheer volume of news, reports, and opinions can overwhelm us, and global events are often filtered through competing narratives, making it difficult to distinguish credible sources from biased ones. And the jury is still out as to whether AI will help or hinder, depending ultimately on how we design, govern, and use it. That is a topic for a future blog. Â
Personally, Iâm most excited about the potential for immersive, AI-facilitated simulations of unfolding global issues, such as the impact of rising sea levels in Bangladesh. Schools like MIT Sloan and HEC Paris are paving the way with these simulations. In the future, students wonât just analyze implications for supply chains, theyâll struggle with the perspectives of farmers, small business owners, policymakers, and NGOs, all brought to life by AI-driven narratives and agents that do more than translate languages; they will also translate cultural nuance and context (and connect disciplines) in meaningful ways.Â
When it comes to international mobility, Iâm impressed that the number of higher education students studying outside their home country has tripled over the last two decades, from 2.1 million in 2000 to 6.9 million in 2022. On the other hand, the percentage is still less than three percent and some important receiving countries are becoming more restrictive. Shorter study trips, including those built on team projects, have expanded, but can be expensive and have raised concerns about the carbon footprint. See a previous post, The Future of Globalization May be Uncertain. The Need for Innovation is Not, for suggestions about how we address these challenges. Â
But this challenge, this complex mix of local and global, is what animates the Global Business School Network (GBSN). Why? At GBSN we believe the worldâs grand challenges form a mosaic of related yet distinct issues across many different contexts. We operate with the belief that a nationâs people power its development, and that local business schools can accelerate development through education, research, and community engagement. Yet, importantly, we believe that business schools can make a bigger difference, in more places, and faster by working together internationally. Â
So this idea, striving to understand the world as others experience it, informs almost everything we do. It is why GBSN Beyond will start with âa deep dive into West Africaâs business revolutionâ and end with excursions to three local companies. Itâs why we built the Global Business Student Changemaker Program with How to Change the World on an immersive three-day bootcamp experience bringing together students from different countries and disciplines to âsolve for sustainabilityâ in a community. Itâs why we bring together investor-experts from around the world to provide feedback to teams of African students working on new business ideas in our Africa Business Concept Challengeânot only for the teams to have access to advice they would not otherwise receive, but also for the investor exports to gain experience with concepts in the African context. Itâs why we pair experienced students from the GBSN network with SME founders in developing or transitioning countries and provide support from local DHL teams and faculty members. Itâs why when our Business & Human Rights Impact Community brings together scholars from different parts of the world to develop curriculum resources in specific topic areas.
