UM Institute To Train Rwandan Managers
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan has spent the past 14 years teaching management skills to corporations, nonprofits and entrepreneurs in foreign countries with transitional and emerging market economies.
But the institute’s newest contract, which begins today in the formerly worn-torn African country of Rwanda, will target, among others, a new set of students — the country’s top 100 government employees.
“There’s a real lack of management talent there,” said Robert Kennedy, executive director of the institute and professor of business administration at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at UM.
Rwanda’s economy is primarily rural, subsistence farming. Annual income per person is only around $200, making it one of the poorest countries in the world.
“The president wants to try to manage the country like it’s a firm — to have a strategy and understand who (Rwanda’s) rivals are to give his ministers objectives,” Kennedy said.
“One of the key strategies is to build the private sector, but to do that you need managers.”
The institute has signed a five-year contract with the Rwandan government to provide three weeks’ worth of management training to top government employees and consultation for the next five years to transition the country’s School of Finance and Banking in the capital city of Kigali to a “Western-style” business school.
The World Bank, the U.S. government and several European governments are picking up the costs of the programs, which could run between $2.5 million to $5 million over the next five years, Kennedy said.
Government employees will receive training in three areas: leadership, strategy and marketing, and finance and accounting, said Amy Gillette, director of executive education at the institute.
The courses will cover things like how to run meetings, how to delegate effectively, budgeting and budget tracking. “It’s kind of a mini-MBA, but focused on civil servants,” Kennedy said.
Robert Pasick, CEO of Ann Arbor-based Leaders Connect, an international and domestic training and leadership consultancy, will kick off the program with the leadership courses. He will be joined by a professor of marketing and international business at Texas A&M, and an assistant professor of international accounting at Tufts University in Massachusetts to teach the other subjects.
The trio will work with the local business and policy schools to show them how to teach the courses to the remaining government employees, Kennedy said.
The institute also will assist the Rwandan School of Finance and Banking in shifting its focus to general management rather than narrow areas such as accounting or project management.
The U.S. institute will help the school revise its curriculum and conduct training for faculty in teaching and research, Kennedy said. As part of that, it’s leading a search for a new dean and two vice deans.
The institute is also identifying a U.S. or European business school faculty mentor for 15 of the Rwandan school’s most promising faculty members. Each will help them manage their research, their course development and teaching, Kennedy said.
The goal is to lead the school to self-management and be in a position to be accredited by the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business, he said.
The institute also plans to send additional groups of UM MBA students to Rwanda to help it to tackle projects that promote economic development, Kennedy said.
This spring, the first group of four students traveled to the African country and spent a month there helping the government determine if it made sense to produce infant formula locally rather than importing it. The team showed it could be done, but setting up the supply, manufacturing and distribution system was more complex than the government had anticipated, Kennedy said.
The U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington provides training in finance, business planning and business practices in more than 100 countries around the world, including Rwanda, said senior press officer Harry Edwards.
Over the past couple of years, the agency has worked in Rwanda to establish a coffee industry, teaching residents how to grow coffee, getting them Internet access, helping them to secure financing and bringing in experts from Starbucks Corp.
Business training “is an important part of business solutions for developing countries.”
