Introduction

Abstract

This is a study of management practices in Africa. It is only recently that many African nations have become independent of their colonial masters. The essence of colonial status was that economic as well as political power was in foreign hands. Major economic activities (e.g. banking, commerce, currency, shipping, taxation and a host of others) were all controlled by foreigners.¹ It is therefore not surprising that many of the African countries fall under level I in the typology developed by Harbison and Myers.² These are the countries whose economic and social progress is dependent upon the continued employment of foreign high-level manpower in a wide variety of key positions in major public and private enterprises. Moreover, as part of the foreign control of these countries, raw materials were (unfortunately, they still are!) produced for export and sometimes processed by entrepreneurs from the metropolitan countries. Benveniste and Moran note that `colonies were operated as a part of a foreign economy, that of a colonial empire. They were treated as units within larger economy and were not developed in terms of African or regional possibilities or requirements but in terms of their place in the colonial scheme.’³