Enterprising lessons for entrepreneurs

FT

2 May 2011

Enterprising lessons for entrepreneurs

By Ian Wylie

At Sensational Foods, an expanding self-service restaurant chain in Lagos serving traditional Nigerian fare, cashiers have perfected the technique of what they call “giraffing” – extending their necks for a full picture of the food on a customers’ plate without leaving their position.

The anecdote forms part of the case study on Sensational Foods – one of two dozen local case studies written specifically for the Enterprise Development Center of Lagos Business School. The school at Pan-African University offers a certificate in entrepreneurial management to classes of around 40 local business owners three times a year.

Three years after graduation, research by the EDC suggests two-thirds of its graduates have increased their workforce significantly; one in five has boosted employee recruitment by 50-100 per cent. Lagos Business School’s certificate course is now being adapted and replicated in Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, and has been used as a framework by Goldman Sachs for its 10,000 Women certificate programme for entrepreneurs in Liberia.

From start-up to not-for-profit

GBSN began as a start-up at the International Finance Corporation, where Mr Pfeffermann was chief economist, before being spun out as a not-for-profit group with the aim of strengthening business education in sub-Saharan Africa.