Why Africa’ll continue to rely on foreign aid – Puplampu

African Businesses account for less than 2% of Global FDI Flows - Bill Puplampu

African economies will continue to rely on foreign aid until African entrepreneurs andbusinesses deliver tax revenue, employment opportunities and social innovationin their native countries. This is the view of Bill Buenar Puplampu, a Professor of organisational psychology and Dean of Business School, Central University College Ghana.

Professor Puplampu was speaking at the Alumni Seminar organised by the School of Media and Communication Alumni Association (SMCAA) which held last Saturday at the Victoria Island campus of the Pan African University in Lagos. He spoke on thetheme ‘Building African Businesses that Operate on Organisational Justice’.

Puplampu revealed that, with an estimated population of 1 billion,African businesses account for lessthan 2% of global FDI flow with formal employment rate standing at 30%, 50% ofthis being government employees while the remaining are employed by multinational corporations, international agencies and localentrepreneurs (large and small).

According to him, African businesses face the difficulties of attracting and maintaining competent professional employees,managing compensation, sustaining structural growth as well as successionplanning.

He highlighted several internal and external challenges such as theculture of abhorrence for contract, limited financing, weak regulatory systems, arbitrariness, employeelaziness, lack of connect between pay and performance among other challenges whichthe continent must resolve to break free from reliance on donors.

He stressed that for entrepreneurs and smallscale businesses to succeed in Africa, they must ensure a proper organisationalsystem of operations through effective allocation of task, resources generationand optimization, administrative and management systems among others.

Puplampu advised entrepreneurs to contribute to African economy byproviding employment opportunities, ensuring proper tax returns and investingin social innovation.

The event which was attended by alumni, media and communicationpractitioners and entrepreneurs is a bimonthly programme organised by the SMCAAto share knowledge and learnings from experts in various fields with the aim ofkeeping past and present students of the school abreast of global and industrydynamics.

Prof. Bill Buenar Puplampu is a senior lecturerand immediate past Head of Department at the Department of Organization andHuman Resource Management, Central University Collegewhere he is presently the Dean of the Business School.

Prof. Puplampu has been involved in a wide range of consulting services acrossboth public and private sectors covering institutional renewal, strategy, HRM,organizational structuring, organizational culture among other things. He is aDirector of Psycon H.R and a member of the Ghana First Forum Think Tank.

He holds a Doctoral degree in Organizational Behaviour; MSc in Occupational
and Organizational Psychology, BA in Psychology with Sociology, a Certificatein HRM from Euromoney, UK and a Certificate in Project Management from McGillUniversity Executive Institute, Canada. Prof Puplampu is a CharteredPsychologist (C.Psychol) of the British Psychological Society.