Growing capacity

As every gardener knows, plants flourish when they get exactly the amount of water they require. A sudden downpour is wasted: The ground cannot absorb it, and the runoff erodes the soil. The same goes with funding development in Africa and other poor nations. Too little money, whether domestic savings, export revenues, or aid to governments and nongovernmental organizations, hampers progress. But too much is bad as well, national economies can absorb only a certain flow of money usefully.

That was Guy Pfeffermann in BusinessWeek. He tells us that management and business skills are a key, and often-overlooked, determinant of absorptive capacity. Accordingly, if we want to increase the effectiveness of development strategies we need to help give Africa’s business schools a boost. Read the whole thing and tell him what you think in our online discussion.