Research collaboration was on the agenda when leading scholars from Ghana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe visited the delivery site of the North-West University School of Business and Governance (NWU-SBG) in Mahikeng from 20 to 22 April 2017.

The NWU-SBG was hosting a workshop for Organisation Research Culture in African Universities (ORCA), a project aimed at promoting research collaboration among Africa universities, focusing on the role of leadership in facilitating a research culture.

The visitors included Prof Bill Buenar Puplampu, a professor of Organisational Behaviour and Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Central University of Ghana, and Prof Stella Nkomo, professor in the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Pretoria and President of the Africa Academy of Management (AFAM).

They are the principal researchers on the ORCA project and Prof Yvonne du Plessis of the NWU-SBG is the South African project team leader. The other South African members are Prof Jan Meyer, Prof Ravinder Rena, Dr Joseph Lekunze and Dr Tonja Blom.

The project comprises four phases and should be completed at the end of 2019. The team is currently preparing case studies for each country and plan to present a symposium at the AFAM conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2018.  

The next ORCA project meeting and workshop is planned for Ghana in April 2018, when the project will move into its second phase.

Further collaboration planned
Further collaboration is planned between the NWU-SBG in Mahikeng and the Central University of Ghana. The immediate focus will be on contextualising African research for PhDs in Business Management, looking into the decolonialisation of teaching materials and compiling African business case studies for inclusion in the MBA programme.