Africa Is Not Short of Risk—It Is Short of People Trained to Manage It
I have learned to approach corporate partnership announcements with the same cautious optimism I reserve for restaurant menus containing the phrase “market price.” The language is always polished, the ambitions are always continental, and the photographs invariably feature important people smiling over a document that nobody outside the room has read. Somewhere near the middle, there is usually a sentence promising innovation, transformation, sustainability, inclusion, capacity building, resilience, or—if the communications department was feeling especially energetic—all six. That is why the announcement that the African Export-Import Bank, better known as Afreximbank, and ZEP-RE have deepened their partnership initially triggered my well-developed institutional-jargon reflex. The two organizations have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding bringing together the Afreximbank Academy, or AFRACAD, and ZEP-RE Academy. Their stated aim is to create and expand learning, research, a...
