Doing Business In Africa? You Need Successful Business Strategy

Written by Ann Brown

Jul 19, 2014

Africa is not for sissies – and if you’re looking to do business on the continent, you’ll need a good understanding of the individual country/countries you’re looking to deal with, you’ll have to start developing key relationships and you should adopt an opportunity-based approach.

This is the advice of Hilton Veldsman, Africa Business Director at NATIVE VML. When embarking on an African strategy, he believes there are five critical success factors to consider: Perspective, planning, places, partnerships and people.

“Keep the challenges of doing business in Africa in perspective. Yes, there are obstacles, but not more so than in other emerging markets anywhere else in the world. You can either search for opportunities and then identify risks, or only consider opportunities after filtering for risk. However, an opportunities-based approach will prove to be more successful in many cases,” Veldsman advises.