As part of a Pan-African quasi-academic and industrial social responsibility initiative currently underway in South Africa, Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL) Professor Douglas Boateng, Africa’s first Professor Extraordinaire in Supply and Value Chain Management and founder and CEO of PanAvest International and Partners, presented a free and open public lecture at the SBL campus in Midrand on May 20, 2015
Following the lecture, five-hundred supply chain management resource books were donated to the SBL, Africa’s largest postgraduate leadership development school.
The book, titled An Executive Insight into Strategic Sourcing, is the second publication in the PanAvest executive skills development resource book series.
It aims to facilitate executive awareness of the complex links between supply chain management strategic sourcing and organizational value chain performance, job creation, service delivery, and socio-economic development in South Africa, and on the rest of the African continent.
In response to the donation, Dr Renosi Mokate, SBL Executive Director and CEO, said: “Strategic sourcing is going to be the key ingredient in African socio-economic developmental initiatives. These books will go a long way to assisting our executive students to equip themselves with a clear understanding of sourcing and its strategic link to industrialization.”
Dr Mokate further thanked the Airports Company of South Africa for supporting the publishing of the resource book initiative.
Commenting on the purpose of the donation, Professor Boateng said: “The developed world has successfully used the strategic sourcing aspects of supply chain management to, among other things, industrialize, improve government service delivery quality, create sustainable jobs, undertake value addition to their resources, and promote SME growth. I believe that with long-term collective supply chain thinking, Africa can do the same.”
This not-for-profit, socially responsible, executive skills development initiative, authored by Professor Boateng and published by ACSA, offers insight into the positive role that effective supply chain management, and in particular strategic sourcing, can play in company performance, industrial competitiveness, service delivery outputs, and the realization of long-term economic developmental efforts.
Source: GMA