Chinese school expands into African campus

The past decade has seen a flurry of US and European business schools develop programmes in China, but the tide is now turning.

China Europe International Business School, the Shanghai-based business school set up with the European Union, plans to open a campus outside China – in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

In a move that gives a new twist to Sino-African relations, Ceibs has official approval from the Ghana Ministry of Education to offer business management courses, according to Pedro Nueno, Ceibs’ executive president. Ceibs will offer executive short courses and its executive MBA programme in Accra – it already runs the world’s largest EMBA programme.

The move is part of a Ghanaian government initiative to encourage overseas schools and universities to establish faculties in the country in an effort to improve the local population’s skills base. “It’s one area for investment in Ghana these days,” says Josiah Cobbah, associate dean of the business school at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.

In recent years, 15 new universities that teach business and management, often in conjunction with technology, have sprung up in Ghana as part of a liberalisation of education.

Ceibs plans to attract students from across Africa to its Accra base, with classes taught in English to attract both African and Africa-based expatriate students. “Ceibs’ new Africa programme will deliver world-class business management courses to a population of students who currently lack access to such programmes,” says Prof Nueno. “Now is the right time and Ghana is the right place for this venture.”

Ceibs has traditionally used a large number of professors from other business schools who fly into Shanghai for specific courses, but it says the Ghanaian programmes will be taught by its full-time faculty, and it has already signed up all the faculty it needs for the coming year.

Ceibs has also secured corporate funding for the school’s inaugural year. The first courses to be taught will be executive short programmes.

Ceibs professor of innovation, Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, a Ghanaian national, conducted much of the initial groundwork for the expansion.

http://www.ceibs.edu/