allAfrica.com: Kenya: Strathmore Rebrands Its B-School (Page 1 of 1)

Less than five years ago, when Kenyans considered taking an MBA or similar business education qualifications, their thoughts overwhelmingly turned to the US, Europe and Asia.

While demand for executive training is on the boom informed by global trends and need for top-notch skills as competition among companies heightens, local business schools have been angling to have their presence felt both locally and internationally.

Over the last three years, Strathmore Business School has been battling to carve a niche locally, sometimes seemingly jumping the queue dominated by public universities.

From scrapping for deals with top business schools for international recognition to successfully luring top executives in local companies into its programmes, SBS is now casting its nets wider.

The school has embarked on a re-branding initiative with the aim of marketing itself as an international brand. SBS has launched a Sh250 million war chest that will see it upgrade its infrastructure and teaching facilities by the end of this year.

According to the school's officials, at least Sh36 million was spent on rebranding alone leading to the new brand, which was unveiled last Wednesday.

To signify the transition, the school has unveiled its new logo, opened a new learning and administration centre and launched the Programme for Management Development (PMD) - a programme designed for managers on critical management issues.

"The rebranding will promote an identity that the world will see and know us through, a unique identity the world can instantly recognize as SBS's" said Mr George Njenga, the Dean of the school.

According to the institution, at least 230 students, chosen through a painstaking admission process, have entered the three-year-old Executive MBA programme.

The SBS is unique in that it has several leading international business schools associated with it.

These include IESE Business School, which has for many years been affiliated to Harvard Business School.

IESE is ranked among the top business schools in the world.

With the rebranding, SBS will be hoping to get more business in Africa where apart from South Africa, other countries have lagged behind in academic capability, due to a variety of factors including sluggish economic growth, a lack of investment and civil war and other instability.

SBS was founded with executive training as its main objective. The school also collaborates with the Michael Porter-led Institute of Competitiveness in Harvard.

Prof Porter is one of the world's authorities on competitive strategy and competitiveness and its impact on economic development of nations, states and regions.

According to Mr Njenga, the rebranding is also aimed at giving SBS a stronger feel in the training market, taking advantage of expanding income streams as companies spend millions of shillings to give their key staff new skills and add to the quality of their work.

In the past, many firms preferred to send their trainees to colleges overseas, largely shunning local institutions.However, today learning institutions are also partnering with companies to offer the training, a path SBS has been treading of late.

While Africa is said to be lagging behind other regions in terms of business education, the Association of African Business Schools (AABS) is seeking to raise standards around the continent, linking schools so they can exchange staff, students and ideas and work jointly towards all-important international accreditation.

Such an initiative is expected to boost SBS onslaught to enter new markets.

Some African business schools are already well known, notably in South Africa, where for example, the University of Cape Town's MBA ranked 66th on the Financial Times's 2006 global rankings, the only African school in the top 100.

SBS runs a n advanced management programme for chief executive officers, an advanced health management programme for health sector executives, and a programme for management development for senior and middle level managers.

"Our aim is to reach the regional markets to have business executives study together which would promote business," said Mr Njenga.SBS holds regular workshops on strategic performance and leadership management, balanced scorecard, strategic risk management, among other themes.

The re-branding comes at a time when SBS has embarked on an initiative to use local case studies in its MBA Programme--offering students better insight into the challenges of management based on the business environment that they are bound to face in their working life. In aspiring to use local case studies, Strathmore is following in the footsteps of other Kenya-based universities.

The drive for development of local case studies for use in MBA programmes kicked off at the United States International University's Nairobi college nearly two years ago.The university has since developed successful case studies based on some of Kenya's blue chip companies such as East African Breweries and Kenya Airways.

SBS hopes to use the initiative driven in collaboration with Interbrand Sampson SA and Kenya who designed the logo to boost the synergy of local and international business participation to build a stronger and firm basis for the growth of the business.

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