Contact: Tom Durso, [email protected], 610.660.1532
INT'L. ACADEMY OF AFRICAN BUSINESS AND DEVELOPMENT TO MEET IN ATLANTIC CITY IN APRIL; SAINT JOSEPH'S HOSTING
Philadelphia, Pa. (March 27, 2000) -- Investing in an ascendant Africa will be the topic of discussion when hundreds of scholars, businesspeople, and government officials from across the globe converge on Atlantic City, N.J., for the international conference of the International Academy of African Business and Development.
This year's conference, "The Global Challenge of African Business and Economic Development in the New Millennium," will be held from April 11 to 14 in Atlantic City's Resorts Casino Hotel. Saint Joseph's University's Erivan K. Haub School of Business is the host institution, with co-sponsorship from the Journal of African Business, the Haworth Press, and Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey's Mexico City campus.
The primary goal of the conference is to provide a unique international forum to facilitate the exchange of leading-edge ideas on African business through multidisciplinary presentations and discussions of current business and development issues in the continent, as well as challenges to growth and development in the area of business management education.
Contributions will come in the form of refereed papers, invited and plenary presentations, case studies, round-table discussions, panels, workshops, and forums.
"As the globalized economy continues to grow, Africa will be a key player in international trade," said program chair Dr. Alphonso O. Ogbuehi, director of the international marketing program at Saint Joseph's. "With this conference we hope to address some of the important issues that will come to the fore regarding this untapped market of vast resources."
Speakers at the conference's plenary session, from 8 to 10 a.m. Wednesday, April 12, include Mattie Sharples, special envoy to emerging markets in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service; Ishmael Yamson, the chairman and CEO of Unilever Ghana Limited, in Ghana; Pauline K. Tallen, the Nigerian Minister of State for Science and Technology; and Vinanchiarachi Jebamalai, of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), in Vienna, Austria, speaking on "Leading Issues on the Path to Africa's Industrialization."
Conference tracks will take up business education, international trade, foreign investment in Africa, information systems and technology, business ethics, management practices, agribusiness, entrepreneurship, marketing practices, and urban and regional planning, among other topics.
Special sessions and panel discussions will address such issues as globalization and African business; environmentalism in economic growth; the role of technology in economic development; African regional trading blocs; trends in African business education; government policies and regulations; and patterns and parallels of economic development in Africa.
"With participants coming from 18 countries, representing more than 100 universities and such agencies as the World Bank and the United Nations, this conference is the start of a new effort toward the creation of a knowledge base on various aspects of business theory and practice in Africa," said Dr. Ogbuehi. "We believe that the sweeping political and economic reforms throughout the continent will pave the way for successful business investments as we enter the start of an area that can now be justifiably described as the African Century."
For more information, click here, or contact Dr. Ogbuehi at 610.660.1105, [email protected].
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