Sustaining human resource development in Africa: The influence of expatriates

Not long after arriving in Africa I was fortunate to land a 30 day training contract with a large organisation. Despite having a sizeable training staff, the training manager warned me of their inability. After a few days I developed a much more positive impression of the training centre staff, who were all Africans. Despite my efforts to point out their various merits, the training manager retained his dismissive perspective, recounting various tales of African management disasters. He, like myself, was an expatriate. After meeting more expatriate managers, I realised that this first encounter with an expatriate manager was, unfortunately, not going to be an exception