Building the intellectual capital of African enterprises in a knowledge economy: impediments and requirements

Abstract

With knowledge constituting an additional factor of production in today's global economy, it has become imperative for modern organisations to expand their knowledge base by developing their intellectual capital. However, African enterprises lag behind in this regard. The reason is that Africa's management thinkers and practitioners are still saddled with the problem of how to manage the 'African social man' and not how to manage the 'African knowledgeable man'. Hence this paper seeks to analyse the main impediments to developing the intellectual capital of African enterprises. It asserts that the building of their intellectual capital is a prerequisite for their survival in a knowledge-based economy. Consequently, it draws attention to certain requirements that are to be considered by African enterprises in order for them to ride on the wheels of progress in the current global knowledge economy.