To increase executive awareness of the inextricable link between supply chain management and South Africa and the rest of the continents long term industrialisation, job creation government service delivery quality efforts, Professor Douglas Boateng and the PanAvest partnership has partnered with Sasol to publish a series of books aimed at assisting with executive supply chain management leadership development.
From September 2014, over 7000 of the first book in the executive insight series shall be published and freely distributed to the continents supply chain fraternity, selected government departments, management and business schools.
Mr Andre Coetzee Regional Managing Director of Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Africa, the world’s largest professional membership organisational for procurement and supply said the organisation was pleased to be associated with the publication. “CIPS as a professional organisation will continue to work with both the public and private sectors to help develop executive level skills in the area of procurement and supply chain management . It is our believe that professionalization will in turn help foster amongst others long term service delivery quality, Africa’s long term industrialisation, competitiveness, SMME growth, job creation and wider socio-economic development etc. ”. Posited Mr Coetzee
Commenting on this ground-breaking and first of its kind executive skills development partnership on the continent, Professor Boateng, Founder and CEO of the PanAvest Partnership and Professor Extraordinarius of Supply and Value Chain Management, UNISA Graduate School of Business Leadership said “The developed world has successfully used Supply Chain Management (SCM) to, amongst others, industrialise, improve government service delivery quality, create sustainable jobs, undertake value addition to their resources and to promote SMME growth. I believe that with long-term collective supply chain thinking, Africa can do the same,”.
In Nov 2013 Rob Davies, Minster of Trade and Industry in South Africa was reported in the Mail & Guardian as saying that South African small businesses were faced with one of the highest failure rates in the world – as high as 70% fail in their first year. Nor is this all for during June 2014 Statistics South Africa reported that the unemployment rate among youth aged 15 to 34 had increased from 32.7% to 36.1% between 2008 and 2014," The situation is not different in the rest of the continent.