Most MBA students will, at some point, revise or study in a coffee shop. They may not know it yet, but they can also learn a lot from a coffee shop. Wits Business School (WBS) has turned the story of a Cape Town coffee shop that trains and employs deaf baristas and chefs into a teaching case with international reach. The case study I Love Coffee: A Growing Social Enterprise, written by Rob Venter and Katherine Hofmeyr, took first place in the Africa and Middle East case competition run by Emerald Publishing.

‘Some of our most interesting cases in the past year or so have focused on inclusion and empowerment in the workplace,’ says Claire Beswick, WBS Case Centre manager. In addition to I Love Coffee, which is now part of Emerald’s Emerging Markets Case Studies collection, WBS academics also wrote Khayelitsha Cookies: Empowering Women One Bite at a Time. It charts the rise of a township enterprise from modest beginnings to employing nearly 100 local women and sourcing 98% of its ingredients locally. Today the company supplies its handmade biscuits to hotels, airlines and shops.

 ‘Local case studies form a key component of our MBA programme,’ says Beswick. ‘Case studies in general are an excellent teaching tool in management education. They are even more powerful when they are situated in a local context and reflect the dynamics of the local environment.’ This is why WBS established its Case Centre in 1999, she says, to use high-quality case studies written by local authors for the local context.

The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) also has its own Case Writing Centre that showcases the real-life business conundrums of local businesses. The current case collection spans the African continent, featuring a range of organisations – from start-ups to longstanding market leaders – in SA as well as in countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.

In a first for an African Business school, the GSB’s Case Writing Centre recently published a case collection in partnership with Harvard Business Impact, a division of Harvard Business Publishing. This brings an African perspective to one of the most important global case repositories.

‘Teaching cases put students in the role of a decision-maker who needs to make a series of decisions with incomplete information and competing priorities – just as they would do in a real-world leadership role,’ says Caitlin Ferreira, the GSB’s Modular MBA programme director, who has just been named MBA Director of the Year 2026 by the global Association of MBAs.

‘Cases also allow MBA candidates the opportunity to integrate their learnings from a number of different modules – strategy, finance and marketing as an example – and then play out how they would leverage their learnings in a particular scenario,’ she says. ‘Case studies are rarely about finding a single, correct solution. Instead, they’re about reaching a decision based on available information and then being able to justify and defend that decision. Essentially, they’re about helping MBA candidates shape their thinking as a leader.’

The MBA remains one of the most sought-after management qualifications globally, with employers continuing to signal rising demand, says Stephen Akandwanaho, executive dean of the Faculty of Information Technology and Research at Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology. ‘However, demand alone does not guarantee relevance. The bar has shifted. Graduates must be digitally fluent, context-aware and capable of leading through turbulence.’ Therefore, he adds, Richfield’s fully online MBA is built for African volatility, asymmetry and complexity.

‘It’s designed around African market realities: uneven infrastructure, vibrant informal sectors and rapid technological leapfrogging,’ says Akandwanaho. ‘Rather than importing case studies from the US or UK, we emphasise context-driven learning that reflects the structural features of local and continental economies. As an example, just over 21% of South Africa’s workforce operates in the informal sector, yet it contributes only a small share of GDP. Our students interrogate these asymmetries as part of strategy and operations discussions.’

Ferreira also underlines the importance of local case studies, explaining that for a long time African institutions have relied on content from beyond the continent, typically from the Global North. ‘More often than not, these don’t fully reflect the complexity of operating in African markets. We have now reached a point where African institutions are being recognised on a global scale and are not only contributing to but shaping global MBA conversations. We’re seeing the development of case studies of African firms that actually reflect the reality of what’s happening in emerging markets. That is critical to both understanding and being successful in these markets,’ she says.

The ingredients of a great SA case study are pretty much the same as for all great case studies, says WBS’s Beswick. ‘They have to present a real and challenging problem where there’s no obvious answer; they have to engender debate in the classroom; they have to be well-written; they have to tell an engaging story with engaging, believable characters,’ she says. ‘But what will set a great South African case study apart from its international counterparts is that it presents a challenge that’s unique to our environment, which students know they will encounter in their places of work. This makes them engage more deeply with the case and ensures that the learning is relevant.’

Using local case studies – as well as local lecturers – matters, not simply for reasons of representation but because leadership deci-sions are always made in context, explains Lyneth Zungu, director of MBA programmes at Henley Africa. ‘If you’re running an organisation in South Africa or elsewhere on the continent, the environment you face is not identical to that described in many traditional business school cases. Markets may be less predictable, institutions evolving, and infrastructure, regulatory and social factors often play a larger role in decision-making. Local case studies allow us to explore the texture of leadership in this context.’

They enable conversations about questions that students genuinely face: how to grow a business when infrastructure is uncertain, how to lead across diverse cultures, or how to balance commercial success with the broader social project of building a more inclusive economy, according to Zungu. In the same vein, she says it’s beneficial to employ faculty who live and work in this environment, as they understand the nuances of African markets and organisations and can help translate global frameworks into practical insight.

Increasingly, SA’s MBA candidates are involved in writing case studies. The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), for example, offers the MBA Research Case Study stream as an option when students are completing their applied business analysis and research project in fulfilment of the MBA requirements. According to GIBS, a number of students have subsequently collaborated with their supervisors to have their cases published by Ivey Publishing.

At UCT GSB, MBA students write their own case studies as part of the Doing Business in Africa (DBIA) course. They must conduct research on a company operating on the continent and write it up as a teaching case: focusing on outlining the challenge, rather than on identifying a solution within the case. That’s often difficult, according to the GSB, as most students are used to being given problems to solve. As a result, many initially struggle to pull back a step and identify challenges before trying to solve them.

‘However, this exercise ultimately provides a powerful way for our students to grow as leaders while learning how to contribute value to their companies and stand apart from the crowd (and GenAI),’ says Ferreira. Several student-written cases have been further developed with faculty co-authors to be published in the school’s Harvard collection, while others are being reimagined into the DBIA case series. It’s an innovative series that makes multi-part cases (including podcasts, infographics and analyses) accessible to a wider audience, free of charge, via the centre’s website.

Clearly, it’s an outdated notion that in business education ideas flow predominantly from the Global North to the rest of the world, casting Africa as a mere recipient.

‘Across the continent – including here at Henley Africa, part of Henley Business School at the University of Reading – MBA classrooms are becoming places where some of the most interesting questions about leadership are being explored,’ says Zungu. ‘The continent is, in so many ways, the testbed for the future. You just need to look at the structural realities to appreciate this: our young population, our closeness to climate disruption, political volatility and digital leapfrogging. We are grappling not just with African problems but with early versions of global problems.’

In many African markets, leaders operate in conditions of rapid growth combined with institutional complexity. Infrastructure may be uneven, markets evolving and uncertainty often high, according to Henley. Yet organisations still need to innovate, scale and compete globally. ‘As a result, our MBA classrooms are filled with leaders (from corporates, entrepreneurial ventures, family businesses, public institutions and NGOs) who are accustomed to navigating ambiguity,’ says Zungu. ‘Decisions are made without perfect information, and adaptability becomes a core leadership capability.’

These capabilities, underpinned by resourcefulness and societal awareness, will prove increasingly valuable as the world becomes more uncertain and complex. According to Henley, the lessons emerging from African MBA programmes – including local case studies – may not sit on the margins of global management thinking but move closer to its future centre.

By Silke Colquhoun
Image: iStock