The African Project Manager

Africa, with its rapidly growing economic influence, offers exciting ground for project managers who can adapt to the continent's unique challenges. Africa's diverse peoples and cultures must be considered in any project, as must politics, resources, and an infrastructure often struggling to keep up with economic and technological demands. The successful project manager in Africa combines knowledge of industry standards with the flexibility needed to adjust to expectations while maintaining a disciplined, effective management process. Written specifically for the African business environment, The African Project Manager contains advice, guidelines and case studies valuable to all project managers, whether they're based in Chicago, Beijing, or Lagos. Davies's thorough understanding of his topic has international applications, helping project managers transform local challenges into opportunities. -- back cover.

This special issue of the Project Management Journal presents a collection of six articles on managing projects in Africa. Providing a window into the important project activity taking place there, these articles extend both the empirical and theoretical understanding of the African project context and contribute to improving practice. Each article makes a unique contribution to either our understanding of the African project context or project management in general, and sometimes to both. After an introduction to the African project context at the start of the 21st century, the articles explore: three different countries as well as multinational projects; for-profit, public sector, and development aid projects; infrastructure and information and communication technology; project governance as well as project management; and partnering challenges.

African nations have an underdeveloped industrial and economic base such as their water supply, electrical systems, roads, railways, etc. Massive funding is required to build each of these basic services to the levels of developed nations – funding which they do not have. Many African companies rely on assistance from the government and global companies looking to invest or facilitate projects in the region. And for a variety of reasons, many of these projects fail to fulfil the needs of the nation. In order to facilitate their own economic development, African nations need to cultivate efficient project management practices and policies that will help them achieve their goal of sustainability. This book by a multidisciplinary project management consultant, contributes to the body of knowledge that each African country can attain and sustain economic development by suggesting how to eliminate and correct most causes of failures of projects in construction, water treatment, electricity and renewable energy. It suggests that they should also be able to obtain the sustainable harvesting of the benefits of project deliverables which have been planned for in order to implement the various aspects of their economic development. The suggestions in this book will make a difference in project delivery and are comprehensive enough to create a root-and-branch change which will affect the people involved in making decision on projects and their delivery. Thus, project management teams and their managers, organization decision makers, companies looking to invest in the region, and politicians who plan the economy have to understand the causes of unhelpful practices and what needs to be done in order to produce productive and effective delivery of long-term sustainable project. The principal goal of this book is to advise public and private companies, and international organizations conducting projects in Africa on how to prepare themselves, their businesses and enterprises to solve the problems that cause failure of projects and abandonment of project deliverables. The book also recommends the necessity for a commercial enterprise or government entity to prepare and develop its vision, mission, and strategic objects to constitute the basis of a business plan which should be implemented for successful operations. After first identifying various failed and abandoned projects in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, the author provides an analysis of why these projects failed or were abandoned. By using methodologies of Organizational Project Management (OPM), Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and project management techniques, he suggests a framework for project delivery which could be used as a foundational structure and platform that will address the problem and provide solutions for the achievement of successful and sustainable project delivery in Africa.

In Project Management: The Black Experience, Eric presents his direct and honest experience as an African-American Project Manager in a white-dominated corporate world. He shares his 14+ years of experience and insights in the IT Project Management space of surviving as a black Project Manager. This journey begins with a small town kid from Bluefield, West Virginia seeking to achieve his dreams but faced with the reality of his "good enough, isn't good enough" as his parents taught him at an early age.Project Management: The Black Experience serves as the survival guide for experienced and aspiring black Project Managers. Eric shares the tactical principles to immediate add to your daily working experience to not only survive but excel as a black Project Manager. These life-learned principles include:*You must be two (sometimes 10) times better than you fellow white colleagues*Your good enough isn't enough as a black Project Manager*Break the cycle by helping other minority Project Managers*Learn your voice and be you (professionally)*How to adapt, survive, and excel in a white dominated corporate cultureBy combining his personal experiences and knowledge from his personal mentors, Eric hopes Project Management: The Black experience will shed more light on the diversity gap in Project Management and empower us all (blacks and whites) to make a difference.

The purpose of this book is to shed light on the performance and personal competencies of information technology (IT) project managers in South Africa. Predictive models are built to determine what project managers consider the crucial competencies they should possess to deliver an IT project successfully. This investigation takes place in the context of poor IT project success rates globally and, in particular, in South Africa. This novel research seeks to extend the debate on project success beyond what constitutes success or failure, but seeks to find clarity in what IT project managers believe are the essential competencies in practice. This quantitative research gathered data by way of an online survey based on literature regarding the Project Management Competency Development Framework (PMCDF). The population consisted of IT project managers in South Africa. Four hundred and two respondents chose to share their insights. Through the use of descriptive and multivariate statistics, major competency factors were identified. These factors were used in structural equation modelling to build various validated predictive models. This book contributes to the current body of knowledge by uncovering the competencies that IT project managers consider themselves competent in. The structural equation models indicated predictors of perceived competence by IT project managers and where these perceived competencies differ from literature. Twelve managerial implications are highlighted in the final chapter that seek to draw the myriad threads together into a coherent summary. It is apparent that IT project managers do not consider the PMCDF important in its entirety, but instead choose to focus on certain competencies.

This book presents a state-of-the-art account of the recent developments and needs for project management in developing countries. It adds to the current state of knowledge on project management in general by capturing current trends, how they widen the content and scope of the field, and why there is a need for a specialist body of knowledge for developing countries. Eminent experts in this domain address the specific nature and demands of project management in developing countries, in the context of its scope and priorities, and discuss the relationships between this emerging field and established bodies of knowledge. The book also addresses the future of project management in developing countries and how this might influence mainstream project management. This important book will be an essential reference for practitioners, students, researchers and policymakers engaged in how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of project management in developing countries.