The Mind of African Strategists: A Study of Kalabari Management Practice

For over 400 years, the Kalabari merchants of Nigeria’s Niger Delta were pivotal players in the triangular transatlantic trade. This study delves into the intricate management and business strategies of Kalabari Incorporated, a collective term embodying the entrepreneurial spirit of the Kalabari people during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through their history, the author not only analyzes but vividly illustrates the business and management ethos of pre-twentieth century Africa, particularly within the Niger Delta region.
Using the Kalabari narrative, this book reveals a profound connection between contemporary management principles and African business practices of the 1800s. The Kalabari saga unfolds as a captivating drama of strategy and management, shedding light on the empire’s decline as a consequence of strategic missteps. Additionally, it highlights the exceptional level to which Kalabari entrepreneurs honed the craft of family business management.
In contrast to traditional studies focusing on European demand for raw materials from Africans, this groundbreaking research gives prominence to African organizational management history and business strategy. The book challenges the notion of a grand strategy devised by a singular intellect as the best practice for building a great company, instead it portrays Kalabari Incorporated’s strategy as a series of countless incremental decisions by its entire workforce to maximize resources, outpace rivals, and forge lasting competitive advantages.
Exploring the corporation’s adopted concept of strategy, the book underscores how Kalabari Incorporated’s success was rooted in its purpose-process-people management philosophy, rather than the conventional strategy-structure-system framework. Here, the purpose-process-people approach emerges as the core principle shaping the company’s identity, management decisions, and organizational structure.
Finally, a critical analysis of Kalabari Incorporated’s decline attributes its downfall to the failure to establish and invest in appropriate managerial hierarchies, and to separate ownership from management. Lacking these crucial hierarchies, the corporation struggled to innovate and compete effectively against better-organized European firms in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.