The Center encourages collaboration and dialogue with the business community, both on campus and beyond, with a goal of raising awareness about African economic issues and opportunities. We are collaborate with the Haas Africa Business Forum(link is external), a student run annual event at UC Berkeley. Another recent venture is the Berkeley Stanford Africa Innovators(link is external) (BeSt AI) Series in which we collaborated with the Center for African Studies(link is external) at Stanford, P1 Ventures(link is external) and Nala(link is external) in an online series of conversations with alumni who are changemakers across the African continent. We work regular with the African Diaspora Network(link is external) on programming such as their Investment Symposium(link is external).
On campus, the International Business Development(link is external) (IBD) at the Haas School of Business is an enormously successful MBA student consulting project with an increasing presence in Africa. Haas MBA students, in small teams, work with corporate and non-profit clients on real projects in overseas locations. For instance, Haas students have conducted several studies for Ashesi University(link is external), a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian university in Ghana. Other teams have worked on a microcredit project in Zimbabwe, Internet projects in Senegal, and other projects in Cameroon, Madagascar, Tanzania, and South Africa.
Another good resource is the Doing Business in Africa(link is external) page of the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It serves as a clearinghouse for information.
For useful links on economic and business issues in Africa, go to the pages on business(link is external) and development(link is external) on Karen Fung's Africa South of the Sahara(link is external) website.