Africa Academy of Management

January 22, 2022

Dear AFAM Family,

Dr. David Baniyelme Zoogah

I am writing this letter for two reasons. First, I want to wish you a very blissful Year during COVID-19. Please let’s all keep ourselves safe and healthy. We matter to each other!

Second, I want to remind you that we are beginning our 2023 Biennial Conference preparation. You should have seen the call for submission which we started distributing in the last quarter of 2021. We encourage and invite your submissions. As you know we are planning a face-to-face conference in Cairo, Egypt, the land of the pyramids. The theme, Management Praxis in the African Context: Sustainability, Responsibility, and Ethics, seems fitting in this period of grand challenges, apparent irresponsibility, and relatively heightened unethicality. Scholarly, practitioner, professional development, and caucuses are all welcome. Both committees - Executive and Local organizing – are working hard to make sure we have a good conference. Of course, we do so cognizant of Covid-19. As a result, we have contingency plans should the need arise. So, please encourage all your friends and networks not only to participate in the conference but also to join AFAM.

Let me conclude by saying take good care of yourself for the sake of our common humanity. On behalf of the executive team of AFAM, I want to share our concern for you and your loved ones. We can’t wait to see you in Cairo, Egypt. 

Yours truly,

    
     Baniyelme D. Zoogah, PhD
     President, Africa Academy of Management (AFAM) 

In this Address, I reflect on the journey of AFAM with regard to its past, present and future. As a new scholarly community, AFAM is called to the sacred society. Its future therefore should be based on the use of the legitimacy associated with that calling to enact its strategic role – facilitating transformation of African societies – by assuming the paramount duty of parrhesia. As a parrhesiatic organization, AFAM has to engage in value-creating practices through its discourses so that it can endow Africans with the right and ability to speak. These value-creating practices are means by which AFAM moves beyond its sacredness to the secular context of Africa. Unlike other scholarly communities, AFAM does not have the luxury of not ‘unliving’ the African challenge; it has a sacred duty to help provide a different and new living to Africans than the one they are currently experiencing.

Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322373.2019.1616987