When a pioneering course on African history wins a global business education prize, it signals a shift in how the next generation of leaders is being taught to see the world. “African History Through the Lens of Economics,” an innovative elective at London Business School, has been recognised with the Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award, highlighting a growing movement to embed historical context, ethical reflection and real-world complexity into management education.
At a time when debates over development, inequality and globalisation dominate political and corporate agendas, the course challenges conventional case-study capitalism by taking students back through centuries of African economic and social history. Rather than treating the continent as a backdrop for modern investment opportunities, it interrogates how slavery, colonialism, resource extraction and policy experiments have shaped today’s markets, institutions and business environments.
The FT accolade underscores not only the course’s academic originality, but also its relevance to contemporary business practice. By tracing the long-run economic forces that influence everything from state capacity to infrastructure gaps, the program aims to equip future executives, investors and policymakers with a more nuanced understanding of risk, possibility and duty in African economies-and, by extension, in other emerging markets.
For London Business School, the award is further validation of a broader attempt to rethink what a “responsible” business curriculum should look like: one that connects balance sheets and boardrooms to the deeper historical narratives that still drive growth, conflict and change across the globe.
Celebrating a pioneering approach to African economic history at London Business School
In a field long dominated by narratives from outside the continent, this distinctive course invites students to interrogate Africa’s past using rigorous economic analysis and original archival material. By combining quantitative data with oral histories and case-based debates, it challenges inherited assumptions about growth, trade and institutions, while foregrounding African agency in global development. Classroom discussions move beyond textbook models to examine how policies around land, labor and finance were shaped by colonial legacies and contested by local communities, giving participants a framework to understand how history continues to structure today’s opportunities and constraints.
The teaching design is deliberately immersive and interdisciplinary, integrating research-led insights, practitioner voices and lived experience. Students engage with:
- Data-driven case studies on markets,migration and entrepreneurship across regions
- Comparative analyses that connect African economies to Latin America,Asia and Europe
- Policy simulations that test the long-term impact of alternative development choices
- Collaborative projects with a focus on social inclusion,financial access and innovation
| Course Element | Primary Focus |
|---|---|
| Historical datasets | Reconstructing growth trajectories |
| Archival sources | Uncovering local economic choices |
| Guest practitioners | Linking past patterns to current policy |
| Student projects | Designing inclusive business solutions |
How the FT Responsible Business Education Award elevates curriculum innovation and social impact
The Financial Times accolade shines a spotlight on how business schools can fuse rigorous scholarship with urgent societal questions,turning classrooms into laboratories for change. At London Business School,the recognition signals that modules like African History through the lens of Economics are no longer “nice-to-have” electives but core engines of curricular renewal. By embedding historical context, political economy and lived African experiences into a modern economics syllabus, the course challenges students to interrogate inherited narratives and rethink the foundations of growth, inequality and development. It also nudges faculty to cross customary disciplinary boundaries, collaborating with historians, policy experts and practitioners to design richer, more inclusive learning journeys.
This shift is not only about new content, but also about new forms of impact.The award validates innovative teaching practices that equip students to design business models and policies with a sharper sense of responsibility and long-term value creation. Within this course, impact-driven pedagogy is reflected in:
- Case studies co-created with African entrepreneurs and policymakers
- Data projects that trace historical shocks to present-day market outcomes
- Field-informed insights connecting classroom debates to real communities
- Reflective assignments that link personal leadership to systemic change
| Dimension | Traditional Course | This LBS Module |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic focus | Narrow, often Eurocentric | Pan-African, comparative |
| Teaching lens | Abstract theory | History-informed economics |
| Stakeholder voices | Mostly academic | Scholars, practitioners, communities |
| Impact goal | Technical competence | Responsible, context-aware leadership |
Integrating African case studies into core economics teaching to challenge dominant narratives
Moving beyond abstract models and generalized Western benchmarks, the course positions African economies as primary sources of insight rather than peripheral case notes. Core concepts such as market formation, industrial policy, and institutional design are explored through historical episodes ranging from 19th-century trade routes to post-independence industrialization and contemporary tech ecosystems. Students examine how policy choices were shaped by colonial legacies, geopolitical pressures and local innovation, revealing that outcomes often labelled as “underperformance” are better understood as rational responses to constrained options. This approach not only broadens the empirical base of economics teaching, but also encourages students to interrogate whose experience is considered “standard” and whose is seen as “remarkable.”
The teaching design deliberately contrasts textbook narratives with African evidence through a mix of lectures,archival material and practitioner voices. In class, students work with:
- Historical trade data from coastal and inland regions to test theories of comparative advantage.
- Fiscal and monetary records from post-independence governments to analyze state-building and inflation dynamics.
- Entrepreneurship case studies featuring informal markets, fintech, and pan-African supply chains.
- Policy debates on debt, climate resilience and industrial strategy, co-taught with African scholars and policymakers.
| Theme | African Example | Core Concept |
|---|---|---|
| Trade & Integration | East African railways | Market access & growth |
| Industrial Policy | Ethiopian manufacturing parks | State-led development |
| Financial Innovation | Kenya’s mobile money | Transaction costs & inclusion |
| Climate & Resources | Sahel adaptation strategies | Risk, resilience & externalities |
Recommendations for business schools seeking to embed responsible and locally grounded economic perspectives
Business schools can move beyond case studies set in distant markets by cultivating reciprocal partnerships with local scholars, communities and institutions that hold long memories of economic change. Embedding community voices in curriculum design councils, hosting co-taught modules with historians, and commissioning locally led field research all help surface context-specific insights on trade, labour, finance and entrepreneurship. Schools can also incentivise faculty to design courses that connect historical analysis to present-day policy debates, using archival data, oral histories and local business records as teaching materials, not just global consultancy reports.
- Co-create syllabi with regional universities and community historians
- Fund student projects that examine local industries through a historical lens
- Reward faculty for place-based research and practice-led teaching
- Open classrooms to civil society, journalists and public officials
| Focus Area | Practical Action |
|---|---|
| Curriculum | Integrate local case archives spanning colonial to contemporary periods |
| Research | Prioritise projects co-authored with local economists and historians |
| Engagement | Host town-hall style classes on current economic reforms |
Responsible economic education also requires reframing what counts as expertise. Schools can embed critical discussions on power,inequality and environmental limits,while foregrounding indigenous and regional knowledge systems as sources of theory,not just “context”. This can be operationalised through ungraded reflection labs where students test economic models against lived experience, cross-disciplinary seminars linking macroeconomics to land, migration and identity, and impact metrics that track benefits for local communities, not only graduate salaries. By aligning governance, incentives and pedagogy around these principles, business schools can help shape leaders who see markets as embedded in history, society and place-rather than as abstract, placeless systems.
- Elevate local knowledge as core theory in economics modules
- Introduce reflection labs connecting models to lived realities
- Measure success using social and community impact indicators
- Revisit ethics training to include historical responsibility and reparative policy
In Retrospect
Looking ahead, the recognition from the FT Responsible Business Education Awards is highly likely to bolster both the reach and impact of African History through the Lens of Economics.For London Business School, it affirms a growing commitment to scholarship that does more than analyse markets-it interrogates power, gives space to overlooked voices and reconsiders the historical foundations of modern economies.
As debates about decolonising curricula and confronting economic injustice intensify worldwide, the project offers a template for how business schools can respond: by grounding contemporary policy and practice in rigorous, context-rich historical inquiry. Its success suggests that the future of responsible business education may lie not only in forecasting what comes next, but in re-examining how we got here.
