The impact of risk management practice on the development of African businesses

Against the backdrop of the fledgling entrepreneurship development and the imperatives of risk management to mitigate failure, this chapter discusses the impact of risk management practice on the development of African businesses. It also considers how best to align the practice of risk management in order to achieve business continuity. More than ever before, global competitiveness and the need to trade‐out of declining profits are currently driving businesses into risk management efficiencies in order to continue achieving increased returns on assets employed/equities for their shareholders. The attainment of these growth objectives can often be affected by several types of business risk (financial and operational) coupled with unpredicted movements in prices. These movements especially in times of high volatilities impact materially on profit growth potentials regardless of how well a business is managed. This chapter suggests how African business executives can evolve their business management styles to imbed risk management at all stages.