Ten years of impact in South Africa

20 UC undergraduate students recently returned from an annual study abroad trip run by Karen Manning, annual adjunct assistant professor at UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business.

The course, titled “South Africa: Empowering Small Business Owners,” brings students to Khayelitsha, a township within Cape Town, for 10 days of in-person workshops and cultural experiences over May break. The in-country experience comes after spending the spring semester in teams working with small business owners virtually to help with strategic marketing and branding.

UC students from Lindner and the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) bring their skills and collaborate as consultants with South African entrepreneurs. The interaction allows for real-world application of marketing strategy and design that has measurable impact.

Manning has been organizing this program since its inception nearly a decade ago. “I've seen the impact this program has made on our business owners. We’ve documented sales increases, and in many cases business expansion, as a direct result of the work we’ve done,” she said. “We're still in touch. It feels like one big family. And the thing that's incredible is the business owners who have gone through the program end up helping other aspiring entrepreneurs.”

Post-apartheid, South Africa still struggles, leaving its Black residents extremely disadvantaged. The shockwaves from the regime leave Black South Africans with a systemic lack of education, employment and housing opportunities. Faced with a staggeringly high unemployment rate — one of the highest in the world, according to Reuters — millions of South Africans struggle to make ends meet. 

Khayelitsha is home to many Black South African entrepreneurs making a living in an incredibly difficult job market. Residents own established businesses that they rely on to provide for their families, but are either the sole proprietors or have few employees. Lack of access to business education makes it difficult for these entrepreneurs to develop the skills to strategically market their products and services. It was a desire to address these challenges that led to the creation of this business-focused UC study abroad program.

The on-campus classroom work is set up so that design and strategic marketing are the focus throughout the spring semester, culminating in the nearly two week long study abroad trip between the spring and summer terms. Students are organized into business teams, each consisting of four Lindner business undergraduates, one DAAP design consultant and one South African entrepreneur. 

“The portion taught on campus was so interactive, and I learned so much. We were able to work with our teams all semester and collaborate with our entrepreneurs via WhatsApp,” Rains explained. “Professor Manning also did a great job preparing us for the trip with her lectures and making sure we had all the information needed to be successful.”

Every year, it’s cross-continental collaboration all semester long, but Manning, her students and the entrepreneurs agree: the in-person time together after the end of the semester is crucial to the success of the class. 

“As we make our final preparations for the in-country experience, I always tell the students, ‘You spent the entire semester working closely with your entrepreneurs, gathering information and building insightful brand identities and marketing plans. The work you’ve done this semester has been outstanding.”

Manning has had many students over the years who wanted to stay involved, and she herself wanted to do more. 

“Every time we left, I would start crying. I knew that the need was so much greater than what we could do during the study abroad,” Manning said. And in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Manning and her students wanted to continue their work beyond the scope of a semester-long course and adapt to a changing global environment. 

In the fall of 2020, Manning created Uhambo 8286, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit that provides a yearlong, comprehensive business education training program to aspiring entrepreneurs.  As part of this initiative, business owners receive professional branding and strategic marketing plans as a direct result of the Lindner College of Business study abroad program. The nonprofit organization’s co-founders include UC alumnae Natalie Whisler, DAAP ’21, Kate Conner, DAAP ’21, and Kate Rogers, Lindner ’20. The three women all participated in the trip themselves as students.