Community = Co-Creating Ecosystems | Trans4m Fellows
Chipo Ndudzo:
African Enterprise Renewal – Towards Integral Enterprises in Zimbabwe and Beyond
“Though the enterprise gained the status of a legal persona, it is void of that which makes a person – a heart and an identity. Enterprises across the globe should undergo renewal into integral enterprises that are not only out for profit making but enterprises that also care for their most prized possessions: their people – respecting their identity, their culture and their local and global context.”
To me, identity is everything. I am a strong African woman who has exuded leadership prowess that I feel comes from my totem. I come from the Lion tribe and therefore I am a lioness. The characteristics of the lioness best describe who I am and the energy that has radiated around me and my team throughout my integral journey generally and in my life in particular. Lionesses are almost the real definition of human mothers owing to their powerful maternal instincts, unity with life and their capacity to be great breadwinners – despite their stature which is considerably smaller than that of male lions. I am proud of my African identity and also the fact that it is a patriarchal system that does not necessarily shun the productivity of women, contrary to popular beliefs of patriarchal systems that render women useless and weaklings. In our African context, our gender differences do not determine superiority; rather they define a social order that has allowed women to utilize their potential since time immemorial.
I started Providence Human Capital in 2013 and it has been a platform for my journey of transformation. I have always been an advocate of Afrocentrism and business renewal because I felt that though companies have a legal persona, they are void of a heart and in the African context, an African heart.
Though literature on organizational behavior and development was awash in the body of knowledge, there seemed to be a gap on Afrocentric, tried and tested theories generally and from Zimbabwe in particular. This imbalance probed me to undergo the transformation and pioneer the renewal of a Zimbabwean conventional enterprise into an integral enterprise. Together with my Providence family, we came up with social innovations in the form of Rumuko circles, FED-UP, the naming and norming of our departments in our vernacular language and the general acceptability of one’s identity and religion in the workplace and this saw people warming up to the use of totems in place of the conventional Mr. ‘So, and So’ in the workplace.
In November 2020 I successfully concluded my PhD Journey with TRANS4M and Da Vinci – but the journey of myself and my team to develop, propagate and research integral African enterprises will continue.
