Why benchmarking trips rarely deliver desired results in Africa

International benchmarking is a common management practice, designed to enable one company or organisation to compare itself to another in terms of management practices or performance.

Commonly, benchmarking is associated with so-called 'study tours', in which a group of managers or policymakers visit another country in order to learn from their peers in that country.

Many countries, especially in Asia, have harnessed the benefits of international benchmarking to improve and push forward their economic development. Singapore, the Republic of Korea and Japan are often cited as examples of countries that have benefited from benchmarking. Why then, we must ask, has benchmarking not benefited other countries, especially those in Africa?

There are several reasons. First, benchmarking is not taken seriously. In all too many cases, benchmarking missions or trips are seen as rewards from the bosses, handed out to those members of their staff who are perceived to be most loyal. Moreover, some participants go on benchmarking trips primarily to cash in on the per diem payments that they receive.

Second, most benchmarking activities from Africa seem to have no clear objectives to indicate the purpose of the missions. There are cases where benchmarking participants, when asked the purpose of their mission in their target countries, reply that they have come to see the country. In other cases, participants are only interested in discovering where the shopping centres are located.

This, unsurprisingly, leaves the receiving countries baffled by the low level of preparedness and the type of questions the participants ask. In short, some of the benchmarking missions may be seen as tourism trips, rather than a serious investigation of best practices.

Third, benchmarking missions frequently end up being expensive and wasteful. For example, upon returning from benchmarking missions, participants are supposed to prepare back-to-office reports, including recommendations.

Most participants do not prepare the reports and, if they do, the reports are often not taken seriously by their supervisors. If the participants have returned with gifts for their bosses, that may be the end of the story. Ideally, participants' departments should organise a debriefing meeting at which those staff members who were on the mission can inform their colleagues and suggest ways to improve their work.

Advanced countries

Fourth, some of the selected destinations of benchmarking missions do not really meet the needs of the sending country. For example, while benchmarking in advanced countries might be interesting, what those countries have to show could be beyond the capacity of many countries and, in most cases, too expensive for them to emulate, in particular with regard to technological innovations.

Such missions are a waste of time and resources. There are, of course, areas where African countries can productively benchmark with advanced countries such as university education, medical care, and others. Seen from this perspective, the selection of destination countries for benchmarking from African countries should be geared towards emerging nations, as opposed to advanced ones.

What then can African countries learn from a country like Singapore, which in a relatively short period of time emerged from being a largely agrarian State to becoming an advanced member of the global economy?

First, the Singapore government planned its benchmarking thoroughly and the country made very good use of the benchmarking process. Missions were thoroughly planned, necessary, and cost-effective. For example, when the government wanted to develop the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) aspects of its education sector, benchmarking missions were sent to several countries, both advanced and middle-income, perceived to have the best STEM systems.

Having carried out an evaluation, the government devised a plan by cherry-picking elements from among all the systems they had seen. The missions visited several school systems to explore international best practices. The mission focus was to identify what would work and what would not work in implementing particular policies in Singapore. For example, the country's mathematics curriculum was developed after reviewing mathematics research and practices from around the world.

Second, as demonstrated by the Singapore experience, there is no perfect system in the world but there are pockets of excellence across the globe. The key lesson is how to adapt what is learned to the local context and to ensure that is properly implemented. The Singapore education system, which is one of the best in the world, owes a lot to lessons learned from other parts of the world.

In Singapore, international benchmarking is more than a comparison exercise. It has informed planning and goal-setting and introduced novel good practices. Independently arrived at benchmarking findings have facilitated performance improvement in many aspects of the vibrant Singaporean economy. In Singapore, benchmarking is taken very seriously, because it is needs driven, and not reward oriented as it is in many African countries.

The example of Singapore demonstrates that benchmarking and learning from the experiences of other countries can be an effective tool that governments can use to accelerate their policymaking and management practices, with a view to strengthening their institutional capacities for economic and social development.