Wits Business School celebrates a 50-year journey in 2018

Management which was the first MBA programme to be launched outside of the US.

Wits Business School was the culmination of Wits’s long-standing vision to establish a centre of excellence in the field of business sciences, and the school proudly graduated its first MBA cohort in 1972. Now, in 2018, there are over 5 000 WBS MBA graduates living and working around the world.

The school is still situated on the same historic campus in Parktown where it started, with the same Jacaranda trees and the beautiful heritage “Outeniqua House” at its heart. But many other buildings, classrooms and auditoriums have sprung up to meet demand, and the campus also now houses the university’s School of Governance.

Apart from the 50th birthday celebrations, WBS has a lot on the cards in 2018. It will be hosting two international conferences this year with a focus on emerging markets. From April 4-7, the annual Emerging Markets Conference Board will come to Johannesburg for the first time, attracting a number of global speakers. The board is making critical inroads in the field of marketing in emerging markets, an area still in its infancy. The conference is an opportunity for South African marketing students and academics to interact with some of the best marketing minds in the world.

In August, WBS will host the annual African Review of Economics and Finance conference. This is the premier conference in economics and finance in Africa — and it will be the first time that it is hosted in South Africa.

Executive education at WBS has started the year off on a high with the launch of its first executive programmes in digital business. The school established its Chair in Digital Business in 2016, supported by a five-year funding agreement with Telkom, with the aim of helping South African businesses thrive in the digital era. Under the directorship of Professor Brian Armstrong, the chair is generating new and critical research in the area of digital business and developing cutting-edge teaching programmes. Starting in March, 205 managers from Telkom subsidiary BCX will attend the WBS digital business programmes (future leaders in digital business, digital business management and digital business executive programmes), which are the first of their kind in South Africa.

Finally, WBS kicked off the year with a new director. After a long search Dr Sibusiso Sibisi emerged as the top candidate and assumed the role of director and head of school on January 2. With a doctorate in applied mathematics from Cambridge University and 14 years at the helm of the CSIR, Sibisi’s career straddles both academia and business.

In the highly competitive business school environment, Sibisi is feeling upbeat about taking the WBS into a new era: “The opportunities abound for WBS to consolidate its position as a top business school and leverage our competitive advantages, including our academic and teaching excellence. I believe we have the right team in place to take WBS into an exciting new future.”