Dimitrios Tsagdis has dedicated his career to understanding how businesses across the globe can operate sustainably. Now a chance meeting in Morocco has led to his appointment as Extraordinary Professor of International Business and Senior Research Fellow at the AGCAE, presenting him with the opportunity to contribute to this discussion in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Dr Dimitrios Tsagdis brings a wealth of experience and academic stature to the Allan Gray Centre for Africa Entrepreneurship (AGCAE). Born in Greece, his family moved to Sweden when he was still young, but he moved back following democratic elections. In his early twenties, Tsagdis set off for the UK for a planned six-month visit, his aim to improve his English and then make for US shores.
Instead, he would stay in the UK for the next 23 years. “I got British citizenship, bought a house, bought a car, met my wife, had children,” he explains, laughing.
He also did other things, like studying at the Universities of Sunderland (undergraduate), Humberside (MA) and Lincoln (PhD). He then moved from a research fellowship at the University of Manchester to a position as senior lecturer with the University of Hull, where he would stay another 16 years. He would go on to establish, as Founding Director, the university’s Centre for Regional and International Business (CRIB).
In keeping with the global focus of that position, Dimitrios took on several visiting professorships at institutions in Austria, Colombia, Denmark and France.
His research interests have been two-fold, he points out. “For most of my career, I’ve had one foot in sustainability, one foot in international business.” These issues are no longer mutually exclusive. “Today, there is a growing discussion about sustainable international business,” he says.
It’s a discussion he has helped to initiate; and in 2009 with the KEDGE Business School in Bordeaux, he led a centre of excellence in international business. He went on to conduct studies on many developing countries, including Egypt, a few in Latin America, as well as Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
For a long while, however, Dimitrios hadn’t been able to point his compass south into sub-Saharan Africa. That changed in 2022 when he bumped into Dr Phumlani Nkontwana, founding director of the AGCAE, at a conference in Morocco. Both were keen to forge a Franco/African alliance and committed to establishing a mutually beneficial partnership.
It has brought about a new six-country project that has seen Dimitrios visiting several sub-Saharan countries over his six-month sabbatical in 2024. More specifically, he has visited six ecologically sensitive and important sites — like nature reserves in the Serengeti, Kilimanjaro and others — to explore viable and ecologically sustainable entrepreneurship-led opportunities that could kickstart local development. The countries are Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The work of two students, one masters and one PhD from the AGCAE’s first cohort, will feed into the project.
There are other opportunities coming out of the AGCAE/KEDGE partnership. This includes Dimitrios potentially hosting AGCAE students at KEDGE, and him recently delivering the keynote at the recent Allan Gray Board of Directors Annual Summit.
More importantly, it will generate new data on entrepreneurship-led sustainable development in Africa. According to Tsagdis, it should be development led by generations of entrepreneurs with an appreciation for ecologically aware growth. “What you need are entrepreneurial people who understand how to produce things responsibly.”
ENDS
