Improvisation in Africa

Management has witnessed an increasing proliferation of research on improvisation in recent times. Although this field has been widely studied, the literature on improvisation in the context of Africa is scant. This is surprising since African markets have been characterized as fast-changing, complex, unpredictable, and turbulent, thus representing fertile terrain for improvisation. After providing an overview of the specificities and nuances of the African context, this chapter presents an overview of the few advances made to organizational improvisation literature in this context. It then discusses their broader implications to improvisation theory in general and proposes several avenues for future research on improvisation in challenging and complex contexts like Africa.