On February 25, 2005 Strathmore's Faculty of Commerce was selected to participate in the IFC Competitiveness Project by the Global Business Schools Network (GBSN) together with Kenyatta University, and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. The Global Business School is a project of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and is run in collaboration with Kenya's Ministry of Trade and Industry. It will last for five years.

Each year Strathmore University, together with other leading business schools, including Harvard (USA) and IESE (Spain), will train 5 to 6 faculty members on writing and teaching with case studies. As part of this training, the designated faculty members will attend relevant international conferences and seminars, receive in-person and electronic mentoring as well as participate in international and local workshops.

Progress

The first team from Strathmore faculty that is undergoing this training in 2005 is composed of Dr Ruth Kiraka (team leader), Dr Margaret Kobia, Dr Freddie Acosta, Mrs Beatrice Dimba, M. David Wang'ombe and Mrs Hellen Otieno. After 12 months, each participant is expected to have come up with two new Case Studies — researched and written individually.

The team, which was praised by the IFC for a very significant female participation, begun their training by attending the "Teaching the Practice of Management: A Workshop for African Faculty" held at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, South Africa, from May 8 – 15 2005. Immediately after this workshop, Strathmore hosted a two-week training, from 16th-28th May, for lecturers from the three institution that covered case study development & writing and case teaching.

From the 12th to the 18th June 2005 Prof Lluis Renart, of IESE Business School, came to Strathmore University to continue the training as par of this programme. He accompanied the Strathmore University faculty as each one interviewed the business people they are going to be writing their cases about. Prof Renart was very happy with the progress made so far and he is optimistic that the Strathmore University faculty will surpass the goals that they had set themselves for the first year of this programme.