Hybrid organisations in sub-Saharan Africa

The Khayelitsha Cookie Company (KCC) is a hybrid organisation in South Africa that provides affirming employment for women from disadvantaged township communities, who are paid a fair wage and have equity in the venture. Cookswell Jikos is a hybrid organisation in Kenya that produces and sells energy-efficient cook stoves to achieve its environmental mission of household-level sustainable seed-to-ash cooking in Africa. In Zambia, the hybrid organisation the Mumwa Crafts Association connects low-income craft producers from remote rural areas with domestic and international markets, providing them with a much-needed stable source of income. These are just three examples of hybrid organisations in sub-Saharan Africa, the area of the African continent that lies south of the Sahara Desert. Hybrid organisations, which exist at the interface of the public, private and third sectors, and which span boundaries between them, can now be found across sub-Saharan Africa. In recent times, we have seen a proliferation of hybrid organising, and a growth in the number of hybrid organisations globally (Haigh et al., 2015). It is increasingly suggested that such organisations have an important role to play in tackling ‘wicked’ global sustainable development challenges. Accompanying these developments there has been a surge in academic interest in hybrid organisations and organising (see, e.g., Billis, 2010; Jay, 2013; Doherty et al., 2014; Haigh et al., 2015; Powell et al., 2018). Nevertheless, there remains much about hybrid organisations that we do not know, particularly about hybrids in developing economies. More specifically there remains a relative paucity of work on hybrid organisations and organising in sub-Saharan Africa (Holt and Littlewood, 2015). This reflects wider limited business and management scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa (see Zoogah and Nkomo, 2013; Walsh, 2015). This chapter contributes towards addressing these gaps.