Africa’s MBAs are redefining sustainable leadership – and the world is taking notice

For years, sustainability has been taught in Western boardrooms and classrooms as an abstract principle. In South Africa, it is lived every day – in water stress, energy insecurity, fragile communities and extraordinary entrepreneurial resilience. That reality is now reshaping global business education.

Henley Business School’s Global Executive MBA has surged 27 places to rank 17th worldwide in the 2025 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking, which assesses how seriously business schools integrate sustainability and social impact into their teaching and culture. In a world of more than 13,000 business schools, Henley now sits firmly in the top tier of programmes preparing leaders to run companies and economies within planetary boundaries.

Henley, which is part of the University of Reading in the UK and has had a presence in Johannesburg for three decades, is one of three business schools in South Africa in the global Top 40 – alongside UCT’s Graduate School of Business (7th) and GIBS (23rd) – marking a decisive moment for African business education.

'This is more than a good-news story for business school rankings,' says Jon Foster-Pedley, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement – Sub-Saharan Africa) at the University of Reading, UK, and Dean of Henley Business School Africa. 'It signals something deeper: that if you want to learn serious sustainability, you should be studying in places that live with the consequences of climate and inequality every day – places like South Africa.'

'Together, Henley, UCT GSB and GIBS are punching well above our weight. We’re showing that African schools are not just catching up to global standards; we’re helping set them.'

Sustainability as a core discipline, not an elective

The Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking, published annually for more than a decade, evaluates MBA programmes around the world on how deeply they embed sustainability into what they teach and the careers they enable. In 2025, 179 MBA programmes were assessed, with only 40 making the final ranking.

Henley’s rise reflects a deliberate shift: sustainability is treated not as a specialist track, but as a lens on strategy, finance, innovation and leadership across the programme.

'Our stance is simple,' says Lyneth Zungu, Director of MBA Programmes at Henley Africa. 'If you’re still teaching managers to maximise short-term profit and treat sustainability as a compliance issue, you’re training them for a world that no longer exists.'

'At Henley, we expect our executives to grapple with trade-offs: decarbonising while growing, creating value in stressed ecosystems, building businesses that repair trust in societies under pressure. This ranking is a useful signal that the way we teach – grounded in African realities, linked to global practice – is working.'

Corporate Knights also tracks the proportion of graduates working in “impact organisations” – companies and institutions explicitly focused on solving social and environmental challenges. Henley’s strong showing here underscores that the learning doesn’t end with the degree: it translates into career choices and long-term impact.

Part of a university-wide sustainability agenda

Henley’s performance feeds into a broader institutional story. Its parent institution, the University of Reading, was named Sustainable University of the Year 2025 in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide and is ranked joint 30th in the world out of 2,002 institutions in the QS Sustainability Rankings 2026, up from joint 42nd last year. In the 2025 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, Reading was placed among the top 50 universities globally for its contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

That combination of deep sustainability science, global research excellence and on-the-ground leadership development in Africa, the Nordics and the UK gives Henley an unusual vantage point.

'Our campuses in Johannesburg, Copenhagen and Henley-on-Thames see different parts of the same story,' says Foster-Pedley. 'Africa teaches us about resilience and ingenuity under constraint. The Nordics bring decades of practical sustainability policy. The UK offers research depth and global networks. Our job is to bring those worlds together and turn them into leadership capability.'

Alumni turning learning into renewal

Henley’s sustainability focus is not only visible in syllabi and rankings, but in the projects its graduates lead.

Graduates such as Nerissa Jalim and Rosanna Ponnen have been recognised with the Renewal Award for their groundbreaking MBA dissertations on sustainability, illustrating how classroom learning is converted into real-world change in organisations and communities.

‘Henley encourages a lot of personal reflection on “What is it for? What is my higher purpose?”’says Rosanna, whose MBA research dissertation on the role of purpose in employee retention won the inaugural Renewal Foundation Award. ‘Purpose came up all the time during my MBA. I was trying to think of a way to relate that to my work; it had been a challenging time for my organisation, and I was managing a complex team at the time, and I wanted to find a way to make a real difference.’ 

'What excites us most is not the number next to our name,' says Zungu, 'but the alumni like Rosanna who are redesigning supply chains, shifting investment portfolios, and rebuilding businesses to be fairer and future-fit. They’re showing that ESG is not a slide deck – it’s hard work, courage and better decisions.'

A pattern of global recognition

The Better World MBA result adds to a record of consistent international recognition for Henley’s Executive MBA portfolio:

• The Henley Global Executive MBA, launched in Africa in 2024, was ranked 33rd worldwide and 7th globally for international course experience in the 2025 Financial Times Executive MBA Ranking.
• Earlier this year, the Executive MBA was placed 64th in the world in the QS Global MBA Rankings, and 13th globally in the QS International Trade Rankings 2026.
• The Executive MBA is recognised as being in the top 15% for Career Outcomes (QS ranking) and is rated 7th in the world for international course exposure (Financial Times 2025).

Taken together, these results confirm Henley’s place among a small global group of business schools recognised across multiple independent rankings for both academic quality and international outlook.

The next limited-intake Henley Global Executive MBA in South Africa begins in October 2026. Executives interested in leading the sustainability transition in their organisations and industries can find more information here.