Corporate Strategy & Development (answer length: 2-3 pages) You are consulting to a well-established multinational agribusiness with various operations across the SADC region and with its regional headquarters in South Africa. The firm has a highly experienced regional management team mainly comprising citizens of the respective host countries. It has recently been experiencing declining profits even though its share of various markets has been steady or even growing slightly. The firm faces the following situation:

i. Competition in its core market is beginning to intensify. It needs to protect its market leadership position and its margins which are under pressure.

ii. They say offense is the best defence. The company has employed this approach to develop a new product which is adjacent to its current offering. The product is not market leader but has been doing well and is growing faster than the core business at present. It needs further funding in terms of marketing and promotion

iii. The regional management team believes there is significant opportunity in expanding to other African markets. A major partner has already done most of the groundwork for introducing the core product to new markets that could vastly increase the revenues and profitability of the business. Of course, there is some risk to consider.

iv. The global management team, to whom the regional executives report, is sceptical about the long-term prospects of their African business and has given the regional team a few months to come up with a comprehensive report which accurately diagnoses the regional firms problems and formulates an effective winning strategy. Otherwise, the African unit faces divestiture from the global group.

The Questions: a. How would you go about ascertaining the root causes of the regional operations problems and identifying key priority areas?

b. What processes of strategy development would you employ to address the root causes and key priority areas?

Answer the above two questions in no less than 1000 words.In answering the question kindly focus on the following key areas

1.SWOT analaysis

2.PESTEL

3.Forces framework by Michael Porter