CWC VOICES // 2025: A year of celebration
The UCT GSB Case Writing Centre recounts on the major milestones of 2025
2025 was a year of celebration for the UCT GSB Case Writing Centre, with exciting launches and developments on many different fronts. After spending much of 2024 laying foundations for our biggest passion projects, we were finally able to share them with the world in 2025. With plenty more still cooking for 2026, here are our biggest highlights of the year:
Launching with Harvard Business Impact
In July, we announced a new case collection for Harvard Business Impact, one of the largest and most esteemed publishers of business school case studies globally. With Harvard Business School the pioneer of the case method for business students, it was a major accomplishment to create an Africa-focussed collection for their publishing affiliate. This partnership marks the first time that an African business school has directly partnered with Harvard Business Impact. The collection has been many years in the making, representing the work of a wide range of collaborators – from faculty, student researchers, companies, and editors. The collection of 22 cases (and counting) features some of Africa’s most pressing topics: growing and streamlining agribusiness, promoting social entrepreneurship and responsible investing, and managing family businesses, among many others.
“Our case collection in partnership with Harvard Business Impact was the realisation of a huge long-term goal. It was really a major highlight of last year. Even my Spotify ‘Unwrapped’ playlist confirmed it, with the hours of classical music during editing. That made me smile.”
Claire Barnardo, CWC Manager
Debuting at NACRA
We attended the annual conference for the North American Case Research Association for the first time in October. In addition to having two forthcoming case studies selected for review during the conference, we were honoured to present at the “New Views” seminar, where we showcased our open-source, multimedia case series, Doing Business in Africa. The seminar was a fantastic opportunity to engage with the business faculty members around the world who might adopt the cases in their own classrooms, and get their feedback on the innovative format. Chief among the requests: instructor guides to using and teaching with the cases. We are on it! Watch this space in 2026 for DBIA developments in this direction.
“When we presented the DBIA series at NACRA, I think a lot of people found it quite radical, which surprised me. But the other case writers and teachers from emerging market countries seemed to see the value of the concept right away – freely accessible content, cutting edge companies, real conversations. And that felt like a big, and very meaningful, win.”
Sarah Boyd, CWC Editor
Growing our team
Last but not least, we were thrilled to welcome Shivani Ghai, UCT GSB MBA Class of 2019, to the CWC team. Shivani lectures for the UCT GSB’s Management Consulting course and is an education and employability strategist with a focus on talent and the future of work on the African continent. She is passionate about case studies, having been on the other side of the case as a member of the UCT GSB’s winning team for the John Molson International Case Competition in 2020. Now, she is bringing her talents to writing for our traditional case collection, our blog, and our DBIA series. Check out her debut DBIA case on Christel House, a no-fee school in South Africa.
“Working with the CWC on the Christel House DBIA case was a dream! It sat perfectly at the intersection of an industry and cause that I am so passionate about – Education. It gave me the opportunity to look in from an entirely new and objective perspective: not a strategic or operational one, but rather as an observer at a critical junction in time for this unique organisation.”
Shivani Ghai, CWC Case Writer
Already, the UCT GSB CWC has developments brewing along each of these avenues, so stay tuned for more exciting and inventive case work from us in 2026.
