Business Excellence Models (BEM) are frameworks developed to guide organizations into best practices that lead to sustained high performance. These models are internationally recognized as both providing a framework to assist the adoption of business excellence principles, and an effective way of measuring how thoroughly this adoption has been incorporated. There are several BEMs adopted by different countries. North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia have over the years implemented National BEMs. However, in Africa, various countries have established National and industry/sector based BEMs with minimal success. This is an exploratory study focusing on reviewing existing literature on the BEMs and identifying challenges that the African BEMs have faced. The paper also provides some practical recommendations that can be adopted to ensure success of the BEMs.