Archive for the ‘africa’ Category
Friday, April 13th, 2012
A gentleman’s agreement
Since its inception in 1946, the World Bank has had 12 presidents, each of them an American. The practice of choosing an American for the job has gone unopposed given that the U.S. has been the world’s biggest donor nation. Similarly, the Europeans traditionally pick one of their own to run the IMF. This arrangement is known as a “gentleman’s agreement”.
But this year there’s a wrinkle in the World Bank process. A battle is underway among three candidates vying to succeed the incumbent president, Robert Zoellick, whose term ends in June.
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Tags: africa, Economics, emerging high growth, Kim, macroeconomics, Ocampo, Okojo-Iweala, president world bank, Sub-Sahara, World Bank, Zoellick
Posted in africa, Economics, Emerging Markets, International Business, Sub-Sahara Region, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
While economists are preoccupied with China and India, a new engine of growth is quietly emerging in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Demographics, rising purchasing power and a burgeoning private sector are fueling economic development in a region where markets have been fragmented for too long.
Stretching from Morocco to Oman, MENA’s population tops 350 million, making it the world’s ninth largest market. But trade barriers among countries in the region have constrained market growth.
Now, an emerging trend is disrupting MENA’s traditional market patterns: a growing segment of urbanized, tech-savvy Arab youths is devouring on-line entertainment, gaming and social media, creating demand for digital services that are delivered across borders.
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Tags: "emerging", al arabiya, al jazeera, Arab, Arab digital, arab world, developing, disrupt, Doha, Dubai, Egypt, high-growth, mena, MENA 2.0, middle east, Middle East North Africa, Muslim, pan-arab, qatar, UAW
Posted in africa, Arab Business, Gulf (GCC) Region, How Cool?, Middle East, Technology from Developing Regions | No Comments »
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012
City Bowl – Cape Town, South Africa
Cause for Hope
Good news continues to stream in about the unprecedented growth and stability of Africa’s frontier economies. The Economist, which ran a cover story in 2000 headlined, “The Hopeless Continent”, reversed course in December 2011, dubbing Africa, “The Hopeful Continent”.
Africa’s newer narrative is grounded in economics. In the last decade, six of the world’s 10 fastest growing nations have been in the Sub-Sahara, and that trend is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. The continent rebounded quickly from the global recession reaching 6% growth last year, surpassing East Asia.
Africa is too vast and diverse to be handled in a broad brush treatment. Each of its economies is affected by a unique and dynamic set of drivers.
However, on the whole, the Sub-Sahara is being shaped by converging forces: global demand for resources, burgeoning consumer markets and government reforms are placing the continent on a path toward sustainable growth. Regional trade and foreign investment are increasingly important. There’s cause for optimism and for a closer look at Africa’s Great Boom.
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Tags: africa, boom, consumer sector, consumer-led, great boom, growth, Sub-Sahara, trade block
Posted in africa, Emerging Markets, International Business, Sub-Sahara Region, West Africa | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
Accra, Ghana
In reflecting on the year ending, my thoughts turn again to Africa, home of six of the world’s top 10 fastest growing economies. Africa’s mobile revolution is spawning exciting, new opportunities for entrepreneurs and engineers. For practitioners eager to experience the impact of their work, there’s no more dynamic and interesting place to be than Africa today.
With that in mind, I’d like to share three short but inspiring talks given in 2011 by three of Africa’s best and brightest pioneers. These trailblazers all began their careers in technology, but now they’re developing “platforms” in the broader sense, enabling a new generation of Africans to reshape their future.
Each speaker offers their unique perspective, but a common theme from all of the talks is that Africa is rising rapidly. Through their courage and determination, Africa’s trailblazers can inspire us all to persevere, whether we work on the continent or not.
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Tags: #ict4d, africa, Africa 2012, Afrigadget, Afromusing, Ashesi, Awuah, Berekuso, Global Voices, Hersman, Huduma, iHub, m:lab, Rotich, Tech4d, TED, TED Fellow, Ushahidi, White African
Posted in africa, Sub-Sahara Region, Tech4dev, Technology from Developing Regions, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
An African Narrative
The misdeeds of Africa’s despots get plenty of media attention because they fit a Western “plug-n-play” narrative about the region. Conversely, the work of Africa’s exemplary leaders is often overlooked.
I’d offer the story of an extraordinary African leader determined to improve the quality of life in her nation. She’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was recently appointed Nigeria’s Finance Minister.
In her previous stint in that role, she compiled a stunning record of economic reform. She was the first woman to serve as her country’s Finance Minister and as its Foreign Minister.
Okonjo-Iweala is an inveterate disruptor of the status quo who is guided by her vision for what’s possible and a zeal for instigating change.
Stories like hers give rise to an emergent narrative that’s being written by Africans. As she puts it, “This is the Africa of opportunity. This is the Africa where people want to take charge of their own futures and their own destinies.”
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Tags: africa, Biafra, Delta State, Goodluck Jonathan, Iweala, Minister of Finance, Nigeria, Okonjo-Iweala, West Africa, World Bank
Posted in africa, Emerging Markets, leadership, Sub-Sahara Region, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
Mapping the Fiber Revolution
Most everyone interested in Africa’s connectivity revolution has seen the handiwork of Steve Song, a South African social entrepreneur who wants to make telecommunications accessible to more Africans. His iconic map of Africa’s undersea fiber optic cables is a visual narrative of the continent coming “on-line”.
When Song began the mapping exercise three years ago, his intent was to document the continent’s two or three existing cables in order to aid his work. Since then, the number of new undersea cables encircling Africa has burgeoned, and Song has faithfully revised his map.
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Tags: #ict4d, africa, Afrinnovator, AFTerFibre, fiber optics, fibre optics, Google Africa, Matt Berg, Steve Song, Tech4d, Terrestrial Fibers, Terrestrial Fibres
Posted in africa, ICT, Sub-Sahara Region, Tech4dev, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | 5 Comments »
Sunday, July 17th, 2011
Nairobi Skyline
“This is the future of African technology, and if you blink, you’ll miss it.” ~Erik Hersman
On the ‘Silicon Savanna’
Last month in Nairobi, Kenya, a conference called Pivot25 connected 25 promising mobile app developers from East Africa with investors and venture capitalists. Events like this one, based on the Y Combinator model, give aspiring developers a rare chance to pitch their ideas for possible seed capital.
What’s intriguing about Pivot25 is the attention that it drew from outside the region. TIME Magazine ran a piece about the conference from the standpoint of Nairobi’s contribution to global technology. CNN’s Global Public Square covered the event, too. Why so much attention?
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Tags: #ict4d, @whiteafrican, africa, East Africa, Hersman, ICT, Kenya, m:labs, mobile, mobile app, mobile services, mobile technology, Nairobi, open data, Pivot 25, pivot25, Silicon Savanna, TED_fellow, Y Combinator
Posted in africa, Emerging Markets, ICT, Sub-Sahara Region, Tech4dev, Technology from Developing Regions, Telecommunications | 4 Comments »
Friday, February 11th, 2011
Cairo on the Nile
The images streaming in from Egypt are stirring. It’s evident that this uprising will reverberate not only in the region but around the world. What comes next is hard to fathom, but what the Egyptian people have accomplished is admirable.
My appreciation of Egypt and Cairo, in particular, dates back to my first trip there in the 80′s. I recall most vividly the felucca boats sailing along the Nile — symbols of the city’s timelessness. After many assignments there over the years, I still find Cairo to be one of the most enchanting cities in the world — on par with Paris and Istanbul.
The pulsating energy of this city of 16 million people comes not only from its density but from the stunning diversity of its people. Cairo is the largest city in the Arab world, Africa and the Mediterranean, and has been a magnet that’s attracted people from each of these regions and beyond.
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Tags: cairo, civil disobedience, friedman, protests, rodenbeck
Posted in africa, Middle East | 2 Comments »
Sunday, December 19th, 2010
Turning the page…
Another interesting year is rapidly winding down. This year, I had the chance to work with many gifted business and tech leaders, but it was particularly satisfying collaborating with innovators in developing regions — the Sub-Sahara, the Middle East and South Asia.
It’s time for Western multinational companies — especially those in the customer-facing sectors — to enter developing markets where consumer-led growth is robust but capital and resources are in short supply.
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Tags: "disruptive innovation", Business Model, Collaboration, collaborative, consultancy, consulting, developed markets, developing markets, disruptive, emerging market, Finikiotis, frontier markets, Innovation, innovators, m-money, middle east, prahalad, south asia, Sub-Sahara
Posted in africa, Business Model, Business Practices, Collaboration, Emerging Markets, International Business, Sub-Sahara Region, Telecommunications, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 28th, 2010
India’s top mobile carrier, Bharti Airtel, is bringing its ultra low-cost services to the sub-Sahara. Can it adapt its managed services model to penetrate Africa’s under-served, low-income markets? What are the implications?
Out of the East
Asia’s growing influence in Africa is receiving worldwide attention. China’s investment in Africa will top $100 billion dollars this year making it the continent’s biggest trading partner. There are 800 Chinese companies with over 4 million Chinese people living and working there. China’s impact on Africa, as author Richard Dowden observed, is the biggest economic shift of the twenty-first century.
Now, the story of Asia’s push into Africa is being revised to highlight players from India. In June, Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile carrier – the 5th largest telecom in the world – bought Kuwait-based Zain’s operations in 16 African countries for $10.7 billion in cash.
Bharti has been eager to grab a piece of Africa’s growing mobile market for some time. In 2009, it tried to buy MTN, Africa’s largest carrier, but the deal failed due to regulatory roadblocks. Undeterred, Bharti pivoted quickly setting its sights on Zain. By June, Bharti bagged its African trophy, though some analysts thought it paid too much for Zain’s assets.
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Tags: bharti, bharti airtel, bharti enterprises, Finikiotis, ibm, mtn, osprey, Richard Dowden, spanco, tech mahindra, zain
Posted in africa, Business Model, Emerging Markets, International Business, Sub-Sahara Region, Telecommunications, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | 3 Comments »
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
The swift and agile
A recent Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation study revived the term “gazelle companies” to describe the young, rapidly-growing U.S.firms that are producing the majority of new jobs in the U.S. The report recommends that policy-makers nurture Gazelles to stimulate job growth at a time when unemployment is high.
I’m interested in another class of companies—agile, well-run firms in emerging regions like the sub-Sahara. Like their Western counterparts, they’re creating a disproportionate number of jobs. But these young African companies are playing a more crucial role than gazelles do in driving market growth.
To belabor the metaphor, I call them Impalas, after the lean, swift gazelles indigenous to Africa. Impalas provide technology-enabled and outsourcing services to a growing number of multinational (MNC) service providers – mobiles, airlines and banks – in Johannesburg, Accra, and Nairobi, etc. They share many of the characteristics of gazelles, but there are some notable differences.
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Tags: africa business, african economy, competency gaps, connected markets, Ewing marion Kauffman, gazelle, gazelle companies, Impala, Kauffman Foundation, MNC, multinational, service providers, skills gaps, talent gaps
Posted in africa, Business Model, Business Practices, Emerging Markets, Sub-Sahara Region, Technology from Developing Regions, Telecommunications, West Africa | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
The World Comes to Africa
As the World Cup gets underway this week in South Africa—the first ever to be held on the African continent—the world media is turning its attention there.
Typically, coverage of Africa by the international media is limited to stories about intractable problems—disease, war, famine, and corruption. Many of the World Cup stories are taking a similar tact. Stories about the South Africa’s five new stadiums underscore the nation’s mounting debt while other pieces highlight its security concerns.
A lot of the coverage reflects the world media’s skewed view of Africa as a monolithic place that’s plagued with tragedy. Severe challenges do exist, but many African societies are quietly building their institutions and infrastructures. It’s time the outside world views Africa through a broader, more accurate lens. (more…)
Tags: africa, African diversity, FIFA, Finikiotis, football, John Reader, osprey, Richard Dowden, soccer, South Africa, World Cup
Posted in africa, Emerging Markets, International Business, Sub-Sahara Region, West Africa | 2 Comments »
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