Posts Tagged ‘africa’
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
Accra, Ghana
The New Year is a time to reflect on insights acquired in the past year and to contemplate their impact on what lies ahead in 2012. This season, my thoughts turn again to Africa, home of five 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 (video clips, below) given in 2011 by three of Africa’s best and brightest pioneers. These trailblazers 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 is Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was recently appointed Nigeria’s Finance Minister.
During a 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.
She’s an inveterate disruptor of the status quo who is guided by a 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) | 3 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 »
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 »
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Downtown Cape Coast, Ghana
Pulsating business scene
I spent the last couple weeks on assignment in Accra, Ghana. On this trip, I’ve seen more growth than any time since my company started working there in ’07. This is a period of unprecedented business activity and promising new projects within and beyond the mobile sector. Meanwhile, new competitors from around the world are streaming in. This corner of Africa’s business scene is pulsating.
Astute businesses here are taking steps to preserve their client base and deepen relationships with their customers. We’re privileged to work with a new generation of African business leaders with the courage and determination to transform their offerings to meet the needs of an emerging class of consumers.
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Tags: accra, africa, Analytics, customer intelligence, ECOWAS, empowerment, ghana, strategic alliance, Sub-Sahara, West Africa
Posted in Analytics, Business Practices, Collaboration, customer experience management, Emerging Markets, Social Entrepreneur, Sub-Sahara Region, Technology from Developing Regions, Telecommunications, Uncategorized, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | 3 Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Having just returned from Ghana, I was keenly interested Roger Cohen’s NYT piece today. He says,
In my lifetime, conditions have grown immeasurably better, freer and more prosperous for a majority of humanity, yet hand-wringing about the miserable remains the reflex mode for most coverage of planet earth.
Nowhere more so than in Africa, from which I’d just returned when the e-mail landed. During a short stay in Ghana, which will hold free elections in December, Vodafone had bought a majority stake in Ghana Telecom for $900 million (entering a fiercely competitive mobile-phone market) and I’d heard much about 6 percent annual growth, spreading broadband and new high-end cacao ventures.
Accra, the capital, is buzzing. Russian hedge funds are investing. New construction abounds. Technology enables people in the capital to text money transfers via mobile phone to poor relatives in the bush.
I think most of Cohen’s points are well taken. He doesn’t mention the discovery of oil off Ghana’s coast and the country’s fiber projects or the investments being made by multinationals in the country’s business infrastructure. The business climate in the region is improving, albeit in successive approximations. The country’s services sector — chiefly teleco and financial services — are contributing to Ghana’s high annual growth rate. Inflation is a growing concern, but so far it’s been manageable. The process leading up to this December’s election should be interesting. So far so good.
It’s also true that Africa’s success stories aren’t newsworthy to many news consumers. We mostly hear about war, corruption, disease and rampant poverty. On this point, I recommend Charlayne Hunter Gault’s “New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance,” — it’s chiefly about South Africa, but pertinent to the problem of media coverage across the continent.
If Ghana’s political environment remains stable and forward-looking, the country will be in a position to contribute even more of its stalwart intellectual capital to a “globalized” resource (R=G) community in the coming years. So, even if the global media is fixated on the region’s challenges, the numbers will support a different story. So look for Ghana and other gazelle nations of the sub-Sahara to lead the way.
Tags: africa, business, ghana, NYT, prahalad, Roger Cohen, West Africa
Posted in Emerging Markets, N=P, R=G, Sub-Sahara Region, Telecommunications, West Africa, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
Here’s an interesting piece in Time (July 31, 2008), The Creative Capitalism Roundtable, featuring a conversation with Bill Gates, CK Prahalad and others sharing their views on creative capitalism and the Bottom of the Pyramid. Their conversation led to a discussion of the telecom industry at the BoP:
Stengel [Managing Editor - Time]: C.K., I know that Bill was influenced by, by your work, and one of the questions I have, and I guess it’s a question both about creative capitalism and how you see it, is that, when it comes to cell phones for Kenyan farmers for example, isn’t this just good old fashion capitalism in the sense that it’s a recognition of a market that people hadn’t figured out how to profit from, and now, and now they are.
Prahalad: I think it is, but there’s a twist to it, and I think it’s an important twist. If you look at traditionally how we have looked at all this product and services especially high-tech products like cell phones, we would never have gone to the poor. But, I think that growth opportunity is there, as the cell phones have demonstrated. Also, it is changing the asymmetry of information, be it the farmer, who can now get prices, weather conditions, or someone who can make small transactions with SMS messaging, suddenly the asymmetry of information which is the essence of poverty — that is why people are poor, they don’t have access to information — that is changing very, very dramatically. What is happening in the cell phone industry, three billion people are connected for the first time in human history, I think it will be four billion soon. That I think gives me tremendous confidence that we can really take Bill’s idea and see it through to its logical conclusion, which, for me, is how to democratize commerce.
Food for thought…
Tags: africa, creative capitalism, Emerging Markets, Telecommunications
Posted in Sub-Sahara Region, Telecommunications, What's Next? (WILD CARD) | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Our company made a commitment in 2005 to transferring business skills and innovative practices, along with new technologies, to emerging markets. Our associates share a passion for this effort. But, frankly, we don’t say much about it in our communiqués, and we’re likely missing opportunities to marshal more support and gather additional resources. We know that we need to change that in the coming months.
Throughout Africa, business knowledge is crucial to economies at every stage of development. It enables companies to establish more effective capabilities necessary for developing thriving businesses. Knowledge transfer between companies makes sense. Well-structured collaborations are thriving and the benefits flow in both directions.
Efforts are mounting to raise awareness. In 2007, an unprecedented string of high profile events placed this agenda on the radar screen. After the Davos symposium and the much lauded TED events in both Monterrey and Arusha, Tanzania, African entrepreneurial successes are getting lots of attention.
In a more modest French conference hosted by Insead last April, “Nurturing Business Education in Africa,” a diverse group of educators focused on practical steps for transferring knowledge. “We will be looking for practical ways that business schools and their professors can strengthen the capability of African schools to train the continent’s future managers.”
A recent CNN Int’l article notes, “Africa is in desperate need of qualified and talented management to help its economies, not only running companies but helping entrepreneurs and ensuring more effective corporate and legislative governance policy”.
The publicity that Africa is getting seems mostly helpful and is growing more so as it attracts not just luminaries, but pragmatic entrepreneurs whose early forays are informing the business community about the region’s market potential. But, a looming concern is this becoming a flavor of the day movement.
Like all trends, it runs the risk of being discarded, supplanted by the next, new shiny idea. Another issue is the process being co-opted by global companies seeking to enhance their images. This may dampen the aspirations of those who genuinely want to make things happen.
This project isn’t for short term thinkers. Gains typically come through successive approximations. It takes patience and perseverance to develop opportunities across cultural divides. But, we’re finding that it’s worth the effort.
Tags: africa, africa business, west africa business
Posted in Emerging Markets, Gulf (GCC) Region | No Comments »
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