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.

Brief bios and video clips:

Patrick Awuah lived in the United States for two decades where he worked at Microsoft before returning to his native Ghana in 2002 to establish Ashesi University.

Ashesi’s mission is “to educate African leaders of exceptional integrity and professional ability”. ’Ashesi’ means “beginnings” in Akan, a language of the region.

With a focus on liberal arts, Ashesi offers courses in computer sceince, management information systems, and business administration.  Since its inception, the university has grown in size and stature. In 2011, Ashesi inaugurated its new campus in Berekuso near Ghana’s capital, Accra.

> His moving talk, The Spirit of the Time, was delivered at Zeitgeist Americas. “Education is about developing character,” he says of Ashesi’s approach to building the next generation of Africa’s leaders.

…

Erik Hersman lives in Kenya where he writes two influential technology blogs, White African and Afrigadget. He’s a Senior TED Fellow, a PopTech Fellow and an organizer of Maker Faire Africa.

During Kenya’s post-election crisis of 2007 – 2008, he helped to create Ushahidi, an open-source platform that tracked eyewitnesses reports of violence occurring in the country. Today, Ushahidi operates as a non-profit company which develops software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.

In 2010, Hersman co-founded iHub, an innovative “open space” for Nairobi’s technologists, tech firms and investors with over 6,000 members. In 2011 he co-founded m:lab, a regional mobile incubation lab.

> In his TechPop 2011 talk, Africa on the Rise, he asks, “If you’re an entrepreneur, why would you want to be anywhere else?” He added, “The sun isn’t rising on Africa, it’s risen on Africa.”

…

Juliana Rotich is another co-founder of Ushahidi where she serves as the organization’s executive director. She is the author of the Afromusing blog, a Senior TED Fellow, and a contributor to and editor of Global Voices Online.

She co-founded Mobisoko, a mobile marketplace for language and location-relevant apps in Africa. She was also an analyst with Hewitt Associates in Chicago.

> In her Wired 2011 talk, Rotich tells the story of Ushihidi’s launch and describes how the company’s crowdsourcing platform has been used to track crisis information around the world. ”We started in one country in Africa,” she says, “and now the platform is used in 132 countries.”

***

………………………………………………..

Image courtesy of Dave Ley.

Related resources:

This NYT piece (1/11), “Transforming Africa through Higher Education” discusses Mr. Awuah’s vision and challenges in maintaining Ashesi University.

Here’s a clip featuring Ms. Rotich addressing the UN about Huduma, a Ushahidi pilot initiative launched in 2011 in which citizen reports about government services are collected and mashed up with census and healthcare institution data. More info on Huduma is found in this Guardian article.

Here are two previous posts (2010) on Ushahidi: Out of Africa, Help for Haiti and Kenya’s Tech Helps Chile, too.  And, Ingenuity Born of Necessity in Kenya (2011) featuring Mr. Hersman.

Add: Mr. Erik Hersman’s post (1/4/12), What’s on Tap for 2012?

More info on this subject?

Check out Vijay Mahajan’s ’09 book, Africa Rising.

For up-to-date info on Africa’s high-growth economies, visit the blog by the World Bank’s chief economist on Africa, and the superb, resource-rich Centre for African Economics.

.

Related posts:

1. Song of Africa “It’s not a picture of a dark continent but...
2. Ingenuity Born of Necessity in Kenya Hersman's pitch is compelling: Nairobi's most promising developers are creating...
3. The Disruptor Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has championed economic reform in her native Nigeria...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.”

The Journey

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has championed economic reform in her native Nigeria and on a global stage. Before accepting the job of Finance Minister for the second time, she served as the World Bank’s Managing Director. Her remarkable record of achievement is due to a formidable blend of intellect, creativity and steely tenacity.

Okonjo-Iweala tells the story of growing up in the Delta State near the Niger River during the Nigeria-Biafra war in the late 60′s. Her father fought on the Biafra side during the conflict as the family struggled to survive. At age fifteen, while her mother was ill, her three-year old sister became stricken with malaria.

She placed her sister on her back and walked 10 kilometers to a clinic. When they arrived, hundreds of people were queued at the entrance. Instead of waiting, Okonjo-Iweala made her way to the side of the building and climbed in through a window. “I knew if she didn’t get help she’d die.”

A doctor gave the baby a shot of chloroquine and re-hydrated her. Within hours, her sister had recovered. “The ten kilometers home with her on my back — that was the shortest walk of my life.”

Okonjo-Iweala’s journey had only begun. She went on to earn an undergraduate degree at Harvard and a Ph.D. in regional economics and development at MIT.

‘Trouble Woman’

Okonjo-Iweala was the mother of four children when she began her first stint as Finance Minister in 2003. Soon, she became known for rooting out corruption and making government more transparent.

She led a series of reforms including decoupling the country’s budget from the price of oil, Nigeria’s chief export, to end its perennial liquidity crisis. She led investigations into government corruption and sacked crooked officials.

In addition, she streamlined the country’s bloated public sector and led efforts to crack down on its notorious Internet and letter extortion scams. Oil companies were required to publish how much they paid the government.

As a result of her stringent measures, public trust in government skyrocketed and Nigeria became more attractive to foreign investment. While a majority of Nigerians embraced Okonjo-Iweala, she made enemies among the country’s anti-reformists.

“They called me Okonjo-Wahala [a play on her surname] — or Trouble Woman. It means ‘I give you hell’. But I don’t care what names they call me. I’m a fighter; I’m very focused on what I’m doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve. If you get in my way, you get kicked.”

Her tenacity served her well. In 2005, she spearheaded her government’s negotiations with the Paris Club of Creditors to pay down $30 billion USD of the country’s debt including the cancellation of $18 billion USD.

Before resigning her post in 2006, Okonjo-Iweala stabilized Nigeria’s currency and cut its inflation rate from 28 percent to about 11 percent. The country’s GDP grew to over 6 percent from 2.3 percent in the prior decade. She strengthened the country’s banks and recovered millions of dollars in stolen assets.

The Mandate

After leaving office, Okonjo-Iweala continued fighting for developing countries at the World Bank raising a record $49.3 billion USD through the Institutional Development Fund. She also had oversight of the Bank’s special food crisis fund helping countries impacted by high and volatile food prices. More than 40 million people in 44 countries around the world benefit from the fund.

Okonjo-Iweala reached her latest milestone on August 17, 2011 when Nigeria’s new president, Goodluck Jonathan, swore her in for her second term as Finance Minister.

This time she has a mandate for extirpating corruption. As a condition to accepting the job, she was granted expanded control over all aspects of the economy including oversight of its ministers.

Okonjo-Iweala’s job won’t be easy. Her mandate comes with lofty expectations. Nigeria’s growth rate remains high but much of its population of 140 million still lives on under $2 a day. Institutional corruption is pervasive.

“The expectation, not just for Nigerians but for the whole world, is quite high,” President Jonathan observed at her swearing in, according to AllAfrica.com.

“People expect so much from you. Some feel that you have the magic wand to change everything. I believe with your level of experience and the support we will give you and the cooperation of your colleagues, all of you collectively, will help to change our own country.”

***

Headshot images: Courtesy of the World Bank/IMF Archives

…………………………………….

Want more info on this subject?

Here’s Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s engaging ’07 TED Talk and a video clip in which she talks about facing Nigeria’s generals after recommending sizable defense spending cuts to fund education.

One of Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s focus issues, not mentioned in the post, is South-South cooperation, i.e. fostering trade among developing nations.

“I Keep My Ego in My Handbag”, Guardian piece on  Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s career, work ethic and family life. 

“Is Okonko-Iweala the DeFacto Prime Minister? AllAfrica.com op-ed (9/4/11).

Related but interesting:

Her son, Uzodinma Iweala, is the author of a critically acclaimed novel, Beasts of No Nation (2005). (Here is an audio reading by the author.)

Background:

Recommended for readers interested in Nigerian history – Peter Cunliffe-Jones’ crisp account, My Nigeria – Five Decades of Independence (2010).

.

Related posts:

1. Song of Africa “It’s not a picture of a dark continent but...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

While engineers and mobile operators rely on the map for technical purposes, Song has found that a wider audience has been using the map for a variety of reasons.

“My theory, for which I have no other evidence than the nature of the feedback I have received from users, is that the map paints a different-from-the-usual picture of Africa,” he observes.

“It’s not a picture of a dark continent but rather a brightly lit one, lit by terabits of light capacity brought by a dozen cables landing on sub-Saharan African shores either now or in the near future. Africa, the brilliant continent.  This also happens to be the Africa I believe in.”

The time-series version of Song’s map represents Africa’s digital divide being bridged as investment capital pours into the region.  Each iteration depicts incremental gains in Africa’s Internet access and associated reductions in the cost of access.

Terrestrial Edition

But Song’s undersea fiber map only chronicles bandwidth being supplied to Africa’s rim. Vast swathes of the continent’s interior have yet to be reached by terrestrial fiber, leaving gaps in coverage for millions of Africans. There are no maps that chart the Sub-Sahara’s complex terrestrial infrastructure.

Therefore Song decided to start mapping terrestrial cables, too. But that task will be daunting given that there are many more terrestrial lines than undersea cables. The good news is that Google Africa recently offered to lend a hand. The company is providing Song with much-needed funding and global information system (GIS) support.

Song dubbed the project ‘AFTerFibre‘ (Africa’s Terrestrial Fibres) which he hopes to complete by next year.  In the meantime, he’s set up a Google Group to encourage others to help fill in the missing pieces.

The implications of Google’s involvement are significant. The company recognizes the need for accelerating connectivity across borders, and they see mapping as a critical step in the process.

As the marketplace gets a more complete picture of Africa’s digital infrastructure, new opportunities for commercialization will result in Internet accessibility for more Africans while driving economic development across the continent.

Song says, “I hope that a map like this will inspire the same sort of local/regional projects in the way that undersea cables have inspired national fibre projects.”

***

Map courtesy of Steve Song. His aptly-named blog, Many Possibilities, is a Touch Points ‘recommended resource’.

Additional info on this subject is found on the Tech4change blog. Here are facts and figures on bandwidth and fiber penetration in Africa.

Addendum (Aug 20-11): Afrinnovator’s Internet/Broadband (Fiber) ‘Pulse Check’ (Aug 6).  And, here’s Matt Berg at PopTech 2010 who sums it up best:  ”We have fiber.  We’re no longer sipping through a straw.”

.

Related posts:

1. Ingenuity Born of Necessity in Kenya Hersman's pitch is compelling: Nairobi's most promising developers are creating...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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?

It’s due to Nairobi’s growing reputation as a hotbed of mobile software development. The city has earned the moniker ‘Silicon Savanna’ due to high-profile, innovative mobile ventures launched there including Ushahidi, the ‘open source’ crisis-mapping platform, and M-Pesa, the world’s first mobile money service — a model for ‘access to banking’ services.

Both platforms were originally modest, homegrown solutions for local problems that were later widely adopted outside the region. The global tech community is expecting stellar performers in Nairobi’s next wave of apps and services, too.

The right stuff

On the surface, Nairobi may not look like a prime contender to be the next ICT hub. With a population of 3.5 million, it’s only the 12th largest city on the continent, but it’s one of East Africa’s most vital commercial and cultural centers.

Incubators are springing up in Lagos, Accra, Dakar and other large African cities, but Nairobi stands out due to the top-tier multinational firms using the city as a base for serving Africa’s booming mobile markets.

Nairobi is becoming known for its vibrant community of mobile developers whose ingenuity and confidence are growing over time. Their cleverly designed apps — elegant in their simplicity — are now part of Africa’s social landscape.

The city is also home to a small, vocal cadre of tech advocates who’ve trumpeted their community’s early wins, convincing audiences around the world that there’s more innovation on the way. The impact of potent advocacy is often overlooked when observers speculate about why Nairobi has the right stuff to be the epicenter of mobile technology.

An ‘ecosystem built on talent’

One of Nairobi’s more influential advocates is Erik Hersman, co-founder of Ushahidi, and founder of iHub (‘innovation-Hub’), an open-space tech incubator with over three thousand members. He contends that Nairobi’s pool of gifted developers is responsible for the region’s dominance.

“It’s an ecosystem built on talent,” he said in an interview with TNW Africa. “Nairobi is exploding with world-caliber techies, and companies such as Google, Cisco, Nokia, Seimens and Airtel (all of which built their African headquarters in Nairobi) have recognized that.”

He added, “Certain cities tend to be hubs, success breeds success, so when someone wins in a place like Nairobi, it quickly attracts more entrepreneurs and spinouts.”

A global stage

Success does indeed breed success, but the region also benefits from Hersman’s unique ability to attract capital for funding new projects. He’s not only a champion for Nairobi’s talent, he also creates workspaces for nurturing it.

In addition to his iHub initiative, described as “part open community workspace, part vector for investors and VCs, and part incubator,” Hersman is a driving force behind m:labs — Africa’s first mobile incubator launched on the heels of Pivot25 with support from the World Bank, Nokia and the Government of Finland.

Through his influential ‘White African’ blog and his roles as a TED Fellow and a PopTech Fellow, Hersman has a global stage on which to showcase his community’s engineers who bring, as he says, “ingenuity born of necessity”.

His latest contribution to building Nairobi’s image as an tech hub was his involvement in the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI), launched July 8, when Kenya became the first African country, and one of the first in the world, to make government data accessible to its citizens. (Here’s more on KODI.)

Hersman’s pitch to investors is compelling: Nairobi’s talented developers are creating the next wave of mobile software for the African market and beyond. Like their predecessors, the most promising new apps will affect a large number of people in a meaningful way.

This is an exciting space to watch. We’re witnessing history unfold now in Africa. As TIME Magazine’s Africa bureau chief put it: “…this is not a story merely of how technology is changing Africa. Africans are changing technology right back.”

***

……………………………………………………………………

Image: ‘Nairobi from Uhuru Park’ Courtesy of Arthur Buliva

.
Want more info on this subject?

• –Superb WIRED piece, Switching On: Africa’s Vast New Tech Opportunity (7/11).
• –Other champions of Kenya’s mobile tech community include Ory Okolloh of Google Africa and Juliana Rotich of Ushahidi
• –Hersman makes the case (2 clips): Africa in the 21st Century, and in his ‘09 TED Talk on launching Ushahidi
• –For context, Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS, shares his views on mobile usage in developing markets
• –WIRED piece (July 12, 2011): Switching on: Africa’s new tech opportunity
• –TED Global – Africa (’07) series from Arusha, Tanzania — it’s amazing how far the African tech scene has evolved since then
• –A Touch Points post on Ushahidi’s role in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake

• –Addendum: Hershman post (7/18), “What makes iHub work?”

As always, I’d appreciate your views…

.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Scale and Diversity

Africa is a vast and diverse continent where triumph and despair co-exist with everything in between.  It’s the “in-between” that tends to be overlooked in coverage about Africa.

Outsiders tends to underestimate Africa’s scale. As writer John Reader points out, the U.S., China, India, and New Zealand, together with most of Europe, could all fit within Africa’s coastline. This enormous continent contains almost a quarter of the world’s land mass.

The continent is amazingly diverse. The continent’s billion people inhabit 53 countries and speak over two thousand languages arguably making it the world’s most diverse region.  Africa’s diversity extends to its topography, climate, and culture.

Despite its remarkable diversity, most outsiders tend to picture Africa as a homogeneous region instead of as a melange of distinctive ethnic groups and cultures that influence everything from art and music to social structures.

Author Richard Dowden observes, “Every time you say ‘Africa is…’ the words crumble and break.  Every generalization must exclude at least five countries. And just as you have nailed down a certainty, a defining characteristic, you find the opposite is true.”  Stark contrasts and rich diversity are Africa’s defining features.

Failed States and Model Nations

One need only look at Africa’s recent history to get a sense of its diversity. During the last decade, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was ravaged by an incomprehensibly violent civil war where millions perished. Somalia maintained its role as one of the world’s most lawless and dangerous states. Zimbabwe, endowed with abundant natural resources became known for its delusional ruler, Robert Mugabe, who decimated his nation’s economy. It’s understandable that such dire cases grabbed the headlines and shaped the world’s perception of Africa.

But during the same period, Botswana, Seychelles, Mauritius and, to a lesser extent, Senegal, Zambia, and Namibia encouraged private investment, grew their economies, and improved their living standards.  Kenya focused on building its tech sector and similar initiatives were launched in Ghana and Tanzania.  Oil-rich Nigeria took steps to reform its institutions and diversify its economy.

In light of Africa’s stark contrasts and rich diversity, it’s fitting that the World Cup is hosted by South Africa, a nation where eleven languages are recognized as official and many more are spoken.  South Africa has the continent’s largest and most diversified economy, but it faces serious challenges including steep unemployment and the world’s highest HIV/AIDS rates.  Here, too, great promise and opportunity co-exist with poverty and despair.

I’ve been traveling to Africa since the mid-80′s and whenever I think I’ve found an explanation for why things are the way they are, I’m proven wrong.  There’s always an exception. Diversity rules in Africa.

I’ll be watching the World Cup matches and rooting for the six African teams who qualified. They’re all underdogs, but I’ve learned never to count Africa out.

***

Post-script:  It was a treat to experience the World Cup from Accra, Ghana. The country’s Black Stars team beat the USA to make it to the quarter finals.  Here are images from that trip.

……………………………………………….

What do you think? As always, I’d appreciate your perspective.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

These are exciting times to work with African business leaders who take seriously their mandate for investing in new technologies and business practices.  We’re helping them gain competitive advantages by improving the service systems that support touch points, by adding new service channels, and by harvesting business intelligence, among other initiatives.

Building competitiveness

The most effective strategy for businesses to gain a competitive edge here is to understand and meet the customer needs better than their rivals.  Forward-thinking leaders here know that competing on service will help preserve their customer base and attract new customers even as the marketplace grows more crowded with aggressive new entrants.

Developing insights about customers’ preferences and purchasing drivers helps companies here achieve competitiveness as well as profitability.

It also creates jobs. Thriving regional businesses are Africa’s greatest engine of job creation and economic growth.  That’s why we’re committed to collaborating with leading African businesses, knowing that their success means more jobs and higher living standards across the region.

What it takes to work here

This question comes up frequently in my circles. I think Western companies operating here require a distinctive set of leadership and communication skills. Traditional business skills are necessary but not sufficient to address the complexity and scale of challenges on this continent.

But what’s needed for Western companies to operate effectively in this environment? We’ve explored this question with business leaders in various sectors as well as academics, entrepreneurs, and technology innovators.

Our conclusion is that it’s not enough to bring an open mind. We must be skillful listeners. That means checking our assumptions at the door and listening with the intention of gaining deeper insights about the market and, most importantly, the customer.  Deep collaboration with partners and clients is key.

Africa’s dynamism and complexity require going beyond merely tolerating ambiguity. Ambiguity, a ubiquitous feature here, must be embraced.  “Leaning into” uncertainty is critical to problem-solving in this market.

It’s critical to drop the need for control, otherwise it’s tough to handle the inherent ‘push-pull’ of a region that’s steeped in tradition while it grows so rapidly.

The ability to consider competing, often “fuzzy” options helps us work with stakeholders here to produce the imaginative, yet practical solutions that the region demands.

Finally, operating in the region requires extraordinary levels of patience and perseverance.  Change rarely happens in sweeping strokes here. Instead change occurs through “successive approximations”.  One step forward, two back but always moving ahead.  Patience — never my strongest card — is essential.  (Note: I’m working on it.)

People, Process and Technology – Redux

Succeeding here requires mastery in choreographing people, process and technology, and we help clients focus on all three dimensions — what we refer to as “service systems”.  Of the three, ‘people’ is the most critical and challenging to optimize.

Africa’s leading companies are now investing heavily in their people because they know, in the end, that this the only sustainable ‘differentiator’.

On this trip, I observed how one company in particular, a leading business process outsourcer and partner, transformed its organization into a high performance business by nurturing its talent.  It accomplished this feat by fostering competition among its teams while encouraging buy-in and autonomy among team members.

Watching their evolution over time has been both heartening and instructive. Today, I’d stack them up against any competitor in the world. This kind of innovative, customer-focused organization is poised to meet the needs of customers in any market.

Lessons from Africa

Like all prior trips to Africa, this one was a valuable learning experience on several levels.  I encountered a new generation of leaders and was impressed by their willingness to invest in becoming more competitive. The vitality of the continent’s nascent mobile-web industry is breathtaking.  Keep an eye on this exciting space…

I also learned more about my company on this journey. I’m reminded that what separates us from our peers is our passion for and commitment to producing substantial results for our clients and their customers across the sub-Sahara.  It’s energizing to work on a continent of one billion people whose economic growth is only surpassed by China, and I never forget what a rare opportunity it is.

***

What do you think?  I’d appreciate hearing your perspective.

………………………………….

Want more info on this subject?  You’re not alone.  There’s a plethora of books about conflicts and coups in Africa, but there are fewer resources about doing business on the continent.  I’ve previously recommended Paul Collier’s ’07 book, The Bottom Billion, which remains relevant.

In ’07, TED organized Africa: The Next Chapter, a series of talks which included the first TED conference held on the continent.  The series featured a stellar lineup of speakers on a range of topics about Africa.  Since then, TED has added new presentations about business development in Africa to the series, and  I heartily recommend it.

Here are some of my prior posts about the sub-Sahara.

I’d appreciate hearing your recommendations about resources on this topic.

Related posts:

1. Ingenuity Born of Necessity in Kenya Hersman's pitch is compelling: Nairobi's most promising developers are creating...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.