Taking the question of appropriate and relevant metrics by which to assess competitiveness (rather, attractiveness) of the emerging African consumer markets further, I decided to dig up some analytical infographics to compare and contrast their approaches.
Urbanization is a current favourite, and here are two similar looking visuals from two different perspectives. The first is Knight Frank’s report on real estate opportunities on the continent, while the second is from PwC’s African section of the WEF Global Competitiveness report.
Knight Frank 2015
PwC 2015
Leaving aside the question of whether Dar es Salaam will show greater than or less than 120% growth in the next 15 years, here’s a clear indication of how choice of metrics impact outcomes. Granted, PwC selected countries on which to focus, thus the cities they list differ from Knight Frank’s, and each report has a different emphasis. Otoh, should there be a difference of ~ 10% in growth estimates for Nairobi, for instance, or Ibadan? No wonder these reports lead many to decry the quality of statistics and data from Africa.
Anyway, the point isn’t to debate whose method was better or if Dar will be the fastest growing capital on the continent or not. Until the dust settles down in the current scramble for African reportage, its best to take multiple sources of data into consideration and triangulate on the most reasonable estimate.
Questioning Convention and Convenience
The point is to ask if the conventional way we approach assessing the size and value of a market opportunity might itself need to be questioned when it comes to the African market?
For decades, South Africa was the closest thing to a developed economy south of the Sahara and until last year, the largest and strongest of all. This led to it becoming the de facto frame of reference through which to evaluate the others. PwC’s report shows this heritage in these analytical charts which compare regional (and continental) economic powerhouses of Nigeria and Kenya against South Africa.
In today’s world, you’re highly likely to be looking at Nigeria in West Africa and Kenya in East, if you’re looking at Africa at all. What you’d want is a means to compare the two, or more, rather than compare each against a third country whose operating environment you may not be familiar with.
This choice of metric – the lens by which they assess competitiveness – seems to make sense at first glance. But is it helpful in any way, shape or form to any organization without experience of the South African context by which to judge the relative rankings of the others? South Africa’s historical economic development lends itself to favourable rankings on the conventional metrics used for a globe spanning index while much of the others fall behind in contrast.
Yet they are distinguishing themselves in unique ways, contradicting what the metrics seem to imply – we saw the same challenge, in different form, with the E-commerce readiness index proposed by UNCTAD. South Africa’s current economic trajectory as compared to projections for either Kenya or Nigeria (or quite a few of the others) is quite dismal and the outlook gloomy, quite unlike the healthy exuberance of these two – compare SA’s 2.1% with Kenya’s 6.2% or Nigeria’s 7.3% – like I said, I’d be wanting to compare these two against each other, and maybe Ghana or Ivory Coast or Rwanda etc .
Is it time to think about developing metrics that better reflect the complexity and potential of the African operating environment?
Interesting post. It’s pretty straightforward to do the NG v KE comparison using PWC’s charts since it’s an ordinal ranking – for instance for health & primary education, I can easily read Nigeria as a 3, SA as a 4, and Kenya as a 4.5.
What the rankings actually mean beyond generating frisson and faux precision is another thing altogether; though it is great to learn from PWC that the ancient town of Ibadan has recently grown wings and moved a thousand miles east to a new country, Cameroun. Must be that new urban globalization thing. ;)
@AfricaMET