Author Archives: Niti Bhan

While you were out: 15 years later

By Niti Bhan | Published: September 6, 2019

The locus of Industrial Design and Manufactured Product Development has shifted halfway across the world to Asia – South Korea, China, India, the ASEAN. Wherever there is manufacturing and industries, there will be the necessary critical mass of skills, experience, and knowledge for industrial design to flourish. In December 2004, I wrote an article for […]

Posted in Analysis, China, Design, global, Innovation Planning, Perspective, Strategy, Technology | Tagged china, design, hardware engineering, industrial design, industrial production, manufacturing, shenzhen | Leave a comment

The Colonized Self

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 31, 2019

In the mid to late 1960s, my maternal grandfather sought to expand his industrial operations outside India, and began exploring the idea of establishing a manufacturing footprint in the newly Independent nations of South East Asia. By 1970, once the troubles of May 1969 had settled down, a joint venture was founded in what was […]

Posted in Perspective | Tagged colonization, colonization of the mind, decolonization, decolonizing the self, personal, the colonized self | Leave a comment

The legacy of Uber’s business model and app will outlive the company in Africa

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 27, 2019

As news of Uber’s possible decline and fall filters in, it behooves me to take a moment to ponder the implications for sub Saharan Africa’s digital economic ecosystem, particularly the decentralized hybrid one emerging among the erstwhile informal sectors of the economy, such as motorcycle taxis and other on demand services. While Uber itself has […]

Posted in Africa, African Consumer Market, Analysis, Biashara Economics, Business Models, Cashless transactions, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Consumer Behaviour, Design, Economy, Ecosystem, Frameworks, Innovation Planning, Marchés africains, Marketing, Mobile platform, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology | Tagged business model, demand and supply, informal economy, prepaid economy, social biashara, uber, uberization, uberization of african informal economy | Leave a comment

Decolonizing Africa’s Informal Economy

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 25, 2019

I’ve been reviewing the seminal literature on decolonization as it relates to my professional practice, all in various books from the library – Dr Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall’s Decolonizing Design Innovation; Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodology; Kagendo Mutua and BB Swadener’s Decolonizing Research in Cross-Cultural Contexts; specific articles such as Dr. Pranee Liamputtong’s Cross-Cultural Research […]

Posted in Africa, Education, Literature review, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research | Tagged decolonization, decolonizing informal economy, informal economy, informal sector | Leave a comment

Transition to Student Life

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 19, 2019

I’ve been too busy to blog since August began, transitioning into the spaces where I will be a fulltime student once more, after 30 years. Now that the rush of registration and photography and getting all the keycards sorted is over, my time is my own again and I can write. You can see my […]

Posted in Education, Emerging Futures, Perspective | Tagged aalto design factory, doctoral studies | Leave a comment

“You can call my name” – A poll on labels that divide us

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 23, 2019

Hand curating an Africa specific economy, innovation, and enterprise timeline on Twitter means that I come across a plethora of labels to describe the rest of the world outside of the mainstream. And, in the global mainstream media, this tends to mean the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Given the recent spate […]

Posted in Base of the Pyramid, global, Perspective, Research | Leave a comment

The Perfect Storm: A Continent, A Phone, A Business Model

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 20, 2019

In the mid 1990s, in a small city in northern Finland, engineers and designers began work on the product development of a mobile phone that would eventually become one of the best selling Nokia models ever – the 3310, released in Europe and the Far East in the year 2000. The continent of Africa was […]

Posted in Africa, African Consumer Market, Afrique francophone, Airtime, Analysis, Articles on Design and Innovation, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Business Models, Cashless transactions, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Consommateurs, Consumer Behaviour, Design, Economy, Ecosystem, Emerging Futures, Emerging Markets, Flexibility, global, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Kenya, Mobile platform, perfect storm, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Rural Economy, South Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology, User research | Tagged africa, digital ecosystem, mobile phone, prepaid economy, the perfect storm | Leave a comment

The Prepaid Economy as a Commercial Operating Environment

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 18, 2019

I have been looking for information the global prepaid mobile subscriber market since yesterday morning. Initially, all I wanted to know was the percentage of prepaid subscribers in China, as I wanted to compare operating environments in major mobile markets like India and China, against the fast growth emergent one in sub Saharan Africa. What […]

Posted in Africa, African Consumer Market, Airtime, Alternative currency, Analysis, ASEAN, Assumption filter, Banking, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Business Models, Cashless transactions, China, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Consumer Behaviour, Culture, Design, Economy, Ecosystem, Emerging Markets, Flexibility, Frugality, Ghana, global, Income, India, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Kenya, Marchés africains, Marketing, Mobile platform, Nigeria, Perspective, Philipines, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Rural Economy, Savings, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology | Tagged africa, china, digital mobile social ecosystem, digital social economy, ecosystem, emerging markets, india, informal economy, mobile, prepaid business model, prepaid economy, south east asia | Leave a comment

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement and the Age of Interoperability

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 15, 2019

I have been writing on cross border mobile financial flows across the African continent since early 2015, when the partnerships and agreements made between African telcos to provide interoperability between their mobile money services first began to hit the headlines. In my last post back in August 2016, I asked if Cross Border Mobile Money […]

Posted in Africa, Afrique francophone, Airtime, Alternative currency, Analysis, Assumption filter, Banking, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Business Models, Cashless transactions, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Economy, Ecosystem, Emerging Futures, Ghana, Income, Informal & Flexible, Kenya, Mobile platform, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology, UEMOA | Tagged afcfta, african continental free trade agreement, african digital economy, cross border mobile financial services, cross border trade, interoperability, mobile money, trade | 1 Response

New Market Opportunity: The Digitalisation of African Agriculture

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 12, 2019

Just over two weeks ago, I analyzed a report on the Digitalization of African Agriculture on twitter. Bandwidth heavy PDFs aren’t user friendly for mobile first or mobile only browsing environments, such as prevalent across much of the African continent, and ‘granulating’ reports is something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing quite regularly for […]

Posted in Africa, Airtime, Alternative currency, Analysis, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Cattle, Design, Ecosystem, Indigenous & Traditional, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Livestock, Mobile platform, Platforms, Report Review, Research, rural, Rural Economy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology | Tagged africa, agriculture, D4Ag, design, digitalization, new market strategy, rural value chain, sustainable agricultural value chain development, vcd | Leave a comment