My thoughts on the internet closures by various African governments
There have been a lot of internet shutdowns of late in many countries in Africa. These range from as little as simply blocking access to popular social media apps like WhatsApp and Facebook, all the way to shutting down the entire internet. What concerns me is the conflation of access to the internet with access […]
Resurrecting the Perspective blog
A long time ago, sometime in the first couple of months of 2005, I was on the phone with Stu Constantine, the founder of Core77, wondering out loud about future prospects as I contemplated resigning from my position as Director, Graduate Admissions at the Institute of Design, IIT, Chicago. He advised me to start a […]
Building the Bridge: Design methods for success in the informal economy
The above is a screen cap of my research plan submitted at the end of March 2019 as part of the doctoral admissions process. Everyone understands its only a working title for a yet to be defined problem statement, which is the purpose of doctoral studies as I see it from the user’s perspective. Both […]
I have been granted right to study at Doctoral level by Aalto University School of Engineering
That is a friend’s restored vintage Porsche I’m standing in front of, on the day I heard about my admission to the PhD programme in Aalto University. I’m officially admitted to the department of mechanical engineering, or konetekniikka as its known in suomi. In the Finnish system, I was admitted as an enrolled student as […]
Informal 4.0: How Tech Savvy Africans Are Transforming the Informal Economy
Here are my slides. In PDF form. And the video of the panel discussion.
Kenya’s informal economy clambering on to the information highway through their smartphones
Sometimes cliches are the only way to communicate the sheer breadth and depth of the transformation now undergoing in the informal sectors, such as trade and light manufacturing, thanks to affordable smartphones and data bundles. I began calling it digital and not online yesterday when we discovered many people didn’t recognize the word “online” in […]
The role of the grey market in Africa’s mobile telephony boom years
The grey market refers to goods which have been manufactured by or with the consent of the brand owner, but are sold outside of the brand owner’s approved distribution channels – which can be perfectly legal. (1) In Africa’s teeming business districts and electronics mega markets, the concept of grey market products underwent an evolution […]
Mobile Phones and the Informal Economy
Over the past week or so, I’ve been scanning literature from African researchers on the broad theme of mobile phones and the informal economy. Here are some of my top findings: The Mobile Phone is a Business Tool and Income Generator – Regardless of the region (and cultural context) of study – Cameroon or Cote […]
Africa’s emerging digital, social, mobile economy is neither formal nor informal but a bridge in between
Let’s call it the prepaid economy, I told Michael in our regular weekly call the other day. We were exploring the emergence of commercial activity on digital platforms in Kenya, and debating whether it could still be considered as an element of the existing informal economic ecosystem, or, was it something wholly novel and different? […]
I stand on the shoulders of giants
On the first day of 2019, instead of looking back over just the past 12 months, I am going to look back ten years. There’s an African proverb which says if you don’t know where you’re coming from, then you don’t know where you’re going. The photograph above was taken towards the end of 2009, […]
