A holistic perspective
Most maps on economic affairs tend to focus on either the developing or the developed world, or a preselected set of countries such as BRICS or G20. Stepping back for the big picture changes the frame of reference entirely. Dark brown denotes the fastest growth.
Japan’s Indian Strategy for the African Consumer Market
One of the most high-profile events Kenya has hosted since independence begins this week when heads of state from across Africa and the Prime Minister of Japan Mr Shinzo Abe jet in for the Tokyo International Conference on Africa Development (TICAD). It will be the first time that Ticad has been held outside Japan and […]
Lowering the barriers to effective communication is the key to sustainable development
One of the challenges that we discovered during our multistakeholder workshop in The Hague a few years ago was that people tended to fall back on their expertise when faced with the discomfort of empathizing with farmer’s needs. Particularly so when the farmers in question were from Africa, and not from their own regions. Our […]
Design of Digital Financial Services for Inclusion Needs More Respect and Humility to Succeed
In the past week alone, I’ve seen three glaring cases of unquestioned assumptions around the design and implementation of Digital Financial Service (DFS) particularly for financial inclusion, but also otherwise. This gives rise to the question whether the industry is prepared to undertake the mission they have set for themselves. The first is that their […]
Le commerce direct des produits fabriqués en Chine est-il susceptible de perturber le marché des consommateurs africains?
This article has been translated into the French by Yacine Bio-Tchané La première plateforme d’e-commerce spécialisée dans la vente directe des produits fabriqués en Chine vient d’être lancée au Togo, un pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Coincé tout comme la République du Bénin entre deux grands pays davantage connus, le Nigeria et le Ghana,le Togo […]
Will Cross Border Mobile Money Boost intra African Trade and Regional Integration?
Over the past 18 months, since I started tracking the spread of cross border mobile money payments across the African continent, there has been visible progress in leaps and bounds, as documented by the GSMA. In fact, back then, I’d written: Top down reportage on banking and interoperability seems to focus only on the customer’s […]
Will Direct Access to China-made Goods Disrupt Trade in West Africa’s Consumer Market?
The first e-commerce platform for direct trade of China made products has just been launched in the West African country of Togo. Squeezed together with the Benin Republic between the larger, and better known countries of Nigeria and Ghana, Togo is a small francophone country of around 7 million people. Per the article: “We want […]
Part 2: Enabling development’s paradigm shift from ‘best practice’ to ‘best fit’
Programming in International Development jumps directly into the Design phase of the projects. This is the root of the challenge they face now as they seek to change the paradigm away from ‘best practice’ to putting the end users at the center of their strategies, with ‘best fit’. I identified this problem in the Autumn […]
An Interdisciplinary Approach to “Best Fit” for International Development: Process and Tools
This post follows on from the previous one which introduced the concept of a ‘best fit’ approach to the ‘wicked problems’ in development. There I posited that consumer facing private enterprises looking at the African market would benefit from considering Development’s thought-leadership in this regard, given their experience in the challenging operating environments of the […]
Pivoting from “best practice” to “best fit”: An interdisciplinary perspective
There has been an evolution in thinking about development practice. Buckley and Ward (2015) found a broad consensus for a shift from a ‘best-practice paradigm’ (Chambers 2011) to one of ‘best fit’ — that is, development interventions that are ‘optimally adapted’ to the socioeconomic, political and ecological context at any given moment (Ramalingam et al. […]
