Reframing the informal sector in the African consumer market: The real African middle class
This is Ruth’s shop, on the side of the highway, approximately 5km on the road to Kisumu, from Busia in western Kenya. Not quite directly part of the borderland’s economy, that trades incessantly with each other, these businesses still manage to feed off the energy of the hustle and bustle of biashara, as it flows […]
Africa’s rise might strangle the informal trading sector in the “middle income trap”
Ruth, who was briefly introduced in a photo caption is currently facing this middle income trap. She can’t gather enough together to scale and the banks want to skim 18% of the profits of the top, usury, thy name is inclusion. Mrs Felice is facing this dilemma as her container from China will now make […]
Emerging African women entrepreneurs #informaleconomy
At the other end of the high tech geeky startup spectrum increasingly providing a platform for African women is the informal retail and wholesale trade sector. Like their West African sisters, the women traders I met in the border market of Busia, Kenya (next door to Busia, Uganda) and its nearby environs (~ 5km radius), […]
Infrastructure has a direct relationship to how much your rural business can scale
This is a micro-wholesaler and retailer in a staple commodity. Infrastructural constraints limit the stock she can manage at one go – seen as the sack with her name on it. This indicates that it was sourced from some distance away, as this is the matatu’s informal package tracking service. It could have come from […]
The hidden cost of doing business #informaleconomy
This looks like its a low cost business operation with low barriers to entry. All you need to do is find a decent tree under which to display your wares. The reality is that these entrepreneurs have numerous fees and costs that they must pay in order to do business, regardless of how informal it […]
There’s more to informal trade than meets the eye
This photograph captures the way micro entrepreneurs in the informal economy perceive their business. There is more here than meets the eye at the first instance. Note the green logo of the Kenyan mobile money transfer system M-Pesa in the background of the cash transfer taking place, by hand, in the foreground. The customer is […]
Changing flows of trade
This unassuming pile of clothes caught my attention on market day in Busia, Kenya. They are mitumba (secondhand clothes) from India. This is a recent development, apparently, as traditionally mitumba tends to come from the ‘west’ (as can be noted by the name on the bag shown below). Clothes sourced from India have begun showing […]
What marketing 101 can teach development practitioners and academics
The entire universe of people with an unmet need that you expect your solution to fulfill is not your target audience. The fundamentals of market analysis include the basic calculations that allow marketing managers of all stripes to calculate (guesstimate) their potential market size, and thus a realistic assessment of its value. That is their […]
Carrefour in Cote D’Ivoire: Thinking global; acting local
Unusually, for a global retail brand like the French Carrefour chain, their range of products in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire include numerous locally sourced products. News has it that they signed as many as 170 different supplier agreements in their bid to source indigenously. …local products like pineapple from Bonoua (south-east), yam from Bondoukou (east), rice […]
Is Uganda’s rural, informal economy helping people climb over the poverty line?
I stumbled across this dataset on the World Bank’s open data website yesterday, and couldn’t resist making a table to convey the message. Uganda’s poverty headcount halved in the decade between 2002 and 2012. Their statistics are rated well enough that this doesn’t seem to be too far off the mark. In the three years […]
