Welcome to the new home of The Prepaid Economy blog
Instead of two separate locations, all my research, fieldwork, analysis and synthesis as well as news snippets covering all aspects of The Prepaid Economy project, systeme D, the informal and rural cash based markets of the developing world will now be available here together with the original Perspective blog. The Research category will pull […]
While you were outsourced: Last 10 years of mobile design, business and emerging markets
There’s a lot to be said here and I’ve been trying to sort it all out into some kind of logical flow. The global landscape of mobile phones is undergoing a huge shift, and like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, much of it is still under the radar. If I hadn’t gone down the […]
“Under Construction”
Dear Readers, I know its frustrating to hit my “Page not Found” message as you try to access a blog post on my website. We’re working double time to fix things as the site undergoes its first major redesign in 10 years! Tip: If you remove the .html from the end of the specific blog […]
New Market Analysis: It all boils down to Interpretation
This isn’t a new diagram for anyone familiar with my writing. Its a diagram I’ve been using to explain where my work fits into the innovation development process since I first saw it on Luke Wroblewski’s blog back in 2006. However, I’ve just been struck forcibly by the realization that there’s a very important piece […]
Segmenting the African Middle Class without dollar figures
Continuing the thinking from my previous post on the various attempts to size and value the potential of the emerging African middle classes based primarily in dollar figures, I thought to take a step back from income data to see if I could approach the challenge of segmentation in a different way. Below is the […]
My 2 shillings worth on the size or value of the emerging African middle classes
There’s been a lot in the news of late about the size and worth of the emerging African middle class subsequent to the release of an as yet unseen report by an economist, Simon Freemantle, at Standard Bank, South Africa. The various headlines conflict each other, some say the middle class isn’t as large as […]
The African Consumer Market: Where the Informal meets the Formal
While still largely based in the informal economy, the African haircare business has become a multi-billion dollar industry that stretches to China and India and has drawn global giants such as L’Oreal and Unilever. ~ Reuters, 6 Aug 2014 This snippet captures what I’d said in my HBR article on the challenge to marketing […]
Why social enterprise marketing tends to fail – hidden competition, invisible consumers
A couple of years ago, I was frequently in East Africa, consulting with a consumer product company set up as a social enterprise in the renewable energy sector. An extensive distribution network across Kenya had been established through what they called TT – traditional trade. Yet their sales were nowhere near the figures one would […]
Human centered design for financial inclusion: Lessons from fieldwork in rural India, The Phillipines and Kenya
Introduction Financial inclusion has become mainstream thinking in economic development. The vast majority of the unbanked live in the developing world, and a significant proportion of this population are rural residents. One can easily surmise, without recourse to statistics, that the bulk of the target audience for institutions seeking to offer them affordable and accessible […]
What is The Prepaid Economy anyway?
Young Kenyan digital currency blogger Michael Kimani has been asking questions on the future of the “Prepaid” economy, given the rapidly evolving financial landscape of his home country. While Twitter might be good enough for a rapid give and take, it’s constrained as a platform for any meaningful dialogue requiring more than 140 characters at […]
