How I Use My Phone – Extracting consumer insights from purchasing patterns
The Mobile Experience Center of the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria conducted a survey series – How I Use My Phone – where they looked at phone use among university students, white collar professionals, blue collar workers and market traders*. I’ve screen-capped the section on airtime purchase patterns from each infographic to analyze a little […]
The ILO’s ‘historic’ informal to formal guidelines and framework: What does it actually mean?
The big news this weekend is the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) first ever Recommendations and Guidelines on the informal economy. My first take away from all the documentation is that the informal sector is no more the enemy of good and, now, can finally be addressed with the consideration it needs and deserves. Here’s a […]
Emerging Markets Competition – this time its technology
Around twenty years ago, when the Indian and Chinese markets first opened up to global brands, many were surprised to discover domestic incumbents were stronger than they had imagined. Proctor & Gamble’s laundry detergents battled for the Indian housewife’s attention and share of wallet. It wasn’t just their usual competitor Unilever either but indigenous upstarts […]
10 years later: Will buying Lunar Design make McKinsey more nimble?
Around 10 years ago, I’d made this rough sketch of the innovation consulting landscape as I saw it at the time. The overlap of business and design was the topic du jour, and IDEO had just begun seeding the media with stories of the Empathy Economy and the magic of “design thinking”. Today*, peterme’s blogpost […]
Assessing the size and value of investment opportunities with an informal economy footprint
There’s an interesting snippet from the Nigerian news yesterday that led to this framing of a necessary problem statement. KPMG’s head of private equity is quoted as saying: Meeting current needs of the one billion plus population and, the future demands of the rapidly emerging middle class consumers will drive the next wave of Private […]
“No Ordinary Disruption” – Africa’s Transformation
McKinsey consultants have released a new book – No Ordinary Disruption – looking at global mega trends and market forces that are forcing a rethink of the foundations of their intuitive knowledge. Assumptions are to be challenged and questioned, they say, as these changes impact a deeper transition in the way the world works. Even […]
Meeting the challenge of consumer demand
Understanding consumer demand is an inherent part of the informal trader’s expertise. In the cash economy, unsold inventory is sunk cost. The balance between risk and return is a constant juggling, interwoven with the need for incoming cash flow to meet outgoing expenses. This tabletop – informal retail – caught my attention for its unexpected […]
Dynamic vs Static Metrics: Attributes for an African Measure of Competitiveness
For analysts everywhere, the challenge of considering each economy in its own right seems to be far too much trouble, and so they tend towards sweeping generalizations which lump all metrics under one label – “Africa”. Some find even that far too exhausting and aggregate Africa along with Europe and the Middle East. These regional […]
Questioning Convention: Comparison Metrics for Competitive African Markets
Taking the question of appropriate and relevant metrics by which to assess competitiveness (rather, attractiveness) of the emerging African consumer markets further, I decided to dig up some analytical infographics to compare and contrast their approaches. Urbanization is a current favourite, and here are two similar looking visuals from two different perspectives. The first is […]
African E-Commerce: Successfully Leapfrogging The Metrics of Fail
Postal networks are critical elements of the e-commerce chain, a UN report said, including home postal delivery as an indicator in a new global index to measure countries’ readiness to carry out business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce. ~ source By these metrics, countries on the African continent such as Nigeria rank 101st on the global index, far […]
