Category Archives: Economy

The Perfect Storm: A Continent, A Phone, A Business Model

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 20, 2019

In the mid 1990s, in a small city in northern Finland, engineers and designers began work on the product development of a mobile phone that would eventually become one of the best selling Nokia models ever – the 3310, released in Europe and the Far East in the year 2000. The continent of Africa was […]

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The African Continental Free Trade Agreement and the Age of Interoperability

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 15, 2019

I have been writing on cross border mobile financial flows across the African continent since early 2015, when the partnerships and agreements made between African telcos to provide interoperability between their mobile money services first began to hit the headlines. In my last post back in August 2016, I asked if Cross Border Mobile Money […]

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Mobile Money and the Informal Economy: A Paradigm Change

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 9, 2019

One of the most powerful pieces of data analysis I have come across recently has been the Banque de France’s working paper on the role of financial innovation in the informal economy. In my opinion, the importance of their conclusions are no less than the famous “price of fish” paper of a decade ago – […]

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The results, two years on, from Kenya’s Movable Property Security Rights Act 2017

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 6, 2019

Movable property such as household goods, livestock and office equipment has helped add 183,487 loan accounts into the banking sector, a Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) report shows. […] “The loans that flow out of the banking system on the basis of assets in the register has been growing. This shows that the alternative collateral has […]

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Book Review: Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 5, 2019

Although the book I’ll be reviewing today was first published in the year 2007, I only came upon it this year in a used bookstore. Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved lays bare the innards of the world’s food distribution systems and the market dominance of the megacorps in the business. The Guardian’s original review captures […]

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Lessons from African Fintech for the Gig Economy

By Niti Bhan | Published: December 20, 2018

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to share my research on the past decade of mobile ecosystem development across the African continent with Dr. Antti Saarnio, founder of Zippie; co-founder of Jolla (developers of the Sailfish OS, among other things). “We want to test our product first and foremost in Africa because there is […]

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What happens when the informal economy is not criminalized? : Case of Hargeisa, Somaliland

By Niti Bhan | Published: December 3, 2018

In Hargeisa, the role of the informal economy during and after conflict has been vital to conflict prevention and peace-building. A recently released report by Cardiff University and Somaliland research partners on their work related to the role of urban informal economies in conflict zones offers us perspective from another angle. A little thin on […]

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Pondering India’s Cashless Future

By Niti Bhan | Published: November 28, 2018

Chhotu here accepts digital currency payments via the mobile platform on a daily basis. His QR code is prominently displayed upfront next to the bottles of sauce, and a sticker displays the icons of all the payment apps acceptable to his Bhim app. The Bhim system, launched by the Government of India, is a godsend […]

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Lessons from the Informal Economy: Managing on Irregular Payments in the Gig Economy

By Niti Bhan | Published: November 3, 2018

Last week, an unusual report was released in Great Britain. Lloyds Banking Group (LBG), together with the Resolution Foundation, addressed the question of earnings volatility in the UK, a first for a developed country with a formal economy. Their research and analysis made use of anonymised transaction data from over seven million LBG accounts. That […]

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