Category Archives: Indigenous & Traditional

Less Technologically Advanced Societies are not necessarily backward or primitive: Assume at your own risk

By Niti Bhan | Published: December 26, 2019

This illustration by Jeroen Meijer of Jam Visueldenken of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, was created for our team during a workshop to capture the insights from a feasibility study on agritech we had completed for the Dutch government’s sustainable agricultural value chain development at Wageningen University’s Economic Research unit back in mid 2013. I’m pulling it […]

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New Market Opportunity: The Digitalisation of African Agriculture

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 12, 2019

Just over two weeks ago, I analyzed a report on the Digitalization of African Agriculture on twitter. Bandwidth heavy PDFs aren’t user friendly for mobile first or mobile only browsing environments, such as prevalent across much of the African continent, and ‘granulating’ reports is something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing quite regularly for […]

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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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Rural Household Financial Management on Irregular Incomes

By Niti Bhan | Published: October 18, 2018

While all farms are not alike, and scale and variety and geography differs, the pattern of household financial management holds its fundamental logic across continents. As we saw previously, an experienced farmer tends to fall somewhere in between a salaried employee and an odd job labourer in their ability to predict with any reasonable degree […]

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Competitive Advantage & Customer Relationships: Lessons from Market Mummies of Ghana

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 29, 2018

How would you differentiate yourself in this informal retail market? Ghanaian market research guru Gerry van Dyke took a closer look at the market ‘mummies’ – Mama Biashara, as we call her – and their consumer marketing techniques in the “non-label environment”. His findings form an excellent foundation for understanding marketing and customer relationships in […]

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How informal financial services can lower the barriers to formal financial inclusion

By Niti Bhan | Published: March 9, 2018

Around 2 and a half years ago, I was on a short visit to Abidjan, the capital of Cote D’Ivoire as a guest of the African Development Bank. They were holding an innovation weekend for young women and men in the Francophone West African region who were interested in becoming entrepreneurs. David O. Capo Chichi, […]

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Context Sensitive Law: What happens when African societal norms meet modern commercial practice?

By Niti Bhan | Published: March 6, 2018

In short, social forces shape contracts: the stronger the sense of community, the more effective these sanctions are likely to be. The result: A privately ordered system of business behaviour, which exists without reference to the governing law of the state. The underlying adhesive: community. In the absence of conventional forms of collateral, my contract […]

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Why the African Consumer Market is NOT the same as the African Middle Class

By Niti Bhan | Published: February 15, 2018

The biggest challenge faced by consumer facing companies looking at the African Consumer Market is the age old positioning of the “middle class” as the ideal target audience. This middle class is segmented by the same attributes as the original middle classes who formed the consumer markets of the developed world. This is the outside […]

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Zambia’s inclusive approach to various sectors in the informal economy is worth noting

By Niti Bhan | Published: February 8, 2018

The Zambian government most recently announced that they would provide certificates to illegal (artisanal) miners in order to recognize and formalize their activities. In addition, they were being encouraged to form cooperatives – a legally recognized organizational structure – that would permit further benefits to this informal sector. Compared to the challenges Ghana is facing […]

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Household energy consumption behaviour in East Africa: Lighting & Conclusion (3 of 3 Parts)

By Niti Bhan | Published: January 29, 2018

  The following is extracted from a six month study during 2012 on household energy consumption behaviour in rural Kenya and Rwanda among the lower income demographic, that led to an understanding of some of barriers hampering the sales of client’s solar products in this market. This 3rd and final part will focus on fuel […]

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