Branding the Unbranded: The story of Cookswell Jikos, Kenya
These are jikos – metal stoves that use charcoal – displayed for sale in the jua kali market in the town of Nakuru, Kenya. Made from scrap metal, using the most rudimentary tools, under conditions of resource scarcity, they are one of the everyday products churned out by the informal manufacturing sector. These are […]
Loyalty cards to incentivitize vaccinations – service innovation from Kenya
We most commonly tend to associate loyalty cards with grocery shopping at our local supermarket chain – swiping the card for the occasional discount on milk or eggs. Now this same concept is being used in an entirely different context in order to lower the barriers for rural Kenyan mums to invest in the time […]
RIP Google BebaPay – Requiem for a cashless payment system
Less than a year after going live, Google is closing down the BebaPay smart card which was introduced as an NFC based cashless payment mechanism for Nairobi’s public transport. Last year, I’d analyzed the context and the operating environment in which they’d launched their service, on hearing the news that they’d been struggling to gain […]
Informal trade is big business in Africa
On my way to Nairobi from Singapore a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to observe first hand the phenomenon of informal trade between China and the African continent. The energy and excitement of the traders, laden with goods on their way back, was a palpable part of the inflight experience. Today, I […]
Analysing shifts in consumer household purchasing patterns – Milk ATMs in Kenya
“We are selling one litre at Sh65, but a consumer can get as little as 77ml at a cost of Sh5. All one needs to do is key in the amount they require, and the product is dispensed,” Gitonga, who procures his machines from Italy, said. Flexibility is the key to survival, indeed. This quote […]
Food security: time to think of the small scale farmers
This article was written by David Indeje (@DavidBurudi) and was first put on the internet on West FM. It has been republished here with his kind permission. Agriculture is the essence of life, but it seems leaders are not getting the idea as farmers continue to experience the effects of climate change and in their […]
Exploratory User Research in the Rural Economy
When I first began developing the attributes by which to select representative user profiles for the original fieldwork to begin understanding the “prepaid economy”, that is, household financial management in rural India, The Philippines and Malawi, it was based on people’s ability to plan and budget. One can plan best when one is certain of […]
Reflecting on this blog’s genesis after 5 years
I started this blog in late December 2008, in earnest and every day during the first prototype fieldwork for The Prepaid Economy project, one of the iBoP Asia Project’s first batch of Small Grant winners from the ASEAN region. For the first 5 months of 2009, this blog was on the mainpage of my website […]
The Brass Ring Syndrome: When prosperity is close enough to make a jump for it!
We’ve been talking about that borderline where one goes from “destitute” or “BoP” towards becoming “emerging global middle class” or the AfDB’s “Sub Saharan middle class” since the common band that overlaps both categories is the ever popular $2-$4 a day and it is proportionally the largest segment of the population in most newly emerging […]
CNC experts set up kiosks or work on demand on your equipment – imagine jua kali upgrades
Emeka Okafor talking to an award winning maker at Maker Faire Africa 2010, Nairobi August 2010 Emeka Okafor has captured a blog snippet today that refers to a study on Ghana’s informal manufacturing and fabrication industry: With over 100,000 technical artisans, auto-mechanics, and purveyors of related supplies, Ghana’s “Suame Magazine” cluster is a hotbed of […]
