Will Direct Access to China-made Goods Disrupt Trade in West Africa’s Consumer Market?
The first e-commerce platform for direct trade of China made products has just been launched in the West African country of Togo. Squeezed together with the Benin Republic between the larger, and better known countries of Nigeria and Ghana, Togo is a small francophone country of around 7 million people. Per the article: “We want […]
Platforms that aggregate small businesses can integrate the informal with the formal economy
Continuing my thoughts on Nilekani’s vision introduced in the previous post, I want to use this post to focus on the key element of what captured my imagination from his article “The New Road to Nirvana“: So manufacturing is squeezed on one side by Chinese overcapacity and on the other side by extreme automation. So […]
A Framework for New Market Entry Strategy
There are two parts to this article: The first is a revision of the lenses through which we assess the landscape within which your new market strategy will be expected to operate; and the second covers your implicit assumptions at inception, as well as gaps in your mental model. 1. The lenses for innovation need […]
Borderland Biashara: Mapping the Cross Border, National and Regional Trade in the East African Informal Economy
And, we’re back! With apologies for the long delay in posting on the blog, we’d been busy wrapping up our groundbreaking design research for development programming project for Trade Mark East Africa this past month or so. As you can imagine, the last few weeks of any project suck all the bandwidth out and leave […]
The Kenyan informal sector’s well-trodden paths of upward mobility
Studying the dynamics of the informal economy of a particular region in Western Kenya has been an eye opening exercise in questioning one’s own assumptions and frameworks. Other times, I noticed answers to questions I’d never even thought of asking (an outcome of holding implicit assumptions). One of these was career paths and ambitions. The […]
Reframing the informal sector in the African consumer market: The real African middle class
This is Ruth’s shop, on the side of the highway, approximately 5km on the road to Kisumu, from Busia in western Kenya. Not quite directly part of the borderland’s economy, that trades incessantly with each other, these businesses still manage to feed off the energy of the hustle and bustle of biashara, as it flows […]
Africa’s rise might strangle the informal trading sector in the “middle income trap”
Ruth, who was briefly introduced in a photo caption is currently facing this middle income trap. She can’t gather enough together to scale and the banks want to skim 18% of the profits of the top, usury, thy name is inclusion. Mrs Felice is facing this dilemma as her container from China will now make […]
Emerging African women entrepreneurs #informaleconomy
At the other end of the high tech geeky startup spectrum increasingly providing a platform for African women is the informal retail and wholesale trade sector. Like their West African sisters, the women traders I met in the border market of Busia, Kenya (next door to Busia, Uganda) and its nearby environs (~ 5km radius), […]
Infrastructure has a direct relationship to how much your rural business can scale
This is a micro-wholesaler and retailer in a staple commodity. Infrastructural constraints limit the stock she can manage at one go – seen as the sack with her name on it. This indicates that it was sourced from some distance away, as this is the matatu’s informal package tracking service. It could have come from […]
The hidden cost of doing business #informaleconomy
This looks like its a low cost business operation with low barriers to entry. All you need to do is find a decent tree under which to display your wares. The reality is that these entrepreneurs have numerous fees and costs that they must pay in order to do business, regardless of how informal it […]
