West Africa’s incipient mobile platform boom will transform the ECOWAS economy
While East Africa has tended to grab the headlines as the mover and shaker in mobile platform innovation, there’s an imminent boom due to emerge in West Africa. The GSMA’s most recent report on the West African mobile ecosystem contains all the signals of this happening within the next 3 or so years. Even in […]
Why is the Kenyan mobile loan industry facing just a digital version of India’s MFI problems?
When you make fast, easy, short term loans available on the phone to anyone with a need for quick money, why is it a surprise when high levels of consumer debt are the result? A recent survey by financial inclusion giants like FSD and CGAP discovers that low income Kenyans have not been helped by […]
How informal financial services can lower the barriers to formal financial inclusion
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, […]
Why does the prepaid model work so well and what are the lessons for business model innovation?
Increasingly, employment is becoming ad hoc and flexible. The gig economy and the informal sector share a common characteristic of incomes which are irregular and unpredictable, unlike the timely wages characteristic of formal employment. Both budgeting and planning thus become a challenge when there’s no predictable paycheck to rely on. Expenses are managed against cash […]
Connectivity, Communication, and Commerce: The 3 Cs of Africa’s Smartphone Led Future
Recent headlines touted the decline in marketshare being seen by smartphones on the African continent, and the concurrent increase in sales of basic devices. Yet a closer look shows that this shift might only be numerical due to the opening of new markets in heavily populated DR Congo and Ethiopia – first time buyers are […]
Mobile First Africa: Social Media’s Boost to Rural Productivity in Kenya
Now in business for just six months, he also uses social media pages to sell his products, improving his customer reach. “Through Facebook posts I receive enquiries and orders from Kenyans in the diaspora living in the US, South Korea, South Sudan, UK, Switzerland and Botswana who want the splits to be delivered to their […]
Mobile First Africa: Opportunity for Accessories that Boost Productivity on Smartphones
Long ago, when smart phones were still on their way to changing the world, I remember the product development of a host of accessories that would boost business productivity in a variety of areas for phone owners. The projector phone was one such innovation, flopping back when it was launched due to the tech not […]
The Strategic Entry of China’s Transsion into the Vacuum Left by Nokia in Africa
If you’re outside Africa, you’ve never heard of them before, but a mobile phone brand called Tecno has been painting Kenya blue ever since I started fulltime fieldwork there in late 2011. It was in Mombasa that I first noticed the name and wondered what it was about. Over the years, I saw the line […]
Book Review: Operation Elop, the final years of Nokia by Merina Salminen and Pekka Nykänen
Operation Elop, uploaded by Harri Kiljander has just been made available in English and I’m already on Chapter 8. I saw the editor’s tweet 23 minutes after he said “It’s done and available on Medium under a Creative Commons license” and I haven’t stopped diving in and out since. It starts with a memorable day […]
Mobiles at the Border Post: Anti-Atlas of Borders Exhibition Slides (Jan 2016)
In January 2016, our submission for the Anti-Atlas of Borders Art Exhibition in Brussels was accepted for a commission of 500e. We were thrilled and surprised since we’d never imagined our work on mobile platforms, technology, and the borderland biashara could be considered from the arts and culture point of view. Here is our story […]
