“Unlearn the past to create the future”
The late Michigan University management professor, CK Prahalad, is best known for his last, and most famous publication, The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. But to MBA students, management consultancies, corporate planners, and regular readers of the Harvard Business Review, he is also known for a long and distinguished career in management thought […]
Detailed breakdown of Uber’s business model in Kenya puts spotlight on weaknesses
Latiff Cherono has just published an indepth analysis of what exactly it takes for an Uber driver in Nairobi to cover the cost of doing business. Here’s a snippet, In this post, I try to understand the root cause of the disconnect between how the customer (who defines the value), Uber (the service that controls […]
The East African Community is a hidden gem
Even as headlines shriek about “Africa”s economy undergoing some form of turmoil or the other, increasingly, indepth focused reports point out that the East African Community is performing exceedingly well. “Africa”, it turns out, is a vast and diverse continent made up of more than 50 countries. The IMF said: …the multi-speed growth in the […]
Professionals stand above the competition: Branding lessons from street vendors of Africa
Farai Mushayademo’s distinctive dress sense, with a different shiny suit every day, makes him a darling of customers and helps him beat the “rising competition,” he said. This article on the increasing competition for the burgeoning informal economy of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, came less than a month after we saw this smartly turned […]
Tailors, the overlooked actors of the value chain
According to Ibifagha Cookey, a Lagos-based financial analyst, custom-made apparel from self-employed tailors generates $8.2 billion annually out of the clothing industry’s $19 billion in sales. In other words, half of the earnings in the custom-made clothing industry in Nigeria is generated by tailors. This finding highlights two important points : • Tailors alone represent […]
Promoting local designers: brick and mortar vs. online
Retailer Woolworth has had a history of collaborating with South African local fashion designers, selling collections in their department stores. This is how I discovered South African designers and managed to incorporate a few items in my wardrobe during my stay in Pretoria from 2007 to 2009 (sidenote: flea markets are also a good place […]
Systems design and the Monster who squats between the formal and the informal
This framing of the real challenge to development and poverty alleviation comes from Ken Wong writing on his experience in Malawi: We can only win the war on poverty and hunger in Malawi by targeting the real enemy – and that enemy is the system of how the world tries to help. Specifically: — The system that […]
Africa’s Middle Class: Development economics and marketing demographics conflating the holy grail
The most developed nation on the African continent, south of the Sahara desert, is considered to be South Africa with its financial and transportation infrastructure and systems, a legacy from history. In the first decade of the 21st century, the black middle class – known as Black Diamonds in marketer jargon – came into prominence […]
What will it take for African-made clothing to become available for mass market?
When we talk about fabric in West Africa, there is no doubt that wax (also called ankara) is one of the first thing that comes to mind. Vlisco, the Dutch fashion textile brand, has been for long THE fabric par excellence bringing prestige and elegance to those who wear it. As 2016 marks the 170th […]
Poverty is Dynamic and Flexible, Just like the Informal Economy: Evidence from India
…the concept of poverty today is fundamentally different from that of poverty three decades ago, and that safety nets need to be tailored to meet the needs of a society in transition.~ The Hindu, 2 Aug 2016 When quantitative data provided by the India Human Development Survey (the first large panel survey in India) provokes […]
