Carved heads in The Hague
A Sinhala head carved onto the lintels of a shopfront. This one was a little harder to identify. This post was written by niti bhan and rss originates from www.nitibhan.com
Book Review: An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen
Photo Credit: India Habitat Centre, New Delhi Just over a month ago, in Kinokuniya bookstore located in Singapore’s Orchard Road, I picked up the hardcover release of Amartya Sen’s latest book – An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions – coauthored with Jean Dreze. Today, I’ve reached the point in my daily few pages of […]
Projected Impact of recognizing and integrating end-user’s agency on innovation adoption rates
Rajasthan, India January 2009 Our problem statement for the recently completed, two phase project on sustainable agricultural value chains, was framed as follows: What are the barriers to adoption of sustainable agricultural practices that limit their spread and scaling? What are reasons and/or causes of the existence of these barriers? The complexity and wicked nature […]
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 […]
Affordability is not the same as a lower price point
Third party informal kerosene sales point deep interior of rural Eastern Kenya. Photo credit: Niti Bhan Absolute price of a product has always been assumed to be the means to successfully reach the BoP customer and the concept of affordable is often a synonym for cheaper. While price bands do matter when targeting this market, […]
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 […]
Global emerging middle classes are Africa’s GEMs
Kentucky Fried Chicken at The Junction, Nairobi, Kenya 2011 Photo Credit: Niti Bhan Bright Simons cautioned us about hyperbole and exuberance in a recent article published on the HBR site. In “Beware Africa’s Middle Class“, he points out with great clarity that the ’emerging market consumers’ spotted by the optimists over at the African Development […]
More or Less: the flexibility of the informal
One of the things that stood out for me during the recent household consumer behaviour study was the lack of weights and measurements used to sell foodstuffs and commodities in the market. There were no weighing scales at all, unless they themselves were for sale. Instead, some form of “socially accepted” measure was used to […]
Will “Grown in Africa” become tomorrow’s equivalent of “Made in China” ?
PhotoCredit: Niti Bhan Kenya 2012 Even as experts and specialists split hairs in their current debate over Africa’s rise, one has begun to see some weak signals of the economic potential of private agribusinesses on the continent’s economy. Granted that the emphasis on agriculture itself by a variety of organizations is not insignificant, particularly in […]
A tale of two Africas
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. By the middle of the year 2013, the continent of Africa finally put her foot down and said to the world that enough is enough, “We’re taking over the reins of our future and giving voice to our own story.” Ghana and Kenya […]
