Snapshot of the Dynamics of the Urban Informal Retail Trade in Nairobi, Kenya
Latiff Cherono quickly made up this diagram during a brainstorming session with Francis Hook and myself on the ways and means to further disaggregate the general category of “Informal wholesale and retail trade” that the Kenya National Statistics Board uses to lump together the second largest sector providing employment in Kenya after agriculture. In urban […]
Innovation, Ingenuity and Opportunity under Conditions of Scarcity (Download PDF)
In July 2009, I was inspired by working in the Research wing of the Aalto University’s Design Factory in Espoo, Finland, to launch a group blog called REculture: Exploring the post-consumption economy of repair, reuse, repurpose and recycle by informal businesses at the Base of the Pyramid*. Within a year, this research interest evolved into […]
An Africa Expert on Beneficiaries maybe the wrong Expert on Customers and Consumers
As the African markets increase in opportunity and visibility, the corresponding increase in need for experienced personnel is also felt. Many consumer facing companies hire “old Africa hands”, often former employees of various nonprofits and their projects. The assumption is that knowledge and experience among “poor” Africans implies knowledge and experience of African consumers and […]
Time to reach consensus on the #informaleconomy debate
As yesterday’s post showed, the unforeseen outcome of India’s demonetization initiative on the rural cash economy arose due to the lack of disaggregation of all that tends to get lumped together under the umbrella label “informal”. Segmentation would lead to more impactful design of policy and programmes. WIEGO has an excellent review of the academic […]
Unforeseen outcomes of India’s demonetization shine light on the value of our design philosophy
Latest news on India’s demonetization informs us how the rural economy is bearing the brunt of this initiative. The action was intended to target wealthy tax evaders and end India’s “shadow economy”, but it has also exposed the dependency of poor farmers and small businesses on informal credit systems in a country where half the […]
An economy of trust
Cash on credit is the caption given to this cartoon by the BBC. Neighbourhood groceries are offering their regular customers cash advances in addition to bread and milk. While the media is filled with a plethora of stories of heartbreak, my own suspicion is that we’ll discover the resilience of the cash intensive informal sector […]
Analysis of the mobile phone’s impact on cash flows and transactions in the informal sector
As we saw, Mrs Chimphamba needs to juggle time and money as part of her household financial management in order to ensure that expenses can be met by income. We also saw that the mobile phone was made viable and feasible by the availability of the prepaid business model that gave her full control over […]
Mobile Money in South Africa: The nature of the beast by Flo Mosoane
The 2015 State Of The Industry Report (SOTIR) for Mobile Money published by GSMA, reveals a picture of a service that continues to change the landscape of financial inclusion in developing and poor countries across the globe. In December of 2015, the industry processed transactions in excess of a billion, most of which were in […]
How to Spot Signals of Local Purchasing Patterns in the Market
This photograph is taken from a regular news item from a Liberian newspaper announcing the opening of a new petrol station in the town of Ganta. What caught my attention is the size of the LPG cylinders being promoted. On the left is the 6kg and on the right is an even smaller size that […]
Dignity drives purchasing decisions for South African low income consumers
There is so much I was going to say when I came across this snippet in the news about South African consumer habits among the lower income folk for yesterday’s post. I am not convinced by the framing of the interpretation of the qualitative data but that’s an embedded SA problem with qualitative research in […]
