Biashara Economics: Nurture your Network – Lesson #2
Without a network, you are nothing. In biashara, the complex webs of give and take (Walther has a nice map, he was inspired by social media networks, and inspired our thinking) that are the engine and the nervous system of the organic, living platform for trade are running on trust and relationships, offering you first […]
Biashara Economics: Diversify your portfolio – Lesson #1
Biashara’s growth strategies include the need to diversify one’s customer base from B2C to more B2B. In small markets, that’s the only way to grow revenue without hitting the cap on the actual number of people who can buy your tshirts. It’s when you are able to nurture a stable team of customers who purchase […]
Introducing the concept of Biashara Economics, underwritten by a value web of trusted relationships
The true value of social network lies not in its actor’s activities but in their relationships to each other. When social networks attempt to monetize their users, they tend to identify them as discrete individuals rather than interconnected actors all acting in a wave at a concert. The ripple effect seen in biashara informed us […]
How to segment the informal sector
This is a research interest that I’ve been pursuing ever since the very first fieldwork for the prepaid economy project that was prototyped in rural Rajasthan state in India back in December 2008. The challenge of discovering, then testing and refining the framework for segmenting the informal sector of the economy – particularly by purchasing […]
Mobile Money’s next challenge: Enabling the development of a cashless ecosystem
The latest GSMA State of the Industry report on Mobile Money is out this month and the numbers look great in the developing world. The report frames the industry’s next challenge as the need to grow the platform beyond the basics of airtime purchase and person to person transfer. Here are my concerns, starting with […]
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 […]
