The role of women in informal trade in Africa
Section extract from this ARIA chapter “Informal Trade in Africa”: Women play a prominent role in informal trade, and in informal business activities in particular. These few figures are proof enough: four to five million women in West Africa are involved in collecting, processing and marketing shea nuts and butter, bringing in an estimated 80 […]
Cracking the informal markets in Sub Saharan Africa: the need for strategic improvisation
Ernst & Young’s Consumer Products division released a report for global consumer product companies interested in growing in Africa where they highlight the challenge of cracking the informal markets, described thus: The informal economy is a key feature of life in Africa — estimated to account for around 42% of GDP in 2000 with the […]
Analysis of mobile platform business models for lower income customers by Monitor Group
The Monitor Group has released a report analyzing business models across Sub Saharan Africa meant for the BoP (Base or Bottom of the Pyramid, that is the survival markets living on $2 or less a day shown above). For comparison, the percentage of population who fall under the category of emerging middle class market (defined […]
Kenya’s Kadogo Economy
Charcoal seller Margaret Nyambura, a widowed mother of four, used Sh100 we had given her to shop for food and household goods that would last her family three days. Her priority was cooking oil and maize flour, which cost her Sh20 and Sh10 respectively. Each was measured in portions to fit her money. She bought […]
Reflecting on managing retail at the BoP
When I think about my time in the Filipino village last year, the most significant learnings from the field are the ones I never really wrote about or pondered deeply at that time. They were too specific to retail, I felt, or business management, and while this shop was one of the sources of income […]
Core values: business models meant to serve the BoP
(Republished from old Perspective 2.0 blog March 10th 2009) The biggest shock for me in the Phillippines was learning that airtime minutes purchased on a prepaid plan came with an expiry date. The smaller the amount the faster the expiration. For example, the lowest amounts of “load” that can be purchased are 10 or 20 […]
We arrive in Shanghai
with the PowerKiss table. The team that took off from Helsinki on the evening of the 20th arrived early morning of the 21st of May and went directly to the Aalto Tongji Design Factory premises in Shanghai. Naturally, the first thing to be the built was the sauna on the roof – construction started in […]
A Wisdom Manifesto – Re:interpreted and Re:framed
I went back to look at Umair Haque’s Wisdom Manifesto I’d linked to last week, as I’d been mulling over things such as values, meaning and understanding after my post yesterday. In context of the values we espouse here at the Design Factory, it struck me that there may be seeds of an entire foundation […]
Design Globalization – A conversation in four parts (December 2006)
Luke Wroblewski, design strategist and thinker, invited Dirk Knemeyer, Joseph O’Sullivan and myself to participate in a four way conversation a while back. Three of the four parts are now online with the fourth and final part up by the end of the week. Here’s the topic: A conversation about the impact of large scale […]
From Top to Bottom: New Design Magazine Emerging Markets Special February 2008
The challenge to address the issues faced by the significant proportion of the world’s population who live on less than £ 1 a day has been taken up eagerly by many in the global design industry. The INDEX awards regularly nominate some of the best in the world, and others are frequently seen in the […]
