Will Cross Border Mobile Money Boost intra African Trade and Regional Integration?
Over the past 18 months, since I started tracking the spread of cross border mobile money payments across the African continent, there has been visible progress in leaps and bounds, as documented by the GSMA. In fact, back then, I’d written: Top down reportage on banking and interoperability seems to focus only on the customer’s […]
Will Direct Access to China-made Goods Disrupt Trade in West Africa’s Consumer Market?
The first e-commerce platform for direct trade of China made products has just been launched in the West African country of Togo. Squeezed together with the Benin Republic between the larger, and better known countries of Nigeria and Ghana, Togo is a small francophone country of around 7 million people. Per the article: “We want […]
Borderland Biashara: Mapping the Cross Border, National and Regional Trade in the East African Informal Economy
And, we’re back! With apologies for the long delay in posting on the blog, we’d been busy wrapping up our groundbreaking design research for development programming project for Trade Mark East Africa this past month or so. As you can imagine, the last few weeks of any project suck all the bandwidth out and leave […]
Trade is the network
Trade is not a verb or a noun. Trade is a living, breathing network of give and take. When Doc and gang wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto all so many years ago, the first chapter described teh “bazaar” – that markets are conversations was a revelation to the first world in the generations since the end […]
There’s more to informal trade than meets the eye
This photograph captures the way micro entrepreneurs in the informal economy perceive their business. There is more here than meets the eye at the first instance. Note the green logo of the Kenyan mobile money transfer system M-Pesa in the background of the cash transfer taking place, by hand, in the foreground. The customer is […]
The formal sector and economic development: A lesson from marketing
Pursuing the thoughts introduced in the previous post further, I looked up the original reference on “formalization of the informal sector”1. Alan Gelb, et al. 2009. “To Formalize or Not to Formalize? Comparisons of Microenterprise Data from Southern and East Africa.” CGD Working Paper 175 “…in East Africa, weak enforcement of tax payment and no […]
How I Use My Phone – Extracting consumer insights from purchasing patterns
The Mobile Experience Center of the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria conducted a survey series – How I Use My Phone – where they looked at phone use among university students, white collar professionals, blue collar workers and market traders*. I’ve screen-capped the section on airtime purchase patterns from each infographic to analyze a little […]
Introducing Mama Biashara
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) released a women’s report with some eye opening figures. Simply put, African women lead the world in being their own boss. Mama Biashara’s business activities may perhaps be more driven by livelihood need and few alternatives but she’s not sitting around looking for a handout either. Pillar of the informal […]
The ubiquitious rural computer
Bargaining for bananas in rural Rwandan market could not have been completed without the use of the mobile phone’s calculator function. While a combination of broken Swahili, Kinyarwanda and English was used by the customer and the shopkeeper, the transaction’s clarity was increased by piling goods on the table and then using the clear numerals […]
