Looking back at the last 15 years of The Prepaid Economy Project
In 2007, I was the Closing Plenary speaker for the CHI2007 25th Anniversary conference in San Jose, CA. Today, I look back at the last 15 years of the “mobile as a post industrial platform for bottom of pyramid and emerging markets” conceptual working space, and find myself ready to move on to a new […]
Less Technologically Advanced Societies are not necessarily backward or primitive: Assume at your own risk
This illustration by Jeroen Meijer of Jam Visueldenken of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, was created for our team during a workshop to capture the insights from a feasibility study on agritech we had completed for the Dutch government’s sustainable agricultural value chain development at Wageningen University’s Economic Research unit back in mid 2013. I’m pulling it […]
Is Design Prepared to be Responsible?
Last week, I was invited to join a 60 strong group of pan African thinkers in law, human rights, gender, debt and related issues to convene in Nairobi to explore the concept of predatory lending now being delivered direct to your handheld device. As a human centered designer, I was rocked back on my heels […]
The Prepaid Economy as a Commercial Operating Environment
I have been looking for information the global prepaid mobile subscriber market since yesterday morning. Initially, all I wanted to know was the percentage of prepaid subscribers in China, as I wanted to compare operating environments in major mobile markets like India and China, against the fast growth emergent one in sub Saharan Africa. What […]
Emergence of a decentralized digital economy? Snippets from Nigeria and Kenya
Continuing the conversation from the recent posts on app enabled demand redistribution as well as digital platforms being used by informal sector economic actors to boost their own productivity and efficiency, I thought to share snippets from these two recent articles I just came across, as cases in point. From Nigeria, West Africa: How WhatsApp […]
Lessons from African Fintech for the Gig Economy
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to share my research on the past decade of mobile ecosystem development across the African continent with Dr. Antti Saarnio, founder of Zippie; co-founder of Jolla (developers of the Sailfish OS, among other things). “We want to test our product first and foremost in Africa because there is […]
All Hail the Business Model Behind the Global Gig Economy
The first world’s ardent embrace of the gig economy is already over. Buyer’s remorse is setting in, even though it may have helped global unemployment hit its lowest point in forty years. What will remain, however, is its impact on the usually overlooked Rest of the World, where the ability of an app to drive […]
From the Caterpillar to the Butterfly: Africa’s Mobile Boom Years Are Over, Here’s What Next
For the past 15 years, Africa watchers have been waiting for her mobile phone industry to reach a critical landmark – almost full saturation of the market. This milestone may be close at hand, as recent news and data show. In June 2018, Kenyan mobile subscriptions reached 98% penetration, a 13% jump over the previous […]
The Mobile as a Post Industrial Platform for Social and Economic Development: Top 3 Trends in Africa
Just over a decade ago, in San Jose, California, I was invited to speak as the Closing Plenary for the CHI 2007 25th Anniversary Conference. The theme was “Reach Beyond”, as this was the 25th Anniversary conference of the Computer Human Interaction society, and as the closing plenary, I was tasked with articulating the vision […]
Tecno and Nokia: The tale of two brands
Chinese mobile maker’s original brand strategy succeeds in Africa: Transsion’s Tecno This year, Nokia got shoved out of the top 10 most admired brands in Africa list, not bad for a company that had lost its way in emerging markets 7 or 8 years ago. As an old (in all senses of the word) Nokia […]
