Dynamic vs Static Metrics: Attributes for an African Measure of Competitiveness
For analysts everywhere, the challenge of considering each economy in its own right seems to be far too much trouble, and so they tend towards sweeping generalizations which lump all metrics under one label – “Africa”. Some find even that far too exhausting and aggregate Africa along with Europe and the Middle East. These regional […]
The true size of opportunity in Africa
The Africapitalist Foundation’s most recent issue of their Africapitalist Magazine has a cover story on the true size of opportunity in Africa. Readers familiar with my exploratory user research and insights from the prepaid economy and the informal sector will recognize the key point being made – that we must look beyond the obvious when […]
RIP Google BebaPay – Requiem for a cashless payment system
Less than a year after going live, Google is closing down the BebaPay smart card which was introduced as an NFC based cashless payment mechanism for Nairobi’s public transport. Last year, I’d analyzed the context and the operating environment in which they’d launched their service, on hearing the news that they’d been struggling to gain […]
Mobile Money Is Driving Africa’s Cashless Future
This article was written for HBR a few months ago. Here are some key snippets: Three distinct factors are driving this transformation. First and foremost is the desire for financial inclusion. Africa’s unbanked majority needs access to affordable tools for savings, loans, and credit. The second is the need to lower the costs and risk […]
Prepaid Economy Newsletter: Curated Snippets on Informal, Rural and Prepaid
Welcome! This is the first prototype experimenting with a newsletter format on topics dear to the heart of The Prepaid Economy’s research interests and reader community. Its a special edition looking back at the year. Leave a comment or tweet @prepaid_africa if you’d like to see this become a regular feature. All feedback welcome! Click […]
Welcome to the new home of The Prepaid Economy blog
Instead of two separate locations, all my research, fieldwork, analysis and synthesis as well as news snippets covering all aspects of The Prepaid Economy project, systeme D, the informal and rural cash based markets of the developing world will now be available here together with the original Perspective blog. The Research category will pull […]
Human centered design for financial inclusion: Lessons from fieldwork in rural India, The Phillipines and Kenya
Introduction Financial inclusion has become mainstream thinking in economic development. The vast majority of the unbanked live in the developing world, and a significant proportion of this population are rural residents. One can easily surmise, without recourse to statistics, that the bulk of the target audience for institutions seeking to offer them affordable and accessible […]
What is The Prepaid Economy anyway?
Young Kenyan digital currency blogger Michael Kimani has been asking questions on the future of the “Prepaid” economy, given the rapidly evolving financial landscape of his home country. While Twitter might be good enough for a rapid give and take, it’s constrained as a platform for any meaningful dialogue requiring more than 140 characters at […]
A design challenge for agric service innovation in rural Africa
Find a way to embed principles of sustainable good agriculture for the smallscale farmer in a socio-economically beneficial way. How would we do this? Where do we begin? The answers to these questions and more will be forthcoming on this blog. I reach out and encourage you all to consider submitting your thoughts and opinions […]
Part 4: The visual documentation of the original research on rural economic behaviour
I have uploaded a PDF synopsis of the fieldwork conducted during the original Prepaid Economy research including approach and methodology. Also documented are the different ways those in the rural economy manage their ‘investments’. These images support the observations documented in Part 2 and my thoughts on rural Indian cow ownership have been fleshed out […]
