The Ikeja City Mall in Lagos, Nigeria In the second of our two-part article, Ben Longman, managing director of market intelligence firm Trendtype, further examines the main risks exporters to Africa need to be aware of. Read Part 1. Mistake #6: Disconnecting from distributors Your distributors are your eyes and ears.…
Ségou is rich in arts and crafts, and has built its famous festival around the performing arts. Photo: Guillaume Colin & Pauline Penot/Flickr In the first week of every February, the streets of Ségou in Mali come to life. Residents from the capital, Bamako, flock to the secondary city to…
Namibia is a politically stable upper-middle income country with a tiny population and good infrastructure. Mining plays a very important role in the economy, and is the main source of export revenues. The main challenges the economy faces are to do with persistently high unemployment and income inequality. Amidst rapidly…
New off-grid energy solutions hold the potential to provide much of Africa’s currently marginalised rural population with access to affordable electricity. To date, however, funding off-grid solutions on a sufficiently large scale has inhibited the potential of these solutions to transform Africa’s rural economy. In Kenya, approximately 50% of the…
Paul Boynton, CEO of Old Mutual Alternative Investments With 2017 drawing to a close, it’s time to take stock and reflect on what kind of year it’s been for African private equity, and to look forward to what we can expect next year. All things considered, 2017 was an improvement on…
Henri Nyakarundi African Renewable Energy Distributor (ARED) is a hard-tech company based in Rwanda and Uganda. It developed a business-in-a-box solar kiosk that offers customers phone charging and airtime top-up services, wifi, an intranet with free digital content and a Bluetooth printer. ARED leases the kiosks out through a franchise model. Tell…
Nairobi, Kenya For the vast majority of people living in sub-Saharan Africa, a traditional bank loan is simply not an option. The region is home to the largest proportion of unbanked people (estimated to be over 60% at last count). But even those who do have access to bank credit…
Spring onion, chard and other vegetables grow in the rooftop garden of one of Johannesburg’s social housing skyscrapers, set up by social enterprise Rooftop Roots. Photo: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Inna Lazareva The soaring “Chamber of Mines” building in central Johannesburg, a hub for South Africa’s mining industry, is a symbol of…
From left to right: Tanya van Lill, CEO of the Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SAVCA); Brett Commaille, lead partner at AngelHub Ventures; and Keet van Zyl, co-founder of Knife Capital South Africa’s venture capital (VC) ecosystem is young but evolving, with more fund managers entering the…
Nigeria’s retail sector is dominated by traditional trade formats like open markets and kiosks in terms of absolute store numbers. Despite the prevalence of these channels, the Nielsen Nigeria Shopper Trends 2017 syndicated report reveals that modern trade formats like supermarkets and hypermarkets are stepping up to fulfil the needs of…