When was the last time that lights went off? Couple of years ago? Couple of months? Couple of hours? Your answer depends on where in the world you seat. When sitting in Lagos, lights went off several times on a typical day. At inconvenient times on occasion, like in the middle of taking a shower […]
The “African Shot”: An optimistic outlook
One reason I enjoy visiting Africa is that I get what I call my “African shot”: despite difficulties, optimism transpires there. To me this is in sharp contrast to the gloomy attitude that many of us in Europe have developed over the last few years. In my post of last week (“Africa Rising” – Under […]
Climate Change and Water Scarcity
I’ve been in Nigeria and Kenya during the rainy season and was surprised that it didn’t rain that much. “It’s not like it used to be – it’s not a rainy season any longer…” Transpose this comment onto your own country. Doesn’t it sound familiar? I think we all can feel that yes, the climate […]
Trash and Hope
You might wonder how trash and hope relate to each other. Last Saturday I watched the thriller “Trash: Thieves of Hope.” It was filmed in one of Rio’s favelas. It’s a harsh movie that confronts you with the reality of children who survive by picking up items with some residual value from humongous mounds of […]
Creating a Middle Class: The Role of Companies
A frequent comment in my interviews with executives from sub-Saharan African (SSA) companies has been, “What really drives this company is job creation… of course, we want to make money, and we do make money… but our real driver is to create employment.” I mentioned this in a previous post. But I want to bring […]
