“GDP is not the best way to determine whether or not to go into an African country“, the founder of a successful Nigerian company with operations across the continent told me. This wisdom also applies to launching a consumer brand in Africa. Nielsen’s recent report “Africa: How to navigate the retail distribution labyrinth” confirms this. […]
A Young Population, a Youthful Mentality
“Africa is young, Europe is old“. That was one of the first conclusions I reached after a few weeks in Lagos. I wasn’t thinking just in terms of the age of the population, more in terms of the spirit and outlook I saw there. Africans are bursting with youth and energy which is why I […]
The strength of Nigeria is its people
I once heard a Nigerian saying proudly that the strength of Nigeria is its people. That statement stuck in my mind: in fact, its 170 million (or so) people makes Nigeria the most populous African country – but what did he mean exactly? A number of things come to mind: the most immediate and obvious, […]
A new era of indigenous entrepreneurship
I came across a short article by Ronald Coase (1991 Nobel laureate in economics) published at the Harvard Business Review a few months before he died, aged 103, in 2013. The article is a delicious call for economists to re-engage with the (real life) economy. I want to focus on just one sentence in the […]
Localizing international quality standards
Standards are meant to ensure that products and services are safe, reliable and of good quality. More often than not, there are multiple ways in which standards can be met, depending on the context and external conditions. That’s why it’s important to localize international quality standards, ensuring the standard is achieved but taking into account local […]
