As I ventured into Nigeria and Kenya, the locals warned me: “don’t think all of Africa is like us.” In fact, This has important implications for companies doing business in Africa and expanding in the continent: whether traditional multinationals, emerging market multinationals (EMMs), Pan-African companies, and even African regional companies. What does country distance mean? In his CAGE […]
Trading Times Across East African Borders
My young friend Giovanni came back from a visit to East Africa last week. As part of the trip, he traveled by car from Uganda to Kenya. This involves crossing the Malaba border where trucks can wait anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. But the driver was an expert at crossing this border, so they only […]
African Investments in Africa
Great news! . This is according to a perspective paper by Ralf Krüger and Ilan Strauss published by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investments. So it looks like African development is finally beginning to come from within the continent. Over 400 Africa-to-Africa projects (which I like to call intra-African development projects) were carried out between January 2003 and January […]
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 […]
Water purification: a basic need
During my stay in Kenya, I acquired a new habit, one which I have kept in my daily life: drinking hot, really hot, water – like from the kettle. That’s common there. I guess it has to do with the need to purify the water before drinking it. Though it’s a basic need, water purification […]
