Philips announced a few months ago that sales of "green products" accounted for 51% of its total revenue last year. Similarly, the Siemens environmental portfolio brought in 43%, while General Electric reported that 19% of the group's earnings came from "clean energy." It is a good sign that the ratio of green products is on the…

Last week I heard a talk by a consultant from Roland Berger who specialized in Sub-Saharan and Southern Africa. He offered some practical advice for doing business in Africa. This is what he said, and some of my experiences of how it holds true: 1. Take market intelligence and customer understanding seriously: product-oriented companies won't make…

Major financial crises have always left huge amounts of debt in their wake, followed by incidents of nonpayment. Occasionally the reduction of debt has been concealed, as in the case of Germany, which, thanks to an annual inflation that averaged 17% from 1913 to 1950, reduced the value of its domestic debt to almost zero.…

Nigeria is fashionable. It's the "N" in the MINT countries – the next high-growth markets. As you may remember, earlier this year Nigeria was declared the largest African economy. It surpassed South Africa for the first time. A recent survey by KPMG on High Growth Markets Outlook reveals that Nigeria – along with Kenya –…