Post(s) tagged with "africa"
AUSTIN, TX—Mobile phones are kicking off a revolution in Africa, with everyone from farmers to villagers relying on apps to make electronic payments, check on expiration dates for medicine, and predict future storms or the best prices for produce. In a SXSW session titled “The $100bn Mobile Bullet Train Called Africa” (which would also be a pretty good name for one of the indie films playing at this massive convention), Tech4Africa founder Gareth Knight explained the contours of this revolution.
…
Knight then explained how mobile devices are disrupting traditional markets, citing the case of an ex-pat from Ghana who, after raising money “from friends, family and fools,” started rice farms in his home country. “He communicates with 2,000 farmers in the West of Ghana using SMS, he sends out text messages to all his farmers,” he said. “He’s crowd-sourced rice production, and he’s selling that to the rest of the world.” That collective is now the second-biggest rice exporter in the country, largely thanks to the ability to leverage mobile technology.
The crowdsourcing/collective approach is interesting albeit probably very fragile when corporations starting to enter the markets.
An interesting look at Africa to give some perspective about its size.
Source: visualamor
The attention is, like many of us have predicted, continuing to shift towards Africa
The continent’s consumer-facing industries are expected to grow by $400 billion, representing its single-largest business opportunity, by 2020. But many companies don’t know how to translate this potential into action, because of a dearth of market research. That, however, is changing. In one of the first studies of its kind, McKinsey’s Africa Consumer Insights Center surveyed 13,000 consumers in ten African countries, with a focus on the largest cities. Five categories of consumption were covered: apparel, financial services, groceries, the Internet, and telecommunications.
The rise of the African consumer - McKinsey Quarterly - Marketing & Sales - Sectors & Regions
Source: mckinseyquarterly.com
By Dave Mayers | August 31, 2012, 3:09 AM PDT, smartplanet.com
JOHANNESBURG–It’s no secret that mobile technology is a driving force behind developemnt across Africa. The people at Johannesburg-based Praekelt put together a wonderful video illustrating some of the trends are are transforming a…
Kenya Has Mobile Health App Fever - Technology Review
Mobile health platforms are fast emerging in Kenya, where one startup’s newly launched mobile health platform is attracting nearly 1,000 downloads daily, and the dominant telecom, Safaricom, has forged a partnership that will give its 18 million subscribers access to doctors.
Will Africa be the leading continent when it comes to use new and mobile technology in health care? Will that let them to leapfrog the whole problem of gigantic health care systems which we in the west now see suffocating from demographic pressure, and increasing and toxicating complexification, both internally and externally.
Source: technologyreview.com
Robert Neuwirth: 1.8 billion people on the planet live in an economy outside legal spheres - an economy that grows faster that the regulated economy
Robert Neuwirth (PopTech 2011) tells us about life in the informal economy, what French culture classifies as System D. 1.8 billion people on the planet subsist through economic transactions that happen outside legal spheres and, by 2020, two thirds of our planet will be doing business in this domain. The future is the free market vs. the flea market.
This is also in line with some other megatrends (gigatrends?) which points out that power and influence moves from institutions to the individuals, who of course will do something about their situation if no one else does.
An interesting aspect of this is that Robert Neuwirth don’t mention the relation to the prosumer economy - an economy without money, but which creates and exchanges huge amount of value, and which is also probably growing much faster than than the regulated money economy.
This is yet another project based on mobile phones that is focusing on health care in Africa.
Since 2009, a mobile health program called ChildCount+ has coordinated a network of community-based health workers who examine local children, treat them, and then a send a text message about their health status back to a central web dashboard.
Africa is in the midst of a technological revolution, and nothing illustrates that fact than the proliferation of mobile phones. Consider this: more Africans have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water.
(via textually.org: More Africans have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water)
The statement about drinking water vs mobile phones is to me a bit weird and misleading because it is really hard to understand what it really means (if it is true), but it says something about how the technology diffusion continues regardless of many other problems. In the best of worlds it might help solving those problems as well…
Source: textually.org
Read about four projects/initiatives that use mobile phones to support health care in Africa:
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P A Martin Börjesson
To be able to see the future emerge we have to throw a wide net to catch the weak signals. In this tumble I collect things I find valuable for my work as scenario planner, strategist and futurist - for more info about me go to www.futuramb.se.
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