Tag: economy

  • Indian Newspapers Thrive with Economy

    Indian Newspapers Thrive with Economy

    By David SouthDevelopment Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The onslaught of digital media in the developed countries of the world regularly brings pronouncements of the death of the traditional newspaper. But this assumption of digital triumph misses out on the reality in countries across the global South.

    As incomes rise and literacy levels go up, so does the desire to consume news and information. And while many are jumping straight to online and mobile phone sources, just as many are enjoying more traditional print media offerings like magazines and newspapers.

    India boasts both a fast-growing economy and the largest number of paid-for newspapers in the world. The print media industry in India has seen phenomenal growth since 2005, with the number newspaper titles increasing by 40 percent to 2,700 (World Association of Newspapers). The two factors driving this growth in newspapers are rising literacy and a booming economy

    The World Association of Newspapers found China leads the world for newspaper subscribers, with 93.5 million readers a day. India is second. It is estimated the Indian newspaper industry will generate US $3.8 billion in revenues in 2010, a 13 percent growth rate over the last five years.

    Estimates place growth in the newspaper industry in the next four years at 9 percent a year, to US $5.9 billion (KPMG).

    Part of the reason India is defying the decline in newspaper numbers and readership seen in developed countries is poor internet penetration across the country. Because of this, only 7 percent of the population uses the web for information. And the country’s high number of illiterates (just 65 percent of the population can read) means even if many could afford a newspaper, they couldn’t use it.

    According to Amar Ambani, head of research at India Infoline Group, “Unlike the West where the internet publishing and advertising has significantly hit the print media, the Internet threat to print media is still in its nascent stage in India, given the low penetration of computers and adequate bandwidth across the country.”

    Newspapers are also growing in a highly competitive market exploding with new television channels on cable and satellite and other media distractions like mobile phone applications.

    The newspapers (http://www.world-newspapers.com/india.html) are a strong reflection of how much the economy has changed in the past decade. They contain advertisements for property, mobile phones, cars and dating services.

    Cost is also a critical element in their success: at only four rupees each (US $0.09 cents), many Indians buy several newspapers at a time for their home. The publications are able to charge so little because of the health of the advertising revenue coming in. Newspaper advertising in India increased by 30 percent between January and Match 2010 alone, the quickest jump in ads for the Asia-Pacific region (Nielsen India).

    There is a hierarchy in the newspaper industry: English-language newspapers attract wealthier readers and can charge the most for advertising. But rising literacy rates combined with increasing personal wealth is fuelling growth in regional papers written in local languages. India has 22 official languages and English as an associate language. The country as a whole has about 33 different languages and over 2,000 local dialects. Hindi newspaper circulation rose from 8 million in the early 1990s to over 25 million in 2009.

    The Times of India (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com) is now the world’s largest circulation English-language newspaper, with 4 million readers. It uses this success to charge 10 times what regional papers can for advertising. At present, the regional newspapers’ bread-and-butter is mostly government-paid advertising.

    But if trends continue as they are, then the tables will turn on big beasts like the Times of India. Regional papers will grow as people look for an opportunity to read in their own local language.

    Flush with cash and confidence, Indian newspapers are also innovating new ways to advertise untried in other countries. Talking ads attached to the actual newspaper’s back pages caused a great stir when they were trialled in India recently (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/sep/28/newspapers-advertising). The talking ads for a car company delivered a sales pitch but also alarmed and annoyed many people because the talking ad wouldn’t stop talking.

    Ambani puts the success of the Indian newspaper industry down to five factors: the economic boom in semi-urban and rural India; growing local content; more opportunity to grow the number of readers; rising advertising spending; and rising literacy as a result of rising secondary school enrolment. He believes students aged between 10 and 15 are getting the newspaper habit and they represent huge future growth in newspaper readers.

    Published: October 2010

    Resources

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/17/book-boom-rides-growing-economies-and-cities/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/29/cheap-indian-tablet-seeks-to-bridge-digital-divide/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/20/the-e-reader-battle-reaches-india/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/12/free-magazine-boosts-income-for-rickshaw-drivers/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/05/26/kenyan-book-company-brings-online-sales-to-east-africa/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/12/rickshaw-drivers-prosper-with-new-services/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-1/

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2024

  • Kenyan Bank Helps the Poor and Gets Rich

    Kenyan Bank Helps the Poor and Gets Rich

    By David SouthDevelopment Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Good quality banking services are a basic building block to rising incomes. Yet the poor across the South are often overlooked and denied access to savings accounts and loans. Many low-income people are openly discriminated against as ‘bad risks’ by banks, and denied the sort of banking services middle and higher income people take for granted. Yet it is a myth that the poor do not have money or do not wish to save and invest for their future or for business.

    The so-called Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) – the 4 billion people around the world who live on less than US $2 a day – are being targeted by a wide range of businesses. Indian business consultant and professor CK Prahalad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.K._Prahalad) , the man who coined the term BOP, has gone so far as to claim this is a market potentially worth US $13 trillion, while the World Resources Institute puts it at US $5 trillion in its report, “The Next 4 Billion” (http://www.nextbillion.net/thenext4billion).

    A Kenyan commercial bank has proven it is possible to target the BOP and become successful doing it; so successful that they have seen off foreign rivals and were voted Kenya’s third most respected company.

    By offering Kenya’s poor people savings accounts and microloans, Equity Bank (http://www.equitybank.co.ke/) has captured 50 percent of the Kenyan bank market. It now has more than 3 million customers and 2.8 million account holders and opens 4,000 new accounts a day.

    Its chief executive officer, James Mwangi, said Equity Bank built its success by doing the opposite of what other banks have done – it doesn’t target the middle and upper classes, but the “the watchmen, tomato sellers and small-scale farmers”.

    The Kenyan banking sector in the past was dominated by foreign banks. But by investing in the 46 percent of the population who still live below the food poverty line, Equity has become the third most profitable bank in the country. Its approach was once considered odd. Most of the bank’s borrowers work in the informal sector and have few assets to use as collateral for the loans. So Equity uses what it calls ‘social collateral’. This includes a mix of measures: in some cases, account holders join together to guarantee a person’s debt. Even more unusually, women offer their matrimonial beds as security – it would be shameful for a woman to admit her bed has been taken to pay for the debt.

    “For us it’s psychological security. Nobody wants to be excommunicated and lose their inheritance,” said Mwangi.

    “By focusing on the previously excluded, Equity has revolutionized the banking sector,” James Shikwati, a director of Kenyan think tank the Inter Region Economic Network (http://www.irenkenya.com/), told The Guardian newspaper. “It has forced the multinational banks to change their business strategies.”

    Started in 1984, the bank was still insolvent by 1994, when Mwangi joined as an accountant. Things were looking grim as Kenya’s economy was in a slump and foreign banks like Barclays were closing branches outside big centres.

    Mwangi and other Equity Bank managers realized there were millions of low-paid poor in Kenya – all BOP – but who wanted to save and borrow but had nowhere to go.

    “Banking was the only industry in Kenya led by supply rather than demand,” said Mwangi. “There was no ‘bottom of the pyramid bank’.”

    While absolute poverty in Kenya has declined in recent years, inequality remains high. The population of 37 million people make on average a per capita income of US $580.

    By 2003, as the economy picked up, Equity Bank gained 256,000 account holders. It now has 100 branches across the country and 500 automatic teller machines (ATMs). It uses armoured trucks to go into rural areas so that the people can receive banking services. While traditional banks require pay slips and utility bills as proof of a person’s address before letting them open an account, and charge high monthly fees, Equity only requires an identity card.

    Within just one year, the bank saw the number of account holders jump to 600,000. Mwangi likes to say that the bank’s competition is the bed mattress, since most people have never had a bank account before. Most savers have around US $148 in their savings account.

    The bank’s micro credit operation makes loans of less than US $7 and gives borrowers a few months to repay them.

    The bank claims loan defaults are less than 3 percent on 600,000 outstanding loans – the banking industry average is 15 percent.

    It keeps its transaction costs down by using the latest in information technology. These efficiencies enabled the bank to earn pre-tax profits of more than US $40 million in 2007.

    Equity does face competition, as its success attracts mainstream banks into the BOP market.

    In Africa these days, banking is hot: a South African research and analysis company BMI-TechKnowledge (http://www.bmi-t.co.za/) in a report identifies a boom in banking services across Africa. In particular, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Mauritius, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco – all have seen surges in profit and services as a result of improving banking regulations and political conditions.

    Mwangi isn’t worried, however, since the number of people still without bank accounts is huge. Equity Bank is expanding its operations into Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan.

    Elsewhere, mobile phone banking in Kenya is proving highly successful. Equity has a service, but so does Safaricom with M-PESA (http://www.safaricom.co.ke/index.php?id=745). Customers can deposit, transfer and withdraw money using their phones. Over 4 million are now using the service.

    Published: January 2009

    Resources

    1) NextBillion.net: Hosted by the World Resources Institute, it identifies sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens.
    Websites: http://www.nextbillion.net/ and World Resources Institute

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Arab World Domain Name Opportunity Huge Economic Help

    Arab World Domain Name Opportunity Huge Economic Help

    By David SouthDevelopment Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    With the so-called Arab Spring still unfolding across much of the Arabic-speaking world, it is easy to miss a rising new economic opportunity: The introduction of an Arabic domain name system for the Internet.

    The explosion in mobile phones in the Arab world has dramatically increased the number of people who can now access the Internet. One Arabic financial website put the number of people who can now access the Internet in one way or another in the Arab world as 75 million (www.nuqudy.com). As highlighted in the 2003 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), Arabic-speaking countries have been at a knowledge disadvantage for some time: more than 270 million citizens have access to fewer books than other languages, slower growth economies, and greater illiteracy than the faster-growing emerging economies. At the time, the AHDR found there were just 18 computers per 1,000 people compared to a global average of 78. And just 1.6 percent of Arabs had Internet access, one of the lowest ratios in the world (AHDR 2003).

    Since the dawn of the Internet, Latin script has been used exclusively for top-level web domain names, the addresses that end .com, .org and so on. That has been a big obstacle for users of non-Latin script languages like Arabic. It is estimated just 10 percent of people in the Arab world speak English. Many of the resources on the Internet and its utility have been lost to these people. But by using Arabic domain names, there will be a consistency and no more guesswork.

    A typical problem in Latin transliterations of Arabic is the conundrum as to either using El or Al as the prefix to a word. This problem is eliminated when Arabic is used.

    The Arab world is also very mixed, including the resource-rich, cash-rich Gulf States – Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain – and states with high rates of poverty such as Egypt, Djibouti and Yemen.

    The protests and uprisings this year in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere – with their Facebook pages and Twitter streams – have shown that a growing group of highly Internet-savvy young people is emerging in the Arab world. But for many without the education or the resources, access to knowledge still remains weak. But armed with Internet-capable mobile phones and Arabic language domain names, rapid change is now possible.

    The number of books published in Arabic is notoriously relatively low, and print runs are small. Arabic language books make up just 1.1 percent of world production.

    The AHDR reports have called this knowledge deficit a direct obstacle to human development in Arab countries.

    But things are changing and the rise of Arabic domain names offers the potential for an explosion in Arabic language Internet content.

    In May 2010 ICANN, the world’s Internet domain authority, decided to allow top-level domains in non-Latin script. For Arabic speakers, it started this program in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    As a sign of the importance of Arabic participation in future growth of the Internet, this year’s World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva, Switzerland in May 2011 was sponsored by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

    A catchy domain name has many advantages. For Arabic speakers, this means they can type in Arabic domain names for websites and even do it right to left, as they do in print.

    In 2009, the first Arabic domain name was grabbed by Egypt. As the Internet naming authority, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (www.icann.org), started to allow the registering of non-Latin script names. The domain was for the Arabic word for Egypt or “.masr”.

    As an early adopter, Egypt sees it as an important part of bringing more Arabic speakers online. George Victor, from the Egyptian National Telecom Regulatory Authority, told the BBC: “We believe that this is a great step that will open new horizons for many e-services in Egypt, and it will have its direct impact, enlarging the number of online users.”

    Victor believes using Arabic builds trust.

    “Having a domain name in your own language is a point of having a local identity,” he said.

    “When talking about Arabic domain names, we are talking about having users which are not online now. People with languages disabilities – people who are having language as a barrier to connect online.”

    From now on Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways.

    The advantages of registering an Arabic domain name are numerous. They include clear improvements to business and trade: an ability to protect a trademark, better communication with Arabic customers, better Arabic-language advertising opportunities, better memorability for Arabic domain names because they will be in the Arabic language, and greater access to Arabic customers.

    But there are also significant improvements to how the Internet functions in the Arabic world. Search results on Arabic search engines will be more precise with Arabic domain names; catchy, memorable domain names will be a spur to the advertising and marketing industries; and a more Arab-friendly Internet will draw in more Arabic-speaking Internet users, helping them to enjoy the fruits of this great technological advance just as speakers of other languages have.

    In March 2011, the Gulf state of Qatar enthusiastically started to offer Arabic domain names.

    “The launch of Qatar’s Arabic top-level domain names is a major milestone as we work to build a more digitally inclusive society,” said Dr. Hessa Al Jaber, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology, which will manage Qatar’s Internet domain names through the Qatar Domains Registry.

    “As more organizations and individuals begin adopting Arabic domain names, the Internet will literally be opened up to broad new audiences. The Arab world represents a region with enormous potential for growth both in terms of usage and the creation of new digital content, especially Arabic content.”

    ICANN’s President and Chief Executive, Rod Beckstrom, sees this as a new phase for the Internet: “ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain system to better serve all of mankind.”

    Published: July 2011

    Resources

    1) Watch the ICANN educational video “Get Ready for the Next Big Thing”, explaining how domain names work and what the changes mean. Website: http://www.icann.org

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/africa-to-get-own-internet-domain/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/berber-hip-hop-helps-re-ignite-culture-and-economy/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/04/data-surge-across-global-south-promises-to-re-shape-the-internet/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/11/egyptian-youth-turns-plastic-waste-into-fuel/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/innovation-cairos-green-technology-pioneers/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/29/new-apps-make-driving-and-travelling-in-egypt-easier-safer/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/21/preserving-beekeeping-livelihoods-in-morocco/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/21/social-networking-websites-a-way-out-of-poverty/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Africa to Get Own Internet Domain

    Africa to Get Own Internet Domain

    By David SouthDevelopment Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Africa is in the midst of an Internet revolution that is set only to accelerate. The continent is one of the last places to experience the information technology revolution that has swept the world in the past two decades.

    Africa has been at a disadvantage for several reasons, the most basic of which has been the lack of bandwidth capacity available from the undersea cables that connect other continents to the Internet. A map showing the world’s undersea cable links says it all: the majority of traffic goes between Europe and the United States (http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-resources/telegeography-infographics/submarine-cable-map/).

    But this is changing: a glance at recent developments with the launching of the Seacom, EASSy, MainOne and other cables shows a continent getting better connected by the year (http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/).

    With seven out of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world between 2011 and 2015 projected to be in sub-Saharan Africa, the conditions are ripe to grow African Internet businesses. For example, Ghana, with its booming information technology sector, boasted 13 percent economic growth last year, among the fastest in the world.

    In eight of the past 10 years, sub-Saharan Africa has grown faster than Asia (The Globe and Mail).

    While Africa has come late to the Internet party, the continent can benefit from two decades of experience elsewhere to avoid making the mistakes others have. Africa can upload tried and tested Internet platforms and can also create new, Africa-specific platforms that tackle the continent’s own needs and challenges.

    One of the ways to make the most of the opportunities presented by the Internet is to have an Africa-specific Internet domain name. A domain name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name) is the suffix placed after the period in Internet URL (uniform resource locator) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator) addresses. Common ones familiar to most people who use the Internet include .com (for commercial websites), .org (for non-profit websites and organizations), .co.uk (for British businesses) or .ca (for Canadian organizations).

    The dot Africa (.africa) domain name will be available in the next 15 months according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (http://www.icann.org/). It is currently reviewing 500 African organizations that have expressed interest in managing the domain name registrations, and will choose one at the beginning of 2013.

    Countries such as Kenya and South Africa – two places in Africa with booming information technology sectors – are hoping to make the most of the new dot Africa domain name.

    The idea is to use the dot Africa domain name to build a stronger brand for the continent’s Internet that will be bigger than the individual country domain names. Sophia Bekele, executive director of DotConnectAfrica, told CNN the suffixes for individual African countries had proven unpopular during the decade since their introduction.

    Her organization found that 80 per cent of African domain name registrants had opted for “.com” or “.org” suffixes, which were price competitive, reliable to register and had wide recognition.

    The country-level domain names suffered from being “usually owned by governments, and governments are typically not very good at marketing,” she told CNN.

    Bekele’s research found young developers involved in creating local content felt a stronger affinity with the “.africa” suffix than to the “.com” domains. And the new suffix will let companies unify their presence across the continent under a single online brand.

    A major benefit of the “.africa” domain will be that proceeds from African domain registrations remain on the continent, rather than flowing offshore. DotConnectAfrica says it plans to reinvest surpluses into developing the African Internet sector.

    The African Union Commission (http://www.au.int/en/commission) is also looking to register the .afrique (French language websites) and .afriqia (Arabic language websites).

    The AUC’s head of information society, Moctar Yedaly, told CNN the commission’s vision for the .africa domain is not just commercial.

    “It may well be a very good business in terms of money generating. If it may generate some revenue we can use for the development of ICT in Africa, then that is all very good, but that’s not my primary goal,” he told CNN. “My primary goal is to ensure the identity of Africa, the image, the culture are well-maintained.”

    Published: October 2012

    Resources

    1) The Wikipedia page on the .africa initiative. Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.africa

    2) ICANN: To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer — a name or a number. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world.  Website: http://www.icann.org/

    3) DotConnectAfrica, a non-profit organization registered in Mauritius, is one of the is trying win the right to manage the dot africa name space for businesses and individuals across the continent. Website: http://www.dotconnectafrica.org/

    4) Dot.Africa: Dot.Africa is specialised in realising internet access for international organisations with sites in Africa. Website: http://www.dotafrica.com/about/index.html 

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/21/africa/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/african-breakthroughs-to-make-life-better/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/19/african-culture-as-big-business/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/arab-world-domain-name-opportunity-huge-economic-help/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/04/the-brck-kenyan-developed-solution-to-boost-internet-access/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/23/kenyan-farmer-uses-internet-to-boost-potato-farm/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/17/mapping-to-protect-kenyas-environment-the-emazingira-solution/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/11/30/nollywood-booming-nigerian-film-industry/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/09/the-power-of-the-word-african-blogging-and-books/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/03/30/riverwood-kenyan-super-fast-super-cheap-filmmaking/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/wireless-internet-culture-helping-zimbabwe-economy-recover/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023