Tag: February 2012

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Business Leads on Tackling Violence in Mexican City

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 24/10/2022
No Comments on Business Leads on Tackling Violence in Mexican City

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

The damaging affects of crime and violence can ruin a city. They act as a drag on efforts to increase wealth and improve living conditions, and a city that gets a bad reputation, especially in the age of the Internet, will lose investment opportunities.

The North American nation of Mexico has been struggling against drug and gang-related violence that has left an estimated 47,000 people dead over the past five years. It is a casualty rate worthy of a war.

In Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuevo_Le%C3%B3n), an innovative initiative has brought together local businesses to tackle the root causes of violence and crime. The initiative – called Red SumaRSE, which means ‘joining a network’ – was born from anger and disgust at the situation in the city. And it was ignited by a prominent member of the business community expressing this frustration on the social media outlet Twitter (twitter.com).

The chief executive of the Cemex cement company had had enough one day. Lorenzo Zambrano tweeted a blunt message to other companies in the city: “He who leaves Monterrey is a coward.” It was to be a rallying cry for the campaign to take back the city from the violent gangs.

Monterrey is embroiled in violent drug-related gang crime. Just one incident shows how bad the situation had become. In August 2011 members of the Zetas drug gang torched a casino over a dispute over non-payment of extortion money, killing 52 people.

Law enforcement measures can often only go so far to curb violence in a community. Little impact can be made without addressing the underlying economic causes of much of the violence – poor employment opportunities, drug turf wars between rival gangs, economic instability and more.

“Violence is an expression of social inequality,” Zambrano told The New York Times.

Tragedies like the casino fire provoked the city’s business community to take action. Private companies in the city have stepped up to design and fund a recruitment campaign for the police force and are paying part of the cost for government-backed community redevelopment plans.

Corporate philanthropy in Mexico has a history of being very limited. Apart from distribution of gifts at holiday time,there was little else. But this is changing, with Red SumaRSE showing the way.

“In the last five or 10 years there has been progress both in terms of the quantity of the money and the quality,” Michael Layton, director of the Philanthropy and Civil Society Project at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, told The New York Times. “But I don’t think Mexico has caught up to Brazil and other countries where the business sector has taken corporate philanthropy to heart.”

The Red SumaRSE alliance of Monterrey’s companies is directing support to non-governmental organizations working on community development. Examples include telephone company Axtel and the tortilla maker Gruma (gruma.com/vEsp) taking charge of 20 other companies to invest in schools, building up infrastructure and reversing drop-out rates.

The Oxxo company (oxxo.com/index.php), Mexico and Latin America’s largest chain store, has started to work at improving conditions in the neighbourhood immediately behind its headquarters. The company is working on building parks, increasing job opportunities and finding ways to prevent teenagers from joining gangs in the first place.

Cemex has also opened a new community centre in a violent neighbourhood where shootings were a regular occurrence. It was based on some Latin American knowledge sharing: inspired by the case of the Colombian city of Medellin, where libraries were strategically located in violent slum areas.

And there is more good work in the pipeline. The business community has drawn up a list of 70 neighbourhoods in the city needing re-development.

Red SumaRSE has not been without its critics. They have attacked the focus on security, education and victims while ignoring corruption, which many believe is the source of many of the city’s problems.

Published: February 2012

Resources

1) Medellin: Walking between slums and dreamworlds of neoliberalism: More on the complexities of the situation in this Colombian city.Website: http://www.a0n.com/medellin/dreamworlds.htm

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.

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

Tags 2012, Business Leads on Tackling Violence in Mexican City, David South Consulting, Development Challenges, development challenges south-south solutions, February 2012, Issue 4, Mexico, Published: February 2012, South-South Solutions, Southern Innovator Issue 4, Southern Innovator magazine, Southern Innovator Magazine Issue 4, southerninnovators, UNDP, UNOSSC, urban, urbanism

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Africa’s Tourism Sector Can Learn from Asian Experience

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 20/10/2022
No Comments on Africa’s Tourism Sector Can Learn from Asian Experience

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Africa continues to be seen as new territory for global tourism, yet it still is not even close to meeting its potential,according to a report by a South African think tank. In fact, many resorts and tourist areas are failing to fill up with visitors. This contrasts with the booming world tourism industry, which broke records in arrivals in 2011 (UNWTO).

Apart from South Africa, much of sub-Saharan Africa is the worst performing region for tourism in the world. Africa received 5.2 per cent of the world’s tourism – 40 million visitors – in 2010. Yet the continent as a whole has 15 per cent of the world’s population: a hint at the potential being missed.

Okavango Delta in Botswana (botswana-places.co.za/okavango.html), reports Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper,has nearly empty luxury lodges and resorts and is offering heavy discounts to lure tourists in.

But the report believes there are two countries African nations can look to for lessons on how to tighten up their tourism offerings: Vietnam and Cambodia. It points out both these countries share similar challenges, including colonial legacies, war and conflict, poor quality skills and weak infrastructure. Both countries dramatically reversed their failures in a decade and now have booming tourism sectors creating jobs and bringing in wealth.

Africa suffers from negative publicity generated by media reporting about terrorist attacks on tourists across the continent and kidnappings by criminal gangs and pirates in East Africa. The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ upheavals in North Africa are also having an impact. The continent’s many infrastructure problems also limit its potential. These include unreliable power supplies, out-of-date airports, inadequate involvement of local populations in the benefits of tourism and the tourist economy, and poor awareness of attractions apart from the clichéd African “safari”.

The report is urging a re-think by all of Africa’s nations of their tourism strategies and the structure of their tourism sectors. In order for the tourism industry to grow and to thrive, greater focus is required and greater investment needed to ensure the facilities, attractions and experience matches what tourists would expect. And the report believes this matters a great deal because in tourism lies the solution to many of the continent’s high unemployment problems.

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries and a great generator of wealth and jobs. But while it provides 5 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), it only provides 2 per cent of Africa’s GDP.

Tourism in Africa is also heavily skewed to just a handful of countries. The bulk of tourists visit just four countries: Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa.

“This desultory record belies the natural advantages Africa has over other regions that have performed much better,in particular the continent’s extraordinary diversity – of wildlife, environment and people,” according to the report produced by the Brenthurst Foundation (thebrenthurstfoundation.org), a think-tank in Johannesburg.

The paper is called ‘Unlocking Africa’s Tourism Potential: Lessons from Vietnam and Cambodia’ (http://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/a_sndmsg/news_view.asp?I=121182&PG=288)

The Brenthurst Foundation researches new ideas and “innovative actions for strengthening Africa’s economic performance”.

Cambodia’s tourism industry grew by 17 per cent in 2010 and became the country’s second largest earner of foreign income. In Vietnam, tourism has grown by 11 per cent every year since 1995 and makes up 12 per cent of the country’s GDP.

The report isolated four key lessons that African tourism authorities should follow:

1) Help the private sector to expand what it offers to tourists, and make it more sophisticated, including ecotourism and maritime tourism.

2) Undertake aggressive international marketing campaigns (South Africa is a good example) and push hard their well-known tourism offerings, making them global icons. Also develop tourism hubs.

3) The tourism sector needs to professionalize by investing in skills training in tourism and hospitality.

4) Identify potential tourist markets and smooth the journey for them by streamlining obstacles like visas. They should also make a list of health and safety concerns tourists will have and address them. The report believes this strategy would go a long way to tackle the continent’s high unemployment levels.

“No continent stands to benefit more from the 21st century tourism boom than Africa,” the report claims.

Published: February 2012

Resources

1) World Tourism Organization: UNWTO is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible,sustainable and universally accessible tourism.Website: http://unwto.org

2) Vietnam Tourism: The national tourism administration of Vietnam. Website: http://www.vietnamtourism.com

3) Tourism Cambodia: The official website for the tourism authority of Cambodia.Website: http://www.tourismcambodia.com

4) Tourism and Poverty Reduction: Pathways to Prosperity by Jonathan Mitchell and Caroline Ashley, Publisher:Earthscan.Website: http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?TabId=92842&v=497073

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

Tags 2012, Africa’s Tourism Sector Can Learn from Asian Experience, David South, David South Consulting, Development Challenges, development challenges south-south solutions, February 2012, international tourism, South-South Solutions, Southern Innovator magazine, tourism, UNDP, UNOSSC, UNWTO

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Venture Capital Surge in Africa to Help Businesses

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 19/10/2022
No Comments on Venture Capital Surge in Africa to Help Businesses

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Africa’s potential economic powerhouse lies in its small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa ebbs and flows based on the state of the global economy – and most of it is directed towards large enterprises and multinational companies.

Finding ways to support grassroots SMEs has the potential to truly build in sustainable prosperity for the continent and construct stable middle class jobs.

But building a continent-wide network of investors, and directing that investment at the grassroots business entrepreneurs who employ the majority of Africans, is not easy.

Foreign direct investment to Africa rose fivefold from 2000, peaking at US $72 billion in 2008 (African Economic Outlook). A surge in raw material prices fed this boom. FDI is, however, unevenly distributed and much of it goes to extractive industries like mining and oil and gas in a handful of countries. When the global economic crisis hit, FDI inflows to African countries fell by 20 per cent, to US $59 billion in 2009.

Venture Capital for Africa: Connecting Entrepreneurs and Investors (http://vc4africa.biz), is a free service trying to nurture the SME sector and help entrepreneurs overcome the challenges of funding start-ups in Africa. Members are expected to contribute, collaborate and show their seriousness, bringing resources or their ideas and enthusiasm.

It has a detailed website with a mix of resources available. People can register and connect with others, check out venture ideas and the most popular ones in the past day to month, read about featured entrepreneurs, register as an investor looking for investees, and meet-up with others in their city. This includes expatriate communities in places like Oslo, Norway.

VC4Africa believes its mission is to champion entrepreneurship, and particularly SMEs, as the main driver of Africa’s economic growth. These businesses provide the majority of the continent’s employment and income. And as it says on its website, they offer “hope for a better future.” It is estimated SMEs contribute two thirds of national income for many African countries and are a major source of middle class jobs.

VC4Africa believes “that the most meaningful impact will still come from grass roots level i.e. entrepreneurs bold enough to start potentially great companies. It aims to connect these individuals with the additional network,knowledge and capital they need to realize their potential.”

VC4Africa started from a group on the social media and connecting platform Linkedin in 2008. It claims to be the largest online community “dedicated to entrepreneurs and investors building companies on the continent.” It is a free service and was founded by “serial entrepreneurs” Bill Zimmerman, formerly of Microsoft in the USA, and Ben White, founding member of AfriLabs (afrilabs.com), a network of technology incubators. Both have extensive experience founding and investing in technology initiatives in Africa.

VC4Africa is sponsored by a long list of well-known names in supporting African entrepreneurs: Acumen Fund (acumenfund.org), Afribiz (afribiz.info), AfricaNews.com, How We Made It In Africa.com, iHub Nairobi (ihub.co.ke), and others.

Consulting firm McKinsey (mckinsey.com) believes Africa’s more than 1 billion citizens should be seen as consumers and says the continent’s growing number of middle-income consumers now outstrips India’s. It boldly claims consumer spending will reach US $1.4 trillion in Africa by 2020, up from US $860 billion in 2008. Ventures that target these consumers could do very well indeed.

The future is looking good for the venture capital model if VC4Africa continues with its successes. Two of VC4Africa’s ventures – BongoLive and Njorku – were hailed by Forbes Africa magazine in February 2012 as top start-ups in Africa.

Founded in 2010, BongoLive is a mobile and SMS services company in Tanzania. Njorku, founded in 2011, is a Cameroonian career and recruitment services platform focused on Africa.

A long and impressive list of African ventures is being supported by the VC4Africa network. Not all will succeed, and they are in very different stages of development, from embryonic to established. The failure rate for start-ups anywhere is always high. But this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. What tends to happen from experience in other countries is this: a buzz is generated as like-minded people gather around a tech scene. They feed off each others’ideas and when one idea dies, it is often feasted on – like a lion on a wildebeest – and becomes the meal for another start-up. Or, the idea is taken on board by a more established outfit.

The dynamic around tech start-ups can seem strange to more traditional business cultures. Tech start-ups tend to be more forgiving of failure and more willing to see all their labour as part of a bigger thing. It is accepted that some ideas will fly, and others will die. It is not a culture heavily laden with the shame that can be associated with more traditional business failures.

Some of the ventures supported by VC4Africa include:

MXit – Founded in 2003, MXit was one of the first Mobile Instant messaging services in the world and in Africa, and has a user base of about 45 million. (South Africa)

Dropifi – Founded in 2011, Dropifi helps businesses better respond to incoming messages via their websites, and also includes analytics for website owners. (Ghana)

FloCash – Founded in 2010, FloCash allows anyone with an email address and mobile number to send and receive money across Africa simply and easily. (UK)

Bandeka – Founded in 2011, Bandeka is an exclusive social network for building relationships/dating. (Ghana and Nigeria)

Motribe – Founded in 2011, Motribe is a mobile platform enabling users, brands, agencies and publishers across the world to build and manage their own mobile social communities. (South Africa)

Hummba – Founded in 2011, Hummba is a social and travel networking website that lets users download free audio travel guides and share travel experiences directly from mobile phones.

10Layer – Founded in 2011, 10Layer is a CMS (content management) system targeted specifically at newsrooms. (South Africa)

Published: February 2012

Resources

1) African Venture Capital Association is a not-for-profit entity founded to promote, develop and stimulate private equity and venture capital in Africa. AVCA is committed to promoting high ethical standards of business conduct and professional competence in the private equity and venture capital industries. Website: avcanet.com

2) Venture Capital Investment for SMEs: Africa Report explores what venture capitalists look for in African businesses.Website: http://www.africareport.com/latest-business-news/2010/10/22/venture-capital-investment-for-smes

3) New book: Africa’s Future: Darkness to Destiny: How the past is shaping Africa’s economic evolution by Duncan Clarke.Website: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Africas-Future-Darkness-economic-evolution/dp/1846685699

4) The Co-Creation Hub Nigeria, a technology innovations center in Lagos, is working to start 30 profitable social tech ventures in the next two years. “The thinking behind CcHub is that the techies should not believe that they can just stay in a corner and create solutions for the market”, says Bosun Tijani, CEO of CcHub Nigeria. “You need to engage the market in the creation process and that is where co-creation comes into play.” Website: cchubnigeria.com

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

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/20/african-hotel-boom-bringing-in-new-investment-and-creating-jobs/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/05/18/african-innovation-helps-make-banking-transactions-safer/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/05/african-innovation-eco-system-taking-shape/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/africas-consumer-market-in-spotlight-for-2011/

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

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/25/business-as-a-tool-to-do-good/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/10/19/buying-into-capitalism/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/14/cash-machines-for-the-poor/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/crowdfunding-technology-start-up-success-in-africa/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/15/development-challenges-south-south-solutions-newsletter-2011-2014-2/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/17/diaspora-bonds-to-help-build-up-infrastructure/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2017/10/18/innovation-agenda-and-timeline-2007-2015/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/regions/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/19/safe-healthcare-is-good-business-and-good-health/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/shopping-and-flying-in-africas-boom-towns/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-2/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/02/04/us-450-million-pledged-for-green-economy-investments-at-kenyan-gssd-expo/

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

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

African Afro Beats Leads New Music Wave to Europe

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 02/10/2022
No Comments on African Afro Beats Leads New Music Wave to Europe

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

A surge in interest in African music in Britain is creating new economic opportunities for the continent’s musicians. The new sound heating up the U.K. music scene is “Afro Beats” – a high energy hybrid that mixes Western rap influences with Ghanaian and Nigerian popular music.

Afro Beats draws its inspiration from the “Afrobeat” sound popularized in the 1970s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrobeat).Afrobeat recordings from that time are still making money as long-forgotten tunes are re-packaged by so-called ‘crate divers’ – enterprising people who rummage through old vinyl record collections and re-brand scenes and sounds.

This is part of the global creative economy, which is thriving despite the recent years of economic turmoil. Musicians offer many lessons for businesses in the South, both in their adaptability to new conditions and their resourcefulness in experimenting with new business models to earn an income.

Afrobeat stars and pioneers like Nigeria’s Fela Kuti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti) have been popular outside Africa for many decades. But Afro Beats – a new name with the addition of the crucial letter “s” – is being declared as the beginning of a new phase in taking African music global.

As the digital music revolution has rocked the global music business, artists have had to adapt and change their business models. For all but a very few “big names,” it is no longer possible to build a career on royalties from recordings and hits. Stars and novices alike must battle with music pirates, who sell CDs and downloads of other people’s tunes and keep the money for themselves. Legitimate income often comes in micropayments from large music platforms like iTunes as people pay to download an individual song or mix and match tunes they like from an artist’s catalogue, rather than buying a whole album as they would in the past.

Clever musicians have turned to building their brand, using live performances and the ability to sell other services and merchandise to make a living. They create their own web platforms, or mobile phone apps (applications), and do the marketing and distribution on their own to build a loyal fan base. Others are creating their own mobile radio stations by distributing CDs to the ubiquitous taxi mini buses that are the main means of transport in most African cities.

But some things remain the same as in the past, such as the importance of having a champion, such as a radio DJ (disc jockey), who acts as a “taste maker,” discovering new acts and telling their audience about them.

The DJ most associated with pushing the Afro Beats sound and scene is London-based DJ Abrantee (http://www.facebook.com/djabrantee).

“I’ve been playing this music to three or four thousand people at African events in the U.K. for years,” DJ Abrantee told The Guardian. “For years we’ve had amazing hiplife, highlife, Nigerbeats, juju music, and I thought: you know what, let’s put it all back together as one thing again, and call it Afro Beats, as an umbrella term. Afrobeat, the 60s music, was more instrumental – this Afro Beats sound is different, it’s inter-twined with things like hip-hop and funky house, and there’s more of a young feel to it.”

Abrantee (abrantee.com) promotes Afro Beats in the United Kingdom in myriad ways: he broadcasts six days a week on a radio station, including an Afro Beats-themed show on Saturdays. He travels around to DJ and takes Ghanaian and Nigerian tunes with him. He says Africa is so musically vibrant, he can’t keep up with it all.

“This is specifically the western African sound: there are a lot of shared ideas between these two neighbouring countries,” he explained to The Guardian. “I see Afro Beats as music which makes the heart beat. And it’s funky, and hyped, and energetic and young.”

Afro Beats has also been able to reach a young audience. “It’s striking how young they are – when I do these Afro Beats events there’s thousands of people, and they’re all youngsters, really.”

One of the Afro Beats stars is D’Banj (mohitsrecords.com/d-banj) – a Nigerian rap star – who has been receiving attention for his song Oliver Twist.

The Afro Beats sound is also provoking a new interest in all things African amongst youth with African parents. This is a big change from when American “cool” set the trends. As DJ Abrantee notes, “the parents are really pleased, and proud, that their kids are all of a sudden embracing their culture. It didn’t used to be cool, but now they’re going through their parents’ record collections going, ‘Have you got this old song by Daddy Lumba?’.”

Some of the Afro Beats leaders include Sarkodie’s ‘U Go Kill Me’, Ice Prince’s ‘Oleku’, Atumpan’s ‘The Thing’, Castro ftAsamoah Gyan’s ‘African Girls’.

Afro Beat’s popularity in Britain has led to African artists collaborating with musicians in the UK. Afro Beats musician Sarkodie has collaborated with London-based artists Donaeo and Sway. DJ Abrantee sees this trend continuing and expanding. “You’re going to see more U.K. artists doing Afro Beats collaborations now,” he said.

Other Nigerian artists who have benefited from the increasing awareness are Wiz Kid, 2Face Idibia and P-Square (mypsquare.com).

Abrantee believes Ghana and Nigeria are having a big impact on the global music scene.

“The floodgates have opened. Music is always evolving, and everyone’s always looking for the next drug. Funky house has died out, grime is still there but it’s gone back underground, electro-pop’s got U.K. urban music in the charts, but that’ll die out, it’s got a short shelf-life. … and people are finally noticing I’m getting 3,000 people coming out to dance to Afro Beats.”

British-Ghanaian hip-hop performer Sway sees connections between Afrobeat and Afro Beats.

“Fela Kuti is obviously a massive legend in the game, and what he was doing is not too different to what D’Banj is doing now – taking western influences and adding them to African culture, and coming up with something new, that appeals to everyone,” he said.

And technology is seen as the binding element that is connecting African music and musicians to other scenes.

“African music in Africa is evolving in relation to what’s going on abroad too,” said Sway. “Via the Internet they’re picking up certain trends much quicker: so for example you have Auto-Tune and western styles of singing cropping up on all these Afro Beats tracks.”

And Sway believes the quality of production of African music has improved: “There’s been a serious change in the music coming out of Africa lately.

“The sound is heavier and clearer, the videos are better, there’s been a positive growth in the African music scene. It was just a matter of time before people paid attention.

“When you’ve got African swag and African traditions combined with up-to-date western styles, and singing in English, well – you’ve got a winning formula on your hands.”

Published: February 2012

Resources

1) Mongolian Rock Pop book: In the Mongolian language, this UNDP book details how pop musicians led on business innovation during the turbulent transition years of the 1990s. Website: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23917535/Mongolian-Rock-and-Pop-Book

2) Afrobeat: An interactive exploration of Afrobeat and its participants from National Geographic. Website: http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/afrobeat_686/en_US

3) DJ Abrantee: More from the champion of the Afro Beats scene. Website: http://www.abrantee.com