Kwame Som-Pimpong

  • No. 143: Three AM Reads: Falling Commodity Prices | Kenyan Regulators Split over Bitcoin | IMF Making the Rounds

    Coffee Prices Are Going to Drop 6% This Year, But My Americano Will Still Be $4 The World Bank put out its forecasts for global commodity prices last week, and it expects coffee, cocoa, and tea prices to fall 6%. Ivory Coast’s President Ouattara recently called on the country’s cocoa farmers to increase their output…

  • No. 142: Three AM Reads: Cars45 gets $5m | Ethos Makes a Sugar Play | Ghana’s Illegal Mining Problem

    Cars45 Gets $5M to Streamline Nigerian Used Auto Sales Jake Bright reports that Cars45 raised a nice Series A round from Frontier Car Group that has backing from some serious names in the venture capital space – Balderton Capital, EchoVC, TPG Growth, and Maryland-based NEA. Seeing that Cars45 raised its round from this one group…

  • No. 141: Three AM Reads Late Edition: Kenya’s Geothermal Energy | Resilient Ivory Coast | Nigeria’s FX Reserves

    Kenya Pushes Forward on Geothermal Plans It’s fantastic seeing Kenya continue to make progress on its Vision 2030 plan to be generating 5000MW of geothermal energy by 2030. I was rooting for these projects back in 2011, so I’m glad they’re not making me look bad. The groundbreaking for the 158MW Olkaria V geothermal site…

  • No. 140: Three AM Reads: Egypt Reaps from Devaluation | Private Equity Gets it Done in Uganda | Africans in the MLB

    No Pain. No Gain: Egypt Edition Yesterday, I bristled at the scenario of a group of hedge fund managers pushing for the devaluation of the Naira. A country going through a devaluation situation experiences lots of pain, but good can come from it. Egypt seems to be seeing early fruit from the devaluation it initiated…

  • No. 139: Three AM Reads – Hedge Funds in Africa | Africa’s Cities are Big, but Isolated | Artificial Intelligence

    A Case for More Hedge Funds Investing in Africa Kurt Davis makes an interesting case for why it makes sense for hedge funds to be more active in core sectors across African markets – financial services, metals and mining, oil and gas, and agriculture and land. I admit that I bristled a bit at the…

  • No. 138: How Does Africa’s Innovation Economy Tap Into Africa’s Wealth?

    Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend who is raising a fund for her Lagos-based startup. At one point in our conversation, she shared the effort she has had to go through to get people she has met with in Silicon Valley up to speed on what is happening in Nigeria’s tech space. This has…

  • No. 137: African American Music Appreciation Month

    Thanks to Peter Bakke for the tip on June being African-American Music Appreciation Month. To get you started, consider taking a listen to Robert Glasper’s new album, Everything’s Beautiful, where he samples a bunch of Miles Davis recordings. I’ve been meaning to listen to more of Prince’s discography, so I’ll probably start working through that…

  • No. 136: Atlas Mara Still Trying to Gain Footing

    Last year, I brought up Atlas Mara management getting dressed down in an investor conference call due to the lack of confidence the market had in the firm. Well, their Q1 2016 results can’t be too much more encouraging considering the $2M loss the bank posted. Apparently, management plans to implement some cost reductions and…

  • No. 135: Queen of Katwe

    Last year, I wrote about my frustration with the difficult time I was having finding a movie about a black princess that my daughter could watch. As you can imagine, when I saw that Disney was coming out with a movie called Queen of Katwe, I was thrilled. When I finally watched the trailer, I…

  • No. 134: Soul City: A City for Black Folk

    My head is still shaking after learning that a prison sits on the land where Floyd McKissick was trying to build a city for black people. White Flight, Urban Crisis, New Cities Soul City was a project McKissick began working on in the late 1960s as part of an initiative at the Department of Housing and…

  • No. 133: Lumumba Was Here

    Originally posted on Kwame Som-Pimpong: Yesterday was the 54th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, independent Congo’s first prime minister. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, one of the first blacks to attend my alma mater, wrote a nice piece on the importance of Lumumba and his death. He recently published a biography of Prime Minister Lumumba that…

  • No. 132: Bill Janeway Knows a Lot about Technology and Economics

    Barry Ritholtz did a fascinating interview with Bill Janeway, Managing Director at Warburb Pincus, a private equity shop whose name you may have seen when Timothy Geithner joined as President a few years ago. Side note: Warburg Pincus is the largest shareholder in Kosmos Energy, the exploration company that was part of the discovery of…

  • No. 131: Netflix Delivers on Promise

    Netflix went live in 130 countries today. I wrote something on their shareholder letter from last summer. In the letter, Reed Hastings mentioned that the plan was to go completely global by the end of 2016. Delivering on that goal 12 months early is amazing, or at least a good move in managing expectations.

  • No. 130: Freedom Schools and Upward Bound Memories

    I’ve watched this video of Ron Clark dancing with some of his students at least ten times over the past day. It reminds me of Harambee at Freedom Schools. Starting off the day with a thorough turn-up is good for the soul. I also think about the summers I worked at Upward Bound. Those were…

  • No. 129: Enthusiasm

    I spotted this plaque at my parent’s home before I headed back to DC from one of the best New Year’s holidays I can remember. I have been observing people around me who I admire for how they consistently show their gratitude. On New Year’s Day, I had a pretty good opportunity to work on…