Economics
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I couldn’t quite put the words together for a longer piece on this, but I think there’s significance to last Monday, May 25 being Memorial Day and Africa Day. Memorial Day On May 1, 1865, formerly enslaved folks in Charleston, SC gave a proper burial to well over 200 Union soldiers who died as prisoners…
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Nigeria’s Bonny Light, Amenam crude under force majeure as disruptions resume (S&P Global Platts) If there is a global heat map showing the frequency of force majeure declarations in countries, I want to see it. It’s awful that Nigeria is still going through this waste of its lives and resources. SoftBank Vision Fund says its…
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5 AI Breakthroughs We’ll Likely See in the Next 5 Years (Singularity Hub) Is Ghana’s Economic Growth Failing to Reach The People? (Global Risk Insights) Uganda’s Leading Family Owned Businesses (Asoko Insight)
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Growing the Pie I’ve spent the past week crafting words about this memo. After a fantastic meeting earlier today, I’ll just speak plainly. For us to have the responsible capitalism Howard Marks calls for in this piece, we have got to get to the point where we have a frank conversation about how the U.S.…
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From Managing Decline to Building the Future What would it look like for there to be a visa program that matched skilled immigrants with communities that are especially hard-hit by population decline in the U.S.? The Economic Innovation Group, a think tank founded by Sean Parker of Facebook fame, just published a report outlining this…
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In his acceptance speech at the NAACP Image Awards this weekend, Jay-Z recited a quote that struck me: “It’s not the number of years in your life that count. It’s the amount of life in your years.” The quote echoed a question I had been pondering a couple days before I saw his acceptance speech…
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The Urbanist: Affordable housing The struggle for regular folks to find a place to stay is global. This is an very interesting survey of housing situations in California, Finland, Egypt, and Portugal. The California situation is so interesting. For a state that prides itself on leading other parts of the country in pushing progressive policy,…
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Bloomberg: Traders Snap Up Assets of Nation Where Default Is New Normal I’m not really sure what to make of this article. I wrote a several weeks ago about how I was nervous about hedge funds investing in countries like Mozambique. While the independent audit of the country’s finances seems to have given investors increased confidence…
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Bloomberg: Owner of $1 Billion Cobalt Project Says Rally Is Far From Over Eurasian Resources Group has a pretty massive cobalt mining project in the works in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company stands to realize a nice return on investment at the rate cobalt prices are skyrocketing. They jumped 71% last year and…
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Tastemakers Africa CEO Cherae Robinson Gives Us A Sneak Peak On Her 10-Year Plan and I’m Here For It Marketplaces are powerful and have a track record of disrupting industries and building. See eBay and Airbnb. Look out for what Safaricom could build on its Mpesa platform if regulators don’t make the two break up.…
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Microsoft Announces First Public Cloud in Africa Microsoft announced today that it was going to stand up two data centers in South Africa, the first public data centers on the continent. Let that sit with you for a bit. Hopefully, this is the beginning of public clouds proliferating across the continent. The benefits of this…
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CcHub Pushes to Keep Yaba’s Startups Clustered Together I struggled to parse out whether there’s really cause for concern for Yaba’s future as Lagos’ tech hub, or whether this piece was a veiled branding for CcHub. Perhaps, it was some of both. All the same, it’s cool to see CcHub making plans for the long-term…
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Nigeria’s Bank of Industry Provides Interest-Free Loans to National Youth Service Members Nigeria’s Bank of Industry has developed a Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund in partnership with the country’s National Youth Service Corps. The program provides NYSC members with loans they can use to further establish their businesses, and it seems like a nice program. Nigeria requires…
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Author Calls For African Entrepreneurs to Talk About Failure Idril Abshir penned this interesting piece arguing that African entrepreneurs should talk about failure more, indicating that they will find resilience in discussing failure. She cites the culture among Western entrepreneurs of acknowledging failure. While the stories in the piece were compelling, I don’t know that…
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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…
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Francophone Africa and Europe can expect access to more African and African-American content through Afrostream. The two-year old startup led by Tonjé Bakang has been on a tear this year, finishing up at Y Combinator and landing funding from Troy Carter’s Cross Culture Ventures (have they finished raising their $50M fund?), Orange Digital Ventures, Ace…
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Why am I to believe that the market will take care of itself when I read about the conflicts present in a committee that drives much of what happens in the $14 trillion dollar credit insurance? Jalak Jobanputra put together an interesting piece on banks giving way to financial services technology if they do not…
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Aly-Khan Satchu, one of the most respected equity investors in Kenya, discusses briefly how US-China cooperation would be a benefit to African countries. This aligns with comments Bobby Pittman, managing director of Kupanda Capital made at a session discussing the Electrify Africa Act. More on that sometime later this week. There are rumors of Anheuser-Busch…
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You’ve probably seen the news of Martin Winterkorn’s resignation from his CEO post at the Volkswagen Group. Rough year for this guy. Earlier in the year, VW Group supervisory board chair Ferdinand Piech publicly stated that there was distance between him and Winterkorn. I wonder if anything related to this discovery of VW vehicles emitting…
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The African Development Bank (AfDB) will be receiving the swagger Dr. Akinwumi Adesina brought to Nigeria’s agriculture sector, as he begins his term as president today. He takes the helm in times that are significantly different from when his predecessor, Dr. Donald Kaberuka got his start, and present their own set of challenges and opportunities,…
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I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing Eric Osiakwan about his experience building internet infrastructure in its early days in African countries, and the transition to investing in African startups. On top of that, he is pushing to get more Africans in the investing game to support the growth of the technology industry across the continent. Here’s the…
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I was glad to see the news about the launch of Valor Ventures, a VC firm led by women and focused on finding women founders. Another firm that excites me is the Impact America Fund. Here’s a good interview it’s founder, Kesha Cash, did with the Andreesen Horowitz team. Some time ago, I posted First…
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I didn’t set out to create an industry. “Something Ventured,” a piece covering the early days of the venture capital industry really helped me get a better grasp of the nascent stages of Silicon Valley. To hear the stories of Three lessons stood out from the documentary: 1. Opportunity is in R&D We’ve seen venture…
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Bobby Pittman, head of Kupanda Capital, did a nice interview with the Center for Global Development where he serves as a board member alongside the likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Lawrence Summers. He highlights the reasons Dr. Adesina won the AfDB presidency, and some things on which he will have to focus. Three points that…
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I gave a presentation earlier this week on how investment was key to moving the needle on transforming economic engagement with African countries from development aid to infrastructure. Here is my brainstorm in preparation for that talk, with some edits. During the IMF Spring Meetings a couple weeks ago, I heard a theme of working…
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As the number of wealthy individuals in Africa grows, I wonder if the US will see more public investment from such individuals. For example, Tony Elumelu invested an undisclosed amount in a California-based satellite startup last year. Will we see more folks follow the lead of, say, the Qatari government which gave around $100 million…
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The African Growth and Opportunity Act is up for re-authorization on September 30, 2015. The Act essentially makes it easier for certain African countries to export some of their goods to the United States, by making them duty-free. The goal of the Act was to support development on the continent and increase US-Africa trade. Fifteen years…
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Is the right next step for promoting American business investment in African markets a tax credit that encourage American companies to repatriate their investments on the continent? The Africa Report ran an interview in November with Rosa Whitaker, head of the Whitaker Group. She argues that this tax credit is the right investment response for US-Africa…
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From LinkedIn. ECONOMIC PAIN CONTINUES – Moody’s downgraded South Africa’s five largest banks, nine of its municipalities, its two development finance institutions, following the firm’s downgrading of the government’s debt ratingand Eskom’s bond rating last week. While the outlook remains stable for the banks and one of the development institutions – the Industrial Development Corporation…
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President Zuma Skips Monday’s innovaBRICS & Beyond Conference – link South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma cancelled his scheduled Monday appearance in London at the innovaBRICS conference, hosted by Deloitte. South African publication City Press reported that President Zuma cancelled his appearance due to not being able to secure a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron,…
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Oil Discovered Off Senegal’s Coast – link The wave of West African countries discovering oil continues with Cairn Energy, a Scottish Oil Company, striking oil about 100km off the coast of Senegal. The company is not yet sure about the size of the discovery – a first for Senegal. When Ghana discovered oil in 2010,…
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Here’s the rundown on last week’s episode of New Rules Africa. Check out the video for our deep dive into Africa’s stock exchanges: Link Marriott Plans to Build 50 Hotels in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt by 2020 – Link Marriott is putting both feet in Africa, where it projects to have its highest revenue growth through…
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Key Points 1. The saga around the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria governor continues; 2. The Central Bank governor is handily backing up his reputation; 3. President Jonathan could get a black eye from this fight; and 4. The independence of the Central Bank of Nigeria is in the balance. The Saga The February 20…
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When I first saw, the agenda for the Africa Rising seminar at this year’s IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, I posted a tweet: There's a peculiarity in the agenda for IMF/World Bank Spring Meeting seminar on "Africa Rising." What is it? http://t.co/wiuvyow1We — KWAME (@KwameSomPimpong) April 7, 2014 Probably not the wisest thing to not provide any…
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Entrepreneurs across the African continent are developing highly innovative technologies that are meeting real needs and improving the ease of life for people from all walks of life. At this year’s MIT Venture Capital (VC) Conference, I sat in on a panel that covered Brazil’s VC space. Two things struck me as very different from…
Kwame Som-Pimpong 