Category Archives: Value
A design challenge for agric service innovation in rural Africa
Find a way to embed principles of sustainable good agriculture for the smallscale farmer in a socio-economically beneficial way. How would we do this? Where do we begin? The answers to these questions and more will be forthcoming on this … Continue reading
Part 1: Why are we publishing our original research on rural economic behaviour in 5 parts online?
A recent article in The Economist on the economic value of owning cattle in rural India made me to realize just how little is understood about the rural economy. Here’s a snippet: That is because most people find spending easier … Continue reading
The Role of Livestock Data in Rural Africa: The Tanzanian Case Study
The World Bank finally notices the humble goat, four of which will buy you a new Nokia featurephone in Malawi. Funded by Bill and Melinda, this report takes a closer look at the domesticated animal as a financial instrument and … Continue reading
India recognizes the economic contribution of street vendors
What Indian economic phenomenon is at once marginal, even illegal, and enormously independent and entrepreneurial? That would be the street vendor, the small capitalist of the poor, and reservoir of off-the-books penalties that grease the machine of every municipal authority … Continue reading
Reflecting on this blog’s genesis after 5 years
I started this blog in late December 2008, in earnest and every day during the first prototype fieldwork for The Prepaid Economy project, one of the iBoP Asia Project’s first batch of Small Grant winners from the ASEAN region. For … Continue reading
Promoting Africa’s Informal Sector
Organising the informal sector and recognising its role as a profitable activity may contribute to economic development. This can also improve the capacity of informal workers to meet their basic needs by increasing their incomes and strengthening their legal status. … Continue reading
In sum
Irregular income streams from a variety of sources pose their own challenges to both buyers and sellers but offer an opportunity through the flexibility designed into business models for the informal economies where this pattern of cash flow tends to … Continue reading
Static income vs dynamic income
It was when attempting to clearly distinguish between patterns of cash flow in the formal vs the informal economy, using the concept of the degree of control granted to the end user over the variables of time (duration, frequency, periodicity) … Continue reading
Cashpower: prepaid electricity in Rwanda
Maarja Motus, an Estonian designer and my recent intern spent 3 weeks in Rwanda recently conducting some research on my behalf. Here’s an extract from her report on Cashpower, the Rwandese term for prepaid electricity. An electricity agent (Cashpower agent) … Continue reading
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