Africa’s Consumer Market in Spotlight for 2011

While other parts of the world will spend 2011 worrying about their debt levels and how to spur economic growth, many factors are pointing to Africa potentially following a different story. A frenzy of activity has been building around Africa’s market opportunities and its growing middle class consumer population. Years of steady growth rates up to 2008 and the vast, untapped opportunities on the continent have sparked interest from investors and businesses alike.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing economies rose by 10 percent in 2010 due to fast economic recovery and increasing South-South flows. Africa peaked in 2008 because of the resource boom and fell by 14 percent to US $50 billion in 2010 (UNCTAD). Rising FDI from Asia and Latin America has still yet to match the decline from developed countries – still the majority of FDI to Africa.

However, foreign direct investment to Africa had risen sixfold to US $58.56 billion between 2000 and 2009 (UNCTAD). The amount going to manufacturing and services has been growing, despite the slow down in 2009 because of the global economic downturn. Africa’s 11 largest economies are now being seen as the next to match Brazil and Russia, economic stars of the last few years.

The continent as a whole forms the 10th largest economy in the world. Of Africa’s more than 1 billion people, 900 million can be classified as part of the consumer economy. Out of this group, there is a third – approximately 300 million people – who make modest sums by Western standards, about US $200 a month, but have spare cash to buy things like mobile phones, DVDs and new clothes, or pay for better schools. They are the population that is overlooked when attention is focused only on the very poor living on less than US $2 a day.

This vast group is captured in the book Africa Rising by University of Texas professor Vijay Mahajan, which details the phenomenon of Africa’s middle class consumer society. He calls this group of middle class consumers “Africa 2,” with the desperately poor called Africa 3s, and the extremely rich Africa 1s.

This new group has expanded far beyond ruling elites and government workers. Many of its members work in the private sector, as secretaries, computer entrepreneurs, merchants and others who have benefited from consistent growth rates in many African countries.

The portion of African households with discretionary spending power rose from 35 percent in 2000 to 43 percent in 2008. The challenge will be to turn this wealth to the benefit of made-in-Africa businesses and to create stable, high-quality jobs to ensure this wealth effect lasts.

The new wealth effect can give Africa the tools needed to tackle its long-standing development challenges and lift more and more people out of poverty and misery while reducing dependence on foreign aid. And this can add rocket fuel to the surge toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals deadline in 2015 (http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Default.aspx).

The rapidly rising profile of Africa is reflected by the prestigious business newspaper the Wall Street Journal recently running a series titled “Africa’s Growing Consumer Class Lures Multinationals” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704720804576009672053184168.html).

Consulting firm McKinsey (http://www.mckinsey.com/) believes Africa’s 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. Consumer spending rose by 16 percent a year from 2005 to 2008 before the global economic crisis.

It is forecast that 220 million Africans now frozen out of this consumer wave will become consumers by 2015 if current trends continue.

The IMF believes the steady growth will continue, with 5.5 percent growth for the 47 sub-Saharan countries this year.

That’s the good news. But many African countries still rank at the bottom in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business survey (http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings). Africa remains a logistical nightmare for companies. Poor quality roads, inadequate harbours and inefficient rail systems, all make it difficult to move goods around the continent and across borders.

This makes distribution in Africa costly. Companies also often have to import building supplies and equipment to construct factories and plants. Then there is the unreliable electricity supply. Unable to trust local power supplies, many companies use their own electricity generators.

If handled right, new brands and companies are set to join African global success stories like Mo Ibrahim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Ibrahim), who founded the mobile telecommunications company Celtel.

Some of the new success stories include African companies pairing up with global firms as they seek local knowledge and experience. This will be a substantial opportunity for companies wise enough to organise themselves for global competition. In 2010, Sweden’s Electrolux – one of the world’s largest makers of home appliances – bought Egypt’s Olympic Group (http://www.ameinfo.com/145039.html), a North African powerhouse for household goods.

In the Ivory Coast, Nouvelle Parfumerie Gandour (http://www.npgandour.com/english/index.html) – makers of perfume, cologne, cosmetics and talcs – is an African cross-border success story. It has factories in Ivory Coast, Senegal, Morocco and Cameroon. Thirty percent of its profits come from exports, some of which are to the United States and Europe.

Sonatrach (http://www.sonatrach-dz.com/NEW/) in Algeria is the largest oil and gas company in Algeria and Africa. Is using its base in oil and gas exploration, production, pipeline transportation and marketing of hydrocarbons and by products, to move into other areas. It is increasing its investments in power generation, new and renewable energies, water desalination, and mining exploration and exploitation. Looking to grow its business with 30 percent coming from exports by 2015, it has spread across Africa ( Mali , Niger , Libya , Egypt ), to Spain , Italy , Portugal , United Kingdom , Peru and the United States.

Marwa (http://www.marwa.es/) from Casablanca, Morocco, is an African fashion success story. The brand started by Karim Tazi in 2003 began with just two stores in Casablanca and Rabat. It identified the niche of very fashionable but good quality and inexpensive clothing. It blends international trends with subtle influences from Moroccan tradition. Its prices hover between six euros for a t-shirt and 100 euros for a coat. It has successfully created a Moroccan high-street fashion look that can be exported. It has opened a branch in Zaragoza, Spain and is expanding to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Paris, France, Beirut, Lebanon and Istanbul, Turkey.

A survey by consultants AT Kearney (http://www.atkearney.com) found eight out of nine West African subsidiaries of global consumer goods companies discovered quicker revenue growth than their parent companies.

All this new wealth and growth provides substantial opportunities to African brands to build their businesses and markets. The big issue will be who will rise to the occasion and who will be clever enough to learn from existing African brands that are already thriving and have shown the way.

Two trends will also power this growth: urbanization and large youth populations. Africa’s youthful, urban population has already been reached by the telecoms sector through the rapid growth of mobile phones. More than 500 million subscribers have been signed up since 2000 (Informa Telecom and Media), a user base greater than the entire US population.

“By 2040, the continent will be home to one in five of the planet’s young people and will have the world’s largest working-age population,” according to Charles Roxburgh and Susan Lund, authors of a study for the McKinsey Global Institute.

“If Africa can give its young people sufficient education and skills, they could be a substantial source of consumption and production in years ahead.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: January 2011

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7kqYBgAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+january+2011&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsjanuary2011issue

Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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

Djibouti Re-shapes Itself as African Trade Hub

Trade hubs can prove to be decisive in boosting regional growth. Trade hubs are places where commerce congregates, for a mix of geographical, cultural and economic reasons. Like a bicycle wheel, a trade hub sits at the centre as the spokes of trade routes travel towards it. Throughout history, trade hubs have emerged, from the outposts of the Silk Route running through Asia and Central Asia to the Hanseatic League cities of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages.

Trade is critical to increasing prosperity, and the more efficient trade becomes – and the greater the variety of goods and affordable prices – the higher the standard of living for the nations doing the trading.

With South-South trade the great economic success story of the past decade, new trade hubs are emerging. World Trade Organization (WTO) (www.wto.org) figures show South-South trade accounted for 16.4 percent of the US $14 trillion in total world exports in 2007, up from 11.5 percent in 2000. While the global economic crisis has slowed things down, the overall trend is firmly established.

One country hoping to become a key 21st century trade hub is the tiny African nation of Djibouti, which sits strategically between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It is surrounded by the nations of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia and is across the Bab al Mandab Strait from Yemen.

It is at the nexus of Africa and Asia. Some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world float by the country’s coastline. Much of the oil shipped to Europe and the United States passes by.

“Djibouti is perfectly positioned to become a services and logistics hub,” said Jerome Martins Oliveira, chief executive officer of Djibouti port, operated by a subsidiary of Dubai World.

PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) (http://www.pwc.co.uk), which recently published its third Transportation & Logistics 2030 Report, predicts that global trade hubs and routes will shift to emerging markets within the next 20 years.

“Trade volumes will move towards emerging markets such as Africa or Asia and competition for future large transport contracts will be determined within the next few years,” said Akhter Moosa, PwC’s South African Transport and Logistics Leader.

This underscores the growing importance of emerging markets. The majority of global trade is forecast to shift to emerging markets by 2030. As the trade shifts, so new trade routes emerge. PwC sees strong links between Asia and Africa and Asia and South America, as well as trade within Asia, transforming global supply chains.

Hot spots for trade are showing impressive growth. Trade between Asia and the former Soviet states grows at 42 percent a year. The volume of trade between South America and Africa is growing by double digits.

“China already owns seven of the world’s twenty largest ports,” said Christopher Siewierski, associate director in Corporate Finance at PwC. “India, Russia and South Africa are also expected to play a significant role as logistics giants.”

Respondents to the Transportation & Logistics 2030 Report
(http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/transportation-logistics/tl2030/tl2030-pub.jhtml ) believe it is unlikely that companies from emerging countries will seek further growth in the developed European and North American markets. Instead, they will concentrate on domestic markets and the strong growing neighbouring countries.

All of this is good news for Djibouti. At present, the population of Djibouti
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djibouti) is small at around 864,202 people (2009 World Bank).

Ancient Djibouti traded hides and skins for the perfumes of Egypt, India and China: a classic South-South trade heritage. Djibouti became a French colony and gained its independence from France in 1977.

The geography is harsh: a rocky semi desert of plateaus and highlands. Djibouti has few resources, apart from its large salt reserves – the country has a long history of salt mining. Djibouti must depend on foreign assistance – or innovative trade.

Djibouti has to be clever in increasing income opportunities: the country has an estimated unemployment rate of between 40 and 50 percent. The country is heavily dependent on imports for food and fuel, and over the past decade has experienced recession – in the wake of a 1991 to 1994 civil war – and a growing population.

For years, the tiny state was overlooked and development had proceeded at a slow pace. But now investment from Dubai is pouring in to upgrade the port to make it a regional gateway.

The Djibouti Free Zone (http://www.djiboutifz.com/) was set up in the wake of the country being designated a free-export processing zone in 1995. In practice, this means a company or business working to export products can be designated as an Export Processing Company (EPC).

It was created to re-shape the landscape in Africa when it comes to trade. Push out the red tape, and bring efficiency and plenty of services: the prime habitat for business to flourish free of restrictions. Prospective businesses can find modern offices, distribution, storage and light manufacturing facilities.

Djibouti provides services as both a transit port for the region and an international trans shipment and refuelling center.

And even more ambitious plans are afoot: a multi-billion dollar, 29-kilometre bridge across the Red Sea has been proposed. The Bridge of the Horns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_the_Horns) will link Djibouti with Yemen and two new cities will be built on either side of the bridge. The new Noor City on the Djibouti side will become the “financial, educational, and medical hub of Africa” according to its developers.

Elsewhere, the United States is funding and operating four regional trade and competiveness hubs in sub-Saharan Africa. They aim to assist, enhance and broaden the flow of trade between the United States and the region, both inside and outside the terms of the historic African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) (http://www.agoa.gov/). The four trade hubs — located in Ghana, Senegal, Botswana and Kenya — provide information and technical expertise to enhance and expand bilateral trade between the United States and Africa.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: December 2010

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7D2YBgAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+december+2010&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsdecember2010issue

Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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

African Health Data Revolution

A pioneering tool for gathering health data now being used in Kenya could herald a revolution in the way diseases are tracked and defeated around the world. It uses mobile phones to better connect patients with medical and health personnel, and allows data to be gathered in real-time and used to track health and improve the delivery of services, especially to remote and under-serviced areas.

In the past couple of years, Kenya has become a hotbed of mobile phone and information technology innovation. The now-famous Ushahidi crisis-mapping platform (www.ushahidi.com) is just one example. Social enterprise Data Dyne (www.datadyne.org) – with offices in Washington DC and Nairobi, Kenya – is offering its EpiSurveyor application (www.episurveyor.org) free to all to aid health data collection. It bills itself as “the first cloud-computing application for international development and global health … Think of it as like Gmail, but for data collection!”

EpiSurveyor claims to have more than 2,600 users around the world and is currently being upgraded to a second version.

“With the touch of a button I can see what’s going on across the country in real time,” Kenyan civil servant Yusuf Ibrahim told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. “It is amazing.”

Ibrahim works in Nairobi as the Kenyan Ministry of Health liaison to Data Dyne.

He uses maps and charts on mobile phones to track deadly disease outbreaks and vulnerable pregnancies.

The EpiSurveyor application works simply: A user logs into the website and builds and creates the sort of form they want. They then download it to a phone and start collecting data straight away.

Ibrahim gathers this data from mobile phones used by health care workers across the country.

“It used to take days, weeks or even a couple of months to find out about an outbreak of polio on the other side of the country,” he said. “Now we know almost instantly. The speed with which we can now collect information has catapulted healthcare and prevention to another level. It has completely changed healthcare and saved countless lives.”

He proudly points out Kenya’s mobile phone data collection system is “probably better than what they’ve got in the West.”

“Although we are a third world country, I’m pretty sure we’ve done this before

Western countries. While they are still collecting information in hard copy on clipboards, we are getting it instantly.”

Packed with data processing power, mobile phones are capable of an immense range of tasks and applications. Some see phones as key to a revolution in how healthcare is provided: the mobile phone becomes one-part clinic, another part mobile hospital dispensing advice and transmitting vital information back to healthcare professionals and scientists in hospitals and labs.

Despite dramatic improvements to the quality of hospitals in Africa and the number of qualified doctors, the continent’s healthcare services are still a patchwork, with rural and slum dwellers poorly served and the stresses of treating patients with contagious diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria pushing resources to the limit.

The United Nations has a number of initiatives partnering with mobile phone manufacturers, networks and software developers as part of a global campaign to reduce HIV/AIDS, malaria and deaths in childbirth.

EpiSurveyor is being used by more than 15 countries’ ministries of health and is the adopted standard for the World Health Organization (www.who.int) (WHO) for electronic health data collection.

It began as a partnership with the United Nations Foundation, The Vodafone Group Foundation, WHO and the ministries of health of Kenya and Zambia in 2006 to pilot test the software for EpiSurveyor.

At the United Nations Foundation (www.unfoundation.org), chief executive Kathy Calvin equates the impact of mobile phones on global healthcare to the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin.

“Instead of building clinics and roads to remote towns and villages so that people can access healthcare, we are bringing healthcare directly to the people via mobile phones. You get a lot more healthcare for your money,” Calvin told the Telegraph.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: November 2010

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsnovember2010issue

Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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

African Megacity Makeovers Tackle Rising Populations

Nigeria’s largest, busiest and most congested city, Lagos, has long had a reputation for dynamism mixed with chaos. Its sprawling slums and ballooning population have for decades stretched governments’ ability to provide services.

The 2006 census placed the city’s population at close to 8 million, making it the most populous city in the country and the second largest in Africa after Cairo. One forecast saw the population reaching 23 million by 2015. It was called the fastest growing city in Africa by UNHABITAT (2008). The city is Nigeria’s economic and financial hub and critical to the country’s future.

According to a report by the International Institute for Environment and Development, Africa now has a larger urban population than North America and 25 of the world’s fastest growing big cities. Getting to grips with urban development will be critical for the future of the continent and the wellbeing of its people.

In West Africa, an OECD study found the area stretching along the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean had a network of 300 cities larger than 100,000 people and the biggest collection of urban poverty on the planet.

It is a common problem across the South as fast-growing city populations surge past the ability of institutions and infrastructure to cope.

By 2025, Asia could have 10 or more cities with populations larger than 20 million (Far Eastern Economic Review).

It is a development challenge that urgently needs solutions.

In Lagos, the Oluwole district – formerly a crime-plagued slum – has been transformed into a new marketplace, and the plan is to follow this with new offices, homes and shops. The brainchild of the Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babatunde_Fashola), redevelopment of the 20,000 square metre site is part of his multi-stage plan to bring more order to the chaos that is daily life in Lagos. There are also ambitious plans afoot to build new roads and bridges. The area’s traffic congestion is also being targeted for solutions. The former slum is now re-branded as the Oluwole Urban Market and Multifunctional City Centre (http://tinyurl.com/2wmrscq) and is being re-developed in partnership with the private sector.

The re-developed slum is part of the much-larger Lagos Island Central Business District (CBD) Revitalisation/Marina City Project, a five-year project, jointly executed by the Lagos government and private sector players. This project has already begun with the redesigning and reconstruction of roads and infrastructure within the CBD and the adjoining axes.

Another fast-growing African city is Addis Ababa. The capital of the East African nation of Ethiopia, it has been in the grip of a building boom for the past few years. But much of this building has been unplanned and, to many, is ugly. The current building boom’s architectural legacy has been criticized for leaving buildings that are too hot for the climate and require expensive air conditioning systems. They also use imported cement and steel and are not earthquake-proof.

Addis Ababa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addis_Ababa) was founded in 1886 by Emperor Menelik II. It is now host to the African Union (http://www.africa-union.org/) and it is this important role that has architects advocating for a new approach to the city’s development.

Addis is home to some of the highest density urban slums in the world, according to the UN. Some estimates place the population at of the city at 4.6 million people and that it could double by 2020. But its pattern is unusual for an African city. Dirk Hebel of Addis Ababa’s architecture school  (http://www.eiabc.edu.et/managing-board/scientific-director.html) told The Economist it defies the usual pattern of rich centre and poor periphery. Instead, because crime is low and the rich seem to tolerate the poor living among them, the slums are jammed between office buildings and flats in the wealthy parts of the city.

Architects favour smaller buildings that stay true to local stone and traditional guttering to collect the rain. Hebel believes turning local would cut building costs by a third and save on costly imports.

The architecture school has received funding from a technical institute in Zurich, Switzerland called ETH (http://www.ethz.ch/index_EN) to help develop new ideas.

Hebel and ETH’s head, Marc Angelil, have written a book profiling the architectural styles of the city. The city has gone through various phases: during its Marxist period (1974-1991) government buildings mimicked the Soviet Union. During the Italian fascist occupation (1935-1941) they followed the styles favoured by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Political problems aside, the architects believe the Italians brought good planning, allowing streets to radiate out from landmark buildings.

The city is plagued – like so many in the South – by pollution and traffic gridlock. Growth is on projection to be so large by 2050, the country would need 20 new cities of 5 million people each to accommodate it (UN). This is an epic challenge requiring imaginative thinking and new ways.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: November 2010

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsnovember2010issue

Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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

African Technology Tackles Health Needs

Africa is becoming a world leader in mobile phone applications for health and healthcare. Despite dramatic improvements to the quality of hospitals and the number of qualified doctors, the continent’s healthcare services are still a patchwork, with rural and slum dwellers poorly served and the stresses of treating patients with contagious diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria pushing resources to the limit.

But innovative inventions are coming along to provide new tools to doctors and medical personnel and to better engage patients with remote services.

South Africa’s Afridoctor (http://twitter.com/afridoctor) mobile phone application claims to be Africa’s first personal mobile health clinic. It lets patients use its “SnapDiagnosis” system to submit photos of their ailments and in turn receive advice from a panel of medical professionals, or use the mapping feature to find doctors, clinics and health industry-related services nearby.

Afridoctor was conceived to fill the gap across Africa for basic health information that is reliable and trustworthy.

There is an emergency feature to notify next of kin during a medical emergency and provide a location. Other features include symptom checkers, first-aid information, health calculators and quizzes.

Expert feedback comes within 48 hours after submission of a request.

A winner of a Nokia competition, Afridoctor was developed by the labs of media company 24.com (http://20fourlabs.com) of Cape Town, South Africa.

“It is more for external use – like dermatology – for things like a bee sting or a snake bite and you don’t know what to do or how to diagnose it,” Werner Erasmus, who created the app, told the BBC.

The “find a doctor” system uses Google Maps to geo-locate local health services including doctors, hospitals and emergency clinics.

The distress feature enables users to contact a family member or friend at the touch of a button. It does this by storing the mobile phone number of a selected relative. When the distress button is pressed, they are notified of the phone’s location.

Developed in just three weeks, to enter mobile phone company Nokia’s contest (http://www.callingallinnovators.com) for mobile phone applications, Afridoctor went on to win the competition in 2009. It is now being expanded to be usable on most, if not all, smart phones.

As in the rest of Africa, mobile phone use in South Africa has dramatically increased in the past 10 years. It is estimated that over 70 percent of South Africans now have access to one.

Another application getting attention is Ghana’s mPedigree (http://mpedigree.net). Designed to combat the damage done by counterfeit drugs in Africa and across the South, mPedigree works by letting a person send a text message by mobile phone to the mPedigree service to check a drug’s authenticity. A message comes back confirming whether the medicine is authentic or not.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 25 percent of medicines sold around the developing world are counterfeit. Some contain no active ingredients, and others are even harmful.

MPedigree is a Ghanian start-up headed by social entrepreneur Bright Simons (http://www.worldpress.org/freelancers/index.cfm/hurl/page=freelancerDetails/id=7). Like Afridoctor, it is ambitious and hopes to expand around the world. So far, the mPedigree Network has expanded its work to East Africa.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: September 2010

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9HaUFL3wYWIC&dq=development+challenges+september+2010&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsseptember2010issue

Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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