Havana’s Restaurant Boom Augers in New Age of Entrepreneurs

Cuba, the Caribbean island nation known for its 1959 revolution and its tourism industry, is undergoing a shift in its economic strategy. The country has had heavy state control of its industries and business activities since the country adopted the official policy of state socialism and joined the Communist economic sphere headed by the Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Cuba was pitched into an economic crisis as it lost access to preferential trade subsidies. This period is known as the ‘Special Period’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period) and was marked by a severe reduction in access to fuel as supplies and subsidies from the Soviet Union disappeared. Some of the iconic images of the time include people abandoning their cars and turning to bicycles to get around, or using make-shift truck-buses packed with workers. Exports collapsed and slashed the size of the economy by a third.

Fast-forward to today, and tourism is booming. A record 2.7 million tourists went to Cuba in 2011, earning the country US $2.3 billion. And it is catering to this tourism market that probably offers the best near-term opportunities. With wages still just 50 per cent of what they were in 1989 many are taking up this new opportunity to become entrepreneurs.

To become an entrepreneur, Cubans need to apply for a pink identification card with their name and photo and the words “Autorizacion Para Ejercer el Trabajo por Cuenta Propria.” This gives authority “to work for your own account.” With the card, a person can start a business, hire staff and pay them what they like.

Cuba’s economy has been through many phases since the revolution, swinging between loosening up the ability of people to establish private businesses – and pulling back, restricting private enterprise. But since 2008, there has been a significant shift to encouraging greater private enterprise, entrepreneurship and the ownership of private property – once banned – to stimulate the economy.

“This is the most important thing to happen in Cuba since the revolution in 1959,” Juan Triana, senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Cuban Economy at Havana University, told The Sunday Times Magazine.

One visible sign of this change is the flourishing of what is called locally ‘paladar’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladar), or privately run restaurants.

Paladares are usually located in a person’s home and staffed by family members. Their customers are a mix of tourists, expatriates living in Cuba, and Cubans with a high enough income to be able to afford restaurant meals.

The cost of a meal in these restaurants can run from US $40 to US $60 for two people.

Stocking the kitchen is not easy. Cuba experiences food shortages and there is still rationing for many. Basics like eggs can be hard to find. As for exotic, imported ingredients, many chefs rely on visitors to stock their larders.

Cuba will have to re-build its food sector to make this a lasting improvement.

The agriculture sector has declined and, where Cuba once provided a third of the world’s sugar harvest, the country now has to import half of its food supply. Measures are in the works to change this, with smallholder farmers now able to own 165 acres of land and sell their produce to private customers and hotels.

One restaurant owner, Héctor Higuera Martinez, told The New York Times:“You dream up a recipe that you’d like to make but then you can’t find the ingredients.

“One day you go out to get salt and there’s no salt. And I mean no salt,Anywhere.”

Martinez trained with a well-known Cuban chef and did a stint in Paris before returning to Havana. He has turned a 19th-century mansion into the restaurant Le Chansonnier (http://www.cubajunky. com/havana/restaurant_le_chansonnier.html) and decorated the walls with the work of local artists.

Martinez sees the paladares as a turning point in changing Cuba’s reputation for having boring food. “I believe we can play an important role in revolutionizing Cuban cuisine.”

Cuba is making the difficult shift from having an economy where 80 per cent of activity is in the state sector, to a mixed model balanced between private and public ownership.

Havana’s historic district offers tourists renovated colonial architecture mixed with shops, restaurants and bars. As a tourist strolls from the renovated district, they quickly come across the rest of Havana, which has beautiful buildings from the colonial period, 1950s American-influenced architecture with its fading retro signage, and more utilitarian Soviet-era architecture.

While charming and home to most of the city’s residents, much of it is rundown and crowded and in need of investment and renovation.

But things are changing fast. Oyaki Curbelo and Cedric Fernando use spices brought in by visitors for Bollywood, their restaurant in the Nuevo Vedado area (http://cubantripadvisor.com/destinations/havana-cityoutskirts/bollywood-paladar/). It has a small menu of Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, including shrimp curry with ginger and tamarind. The restaurant sources its curry leaves from a tree located in the Sri Lankan Embassy.

Another restaurant, Atelier (http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/articles/travel/article_travel.php?landa=70),located in a mansion in the Vedado neighbourhood, serves European Continental food and has a roof terrace letting diners enjoy the a view of the Havana skyline.

The restaurant Doña Eutimia (https://www.facebook.com/paladardona.eutimia) serves up Cuban favourites off the Cathedral Square. Specialties include a dish made of shredded beef with garlic, tomato, oregano and bay leaves.

At Vistamer (http://www.stay.com/havana/restaurant/4249/paladar-vistamar/),diners can enjoy garlic-laden lobster tails and lemon meringue pie. At the paladar Café Laurent (http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/articles/travel/article_travel.php?landa=71), the menu includes meatballs with sesame seeds and mustard in red-wine and tarragon sauce, according to The New York Times.

Habana Chef in the Vedado district (http://cubantripadvisor.com/destinations/havana-city-outskirts/habana-chefpaladar/) was started by Joel Begue and chef Ivan Rodriguez. Begue gained his experience in the state restaurant sector and took the opportunity to get a licence when the government offered them in 2011. He borrowed US $25,000 to start the restaurant and has been able to pay back half so far. His current success is prompting him to look into opening a second restaurant in the capital.

An enthusiastic Andrew Macdonald, who is looking for investment opportunities for a half a billion dollar fund held by the Escencia Anglo-Cuban firm, told The Sunday Times magazine, “Cuba is the top emerging tourism market in the Caribbean by a mile, and it’s in the top five emerging markets globally.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: May 2012

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.  

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Ghana: Oil-rich City Sparks Entrepreneurs and Debate

Commodity booms can seem like the answer to a poor nation’s prayers, a way to fulfil all their development dreams and goals. The reality, however, is far more complex. More often than not, the discovery of resources sparks a mad scramble for profits and patronage, as politicians and politically connected elites carve out their slice of the new resource boom before anyone else.

The twin cities of Sekondi-Takoradi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekondi-Takoradi) in the Western Region of Ghana are now experiencing an oil boom. Ghana’s oil production went online in December 2010 and the government is hoping it will double the country’s growth rate.

Large supplies of oil were found off the coast in 2007, transforming Takoradi from a sleepy, rundown port city into the hub for the oil boom.

Local man Peter Abitty told the BBC he was renting out an eight-bedroom house for US $5,000 a month. The house overlooks the sea and comes with banana and coconut trees.

“Tenants that come here can take the coconuts for free! We don’t charge anything,” Abitty said.

He put the strong interest in the house down to a simple fact: “It’s out there: oil, oil, oil.”

People’s hopes are being raised in Ghana’s case because it has built a reputation as a better-governed country than other African petro states like Nigeria and Angola.

But others argue that price increases caused by the boom are destroying local businesses. A report on the Ghana Oil news website found popular local businesses suffering. One example it gave was the Unicorn Internet Café, an employer of local youth, which shut down in 2010 because of high rents.

It found businesses have shut down in the following sectors: timber, sawmilling, super markets, mobile phone shops, boutiques and trading shops. But it also found many new businesses opening up, including banks, insurance companies and hotels.

The challenge facing Ghana is to ensure oil brings a long-term change to a higher value business environment and economy, rather than just an unequal and temporary boom.

Another challenge is to connect the many youth leaving education in the city with the jobs and opportunities being created by the oil industry. The twin cities are a regional educational centre with a lot of technical colleges and secondary schools.

To counter these concerns, a Regional Coordinating Council is promising to place the growth of small and medium enterprises at the centre of regional development.

The dreams and promises for Takoradi are very ambitious. “In five years time, I see Takoradi becoming one of the modern cities of the world,”  Alfred Fafali Adagbedu, the owner of Seaweld Engineering (www.seaweldghana.com), a new local company set up to service the oil sector, told the BBC.

“I can imagine skyscrapers, six-lane highways and malls.”

“The transport industry is going to improve, because workers on the rig are going to need to be transported. Agriculture is going to see a boom because all those people on the rig will need to be fed.

“Even market women are going to see more business, because a lot of workers are going to have very fat paychecks. Everyone in this city is going to gain in business.”

How far Takoradi has to travel to come close to meeting these dreams and expectations can be seen in its current state. The railway station has a train with laundry hanging from it because it hasn’t moved in years, reported the BBC. People are living in the sleeping car of the train.

But the typical signs of a boom are all visible: traffic jams, booked hotels, rising rents and prices, and it is already hurting people on fixed salaries.

Local authorities have plans to demolish rundown parts of the city and rebuild with modern office environments for the new businesses resulting from the oil economy.

An estimated US $1 billion a year in revenue will go to the Ghanaian government and local authorities want 10 percent of this to be ring-fenced for regional development.

“Many resources are coming from the western region. From years back, gold is here, timber is here, diamonds are here,” said Nana Kofi Abuna V, one of the few female chiefs in the area.

“But when they share the cake up there, they leave out the western region. This time, if there is oil and gas in the region we should benefit more than everybody else.”

But Adagbedu at Seaweld Ghana believes Ghana will see real improvements.

“I’m very sure we will avoid the mistakes,” he said. “Ghana is a democracy, everyone is watching, so there is going to be a lot of improvement here.”

And to help in keeping these promises, the BBC will continue to return to Sekondi-Takoradi to track its changes and see how things improve.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: September 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.  

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Indonesia Best for Entrepreneurs

A global survey has unearthed hotspots across the global South for start-up businesses and private enterprise. It shows there are now many places in the South where people are actively encouraged to start businesses and engage in innovation and enterprise. The top place in the world for entrepreneurship, according to the survey for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), is Indonesia.

The poll shows that Indonesians perceive their country as a place where it is easy to put ideas into practice. Innovation and creativity are highly valued in Indonesia as well, two important elements of business success. Asia as a whole, with a few exceptions, stood out for valuing these qualities.

India came second in the survey, while China and Nigeria were also perceived by their own people as relatively favourable places for new businesses.

The survey for the BBC’s Extreme World TV series polled more than 24,000 people across 24 countries (http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2011_entrepreneur/backgrounder.html). Respondents were asked whether innovation was highly valued in their country; whether it was hard for people like them to start a business; whether entrepreneurs were highly valued; and whether people with good ideas could usually put them into practice.

Interestingly, not only were several countries in East Asia and the Pacific doing well, but three sub-Saharan African countries – Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana – ranked above the global average.

The survey found work still needed to be done in Latin America. While Mexico and Peru scored highly, Brazil and Colombia ranked below average.

So, what are the things that make Indonesia so positive for entrepreneurs and private business? And what do they do – or not do – for small business start-ups?

According to Bali International Consulting Group, the Indonesian economy is highly dependent on small and medium-sized enterprises: they make up 99.95 percent of the total number of enterprises, and provide most of the country’s jobs. Authorities have identified a problem with the sector, however: productivity per worker is very low compared to large enterprises. Poor productivity matters because it means people are working very hard for low return and this affects the overall standard of living in the country and its human development.

The Indonesian government has set about boosting productivity in the sector, adopting a ‘clustering’ approach in partnership with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Like-minded businesses tend to cluster together across the archipelago of islands that makes up the nation. By targeting these places with resources and support, it can use those resources more efficiently. The country has a dedicated ministry for small and medium enterprises (http://www.depkop.go.id) and a wide range of businesses and services targeting them. From dedicated trading and office facilities (http://www.smescoindonesia.com) to an online marketplace to display, trade and sell SME products (http://www.smescotrade.com), extensive resources are applied to give SMEs a boost and a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

From past experience, Indonesia learned it was more effective to use business development services in clusters to promote and develop SMEs, rather than centralised, top-down government models or other approaches.

As Bali International Consulting Group notes, “The government has introduced many models for promoting SMEs, including business incubators, business consulting clinics and technology centers. However, those sponsoring programs have not been productive and could not sustain themselves for a long time. The government then turned to supporting BDS (Business Development Services) providers to serve a certain cluster in a selected area.”

Developed countries like the United States significantly grew their wealth by allowing entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises to flourish. The USA’s highly innovative and globe-straddling high tech and information technology businesses would not have been so successful without entrepreneurs. Think of Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, or Steve Jobs, one of the pioneers behind the Apple computer brand.

China – the country that has seen the largest lifting of people out of poverty in our time – is awash with entrepreneurs. So successful at providing manufacturing services to foreign companies, China is fast on track to become the wealthiest country in the world. The International Monetary Fund recently issued a report predicting China would be number one within five years.

Entrepreneurs play a key role in any country’s economic strategy. The more they are encouraged to flourish – and build wealth and their businesses – the better a country can do. Large human development gains can come about when entrepreneurs are matched with a fair and transparent tax system, balancing between social and economic needs.

China is the source of one of the most successful aids to small business growth in the global South. Hong Kong-based Alibaba (http://www.alibaba.com) is an online trading and selling marketplace aimed at small businesses and start-ups. Packed with support, advice and inspiration, it makes it possible for people anywhere in the world to get trading and selling.

To help small businesses trade with each other, New Delhi, India-based Go4World Business.com (http://indonesia.go4worldbusiness.com) has for the past 12 years helped exporters and importers to explore new markets and increase their international business in a simple, cost effective manner.

The Internet has not only radically transformed how to trade and sell, it has also opened up many ways for small and medium-sized businesses to raise funds and borrow money. Examples include Zopa (www.zopa.com) – “Where people meet to lend and borrow money”; social lenders like Kiva (www.kiva.org)w, whose mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty; and Betterplace (www.betterplace.org), an online marketplace for projects to raise funds. It is free to use, and it passes on 100 percent of the money raised on the platform to the projects. For those with a creative business idea, Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com) is a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, and explorers.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: June 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.  

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Enormous Potential for Nigerian Software Industry

Nigeria has an unfortunate global reputation as the home of 419 scams. A typical 419 scam involves sending emails to people around the world in order to extort money from them. Online scams may show an unexpected technical sophistication for a country associated with poverty, but are a sign that some of Nigeria’s plentiful talents are being turned to illegal activities rather than building legitimate businesses.

Many argue that Nigeria is missing its potential to become an African legal software powerhouse. The Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria said the country’s annual consumption of software reached US $900 million in 2006, making it possibly Africa’s biggest market.

“Nigeria stands a good chance of dominating both the local and West African diaspora in a thriving global software market,” it argues.

Production of computer software is a major income earner for countries like the United States and India.

Many argue that Nigeria has enormous potential, if it can address some common problems: an absence of software quality assurance, poor investment in software development, poor product standards and a lack of proper documentation. In short: if Nigeria’s software industry takes on board global best practice, then it is sitting on a goldmine of legitimate business opportunities.

Chris Uwaje, president of the Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON), told Business Day that the country’s software technology, if well retooled and strategically positioned for global competitiveness, could earn about US $10 billion annually from foreign software exchange.

He argued that developing the software industry would have many benefits for the population as a whole.

“Software has … become and will remain one of the fastest growing industries with power to enrich, and sustain national economies,” Uwaje said.

Some estimates put the world software industry and associated markets at US $1,300 billion, with 90 percent of the world’s software exports coming from the United States and Europe. Outside the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, the new and emerging countries within the software industry are India and China, and to a lesser extent Singapore and Malaysia.

According to market researcher DataMonitor, the worldwide software industry grew by 6.5 percent between 2007 and 2008.

DataMonitor forecasts that in 2013, the global software market alone will have a value of US $ 457 billion, an increase of 50.5 percent since 2008 (Datamonitor’s Software: Global Industry Guide).

Africa has a high proportion of entrepreneurs because people have next to no social supports to fall back on and need to do business to survive. Nigeria’s large youth population – 43.2 percent of the total – could be the driver of this new economy if used right.

Nigeria mostly imports software solutions despite having an extensive capacity in software development. If developed well, software could surpass oil as a revenue generator for the country.

According to A Profile of Nigeria’s Software Industry by H. Abimbola Soriyan and Richard Heeks, “A typical software company (in Nigeria) had between 11 and 50 customers (the average was 36 though a few firms involved with package installation had several thousand). There was a strong concentration among these customers. Almost all were private sector … There was a surprising lack of government/public sector organizations as customers (reflected above in the limited number of firms found in Abuja).”

Jimson Olufuye, president of the Information Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN), believes that more needs to be done to support the software developers. And while on paper there is strong support for this sector in information technology policy, “In addition, we need to establish more IT parks with appropriate policies on infrastructure, human resources, incentives and business plan.”

Wahab Sarumi, chief executive officer of Wadof Software Consulting, explains the problem: “Indigenous software developers are an endangered species, abandoned by the government, neglected by its own people and bullied by the poachers from India, to whom Nigerian businesses rush to buy software applications to solve local business problems.”

Already, Nigerian software firms are offering existing off-the-shelf software that they custom package with local services. This recognizes software made in advanced countries isn’t entirely right for developing countries: and this is where business opportunities await for software developers.

But the key to success, at the end of the day, is to be the best solution on offer for the right price. James Agada, managing director of ExpertEdge Limited, believes people buy the best software for the task and don’t care where it comes from.

“If you want to sell software, the buyer does not buy the software alone, he buys the software, buys capacity to support the software, buys your capacity to improve on the software, he buys what he assumes is your mastery of the domain the software … the software must be able to compete favourably with its competitors.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: February 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.  

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Local Fashions Pay Off for Southern Designers

Fashion earns big money around the world: The global clothing industry is estimated to be worth US $900 billion a year. For many decades, strong American brands have been the desired commodity for those looking to be cool and contemporary. People were willing to pay high premium prices to get the cache of American cool that the brands conveyed.

But the decline in popularity suffered by American brands in recent years has become a boost for local brands. And this is creating a whole new opportunity for canny Southern entrepreneurs. It is being called ‘fashionalism’ or fashion nationalism – a pop culture trend blending patriotism with fashion.

One of fashionalism’s pioneers is Italian-educated Filipino designer Rhett Eala. He is credited with coming up with the snappy name fashionalism, after launching his My Pilipinas clothing line. Its signature logo is the Philippine archipelago on collared shirts and cotton polo shirts. An experienced designer who has worked in Hong Kong and for a major department store, Eala joined Collezione C2 as creative director two years ago.

He started with just three styles sporting the map. But now he has expanded the design to cover almost his entire range of clothing.

“It’s a fun way to show your pride in being Filipino, without a lot of words. Filipinos have today become global citizens,” said Eala.

Eala’s design talent stretches to pop art paintings as well, with an art exhibit called My Pilipinas Series, 18 Filipino pop art paintings that transcend flag-waving notions of nationalism.

But Eala is no parochialist: he is very much inspired by global artists and trends. His work is a blend of foreign concepts and patriotic ideals. Common Filipino iconography gets the high-design treatment, as Eala draws inspiration from Damien Hirst, David Hockney and Andy Warhol. He tries to challenge his customers, taking the complicated and oblique Rorschach Test patterns, and blending them with other designs.

The fashionalist logoed clothing not only sells well domestically, but also amongst the large diaspora of Filipino expatriates around the world.

“Fashionalism has a very positive impact on our business,” said Joey Qua, the Managing Director of Collezione C2. “We’ve always wanted to highlight the ingenuity of Philippine artistry and what it feels like to be proud to be a Filipino.”

“More importantly, we want to make Filipinos proud to wear our brand here and abroad, since the Filipinos of today are more global in nature, we have so many Filipinos who are more exposed globally.”

“We want to make nationalism hip and relevant to today’s generation,” said Eala.

Supporters of fashionalism say it is about restoring pride in the country’s development and achievements, not in stirring up negative xenophobia and other negative aspects of nationalism.

Another group of Manila fashion designers, Team Manila and Analog Soul, are marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Filipino nationalist hero, Ninoy Aquino – who was assassinated at the airport after returning to the Philippines from his self-imposed exile in the United States on August 21, 1983. Their t-shirts include sayings like: “I am Ninoy.”

The clever designers have turned Aquino’s signature old-school eye glass frames into an iconic logo.

“Ever since our humble beginnings as a Design Studio in 2001, we’ve made it a point to celebrate the Philippines and the Filipino people in our designs,” said Team Manila’s chief operating officer, Nico Bacani. “It was only natural that when we established our clothing and apparel line in 2005, the messages would remain the same – positive messages about the country, the culture and the people, be it explicitly or through subtle means in design.”

Underground t-shirt designers had been selling yellow Ninoy t-shirts to the young and trendy urbanites. But it is the professional design flair that has taken the trend to the next level and created an industry in its own right, with the fashionalism branding spreading beyond clothes to coffee mugs and other everyday items.

“We started as a design studio working from our Macs (Macintosh Computers) at home,” said Bacani. “and when we did start selling merchandise, this would be done literally in our garage and obscure spaces throughout the apartment we were renting. We then participated in bazaars, until such time as we raised enough capital and loyal clientele to expand into a stand-alone store.

“So the obstacles we faced were more towards asset capitalization and recruiting people well-versed in the retail industry. We were, however, luckier than most, as the media would frequently feature our products, which was a big boost.”

And Bacani hopes for a big payoff for the Phillippines as a whole.

“We really wouldn’t say there’s anything negative about it, but we would say that it would be quite disappointing if it ended up just being that – wearing the clothes and not living the message. We would be quite pleased if Fashionalism were a trigger, a catalyst for something bigger, such as a more active participation in the development of the country as a whole. And we see that people starting to think and feel proud of being Filipino and representing the Filipino well, whether it be at the workplace here or abroad, or in everyday living around the world.”

As for other fashion designers thinking of going down the fashionalism path, Eala said: “My advice is being honest with your design. Try to design from your heart and your mind. Be inspired with what’s around you. Design for your environment and if you have a chance, travel to places that you haven’t been to. ”

More on Andy Warhol at Artsy here: https://www.artsy.net/artist/andy-warhol

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: October 2008

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.  

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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

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