Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think
- ISBN13: 9780132339421
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Profit from the World’s Largest Untapped Market: Africa’s MORE THAN 900 MILLION Consumers! “This book lays out a powerful portrait of the growing opportunities in Africa. It is clear to us that any global firm interested in growth must see Africa as an essential part of its portfolio.” –E. Neville Isdell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-Cola Company, USA “While we consider Africa one of our most important markets, we are very aware that it is often overlooked as a place to conduct sustainable business. This book shows that Africa offers opportunities equal to other developing regions that receive more attention. Through the Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards, we have committed to promoting high-quality coverage of the business environment in Africa. This book makes an important contribution in providing a vivid picture of the African market opportunity.” –Paul Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, Diageo, UK “This book presents a compelling argument for waking up to the potential of a continent with a population of over 900 million and a high rate of growth. The African continent is rich in natural resources and presents opportunities across a wide cross-section of industrial and commercial areas for companies with appropriate business strategies and a genuine commitment to improving the quality of life of the local population.” –Ratan N. Tata, Chairman, Tata Group, India “Unilever has invested in Africa for over a century and is committed to building strong market positions in the region by meeting the needs of African consumers. As this book highlights, the opportunities for consumer goods companies are considerable and the potential to do business in Africa is much greater than many companies realize.” –Patrick Cescau, Global CEO, Unilever, UK “Bravo. The timing of this book is perfect. It will be much quoted. I especially like how Professor Mahajan uses the voices of Africans to bring it to life, alongside the research.” –Barbara James, former Managing Director of the African Venture Capital Association and founder of the Henshaw Funds, the first independent pan-African private equity Fund of Funds, Nigeria/UK With more than 900 million consumers, the continent of Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing markets. In Africa Rising, renowned global business consultant Vijay Mahajan reveals this remarkable marketplace as a continent with massive needs and surprising buying power. Crossing thousands of miles across the continent, he shares the lessons that Africa’s businesses have learned about succeeding on the continent…shows how global companies are succeeding despite Africa’s unique political, economic, and resource challenges…introduces local entrepreneurs and foreign investors who are building a remarkable spectrum of profitable and sustainable business opportunities even in the most challenging locations…reveals how India and China are staking out huge positions throughout Africa…and shows the power of the diaspora in driving investment and development. *Recognize that Africa is richer than you think Africa is richer than India on the basis of gross national income (GNI) per capita, and a dozen African countries have a higher GNI per capita than China.*Aim for Africa Two Opportunities exist in all parts of the market, particularly the 400 million people in the middle of the market. *Find opportunities to organize the market From retailing to cell phones to banking, companies are succeeding by building infrastructure. *Develop strategies for the most youthful market in the world Companies are recognizing opportunities from diapers to music to medicine in a market growing younger every day.*Understand that Africa is not a “media dark” continent From Nollywood to satellite to broadband, media is exploding on the continent.*Recognize the hidden strength of the African diaspora The African diaspora brings resources and knowledge to African development and expands the African opportunity beyond the continent.*Build Ubuntu markets Create profitable businesses, sustainable growth, and social organizations by meeting basic human needs.
Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think
Comment by Brendon Jones
I read the first few chapters with eager anticipation and then skimmed the rest. The author does Africa justice by highlighting that Africa does have some interesting investment or business opportunities given it’s myriad of problems. He does however treat Africa as largely a single entity which it clearly is not, while many countries suffer from similar problems, such as extreme poverty, over population, war, disease, lack of infrastructure, etc. the circumstances in each country are different. He does not even discuss the length of time to license a business (in the formal economy) this varies from a couple hours in South Africa to months in Egypt, and years in Angola. His grounding in basic economics is weak, on the one hand he compares the GDP of Africa, a continent to countries, to imply that Africa is the 10th largest economy. Well on a continental it is 2nd last only to Australasia and Antarctica combined. It is not even a single jurisdiction. What point is he trying to make? One the other hand he states that the GNI of 10 African countries is higher than that of China. Is also does not make much sense. If he is demonstrating “evidence” for Africa’s merit, well I guess he has done that. Though to be fair to China and India, it would be more reasonable to compare African countries to Chinese and Indian states, which are in both cases, in many respects, semi-autonomous entities. My final criticism is that he almost completely ignores the political factor that will and does affect foreign investment.
Sure there are similarities between India and China from 20 or 5 years ago to Africa today, but these are mostly superficial.
The books sole merit is to highlight that Africa could prove to be a compelling investment ground for new comers as it has for long established players such as Coca-Cola.
Rating: 1 / 5
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 8:41 am
Comment by Gagewyn
I have mixed feelings about Africa Rising. I like the approach of pointing out business opportunities in Africa, but the book leaves out big important things, like minimum standards for living and for the quality of goods.
I like the treatment of Africans as consumers. This is how my society makes someone fully human, by making them a consumer; those who are not fully human are shown as childish victims. So selling something to someone is a way to affirm their humanity and equality. Sad, but true.
I also love that there are demographic breakdowns of different countries. Charts show distribution of Muslims and Christians (important for planning sales pitches to coincide with Ramadan and other holidays), language breakdowns by county, wealth distribution by county, etc. I live in a city with more than 300,000 people, which is the capital of a US state, in which, when I wished to purchase map of the world to tape to my wall, I was unable to find a store that carried such an item. I appreciate when someone includes general background information which is better than wikipedia. This book does that.
One major aspect which is missing from this book is any investigation into minimum standards both for how a person should be forced to live and for the quality of goods. Discussion of minimums with regards to living is addressed from the perspective of producing goods for a market at the very bottom. Similar to a dollar store, one looks at how much money a person has in their pocket and then tries to make a product with that price. I like this. Some of the products described, like a two teaspoon sized container of milk (kind of like a Wendy’s sour cream container) are things I wish were available here. It’s small and because it’s to be consumed all at once, it doesn’t require refrigeration (another thing to consider). Designing products which can be easily divided into units small enough for even the poorest to buy both helps and fleeces the poor at the same time – yay! That’s something we can all get behind.
A major problem that Mahajan doesn’t get into is adulteration and really bad quality problems that can happen when you are looking at products designed around price. The recent troubles we have seen with Chinese imports designed by price and in a country with poor regulation show an example of this: lead paint, toys that turn into roofies when chewed, etc. Mahajan gives glowing descriptions of soap bars designed to be broken into smaller pieces by middlemen who sell to the very poor. In some places he seems to carry this idea into realms where it will not work. For example, medicine can be diluted, but that is a problem, not a market. Powdering a tuberculosis pill and dividing it into seven piles for the week is probably something someone is doing right this moment, but that’s bad for the consumer because the pill costs money but isn’t going to do much when divided like that and bad for the world because it increases drug resistance. Mahajan doesn’t advocate that specific example, but neither does he point out that some middlemen are going to be adulterating like crazy. Here’s my idea for an even better way to make money than adulterating: put some water in a syringe and call it medicine, then sell it cheaper than what medicine costs – so lucrative! Mahajan should have talked about branding and reputation as a way to prevent quality and adulteration problems and also a means to charge more for any product. He should have, but he didn’t. (He also doesn’t much talk about regulation, which is probably where you thought I was going with the adulteration. Regulation requires what Mahajan would call an “organized market” and isn’t much feasible for a single entrepreneur, so that’s probably why he skips on discussing it.)
So, in general Mahajan is way too rosy about designing products cheap. He completely misses branding as a huge market opportunity created by this.
Overall the picture is rosy to the point of not being realistic. Sure, if you are a healthy person with money to do venture, life is rosy. That’s true anywhere. There is not so much discussion of disease (other than to say you can sell drugs, but combined with designing around price, that doesn’t work so well) or of miserable bad poverty other than to say that really really poor people are an untapped market. He talks about companies doing business in the area and how they are going to be altruistic. Coca Cola did this good deed for the poor AIDS babies. PHARMA donated these drugs for this or that project. Some companies threw some bones into projects that bring them good press and Mahajan thinks that is the way to go in terms of uplifting the poorest of the poor. He points out the motivation that cleaning up eyesores makes life better for the workers and customers. Companies can also clean up eyesores by buying those eyesores some bus tickets to somewhere else. That’s what US cities do with the homeless. Somalia seems like a really bad place to do business, so I’m thinking that’s where corporations will be sending the really decrepit people. I think I would have preferred Mahajan not at all discuss ways to help the poorest of the poor.
Probably the best reason to read this book is that it hasn’t been written before. Most US discussion of Africa is: don’t go there, or feed the AIDS babies with warm fuzzy love. I vastly recommend Africa Rising and it’s approach to other views of the continent. Please, if you want to go feed an AIDS baby, read this book!
Rating: 5 / 5
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 11:06 am
Comment by Lynn Ellingwood
There are millions of African consumers out there just waiting to buy your products! Economics professor, Vijay Mahajan writes about the potential marketplace in Africa and encourages readers to join in developing Africa for trade and capitalism. He acknowledges that people need help and aid but says corporations who have a stake in doing business in Africa will help most of all. African countries can stabilize and do better when there are real interests involved. This is a great way to think about Africa and it may actually help more than thinking of it as a charity basket case. I would like to see African lives and the African continent get better.
Rating: 5 / 5
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Comment by J. A Magill
Other reviewers have covered the substance of this work with clarity and thought, and I feel no need to waste anybody’s time marching over the same terrain again. On balance, this book gives an interesting and rarely heard perspective on Africa. Too many people know too little about the continent, but imagine that they know enough. The author does a fine job of demonstrating that the continent is highly variegated, with areas of stability and opportunities. Even more importantly, it will very possibly peak a reader’s interest to learn more.
On the downside, the book could do a better job of judging the quality of the data given, which in several cases comes from unreliable sources. Also, one gets the feeling that some examples are cherry picked rather than offering a more normative perspective of broad populations.
Rating: 4 / 5
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Comment by J. Finkel
Overall, I found Africa Rising to contain enough interesting information and insights to warrant a read. However, the disjointed organization and lack of flow made this a difficult book to get through.
Content:
The author clearly illustrates a first-hand understanding of many African communities and markets. The research done for this book provides additional facts and figures which aptly strengthen these illustrations. Among the satisfying information though, I also found myself extremely tempted to skip ahead when miring through some of the more pointless factoids and marketing talk. Also, occasionally the facts only superficially go along with the author’s point. For example, the author discusses Nigerian direct deposit scams, explaining how these scams demonstrate a high level of technical sophistication and computer skills. On the contrary, these scams require no further knowledge of computers than how to send email, and no more technical rigor than opening a bank account. Worse yet, the author claims these scams work because American’s think Nigerian’s are so unsophisticated…and yet simultaneously they believe the Nigerian capable of internationally laundering money? Aside from a few lapses in logic and an excess of random statistics, figures and statements, the content has a lot to offer.
Presentation:
Organizationally, this book needs a rewrite. Within each chapter regularly lie jarring transitions. I think the author casts too wide of a net for each chapter. In doing so he pulls in tenuously related material; and often you’ll find something later on, more relevant to a point in another chapter and even some redundancy. Plus, the writing style mixes the conversational tone of informal writing with that of an investment prospectus, marketing ads, and textbook. It seemed to have the weaknesses of many of those styles, with only some of their strengths. Some sections made out better than others, but the worst are far too disjointed and unengaging in delivery. I enjoyed the full-color photos included in the middle of book.
Rating: 3 / 5
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 5:06 pm