Description This map shows the total number of Internet users in a country (size of the country) as well as the percentage of the population that has Internet access (shade of the country). It is an update of our 2011 visualization. Data and Method The map uses 2013 data on Internet users and population that… Read More »
Huge resources are invested into plans and projects that are designed to connect some of the billions of people who still lack any sort of digital connectivity. Yet, it is surprising that there is a relatively sparse evidence-base about how greater access and connectivity can facilitate or enable various types of economic development. As such, our research… Read More »
Use of the term “hub” has certainly been inflationary in discussions about innovation and entrepreneurship support. I believe that innovation hubs are a genuinely new (and exciting!) organizational form, but at the same time, “hub” has become a misnomer for many organizations where the label doesn’t quite fit, especially across Africa. This wouldn’t be such… Read More »
I’m happy to announce a new paper to come out of our previous project studying Development and Broadband Internet Access in East Africa. The project was a collaboration between myself, Tim Waema, Laura Mann, and Chris Foster and aimed to look at the role that changing connectivity in East Africa was having on three sectors of… Read More »
I’m happy to report the release of a new report that comes our of a multi-year project to student the Internet and the Business Process Outsourcing sector in East Africa. This work has, in many ways, informed the research design and framing of our current Geonet project. Mann, L., Graham, M. and Friederici, N. 2015.… Read More »
I am very happy to announce a new paper: ‘Contradictory Connectivity: Spatial Imaginaries and Techno-Mediated Positionalities in Kenya’s Outsourcing Sector.’ A pre-print is available below. Graham, M. 2015. Contradictory Connectivity: Spatial Imaginaries and Techno-Mediated Positionalities in Kenya’s Outsourcing Sector. Environment and Planning A. (in press). Abstract East Africa has traditionally been characterised by stark barriers to… Read More »
The publisher has kindly allowed us to freely share three chapters of our new book (that I co-wrote with colleagues Dan Hammett and Chasca Twyman): ‘Research and Fieldwork in Development.‘ The book draws on our experiences of doing fieldwork about development and explores both traditional and cutting edge research methods, from interviews and ethnography to… Read More »
During the interviews I conducted in Zimbabwe last October, many participants asked me: “Why pick Harare as a case study? Why not Nairobi or Lagos?” Indeed, Harare’s “ecosystem” is nascent, and the few tech startups that exist are hampered by fundamental market and skill constraints, as discussed in my last post. At the same time,… Read More »
Click here to view this post as it originally appeared on VC4Africa. We all know that early monetization and revenue generation are crucial for digital startups in Africa. Entrepreneurs in pretty much any African city find it impossible to obtain significant scaling capital before they show revenue, as angel investors (if they exist at… Read More »
Tech entrepreneurship is definitely on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, actually, this rise is not evenly distributed across Africa’s vast geography. Leaving aside South Africa, we can observe that the emergence of content and application startup activity has so far concentrated in the sprawling capital cities of two countries with growing economies, large populations,… Read More »